Work Text:
Baxter first notices the flowers when he ascends from his lab to fetch a delivery that arrived for him. He’s standing in the lobby, penning his signature on the harried-looking delivery person’s tablet, when — for no apparent reason — the vase on the concierge desk catches his eye. He’s too far to read a tag and there doesn’t appear to be one attached either way, but even he recognizes that color scheme with its pastel wrappings and colorful flowers.
“Do you need a receipt?” The delivery person asks, sounding very much like they’re hoping the answer is no.
Baxter shakes his head, already distracted and barely hearing their rattled-off farewell followed by the sound of them leaving. His package will be safe in the lobby for a moment, and he sets the box down on one of the chairs as he walks to the concierge desk and leans up, thankful for the extra few centimeters from his boots, to better see the flowers inside. It’s been many years since he studied botany when he was doing his undergraduate studies at the University of Madrid, but it doesn’t take a scholar to recognize the majority of the flowers that make up the bouquet: pearly white zinnias, the largest of them touched with blush-pink at the throats of their soft petals.
Idly, poking at the arrangement not unlike he would poke at a specimen, Baxter prods a few stems aside to better see some of the other components. Alongside the zinnias are periwinkles, a cloudy white variety that carries the same Heavenly sheen as the zinnias. He’s unfamiliar with the other flowers, which look somewhat like smaller, more compact orchids on long, wisteria-like spears of blooms, but the greenery is recognizable by scent if nothing else as fresh, healthy rosemary. The scent of it clings to Baxter’s fingers when he steps back, staring at the bouquet with a strange feeling welling up in his throat.
Of course, that’s the exact moment that Vaggi decides to return from her lunch break. Baxter can’t backtrack quickly enough for her to miss the way he’s staring at the flower arrangement as if it’s personally offended him. She slips back behind the desk and sets her mug down on the back counter before leaning over the front and nodding at the bouquet.
“Pentious sent them,” Vaggi says. “Do you know what they are? Charlie and I were trying to figure it out, but neither of us know anything about flowers.”
“Zinnias, periwinkles, and rosemary,” Baxter says, and though he knows he should be getting his package and making a quick retreat before the hitch in his chest becomes audible in his voice, he can’t look away from the bouquet quite yet. “I’m...not sure about the other one.”
Vaggi rearranges one of the zinnias with a triumphant little smile. “I told her you’d know. Maybe we can look the other one up.”
Baxter finally tears himself away and picks up his package, the weight of it suddenly feeling as strange and uncomfortable as the sensation in his chest that only gets stronger when he turns back around and catches sight of the periwinkles and zinnias again. “Yes. Maybe. I have to get back to my work.”
The scent of rosemary follows him all the way back to his room. Eventually, after he washes his hands in the lab sink until his skin feels raw with the sting of antibacterial soap, he doesn’t notice it anymore.
***
More flowers come over the next couple weeks.
Baxter finds them in the lobby or the dining room or sees Cherri cupping them in her hands as she stands in front of the fire, the portrait of Pentious that hangs above it seeming to loom in the empty space his absence has left. They seem to fill the Hotel now that Baxter has noticed them — white and pink and orange and purple, petals everywhere, floral breezes no matter down which hall he turns. Rosemary is a common addition to the bouquets, its earthy, herbal scent lingering on the rare occasions that Baxter emerges from his lab for mealtimes or group activities. Charlie proudly wears a boutonniere of angelica on her jacket, the white of it standing out against the red like snowflakes on a bullfighter’s cape.
“Pentious wrote that he picked it himself,” Charlie tells Baxter when she notices him looking at it. “Isn’t that so sweet of him?”
Baxter scoffs — of course the snake would be foolish and sentimental like that — but his heart isn’t in it.
He doesn’t like how the flowers make him feel. It’s not that he doesn’t like flowers; he has no strong feelings on flower arrangements beyond finding the native plants of Hell quite fascinating from a scientific perspective. No, the problem is that Pentious, Baxter knows, is not just sending flowers.
In a funny turn of fate’s endless wheel of comedy, Baxter and Pentious were alive on Earth in roughly the same time period. Their lives themselves even overlapped in temporal space even if not in geographical space. Though, if Baxter’s rough estimate of when Pentious died is anywhere close to correct, the difference in their ages would have been fairly pronounced. Still...had their lives taken slightly different paths, they might have met. They might have even been...friends, of a sort.
...Which is not important, Baxter thinks as he opens the storage closet provided with his room and turns on the overhead light to better see the plastic storage containers within, each one labeled with tape and marker.
The important thing about him knowing the time period that Pentious lived in because it wasn’t much different from his own is knowing that Pentious, soft-hearted dope that he is, must have been the kind of Victorian who put far too much stake in the silly concept of flower language. Baxter has to shift several of the containers to get to the one he wants, kneeling down and unlatching the lid to get to the books and stacks of paper inside. He doesn’t even know if the books are still in here; God knows the logical thing to do would have been to sell them years ago. Continuing to carry around Pentious’ things long after the snake left would be just as idiotic as the same sentimentality Baxter finds insufferable in others. He picks up a stack of books and glances over the titles, the light of his esca catching what the overhead light misses. Many of the ones he’s holding are textbooks that are several years out of date at this point. Baxter really ought to go through and find something to do with these anyway... Not much point in holding on to chemistry textbooks that were published before humanity split the atom.
Baxter shakes his head and stacks the books beside him, reaching in for another few of them and glancing at their spines. Some of these do belong to Pentious, he knows it — or at least they did before Pentious stormed out of their lab like a child and waited until Baxter had left to attend a meeting at VoxTek to come back and pack up his belongings. Baxter returned home tired, annoyed, and a little bit shocked to find Pentious’ side of the lab empty and silent, the coppers and oranges already beginning to fade into muddy, bruised blues. The memory alone is enough to bring a bitter taste to Baxter’s mouth. Pentious left like an idiot, slithering out into the rain, and then he left like a coward, unable to even face Baxter to justify himself. The worst part is that he didn’t even do a thorough job of it. Weeks later, while doing his usual cleaning, Baxter found a trunk full of various odds and ends that Pentious had forgotten.
“Typical,” Baxter mutters darkly, trying to ignore the scent of rosemary that lingers on his coat when he shifts and reaches for another set of books.
It’s probably not in here anymore. He probably did do the commonsense thing and sell it or donate it or leave it in a box on the street corner. It’d be the most reasonable, the most logical. There’s nothing to find in here and he’d be better off putting the whole thing out of his mind entirely.
Baxter is just about to dump the books back into the container and return to his work when he finally sees the cover he’s looking for, dark navy blue with well-worn gold foiling glinting in the shadows at the very bottom of the bin. The Illustrated Language of Flowers. Among the schematics and lab notes that Baxter found in Pentious’ forgotten trunk were several books, this one among them. He could forget he saw it. Dump the other books on top and turn away and continue pushing Pentious’ betrayal down like he’s been doing for the past...however many years it’s been. Baxter hasn’t been keeping count.
(Thirty-three. It’s been thirty-three years.)
Baxter grabs the book.
It feels heavier than a plutonium core in the pocket of his coat as he stows the rest of the books away and returns the closet to its previous state, turning the light off on his way out. He’s already removed his gloves for the day, and he takes his coat off next, hanging it up on its hook near his workbench before withdrawing the book from the pocket and looking at it for a moment. He’s being ridiculous, he knows. Pentious made his choice. There are far better things for Baxter to do with his time than waste it on trying to decipher puzzles of meaning hidden in ephemeral, frivolous petals. Then again...when has he ever liked leaving a puzzle unsolved?
