Fandom Island and Town

So, this was it. Today was Nathan's last day on the island. Tomorrow, he'd be taking his chances with Portalocity in the hopes that it would be able to get him home. Not that he didn't enjoy the island, of course, when it wasn't trying to kill him, but he had a family back in Japan. He missed Higen and Magojiro and most of all Taka, and his inability to be certain that his letters were getting through was all but driving him mad.

So, tomorrow. And today he would spend his time filling orders and writing a letter to Peter explaining that he wouldn't be back. He wished him all the best, especially with another holiday on the horizon, but his time here was through.

Now he just had to get that ivy to stop trying to wrap around him and keep him in place. He wasn't convinced that it was going to miss him that much.

[Open! It's his time.]

Well, the storm had passed, and apparently the island was up to... cutesy things... now. Nathan had raised an eyebrow at the hills in the park on his walk to work, but hadn't found himself particularly tempted to go and do anything on them. Besides, Easter was this weekend, and there was an impressive number of orders for lilies in, as well as a few calls for daffodils, some potted hydrangea in bright colors...

His hands were full.

At least the stock had survived the storm. He hadn't been certain just how much deference Fandom was willing to pay to people's livelihoods over the weekend, so coming in to find the flowers not frozen solid or wilted had been a pleasant surprise.

[OOC: Open!]

It wasn't strictly a flower holiday, per se, but Nathan came in to work today and almost immediately answered the phone to take an order for three dozen shamrock plants, to be delivered on Saturday. Which was... understandable, perhaps? Though an odd order all the same.

Still, he wrote the order down and said he would have his manager call them back to confirm whether or not they'd be able to get so many shamrocks in by then, and then wrote a note for Peter.

Really, that was probably Nathan's favorite thing about this job. When in doubt, let Peter figure it out.

[OOC: Open!]

The entire shop today seemed to be full of teeny tiny succulents.

Nathan wasn't sure if Peter had gone crazy with the order forms now that they didn't have to stock ridiculous amounts of roses, if maybe their supplier had gotten a little confused, or if Fandom was just messing with him today, but there were so many little succulents, from sedum to aloes, that Nathan found it impossible to find a surface that didn't have at least a few tucked away there.

It was a tiny bit vexing, but he set to work trying to clear off a shelf near the window so that, at the very least, he could try to make a display of the damn things in order to sell them off.

Covent Garden is open, and there's a sale on tiny potted succulents today.

[OOC: Living my dream vicariously through Algren. Yes please I will take all your teeny aloes thanks. Open.]

Nathan was doing an admirable job working on flower arrangements today, the day before The Flower Holiday, without resorting to committing homicide. It was anybody's best guess as to how he was managing that, honestly, but he was doing his best to just put flowers together in a calm and rational way, even while at least slightly convinced that he had somehow been transported to one of the circles of Hell overnight.

Whichever one had flowers.

So many flowers.

... And one weirdo coming in to ask if they made bouquets out of pancakes.

"Go to the goddamn diner. We deal in flowers here."

And the occasional arrangement with sex toys worked in, provided people supplied their own, apparently.

"After this, I'm quitting my damn job."

He didn't mean that. Probably.

[OOC: Open!]

Nathan just wanted to make arrangements, damn it. He wanted nothing more than to settle in and select nice roses and carnations, pick decent sprays of baby's breath, and start getting to work with organizing whatever supplies they were going to need in order to meet the Valentine's Day rush in a couple of weeks.

But the phone. Would not. Stop. Ringing.

One person wanted a full arrangement for everybody they worked with, another wanted to know what it would cost to order in a literal truckload of roses to just give to everyone in town. Nathan had to explain in small words that they would have to arrange for pickup at the causeway themselves, as the streets weren't exactly suitable for vehicles. Somebody else wanted to know if there was some way they could work with the animal shelter to get some sort of 'cats and carnations' deal if people gave both to their significant others, and Nathan had to explain the multiple ways that was likely a bad idea, including most notably the fact that carnations were poisonous to cats.

