(originally published on april 24th, 2024 via ao3)
“Hey,” Dorothea murmurs—she’s right next to him, but her voice sounds far away, which means Sylvain has been zoning out. “What are you looking at?”
He blinks, shakes his head, and slouches back into the pillows. “Nothing, really,” he sighs, redirecting his attention to Dorothea. She’s running a tortoiseshell comb through her hair, trying to detangle a serious case of bedhead. Sylvain taps his fingertips to her wrist, finessing the instrument out of her hands and taking up the work himself. “It’s just…” He starts at the crown of her head, delighted by the way she shivers as he traces the teeth over her scalp. “You have a lot of flowers in here, don’t you?”
Dorothea hums, keeping her eyes on the empty wall beside her bed. “Date souvenirs,” she says by way of explanation. Then she’s quiet, abnormally so—maybe it’s because they just woke up, but Sylvain has a hunch he’s touched on something deeper. It’s an intuition he’s entertained more and more frequently with Dorothea, a sense that he’s breaking down her walls. She likes to act as though she wears her heart on her sleeve, but he knows that isn’t true. Not for either of them.
“Date souvenirs,” he repeats, just as he finds a particularly impressive knot. “From when, exactly?” There must be at least ten bouquets sitting on her shelf, all in various stages of wilting.
She turns to check, eyes narrowing in thought. “The dahlias are from yesterday,” she says, sounding confident enough in the fact. But she quickly turns uncertain. “The tulips were… Tuesday? Or was that when I had tea with the viscount’s son… He wouldn’t shut up about his family’s camellia garden. But then he got me lilies of all things…”
“What about the hyacinths?” Sylvain asks, glancing back at the collection. He imagines the bouquet in question was once vibrant and colorful—a symphony of red, blue and purple—but its petals have since faded into a muted shadow of their peak bloom. Several of the leaves have shriveled up.
“Ah.” Dorothea’s voice is soft, delicate. There’s a sudden reluctance permeating her entire being. “Those are from two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks?”
Dorothea’s shoulders shrug to her ears, and Sylvain immediately regrets raising his voice. But he can’t help being surprised.
“Don’t start,” she says, bowing her head toward her lap. “I’ve been meaning to throw them out. I just haven’t had time.”
His lips curl into a sympathetic smile—not that she can even see it. “Sorry,” he says, ruffling her curls. There are still a few spots that need attention. “You know me. Too curious for my own good.” Dorothea straightens, relaxed again as she tilts her head to give him a better angle. Sylvain tries to stay quiet; but as he’s just pointed out, he’s far too curious. Which is probably why he refuses to put the conversation to bed.
“Do you even like flowers, then?”
“What?” She scoffs. “I mean, they’re pretty to look at…”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” he teases. He stops combing her hair, leaning back on his hands as a sudden realization waves over him. A pointed, provocative thought he knows won’t go over well with her—which is all the more reason to say it. “I bet you enjoy the thrill of receiving them, but you hate the flowers themselves.” He can’t help smirking. “Don’t you think?”
Dorothea pivots around, wearing a scowl that almost wipes the grin clean off his face. “I don’t hate flowers, Sylvain.”
If he were smart, he’d shut up. “You hate the men giving them to you, then.”
“Let me finish,” she grumbles, clearly offended by the accusation. But what else is Sylvain supposed to believe, when she’s gone on countless first dates that lead nowhere? When she can’t even remember who she saw on which days? He has the common sense not to call her a hypocrite, but… His stomach drops when he thinks too hard about the fact that the only man Dorothea has seen with any semblance of consistency is him.
He swallows and crosses his arms, nodding at her to continue.
Dorothea appears flustered by his silence, as if she hadn’t expected him to keep quiet for once in his life. He loves when he manages to surprise her. “I…” She twirls her hair around her finger. “I just think they’re cliched, you know? Too easy.” Her gaze flicks over to the array of flowers, then back to him. “Men think all they have to do to impress a girl is give them something pretty. To compare them to said pretty thing.”
Well, he’s certainly compared her to a flower before. It’s a bit difficult not to.
“It’s false flattery,” she adds, biting her lip. “And I know what you’re going to say. It’s the thought that counts. That I should be grateful to be given anything at all—”
“I wasn’t going to say that, Dorothea.”
In fact, he has no idea what the proper response in this scenario is. She’s looking at him with far too much emotion in her eyes, something far too real peeking out from the depths. It seeps out of every pore, colors every detail of how she moves, how she sits: fidgeting with her fingers, rocking back and forth, unable to remain still. In true actress fashion, Dorothea Arnault is incapable of doing anything in half-measures.
“I wasn’t… I don’t…” He takes a deep inhale, lets it out. She’s still staring, as fixated on him as he was on the flowers earlier: unconsciously, intently. Sylvain reaches out and tucks a stray curl behind her ear. “Do you want me to help you clean them up?” he asks, tracing a nail over her hairline. “I bet the folks in the greenhouse would appreciate more material for the compost pile. Or you could press them, if you wanted.” He smiles, withdrawing his hand. “Lots of possibilities.”
Dorothea laughs, peering up at him through her lashes. Whatever truth was whispering to him before is fading, replaced by a combination of interest and flirtation. Not that he minds. “Do you know how to press flowers, Sylvain?”
“Yes,” he says, almost annoyed. “Don’t act surprised. It’s a very common spring hobby in Gautier.” He pinches the back of his neck, ears burning. “The castle maids taught me.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Dorothea lilts, perching her chin on her knuckles.
He shoots her a critical look. “So would you like to or not? I’m free the rest of today.”
She steals one last glance at the flowers—and for the first time that morning, he believes that she might not actually hate them. “Yes, I’d like to,” she says. “I’d like to very much.”