He takes his tablet and the book with him to his bed, sitting up against his pillow with the book in one hand and his tablet propped up on his knees so he can take notes. The first thing he looks up, stuck in his head like a stubborn thorn, is rosemary. Pentious must have bought this book not long after he arrived in Hell — the pages are brittle and faded with age, the lovingly painted illustrations washed out by the passage of time. Baxter feels compelled to be careful of the book as he flips through the pages and runs his finger down the seemingly endless lines of rose, yellow and rose, white and rose, red. Eventually he finds it right under rosebay.
Remembrance, the book tells him. Baxter supposes that’s somewhat self-explanatory. He makes a note of it on his tablet, the contrast of his sleek screen and black stylus next to the old, time-weathered pages almost laughable. Pentious always was stuck in the past. Baxter may be Victorian-born, too, but he sees no reason to stick to outdated technology and old-fashioned attitudes.
Zinnias and periwinkles are next — their meanings are noted on his screen as thoughts of absent friends and pleasant recollections, respectively. Baxter determined that the other flower in the bouquet, the one he didn’t recognize at first, was rose acacia, and according to this book, that bloom stands for feelings of platonic love. Taken together, then, the first arrangement that Pentious sent was one that conveyed feelings of loss and wistfulness for what once was, but also communicated an appreciation of good times had and the love shared between friends. The prospect is so nauseatingly maudlin that it makes Baxter’s head hurt. That stupid, stupid snake, with his pathetic recollections and his contemptible reminiscing—
Baxter shuts the book, shoves it underneath his pillow, and erases the notes he was taking.
***
Baxter reopens his digital notepad mere days later. Charlie’s angelica boutonniere— Pentious is telling her that she’s an inspiration to him. The arrangement of weeping willow, aspen, and white bell flower left by the statue of Charlie’s dragon that was slain by Adam and Lute — Pentious is saying that he’s grateful to the creature and mourns its loss. The meanings are everywhere Baxter looks, and there are few times he’s felt more like a fool than when he’s sulking around the Hotel, trying not to let anyone see him carrying a book so silly as a flower language guide and scribbling notes on his tablet. It’s been over thirty years since Pentious turned his back on Bax— their work, and Baxter really would be better served letting him continue to turn his back. It’s not as if Pentious has got any reason to change now.
So Baxter thinks, at least. Then, while making her weekly delivery of gifts, snacks, letters, and, yes, flower arrangements, Emily calls his name and excitedly flutters over to where he’s sitting on one of the chairs in the lobby and reading a paper on his tablet.
“Pentious sent this for you,” Emily says before Baxter can even ask what’s going on, and she pulls one hand from behind her back to reveal a nosegay made of two different kinds of small purple flowers and sprigs of fresh, sweet-smelling peppermint. “Do you want me to...er...put it in water, or something? I don’t really know how I’d put it in water, but I can try, if you want.”
Baxter is too busy reeling to answer for a few moments, but eventually he manages to set his tablet aside and clear his throat, reaching out to gently pluck the little corsage from her grasp and examine it. “...No, that’s alright.”
“Do you like it?” Emily clasps her hands together, Baxter’s reaction clearly not dampening her enthusiasm in the slightest. “I didn’t even know he could make things as pretty as that! Look, he made me one, too. Now you and I and Charlie all match!”
Baxter looks up to see her point to a small pin she’s wearing that’s been decorated with ranunculus and some delicate white flowers that he can’t recall the name of. Wood sorrel, he thinks, though he can’t be sure. Emily doesn’t give him much chance to think about it, continuing on with her excited chattering while his brain is still stuck on the idea of Pentious’ clever engineer’s hands busy with the careful arranging of stems and blossoms.
“Ever since I showed him the gardens, he’s been spending so much time there,” Emily says with a laugh, though it doesn’t sound unkind. “Making all kinds of machines to help with watering and sowing and taking care of them... Not that we really, like...need them? Which is still fine! He’s having fun and that’s what matters. Anyway, I’ll let him know that you liked it! See you, Baxter!”
With that, she flutters off, probably to go deliver something to someone else or pick up any mail that needs to be sent up to Heaven. Baxter, firstly, did not at all mean to convey to her that he liked the corsage; he figured the way he’s gingerly holding it like it’s about to bite him would have conveyed that his emotions about it are anything other than simply happy. It’s pretty, of course, but Baxter has never been the kind of man to tend towards things that serve no other purpose than being pretty. Of course, perhaps the entire reason the innocent-seeming little accessory makes his stomach do an uncomfortable flip is that it doesn’t only serve the purpose of being pretty. Pentious is no longer just sending messages — he’s sending messages to Baxter.
Baxter grits his teeth, and then he swears, and then he swears again, in Spanish and with feeling because it always makes him feel better to curse someone out in his mother tongue. “¡Que se vaya al infierno! That idiotic fucking snake...”
He keeps up the angry muttering all the way back down to his lab, where he tosses the corsage on his workbench and pulls out his phone to take a picture of the flowers and run it through a search engine so he can look them up. He can’t even believe he’s doing it. It was stupid enough before, but this? What purpose is this going to serve? Is there really any benefit to listening to what Pentious has to say after Pentious left — and Pentious did leave, which Baxter is happy to remind him of if he needs a refresher. He took his eggs and walked away from decades, literal decades, of partnership and research. Baxter and Pentious started working together in 1919, not even ten years after Baxter himself ended up in Hell, and they continued all the way until 1992. More than seventy years they spent together — longer than either of them were alive on Earth — and Pentious threw it away like it was nothing. Baxter may have worked with him to help stop Vox’s plan and link Heaven and Hell together, but that’s a relationship of necessity. Other than that, as far as Baxter is concerned, Pentious can keep his wings and halo and self-righteousness. He’ll always be the snake that left Baxter in the dead of night because his feelings got hurt.
Baxter pauses, the noises of his lab suddenly seeming loud as he realizes that he’s breathing fast and his eyes are prickling. The idea of crying over Pentious, of all people...
No, he’s not crying. His eyes are watering because he spent too long upstairs in the dry, warm air of the Hotel proper and then came back down to his cool, humid lab. He blinks hard and opens the book on flower language while he waits for his search to return results.
There are two distinct flower varieties in the arrangement, it turns out. Saffron flowers, also known as crocus, make up most of it. They strike Baxter as looking like miniature tulips, deep purple with bright yellow-orange centers. The other flowers, tucked in with the peppermint, are honesty flowers, their petals a softer, lighter purple that seems to hold its color even in the blue light of Baxter’s lab. Baxter flips a few pages in the book and takes notes on the notebook laying open on the workbench, scribbling the names of the plants down before he finally finds their respective pages.
Saffron flowers for a wish of good-faith. Honesty for, aptly named as it is, honesty. Peppermint for cordiality.
I’m being earnest and truthful, the arrangement is saying, and I hope you’re well.
Baxter nearly chucks the corsage right in the trash. Is he well? What a wonderfully inane platitude the snake is offering. Did Pentious not think to extend that at any point in the preceding (thirty-three) years? Is he only trying now because he’s safe in Heaven and unconcerned with having to face his own shameful, childish actions? It is just like him to send a silly little flower arrangement, isn’t it, with the assumption that Baxter will bother to figure it out— Does Pentious really think that all people of their time bother with old books on flowers and—
And now Baxter is crying, properly crying, and he pushes his goggles up and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes until the hot, salty feeling begins to ebb like a receding wave. Pentious never bothered to reach out, but Baxter didn’t, either. It’s not even that he didn’t think about it, because he did, so many times that he grew sick of it. Every time, he shot himself down and reminded himself of how Pentious turned his back. He thought Pentious was going to be with him for the rest of their afterlives, and he—
He—
He would have...liked that. He thought that Pentious would have liked that, too. They never talked about their relationship; they were never, strictly speaking, any more than lab partners, just like Baxter told Cherri all those weeks ago. Still, they felt like more. They had...something more. Or did they? Did Baxter just want them to be more and wished that old nostalgia into existence so he had another thing to hate? Can he even answer that question honestly after so many years spent wrapping up every memory of Pentious in bitter, toxic spines to teach himself not to keep reaching for them?