One person wanted to send an arrangement to try to appease the gremlins that lived in their walls. Another one wanted them to literally fashion a giant teddy bear out of flowers. Nathan didn't ask why, but he made a note of it asking Peter to come up with a quote for something like that. Then there was the person who wanted to know if they had bouquets that included sex toys... That one went on another, slightly more hastily scrawled note to Peter, yes.

Nathan was pretty certain he wasn't going to be getting to actual flowers, today.

[OOC: Open!]

Everything was in pink. Everything. Nathan was pretty certain that most of these plants didn't actually have a pink variant, but when he'd stepped into the flower shop today, even the bluebells were a very fetching shade of bubblegum.

"Missed me, did you?"

This was what he got for taking a week off. Plants getting up to shenanigans when he returned, just to remind him what they did to upstart flower shop employees who dared take time away from them. Or... something. Nathan didn't actually pretend he understood the thought processes of flowers.

He shrugged, and then got to work making some very, very pink arrangements. Shame this hadn't waited another few weeks. It would have been perfect for Valentine's.

[OOC: Open!]

"People get flowers for the New Year?"

Nathan had been looking forward to just spending a quiet day in the flower shop, cleaning up pine needle shrapnel and taking down Christmas decorations. He really, really had. And for the first hour or so of his shift, that had even been the case. But eventually, the calls came in asking for centerpiece arrangements.

Because people would use any possible opportunity to buy flowers, apparently.

Nathan sighed and started looking for any flowers that looked 'like fireworks.' They were going to burn through the alliums and asters this week, weren't they? Apparently so.

[OOC: Open! And I'm off this week, so I should be able to ping consistently, cats permitting.]

"Oh good. More... chocolate."

Nathan sighed as he rummaged through the drawer at the flower shop in order to find scissors and floral wire. He was supposed to be making arrangements today, which was mostly easy to do, except when he actually had to open a drawer to go digging for things.

He couldn't complain about the potato pancakes that had already been in the kitchen this morning, and he'd rather never talk about the 'donut in the shoe' incident ever again. But this, the wealth of chocolate coins every time he opened a drawer, was steadily driving him up a wall.

Maybe he could try to incorporate them into his arrangements somehow?

It was worth a try. He certainly wasn't going to be eating that much chocolate himself.

[OOC: Open!]

Nathan was less surprised and more resigned today to come into work to find a large shipment of evergreen boughs, poinsettias, and holly sprigs coming in that morning. There seemed to be an endless stream of random holidays around this time of year, but he was already well aware of Christmas, even if the way people celebrated the holiday had changed significantly since his own time.

He set it all to the side and went about the shop, watering and fertilizing and otherwise grooming the plants, and only when he was done that did he deign to go back to tackle all of... that.

He tried a hand at a wreath, first, and was pleased to find that the end result wasn't a total disaster. And then, on a whim, he attempted some sort of festive twist on his usual ikebana arrangements. If he used the smaller poinsettia plants, and then some of the boughs and holly, he could even make one that would last well beyond the month with regular watering.

He wasn't going to admit that he was having a lot of fun experimenting with this, but here he was. Having a lot of fun. Experimenting with this.

[OOC: Open!]

One thing Nathan hadn't anticipated when he'd agreed to work at the flower shop was the sheer amount of holidays that people observed in a place like this, with people from everywhere all living in one place.

This week, apparently, was the lead-up to November 11th, which meant that Nathan was fielding calls for Veterans Day arrangements. And wreaths for Remembrance Day and Armistice Day. And poppies.

So. Many. Damn. Poppies.

It wasn't tiny gourds, at least. And Nathan was almost relieved when someone called asking if they did cornucopia arrangements for Thanksgiving. He was counting himself lucky that the shop was behaving itself today.

He was also desperately shaking down suppliers for more rush orders on poppies. Because that was going to be a thing this week, apparently.

[OOC: Open!]

Today, the flower shop got in another shipment of tiny gourds. Tiny gourds and dried, decorative corn.

Which meant that today, Nathan was going to sit down and write a letter to Peter, explaining that they were generally used as is in decorating the home for autumn holidays, and while carving the more robust gourds into flower pots of all things was a cute idea, maybe leave the miniature squash and pumpkins as-is, because people were usually quite happy to buy them that way.

God only knew they didn't have any practical function at that size, and they'd just rot if steps weren't taken to preserve them properly when cut.

Then he spent the rest of his shift making more autumn arrangements. If a few of the little pumpkins and squashes found their way into those, well, it was the season, after all.

[OOC: Open!]

Nathan was perhaps just the slightest bit paranoid as he made his way into the flower shop today; the first thing he did was check to make certain that none of the new flowers were moving. Or that they had faces.

Satisfied that nothing was doing anything particularly weird, he went to check out the new shipment that Shiemi had gotten in yesterday.

He frowned a little. Invasive? Most of those plants weren't even terribly attractive. He didn't figure they'd be selling many for gardens or anything of the sort at this time of year, anyway. He considered them for a few minutes, and then shrugged and started taking cuttings to be put into more ikebana arrangements. They couldn't be invasive if they died before having a chance to go to seed, after all.

[OOC: Open!]

Nathan didn't find himself entirely impressed with the new shipment of potted plants that came in that morning. They were interesting enough, he supposed, but probably better suited to be housed over at the animal shelter, where they were used to having toothy merchandise that was occasionally prone to biting.

Then again, he was pretty sure the animal shelter didn't have to deal with many pets that sometimes spat fire, either.

Once Nathan had put out the fire in the azaleas, he sat down with the snapping red and white plants and had a long chat about manners. And about his fondness for sharp objects. That seemed to get them to straighten up and behave themselves, at least.

[OOC: My love of piranha plants surfaces. Apologies to the azaleas. Open!]

The monsoon had gone, the water had been cleaned up, and everything appeared to be back to normal at the flower shop by the time Nathan came in for his shift today. So it only stood to reason that he was going to be the one to open a shipment of what was supposed to be flower pots, and was instead treated to the sight of a large box full of tiny decorative gourds.

He squinted a little, and then shrugged, and proceeded to spend the rest of his day putting together autumn-themed bouquets. If the fixation on pumpkin spice anything over at the coffee shop was any indication, they probably wouldn't do too badly, he figured.

[OOC: Open!]

Well, the day of utter and completely normal flower shop had probably been nice, but naturally that meant that Nathan was going to end up coming to work to something.

Even if it was a small something. A somewhat annoying something. The sort of something that involved a random rain of pennies whenever Nathan finished a flower arrangement. Which wouldn't bother him so much, except that the pennies stood a chance of damaging the flowers, and worse still, they were bad for the fish.

So Nathan wasn't getting much work done today. Two flower arrangements in and he'd figured out what the cue for pennies was, and the rest of the day was going to be spent setting up covers over the fish pond and anything particularly fragile, just in case an order couldn't wait.

This place.

[OOC: Open!]

Nathan was squinting at the flower order that had been placed today. He'd put together the arrangement, sure, but he wasn't entirely certain that 'National Relaxation Day' was a thing, let alone a thing that one generally celebrated with flowers.

... That said, the person who had placed an order had specified plainly that whatever went into the bouquet shouldn't be too carefully arranged, and should probably consist of whatever fell closest to hand. Nathan wasn't to even bother filling out the card.

So, he could live with that.

It was weird. But it was doable.

[OOC: Slowly resembling a functional human being one post at a time today. Open!]

Nathan generally expected weirdness when he stepped in for his shifts, these days.

He hadn't been expecting fish, though. But that was what he was met with, most of them looking... various degrees of distressed, mostly. It wasn't as though the flower shop didn't have containers that could hold water. They made decently sized arrangements there, after all, that went into vases. It was more that those containers were on the smallish side for larger cichlids, and they didn't have anything in the way of filtration units, either.

So, Nathan's day was going to be spent making phone calls to the animal shelter to see if they had a tank that could house them, or, if they couldn't take them, if they had the materials to build a small indoor pond. That sort of thing was classy, right?

He had no goddamn clue what he was doing. But he did, at least, leave a note for Peter saying that, if he didn't want fish in his flower shop, he was welcome to figure out something else to do with them. Nathan really just didn't want to deal with a couple dozen large dead fish today.