Baxter’s next swallow feels sharp, like his emotions are so acute they’re wedged in his throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut a little bit tighter and takes breaths so deep he can feel his gills prickling. The last time he talked to Pentious, they weren’t exactly catching up considering they were too busy trying to prevent Vox from taking over Hell and nuking it to its cosmic foundations, in that order. Even then, he and Baxter never actually spoke directly. Emily was their go-between. Prior to that, the last time they spoke was...
Fine. Slither out like a petulant child if that’s what suits you. Don’t come crying back to me when you end up scraping the muck off the soles of an Overlord’s shoes — or mixed in with the muck yourself.
Baxter isn’t proud of himself for losing his temper. He’s also not proud of what he did the day that he came home to find everything of Pentious’ gone and the snake’s key left for him without even a note of Pentious’ own sneering insults. In that moment, those long, silent heartbeats in the lull of an early afternoon, Baxter had stared at the emptiness around him as the roaring in his ears grew louder and louder and louder until eventually it was joined by the shattering of every single piece of glassware he had been able to get his hands on. He hurled it at the wall, the floor, aiming for every warm-toned shadow and glint he had been able to see, and when he had finally exhausted his supply of beakers and test tubes he had sunk to his knees in the glittering, sharp-edged wreckage. Pentious had left before, going off to traipse around in his airship or hide in one of his little holes, but he had always come back. To see his belongings gone and know, deep and instinctual, that this time, he wasn’t coming back... It felt like his chest had been hollowed out and all his fishbone ribs left raw and exposed to the air.
It still feels a little bit like that, if Baxter is being honest with himself. Even now. Even so many years later. He never got another lab partner and neither did Pentious, it seems, so there’s nothing to pour into that hollow space inside him, nothing to make him forget the way it felt to share a lab with Pentious and talk or theorize or debate while they worked. Thirty-three years and the barbed wire he’s fenced his feelings off with is just as sharp as ever — Baxter has to fight to swallow the lump in his throat as he gingerly takes his hands away from his eyes and scrubs his cheeks dry once more.
Well, that was unproductive, Baxter thinks, blinking a few times before righting his goggles on his face. And unpleasant.
Clearly, he needs to figure out a solution to this. He supposes there’s always the option of talking to Pentious. He could even play along with Pentious’ silly games and send...some kind of flower back, or get Emily to do it for him... Or he could do the reasonable thing and write Pentious a letter for Emily to deliver.
Maybe it’s the bitterness talking, but neither of those ideas sound particularly pleasant. Baxter picks up the corsage again and looks over the soft, delicate blooms, framed by the green leaves of the peppermint. Would it have been kinder for Pentious to never send it in the first place? Baxter is certainly inclined to think so. Who does Pentious even think he is, disturbing the ground that he and Baxter both salted and burned years and years ago? Maybe Baxter should do nothing and simply let Pentious’ message go unacknowledged and unanswered. That would be the easiest course of action, and probably the most logical, too. He could take the message as Pentious probably meant it: a cordial greeting on the street, a passing nod to a gentleman you knew long ago.
Baxter sighs, plucks one of the leaves of peppermint off its stem and crushes it between his thumb and forefinger just to appreciate its sweet-sharp scent, and then tosses the whole thing into the trash.
***
From that point on, Baxter tries not to look at the flowers. The book sits at the far end of his workbench, untouched. The notes he’s scribbled slip down the list of his recently opened files until they disappear out of sight. More arrangements come, but Baxter does his best not to pay attention to them. He does his work, and his chores, and puts the flowers from his mind as best he can even as they continue to encroach on his hard-won and somewhat shaky peace of mind.
The flowers aren’t the only thing encroaching on his peace of mind, though. It’s late in the day, past dinnertime, when he hears the characteristic thunk of someone dropping down the ladder into his room. Seeing as how his room is usually only visited by two of his friends and Niffty doesn’t make that much noise, the options of who it is prove themselves limited. Baxter lowers his clipboard enough to look over the top of it, unimpressed, at Cherri.
“Hey,” Cherri says, completely unbothered by his lack of enthusiasm. “Something showed up at the front desk for you.”
Baxter saw that text message from Vaggi. He also chose to ignore it in favor of finishing what he was working on — he supposes he must have lost track of time. Probably no harm done; if it was refrigerated or alive they would have made him come up and sign for it. He sets his clipboard down as Cherri walks towards his workbench and...
Oh. That’s...not a box of lab supplies or computer parts. Baxter blinks at the piece of greenery-covered decor that Cherri has set down. It’s a square black frame, about 25 centimeters on each side, that’s been filled with mossy substrate full of soft green maidenhair ferns growing out of it in the same way they would grow through the cracks of a cinder block wall. Baxter blinks at it, then turns to Cherri.
“Who was this from?”
“Pentious,” Cherri says. “Duh.”
Yes, Baxter thinks. Duh.
Well, at least it looks nice, at any rate. Baxter pulls it closer and pokes at it experimentally, the moss and leaves soft and cool when he peels his gloves off and runs the ferns through his bare fingers. It’ll probably do well in his lab. He assumes Pentious knew that, and probably also probably knew that Baxter has not lost his aesthetic taste for deep blues and greens.
“I took it out of the wrapping because it was all soggy — you’re welcome, by the way — but I saved the card.” Cherri hands over a small paper card with a painting of a peony on the front. “I figured the anglerfish drawing meant you.”
“Yes, you would assume,” Baxter says drily, and he flips the card open to glance at the drawing of an anglerfish done in metallic gold ink and then closes it again, deliberately not looking at the peony. “It’s...nice.”
“Yup,” Cherri agrees, and then she sits down on his workbench and gives him an expectant look.
Baxter squints at her through the yellow tint of his goggles. What else does she want? Why isn’t she leaving?
Ah. Right. Baxter puts on his best thank-you-and-goodbye tone of voice. “Thank you for bringing it down.”
Cherri’s eyebrow drifts up a little higher. “Uh-huh.”
They stare at each other for another few moments. Baxter clears his throat.
“...You can leave now.”
“I can,” Cherri agrees.
Cherri does not get up and move towards the door.
Baxter sighs, drops the card on the workbench, and reaches for his gloves again so he can return to his work. If Cherri wants to hover, fine, she can hover. She’ll have to entertain herself, though.
Hovering, it seems, is not quite what Cherri had in mind. Baxter hasn’t even gotten one of his gloves on before she’s scoffing and leaning back with a derisive shake of her head in his general direction.
“You haven’t even sent him a fuckin’ postcard, have you?”
Baxter sometimes wishes he hadn’t traded his glasses out for goggles, because safety goggles make it very hard to peer over the top of them to convey the depths of his disappointment. He hadn’t realized his relationship — or lack thereof — with his former lab partner was up as a topic of discussion.
“What I have or have not sent to the snake is none of your business.” Baxter has to make do with glowering at her through his shatterproof yellow lenses, pulling his gloves on with a bit more force than is necessary just to make his point. “But, if you must know, no, I haven’t. We were lab partners who briefly collaborated and nothing more. I see no reason why that would ever warrant being...pen pals.”