Today wasn't so much about the flowers, really, no. But Covent Garden was open, if a bit fishy.

[OOC: I miss having a cichlid tank so much. Also open.]

Had something been weird over the weekend? Nathan hadn't noticed. He'd spent his Saturday reading a good book, and his Sunday had been spent alternating between writing in his journal and trying to get a letter sent home to Taka and the kids.

So he couldn't help but feel a little bit as though he'd dodged a bullet when he came in to work today and found himself inundated with orders for bouquets with notes along the lines of "I'm sorry for the thing I did to you while I was somebody else on the weekend."

And maybe he was smirking to himself, just the tiniest bit, as he got to work putting together arrangements for other peoples' apologies. This was what schadenfreude was, wasn't it?

He'd take it.

[OOC: Open!]

Everything in the flower shop was actually behaving itself, today.

Well. Mostly. Everything in the flower shop also appeared to be some combination of red, white, and blue.

"Ugh," Nathan said as he started to go around watering the potted plants. He'd deal with the orders for Independence Day arrangements eventually, sure, and he'd even be professional about it. But he could only handle so much patriotism at a time before he wanted to throw up in his mouth a little.

Nathan's relationship with America was... complicated, sometimes. There was a reason he'd run off to Japan after Fandom instead of returning to California, and it didn't all have to do with his failing theatrical career.

[OOC: Open! ... Nathan's gonna Nathan. He's a cranky bastard.]

Well, it was shaping up to be an interesting week already, wasn't it? Nathan had apparently picked up another tenant yesterday, and he found himself quietly contemplating when in the world he'd become that person who just opened his doors to anybody needing a place to stay.

It wasn't a bad thing to be, really. It was just... new.

Of course, he spent his day contemplating all that while also trying to extricate himself from a particularly affectionate pothos vine, which was trying to either give him a very thorough hug or else crush him to death. He didn't particularly care to let it continue long enough to find out which it was.

Ah, another day at the flower shop.

[OOC: Open!]

Nathan... didn't trust today. He'd brought his sword in, just to be on the safe side, and by the time noon rolled around he hadn't needed to use it even once.

He even watered the snapdragons, and the most they did was sway a little, apparently properly chastened by the others earlier in the week.

...

Well, okay then. He'd just settle in and work on a few arrangements for the rest of the day. But he was going to keep watching his back. In this job, he'd learned, one always had to watch one's back.

[OOC: And open! It's going to be hot out today, please do not let it be hot out today.]

It wasn't that Nathan had meant to be late to work today. It was just that he'd decided, after a few weeks of disagreeable snapdragons (and rather eerie baby's breath) that maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to... well... to arm himself for his shift today, just to be on the safe side.

And so today he had his katana with him, deciding that it was probably a wiser option than bringing a gun into a flower shop, and the first twenty minutes of his shift...

Well. They'd been spent fighting off a shipment of, perhaps fittingly, tiger's jaw that was a little too pleased to see him unpacking them. He'd suffered a few small scratches in the process, but once they seemed to have lost their fighting spirit, he almost felt sorry for the damn things.

Which was why, against his better judgment, he was going to try to propagate a few of them from the resulting cuttings. He didn't exactly want Peter to start thinking that he'd asked for the job just so that he could demolish the stock every week.

[OOC: I didn't forget about this post, I just had to go to work and then there was democracy to participate in. Open!]

So, somehow, Nathan had wound up with a job at the flower shop. Mostly because he was stuck here and he was bored, and flowers seemed about as close to home as anything, unless he wanted to end up working at Sushi Station.

Nathan really didn't want to end up working at Sushi Station.

... What Nathan hadn't counted on was that his first week was going to be one leading up to what was apparently a very flower-heavy holiday. And so he was going to be learning the ropes of working the flower shop, doing arrangements, and taking orders while under fire. And he was generally calm under fire. He had to be, after the places he'd been.

But this... this was insane.

If anybody needed flowers, they'd find a somewhat frazzled Algren knee-deep in roses and cards, wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into.

[OOC: Open! OCD-free, muwaha.]