Cherri snickers. “Um, newsflash, you bitter little weirdo, lab partners who briefly collaborated don’t send each other flowers.”
“That’s a fern,” Baxter says, annoyed on principle, and Cherri rolls her eye.
“Ugh, I hate nerds. Okay, whatever, you win, that’s a fern. I don’t think they’re big on sending ferns to each other, either.”
“The snake is apparently on a botanical flight of fancy.” Baxter picks up his clipboard as pointedly as he pulled on his gloves to make sure Cherri understands just how exasperating this line of inquiry is. “He’s been sending arrangements to everyone in the Hotel. I’m hardly unique in that regard.”
“Uh-huh,” Cherri repeats with a well-practiced undertone of disbelief. “So all that time being lab partners meant nothing, I guess.”
Baxter is sure Cherri didn’t mean that to hurt as much as it did. Everything she says is sharp, but that’s just who she is. Most of the time she doesn’t actually mean any harm. That, though... Did it mean nothing, in the end? Are the years they spent together meaningless? And why does saying it like that — the years we spent together — make it hurt even more? Maybe it’s just the fact that everything to do with Pentious is already tender, the wound of the snake’s betrayal threatening to reopen with all the reminders of him that Baxter has been subjected to lately.
Cherri is continuing, rubbing idly at a smudge of gunpowder on her hands instead of looking at Baxter, “It’s a dick move, that’s all I’m saying. That lonely idiot deserves at least a thank-you card. One of the stupid little ones or something. I’m sure Charlie has a stash as big as you—”
“Get out,” Baxter snaps.
“What?”
Baxter rounds on her with a real scowl this time. “Get out!”
Cherri stares at him, then scoffs again and shoves herself off his workbench back to her feet. “O-kay, someone’s feisty. I’ll tell Emily to tell Pentious you liked it if I see her before you do, I guess. Better than telling her you threw a fit about it.”
Baxter watches her ascend the ladder, taking one last chance to stick a hand down and flip him off before the hatch at the top opens and then closes again with a comfortingly solid metallic thunk. It feels like there’s a fucking nest of eels in his chest right now, that’s how strongly it’s hitting him, all that betrayal writhing and knotting in on itself behind his ribcage as it churns slimy and cold and threatening to climb up the back of his throat. He can’t acknowledge Pentious’ messages. He can’t. If he does, then...
If he does, then Pentious might respond.
It’s a stupid, illogical thing to be...afraid of. Because that is what Baxter is feeling, he realizes for the first time with an unpleasant, icy jolt like falling into frigid ocean water; he feels afraid, and he’s been feeling afraid for thirty-three years. If he and Pentious talk again, all of those walls he’s built and that barbed wire he’s wrapped up around them might come crashing down, and then he might be left with the same caustic, boiling-over feeling that he felt on the day he realized Pentious wasn’t coming back. He’s been telling himself for over three decades that there wasn’t any point to trying to talk to Pentious because either it would just leave them both even more bitter, but now he realizes what else he was scared of. Talking might lead them to reconciliation...and Baxter isn’t sure which one would be worse.
He’s also not sure if anything could be worse than this, standing frozen in his lab as he stares at the ferns and the painted peony on the card next to them. What do those mean, he wonders? Does he really want to find out the answer?
Of course the snake couldn’t just leave me alone, Baxter thinks, biting back the fear and forcibly stomping it down until it settles underneath the writhing mass of anger instead. I’m an idiot for ever entertaining it in the first place. I should throw the card away and stick the plants out in the greenhouse.
Then again, Baxter has never been able to leave well enough alone, either, and he’s also never been one to simply leave a question unanswered. His mother used to call him pequeña filósofo — little philosopher — because he always wanted to know why.
¿Por qué es azul el cielo? Why do fish live in water, not on land? ¿Por qué se producen las mareas?
Why does his stupid ex-partner insist on reaching out a hand that Baxter wants to do nothing more than slap away? What could possibly be so important he’d send it now?
He sets his clipboard down, gritting his jaw in anticipation of whatever he’s going to learn this time, and reaches for the book where it’s sat untouched for days under a stack of paperwork he’s been working through. The pages seem even more fragile underneath the thick rubber of his gloves, but taking them off seems like a bad idea for the same reason it’d be a bad idea to take PPE off while working with a live pathogen. Baxter flips through the pages, the ferns a constant presence in the corner of his eye, and mentally ticks down the alphabetized list until he reaches the entry for them.
Sincerity. Likely a modifier for whatever the peony is supposed to represent, Baxter reasons. He skips a few pages until he reaches the section with peach blossoms and periwinkle — maybe the snake couldn’t find any peonies, or maybe he knew it would just end up in the trash anyway and there’s no point in wasting live flowers on a man who’s too mature for this shit like Baxter really, truly is. Baxter trails one gloved finger down the page, looking for the right entry...
Shame.
Peonies mean...shame.
Baxter considers throwing the whole thing, including the book, directly into the nearest garbage can, or better yet, incinerator. Pentious doesn’t get to sit up there in Heaven, safely insulated from his own childish actions, and deign to send Baxter simpering little flower messages of— of shame. Then, bitterly, righteousness wells up to take the anger’s place; yes, Pentious should feel ashamed, storming out like he did in a fit of anger and throwing away years of scientific progress in the process because he was too much of a fainthearted, spineless sap to use test subjects as they were meant to be used. Baxter certainly hopes he’d feel ashamed of that. It’s the least he deserves for betraying Baxter like he did.
A month ago, Baxter would have taken vicious and justified glee in that thought. Now, though, it just...feels...flat. Gray sea, gray sky, gray sand, like a fog bank has rolled in and softened the edges of everything he feels until nothing’s recognizable anymore. He snaps at Pentious in his head, has arguments with him in the privacy of his own shower, but refuses to do so much as send him a postcard. Baxter closes the book with a scowl and tosses it onto the workbench, wishing he could find it in himself to send something to the snake just so he could send that idiotic book and all its terrible, foolish translations back to the dolt that brought it into his afterlife.
It’d be easy, all things considered. Find some paper, wrap it up, address it to Pentious, and drop it in the box that Emily picks up outgoing mail from when she visits.
Baxter knows he’ll never do it no matter how easy it is, just like sending a message to Pentious. He could tear off a piece of paper from his clipboard right now and write something and send it up there — but what would he even say? What would be the point? If Pentious actually replied, not just sent flowers into the void but actually replied to Baxter, would he be ready for it? Baxter knows the answer to that question, and it’s even harder to face than the bitter, angry betrayal. Instead of facing it, then, he turns away, ignores the part of him begging to reach out in return, and goes back to his work.
***
Baxter tells himself that he won’t dwell on it. This is, he’s forced to admit, a lie.
He’s still turning it around and around in his head the next morning as he gets dressed after his shower, pulling his turtleneck on over his head and shaking his esca free as he gets the fabric down over himself. A step up onto the low metal stool magnetized to the floor and he can look at himself in the mirror above the bathroom sink, still lightly fogged before he wipes it with the towel and stares at his reflection. Sinner bodies are largely static — they don’t change, or fade, or grow. The face in the mirror, with his teeth poking out over his lower lip and his freckled cheeks, is the exact same one he saw in the mirror the day after Pentious left for good, and it’s also the exact same one that he saw in the mirror the day after he met Pentious for the very first time.
Baxter hasn’t changed one bit since he met the snake that would soon become his lab partner back in 1919. He’s still the same scientist as he was then, both inside and out. That suits him perfectly fine. If there’s one thing he loves, it’s routine. His morning alarms, his work, his perfectly-aligned sheets...Baxter is a man of consistency and has been since before he ended up in Hell. Some would call his preferred lifestyle monotonous. He doesn’t quite see why that’s supposed to be a negative thing. Having his routines is a way of having control, which is probably part of the reason why he’s so goddamn torn up inside about Pentious fucking all of it up.
Baxter isn’t just referring to Pentious blowing up their partnership and walking out, either, though that does, of course, represent one hell of a break in his routine. No, it also applies to his routine for the past thirty-three years, where every day of his life he’s reminded himself that Pentious left him, not the other way around, and the new normal that he settled into in the wake of that is one that he can’t afford to let go of. Pentious is the one who turned his back. He’s the one who abandoned it all. He’s the one who looked at everything they had, everything they had done together, and decided that a few little egg minions were worth throwing it all away for. Baxter has tried not to wonder about it — the snake is an idiot and trying to understand idiocy isn’t worth his time — but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t asked himself the question over and over again: why would Pentious betray him like that?
Baxter puzzles over it again for what feels like the millionth time in his afterlife as he brushes his teeth, trying to make sense of the snake’s senseless actions. It’s not that Baxter’s unsympathetic. He understood that Pentious had gotten attached to the eggs from the first time he caught Pentious snuggling with them. Baxter has gotten attached to some of his own creations; he is, after all, only a man, and there have been times where he was also tempted to hesitate while raising the scalpel or the syringe. But it’s as silly as hesitating over slaughtering the meat for dinner, or hesitating before plucking an apple from the tree, and in the end, his scientific curiosity has always won out. It’s not even like he was doing anything to the eggs he wouldn’t do to himself. Heaven knows he’s ended up in some unpleasant situations due to testing his hypotheses on the closest willing body: his own.
There were other things that got brought up in their fight, too, obviously. It wasn’t just about the eggs. (It was only mostly about the eggs.) The snake’s puerile turf war with Cherri Bomb...his utter refusal to modernize... In the years leading up to the fight, they went from comfortable lab partners to arguing more and more often, and then they didn’t just argue but fought and yelled and insulted each other, and then eventually Pentious was slamming the door behind him while Baxter watched from the window, raindrops beating against the glass. His earfins threaten to flatten at the mere memory of watching Pentious leave, the way his jacket was soaked with rainwater in an instant, the eggs trailing after him as he disappeared into the darkness.
It’s good that he left, Baxter tells himself as he caps his toothbrush and sets it aside to wash his face and splash it with water, raising his head from his wet hands and staring at himself in the mirror. Saves me trouble. It’s not like I would have had any use for his silly inventions.
It’s what he’s been telling himself for thirty-three years now, and he’s never had any trouble believing it before, so why can’t he muster the same conviction behind it as he usually does? Is it because now that he’s been forced to think about Pentious, he remembers the way they used to sit in the parlor in the evenings and drink tea together, chatting idly about new theories or experiments or machines as they both drew? The way that he was there for the first prototypes of Pentious’ airship and helped him spool out the string that kept the models from rising too high? The way that Pentious cared for Baxter when he was injured or sick from an experiment he had tried on himself, or after his surgery, when he couldn’t even lift his arms above his head and Pentious stayed there to help him even though Baxter snapped at him and ordered him around the whole time because he knew that Pentious was never going to leave—
That’s what it always felt like, Baxter has to admit, suddenly feeling a little bit like he’s gotten an Exorcist’s spear through his sternum. It felt like Pentious was never going to leave. He had never left before; clearly he never would. It’s an illogical thing to base a conviction on and yet Baxter realizes with an icy feeling in his veins that it’s exactly what he had believed for over seventy years. In his mind, Pentious was never going to leave him.
And then Pentious...left.
Baxter is not the kind of man who gets left. No, Baxter has always been the one who leaves — his family, his hometown, his life itself abandoned in a pool of pig’s blood and a ripped up dress. He faked his death and fled Gijón to study in Madrid; he left Madrid to study in Edinburgh; he left Edinburgh to work in London; and when the scrutiny in London became too much he bought passage on a ship that was supposed to take him to New York City. All of his forty-and-change years on Earth were spent leaving something behind, and when he got to Hell and realized that he didn’t have to do that anymore...Baxter supposes he forgot that there was always the chance of someone leaving him behind.
Baxter doesn’t want to think about that. He shakes his head hard like a dog shaking off water and scowls at his reflection.
“This is foolish.”
Foolish as it may be, the thought now stuck deep like a barbed hook sunk into his flesh. Pentious left Baxter behind and Baxter just— just let him, and now Pentious is trying to reach his hand back out and Baxter wants to bite the damn thing off. He never changed his mind or took it back; why should Pentious get the chance to? It’ll only reopen old wounds and stoke old embers back into a blaze.
Or, the contrarian part of Baxter’s brain whispers, it’ll let you be his lab partner again.
Baxter scowls harder at the man in the mirror, earfins flattening back before he deliberately wrestles his instincts under control and returns them to their neutral position. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want Pentious back in his life. He doesn’t want Pentious as a lab partner again. He doesn’t want to...to...to know what he’s missing.
...Does he?
Baxter swallows hard, tasting salt when he does, and turns away from the mirror and steps off the stool as if he can ignore his own mind. He doesn’t even realize where his feet are taking him until he’s in front of the freestanding dry erase board tucked behind the ladder into his lab. His thoughts feel like a physical weight on his shoulders, like every single drop in all Earth’s oceans has been distilled and hung around the back of his neck, and he can already feel his hands beginning to shake. He’s been pushing it down for weeks, but he can’t ignore it anymore. Everything in his mind is too fast and confusing and contradictory. He needs to make it something he understands: something he can solve. An equation. A bug in a line of code. If-then. Solve for x.
Baxter picks up the bright yellow marker, his favorite one, and writes a heading on the clear plastic board in quick, sharp strokes.
Known
He stops there, then takes a breath and puts the pen to the board again.
1. The snake is expressing feelings of regret, shame, cordiality, inquiries as to my well-being (associated with feelings of goodwill)
Baxter pauses and frowns slightly at the board. Why did he put that first? He drops one line and, the tip of the pen squeaking slightly with his movements, writes out the most important bullet point that really should have been number one.
2. The snake left me behind.
Charlie would probably say that thirty-three years is a long time to hold a grudge. Thank heavens that Charlie isn’t here right now, then. Another line.
3. No contact for 33yrs despite chances to.
Then Baxter hesitates, because the other things he knows... The letters come slowly, as if by hesitating with every stroke will make it easier to swallow down the words that take shape on the board in their sunny yellow pigment.
4. I wanted our partnership to continue and would have liked it in any form it took.
That last part is a cheap dodge and even Baxter knows it, but it’s the closest he wants to come to addressing it and even that makes him feel nauseous and like he should really erase all of this mess and pretend it never happened. Did he want to bed Pentious, did he want to marry him, did he simply want to be lab partners for the rest of eternity — does it matter now that Pentious is gone?
5. The snake is gone!
A long silence. Baxter stares at his writing, pen uncapped, hand holding it steady over the clear acrylic. He can practically feel his thoughts untangling, like tracing veins back to the artery and from there all the way to the heart, and his blood sounds loud in his ears in the underwater quiet of his lab. When he finally touches the pen to the board again, his face feels hot.
6. I miss him.
Baxter considers picking up the eraser and wiping that out of existence. Instead, he caps the pen and carefully sets it back in its tray. There are a lot of problems in science that are dead simple when it really comes down to it. Switch one molecule and an antidote turns into a poison; change the position of one number and a correct answer becomes laughably wrong. An entire experiment can be ruined because a spore of mold contaminated the whole solution. They tangle in on themselves, all those wrong answers and ruined plans, and then at the end of it all when Baxter sifts through the mess to try to find what happened, he realizes that there was never anything complicated about the answer. He just...didn’t see it.
All this time, he’s missed Pentious. For thirty-three years, he’s missed Pentious. Baxter missed him when he woke up the day after he took his things and left for good, and he missed him when he woke up this morning. He really hasn’t changed one bit: there’s a part of him that’s still watching Pentious leave, certain he’ll return and feeling like he’s suffocating when he doesn’t.
If Pentious is reaching out now...does that mean that he misses Baxter, too?
And...if he does...what are they going to do about that?
Baxter turns to look at the planter of ferns, still sitting on his workbench in the cool-toned light that washes over his lab. Clearly Pentious is doing something about it, so what about him? What’s the solution to this? What guide is he supposed to follow? Once again he thinks about writing a note and once again he wonders what he would say — unless he wants to copy down his notes from the dry erase board, but something tells him that’s not the best course of action. He misses Pentious and doesn’t have the foggiest fucking inclination of how to actually tell the snake that. Especially not with how his last words directed at Pentious were filled with such venom. Baxter is sure that any communication will be taken as if it’s full of hidden barbs. Not that Baxter has ever been one for hidden barbs, of course; he’s always thought life would be a lot easier if people just said what they meant, including the aggressive and unpleasant parts.
Returning to the dry erase board and picking up his pen again, Baxter moves to the other side and marks out a new section.
“It has to survive the trip to Heaven, obviously,” he mutters to himself as he writes, locked on the swipe of the pen as he starts setting the framework in place in his head. “It has to be something small or easily disposed of to avoid any unpleasant aftermath if my hypotheses are wrong... It has to be something that cannot,” He emphasizes the last word with a sharp underline, “be misconstrued or misunderstood to be hostile...”
Chocolates? Far too traditionally romantic. A card? The same problem of needing something to say to fill the card, a task that Baxter does not think he’s up to. One of Pentious’ blueprints or half-finished inventions that he left behind at their old lab? Possibly, but even Baxter can see how that might be taken as passive-aggressive. Heaven’s gift baskets include things like candies and stuffed animals— Ugh, he can’t bear to entertain that thought. Baxter steps back from the dry erase board and stares at it before tucking the pen behind his earfin and starting to pace, arms crossed over his chest. He’ll figure something out. He always does.
Until then, he’ll just have to hope that Pentious keeps on missing him.
***
Baxter does not figure something out.
Evening finds him at his workbench, the book sitting unopened in front of him and the food he took from the dining room at dinnertime untouched next to it. He’s taken off his coat and gloves, having admitted hours and hours ago that he’s not going to get any actual work done, and the only light in his lab is the deep aquatic glow of the various tanks, bubblers, and pipes that encircle him in rings of diffused blues and greens. In the dim lighting, the ferns in the planter turn from green to dark, moody turquoise, like water made murky with algae.
Restless, Baxter stands from his seat and goes to the dry erase board again. He’s not added any more new notes, so it’s the same columns that greet him as he stares at it, hoping that a new look will provide a new answer. None comes. He’s still as puzzled and as frustrated as he was this morning, except now he feels vaguely ill with all of it. Admitting that he misses Pentious has left him feeling unbalanced and strangely nauseous, like he’s coming down with something. Baxter used to be a physician — he supposes he technically still is, though he doubts a medical degree issued in the 1890s carries much weight these days — but whatever this ailment is, it seems like it must be beyond his knowledge, some kind of psychosomatic tangle that lights up a physical ache in his chest whenever he pokes too hard at its knotted, snakeskin coils. It’s viscerally unpleasant, whatever it is, and Baxter scowls at the ghostly reflection of himself in the dry erase board and goes back to his seat.
He feels stupid. He hates feeling stupid. He feels like an idiot for not admitting how much he missed Pentious until now, and he feels like an idiot for admitting it at all. He feels like a fool for playing along with Pentious’ silly games. He feels like a feeble-minded smooth-brain for not playing along well enough to the point that he’s here, sitting in his lab, staring at the fucking book, and being miserable over a man that walked (so to speak) out on him over thirty years ago.
Baxter thinks he might cry again, and he tips his head back and blinks, annoyed, at the ceiling until the feeling fades. He should’ve listened to himself and never gotten involved with any of this in the first place. Maybe then, he wouldn’t be in this terrible position.
Knock-knock-knock.
Baxter jumps about a meter high at the abrupt interruption to his murky thoughts, his stool skittering over the metal grate that serves as the floor before he grabs the workbench for support and glares up in the direction of the ladder and the hatchway above where the noise came from. The only people that he can remotely imagine knocking are Charlie and Vaggi and it’s far past their bedtimes. It’s certainly not Niffty or Cherri, as they would have just jumped straight in, and there are few other people in the Hotel that would have any reason to come pay him a visit at this time of night. Frowning, Baxter stands from his seat and walks to the ladder, standing at the base of it and looking up into the cylindrical opening that’s lit only by a ring of warm yellow lights around the base of the hatch.
“Yes?” Baxter calls up.
“Hi!” The voice that greets him is chirpy and feminine — Baxter almost thinks it really is Charlie until they continue. “I am so sorry if I woke you up, but Pentious really, really wanted me to give you something from him as soon as I possibly could... Well, okay, he didn’t actually say that, but I could really tell he was thinking it and he was wearing a hole in his floor pacing around because of it so I figured I might as well because he said you’re usually up late anyway so hopefully I didn’t wake you up...?”
Baxter blinks, feeling like it takes him an embarrassingly long time to process all of that. “...Emily?”
“Oh!” Emily pauses. “Yes. Sorry, did I forget to say that? Yes, it’s me, Emily! Um... Can I come in?”
Emily has never visited Baxter’s room before. Baxter glances around himself, privately thinking that Emily is going to look more out of place than ever in his cold, dark lab, but can see no reason why she shouldn’t come in if that’s really what she wants. He reaches over to the wall and presses the button to open the hatch automatically, stepping back underneath the ladder until the darkness at the top swings up and out of the way and Emily’s quite-literally-radiant smile greets him from where she’s peeking her head over the edge.
“Hello there!” Emily giggles and stands up, swinging one leg over the edge of the hatch and starting to descend the ladder. “Wow, this is so cool.”
Baxter quickly gets out of the way and is back in his seat when Emily finally hops down the last couple rungs or so to land with her feet on the floor, looking around herself with wide eyes. There must be scientists in Heaven — surely there were some soft-hearted fools like Pentious in other disciplines, too — so Baxter raises an eyebrow, bemused, at Emily’s slack-jawed amazement. Not that he’s complaining about the boost it gives to his ego to have someone be impressed by his space...
“This place is wonderful,” Emily says after another couple moments, still smiling. “It really looks just like he said it did...”
That gets Baxter’s attention. He feels his shoulders stiffen despite himself, instinctively knowing exactly who that particular pronoun is referring to. Pentious...told Emily about how his lab looked? His old lab, Baxter has to assume; Pentious never saw his current room at the Hotel. Obviously, because he went and got himself obliterated by a fucking Archangel before he so much as talked to Baxter, and doesn’t that reminder make the sore, tangled feeling in Baxter’s chest that much worse...
He’d rather not think about that, so he quickly steers his thoughts in a different direction and asks Emily, “You said you had something for me?”
“Um, right.” Emily moves closer, her feet not quite touching the floor, and produces a wrapped bouquet from thin air that she crouches down and extends to Baxter with one hand. “Pentious didn’t let me see what it was. Well— I know it’s flowers, because he was in the gardens all day today, but he wrapped it up before I ever saw it. He’s been talking about it for a couple days now and stressing about getting it perfect, which I don’t really understand because they’re flowers, they’re perfect no matter what, obviously, but it seemed really important to him and I respect that so I hope it’s as perfect as he wanted it to be. He told me to take it in the morning but seriously, Baxter, he was just pacing endlessly in his room like he was really agonizing over the whole thing. I’ve never seen a person who’s half-snake pace before. It’s very interesting.”
Baxter is sure they are just flowers to Emily. With a sudden and unpleasantly sympathetic realization, Baxter thinks he might understand a little bit more of why Pentious might have grown so attached to the concept of flower language. In their time, a brazen love confession was not in the cards for most people, and for those like Pentious and Baxter, it would have been off the table entirely. A coded message hidden in flowers that others may overlook could have provided safety and plausible deniability. Baxter doesn’t like how that makes him feel, either, and he clears his throat and reaches out to take the bouquet, too distracted by the swirling emotions that have been kicked right back up to even scold Emily for doing something so obnoxious as crouching down to speak to him.
Emily seems to pick up on something, because she straightens after a moment, clasping her hands together in front of her chest and giving the bouquet an anxious look like she’s waiting for Baxter to unwrap it. Even if she wasn’t here, in his space, watching him, Baxter doesn’t know if he could. Whatever this message says is going to be another message that he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to respond to. How funny is it that he spent so many decades conversing with Pentious over meals and tea and experiments, but now can’t decide on what to put in a simple card?
“Um...” Emily clearly is not as unobservant as people think she is, or maybe Baxter really is just being that obvious, because she clears her throat. “I think I’m going to go make myself a cup of cocoa in the kitchen before I leave. Do you want one?”
Baxter doesn’t look away from the tag that’s been wrapped around the brown bundle, Pentious having forgone the anglerfish drawing this time in favor of a simple, one-line address: To Baxter. They used to write notes to each other — not long ones, just simple things to let the other know where they had gone if they had to leave the lab for whatever reason. Half the time they didn’t even bother using their names or signing the notes because there was little need in a house occupied by only two people, but sometimes...
Baxter hasn’t seen his name in Pentious’ handwriting in a very long time. It makes him miss the snake even more.
“I’ll make one for you anyways,” Emily decides for him, and she starts off towards the ladder and puts a hand on one of the rungs. Then, with a troubled look on her face that Baxter only sees in his periphery, she stops, takes a breath, and looks back at him again as she says, “Look, I...um, I don’t know you that well, but Pentious...Pentious is my friend, and whatever my friends care about, I care about. And Pentious...really cares about you, and he’s been sending you all these flowers because he cares about you. So I think that if you care about him back, you should tell him that. Even if you don’t know how.” Then she shrugs. “How hard can it be to pick a flower?”
With that not-so-helpful tidbit of wisdom — because Baxter knows more than anyone else exactly how hard picking a flower can be — Emily takes her leave, climbing back up the ladder and disappearing from sight. The lack of her glow leaves his lab seeming much darker than it was before. Baxter has to open the package, he knows he does, but...what if whatever’s in here is Pentious saying farewell for good this time? God knows that Baxter wouldn’t blame him for it. Baxter used to be the reigning champion of leaving and never looking back. He had his chance, thirty-three years of chances, as a matter of fact, and maybe he missed it and it’d be only his own fault if he did.
Schrödinger’s flowers, Baxter thinks wryly, running his fingers over the tag. The message conveyed by them is both positive and negative until I unwrap the paper, thereby observing the flowers and causing the waveform to collapse.
Baxter supposes that he ought to find out whether this proverbial cat is dead or alive. He sets the flowers on his workbench, turns one of his lamps on to better illuminate the colors, and tears open the paper.
Immediately, a riot of warmth greets him: the plain brown wrapping paper was bundled over yellow tulips and orange myrtle blossoms and bright vermilion balsam and peachy, blushed-pink roses, the whole thing woven through with deep red-tinged bay leaves. It looks like it was plucked straight from Pentious’ side of their old lab, where the magic of Hell shaped and influenced the light to fall bright and golden and summer-warm even while Baxter’s side of the room was as cool and still and blue as the deep ocean. The petals are soft when Baxter touches them, slightly afraid they’re going to disintegrate right out of existence when his fingers brush across them, and they seem to shimmer softly in the light, like they’re as divine as Emily herself. Baxter, always the scientist, makes a mental note to save at least a few of them to ascertain whether they actually are as divine as Emily herself.
For now, though... Baxter reaches for the book as if it’s liable to open up and bite him, cracking it open and flipping through the pages. He resists the urge to go slow — it’s always better to rip the band-aid off, so to speak, rather than drag it out. He will read through the book, and he will get his answer, and when he’s gotten it he’ll pick the most reasonable path forward from that answer no matter what it is. There’s no point to delaying or dragging his feet or—
Baxter stops on the first page he gets to, the one with the drawing of a deep red rose on it. Orange roses have no specific meaning, but roses as a whole... Roses as a whole mean love. Baxter flips to the entry for yellow tulips.
Hopeless love.
Red bay: love and memory. Myrtle: love. Balsam: ardent love. Every flower and plant in front of him, sitting innocently on their nest of brown wrapping paper, signifies love or some variation of it. It’s not just stating Pentious’ love, it’s screaming it in his face over and over again, and only now does Baxter understand that Pentious might actually have to scream it in his face for him to understand it because—
Because...
Because Baxter thinks that he might love Pentious, too.
Baxter doesn’t know if he’s ever really thought about it like that before. It’s not that he doesn’t feel love, that’s certainly not the case; he’s loved many people and many things in his roughly 150 years of being alive and dead. Pentious, as much as it hurts to admit it, was one of them, but Baxter never put much time into pondering it in the years they spent together and after Pentious left, it became one of the things that he tucked away behind high walls and barbed wire. He wanted to spend an afterlife with Pentious and sometimes wondered about what it might be like to have more, but it was never anything more than idle musings. After all, Baxter thought he had forever to continue wondering — it’s not like Pentious was going to leave or anything.
“I’m so fucking stupid,” Baxter whispers to himself, feeling his eyes prickle again, and he pushes his glasses up again and jams his knuckles into his eyes and moans despairingly. “I am so fucking stupid.”
He is stupid. He is an absolute chucklefuck, a paragon of idiocy, and he really should have figured this out at least thirty years ago. Of fucking course he loves Pentious. Why else would he miss him like a physical thing? Why else would he have kept the idiot snake’s drawings and notebooks and fucking flower language books? Because he’s sentimental? No! It’s because he’s been in fucking love with that gormless buffoon for most of his afterlife and it took a fucking flower arrangement for him to realize that!
Baxter drops his hands from his eyes, the feeling like he’s going to cry beginning to pass and being replaced with a sort of hysterical, uncontrollable amusement. This is the kind of thing that he’d laugh at in anyone else, not just because of the inherent stupidity in it but also because of the sheer idea of being in love with someone like Pentious. Baxter stares at the flowers and laughs, short and disbelieving, and then he laughs again, and then before he knows it he’s doubled over his workbench with one arm around his stomach and his elbow on his other one, shoulders shaking with silent, airless laughter.
When the fit finally passes, Baxter raises his head, blinks a few stray tears away, and looks again at the flowers. As funny as it may be, does this actually change anything? It might, in fact, make it worse; now Baxter has even less idea of what to say to Pentious. What do you tell someone who fills you with resentment and grief and fond memories and love all at once and who turned his back on you without a second thought?
Emily’s words come back to haunt him: Pentious agonized over these flowers. He paced over them, spent a whole day choosing them — Baxter is taking that to mean that Pentious doesn’t exactly know what to say, either. That...does make him feel a little bit better, actually, and he takes another breath and sits up straighter, trying to think. Giving Pentious the book would probably be taken as refusal, and besides, Baxter thinks he might miss the thing. A note is still right out. A...
How hard can it be to pick a flower?
...Fuck.
Baxter is scrambling for the book again, this time pulling it open so fast the brittle pages rustle warningly and a few pieces of the gold detailing on the front flake off. The answer has been right in front of him the whole fucking time, just like every other goddamn answer, apparently, and here he is wasting time trying to decide on what to send Pentious when Pentious was holding the solution all along: just send him a flower. It’s not that simple, but it is that simple, and if Baxter can just find the right one...
“Magnolia, certainly not...” Baxter mutters to himself as he flicks through the pages as fast as he can read them. “Weeping willow, no... No, no, no, not that... Not that either...”
Something that tells Pentious, I didn’t want it to go the way that it did. Something that tells Pentious, I won’t bite your hand off, even though I want to. Something that tells Pentious, I think I might love you, too, and I miss you no matter what.
Baxter mutters something in Spanish that his mother absolutely would have scolded him for, increasingly frustrated as he flips back and forth and finds nothing that quite means what he wants it to mean. He could send one of the flowers that means love right back to Pentious, but that doesn’t seem correct, not when he doesn’t just feel love. Make no mistake — he’s still royally fucking pissed at the snake for what he did, and he doesn’t want Pentious to think it’s all forgiven and swept under the rug. He could make a bouquet, he supposes, but that would take too long with sourcing the flowers from the various shops here in Hell since the Hotel gardens aren’t that large. In terms of flowers that Baxter can get right now, choices are limited, to say the least. They’ve got daisies, a few of the Eye of Thoth rosebushes, some apple trees that Lucifer would probably plot his murder for if Baxter started going around and breaking off branches, and... Wait, daisies. Daisies. Where did Baxter see daisies?
He thumbs through the pages until he finds the entry he’s looking for: garden daisies, any color. I share your sentiments.
Baxter drops the book unceremoniously on his workbench and covers the room in only a few strides, taking the rungs of the ladder as fast as his arms will pull him up and crawling out of the hatch without even bothering to close it behind him. There’s a chance that Emily hasn’t left yet, and if he can just get to her, then he can get her to carry his message up to Pentious without having to wait for the next time she makes a scheduled pickup or pays Charlie a visit. Baxter certainly doesn’t run the distance from the back maintenance hallway where the main entrance to his lab is to the kitchen, because running would be embarrassing. He jogs at a sedate, relaxed, and mature pace, because that’s the kind of man he is.
The kitchen light is still on when he turns a corner and he can hear someone humming in there. The relief it fills him with is enough to make him pick up his pace a bit, and he stumbles to a stop in the doorway to the kitchen, panting and feeling his gills threatening to open under the collar of his turtleneck, and fixes his gaze on a very surprised Emily.
“Wait here. I need to get something for you to take to Pentious. Don’t leave until I bring it back.”
“...Okay,” Emily says, blinking in his direction over a mug that seems like it’s mostly comprised of whipped cream. “Um, do you need help? What are you doing? Baxter? Baxter, wait up!”
Baxter is already gone again, running to the elevator and mashing the buttons until it arrives seconds later in a whoosh of annoyed-sounding magic at being called so late. He darts in, watching Emily follow him at a slower pace with the surprise on her face replaced by full confusion until the doors close, and grabs on to the rail with one hand as there’s the characteristic lurch and then the elevator starts to rise. The rooftop gardens are where most of the smaller flowers are, planted in the planters and conservatories on the balcony that the lounge opens to, and it’s on that level that the elevator stops and the doors open once more. Baxter hurries through the dark, empty lounge, throwing the double doors open with all the force he can muster and tripping out onto the balcony. The nearest planter box is off to the side, forming a natural, tasteful barrier between the main area and a little grouping of chairs and a fireplace, and it’s there that Baxter goes, trying to slow his breathing into something that makes him seem less crazed. (It’s not that he isn’t crazed, obviously, but he doesn’t really like looking like he’s crazed.)
The large daisies in this garden box are largely of the plain white variety. They’re tall, most of them in full bloom with a few buds scattered throughout, and when the warm, dry breeze blows, the whole mass of them sways softly, as if breathing. Despite being white, the petals look almost yellow in the warm glow of his esca. Baxter picks one that looks healthy, not quite at full bloom but very nearly there, and reaches into the mess of greenery and blooms to sever the stem with the edge of his claw and neatly pluck it from its brethren. As he steps back, prize in hand, he hears the small, strange noise that always accompanies Emily’s arrival and turns to see her standing near the doors, looking around. She sees him, smiles awkwardly, and waves.
Baxter takes another second to breathe before he heads over to her. He’s glad that everyone else is asleep right now, because the last thing he wants is witnesses. Is he really going to do this?
Baxter thinks of the very first arrangement Pentious gave to him with its sweet peppermint and saffron. He was taking a chance on Baxter, sending a message that he may not have even known if Baxter would understand, and Baxter ignored it just like he ignored every part of himself that wondered if maybe they could try to repair the bridge they had both thoroughly burned.
Baxter closes the distance between him and Emily, standing up as tall as he can and presenting her with the flower. “Will you take this to Sir Pentious for me?”
Emily gasps softly when she sees it, and for a moment Baxter is afraid that maybe she knows more than she’s letting on. Then he remembers that this is just who Emily is and she’s this enthusiastic about practically everything. She takes the daisy and then looks at Baxter with something uncomfortably saccharine in her eyes.
“Yes, absolutely I will.” Emily gives a happy-sounding sigh. “Pentious is going to be so excited.”
Yes, Baxter is sure he will be. He clears his throat and, before she flutters off, asks, “Do you have a card or something that I could write a message on?”
“Oh, sure! And I promise I won’t read what’s on it. You deserve your privacy.” Emily plucks a small card in a pearly baby blue and a matching fountain pen out of nothingness and offers them to Baxter.
Baxter braces the card against the doors of the lounge as he writes his message, his esca providing more than enough light. He feels like a dumbass standing out here on the balcony with a fucking Seraph holding a flower, but then again, he thinks letting this message go unanswered would make him an even bigger dumbass. He dots the end of the sentence and signs his initial, then looks at the message one last time to give himself the final chance to forget this ever happened.
I understand the flowers. Help me understand the rest.
— B.
Baxter doesn’t forget it. He folds it in half so the message isn’t visible from the outside, hands it to Emily, and gives her back her pen. “Thank you.”
Emily is glowing even brighter with what Baxter assumes is glee. “You’re so welcome. Oh, I can’t wait to see Pentious’ face when he gets this!”
The air around her crackles, there’s a brief flash of light and an accompanying pop, and then Emily is gone.
Baxter tilts his head back, focusing past the glow of his esca to the bright glow of Heaven in the darkened sky. Pentious is up there somewhere, and Baxter feels like he’s broken the surface of the water and is reaching his hand up, grazing the warmth of a life he thought was behind him. They might not be lab partners ever again, but...they could be partners, Baxter thinks. If they try. He’s sure it’s not going to be easy and he doubts that Pentious, delicate man that he is, will ever fully forgive him, but at least it’s a start. It really was simple in the end, Baxter has to admit as he stares up at the many-ringed light of Heaven. He just spent three decades missing it.
Baxter drops his head, blinks the afterimages out of his eyes, and starts thinking of what he’s going to say.