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More often than not flowers reminded him of Marc, it was a deplorable association, flowers were everywhere not just bouquets in shops or in the vases that quite often filled his brothers house, wildflowers, flowers in the garden, all over the place. It was almost as if he couldn’t escape him, he was cursed or destined to think of him everywhere he went, everywhere he was Marc, everywhere there was a flower that reminded him of the younger man.
And then when he actually saw him, Marc always had some sort of flower on him, in his hands, his hair, tucked into a pocked hidden away from view occasionally you’d see a petal poking out. He had always had some baby’s breath in his house in a vase when they were together, he wondered if he still did, or if he’d graduated to something else, an iris or tulips. They were painted on his helmets flowers changing every other race the small white blooms a constant in his designs, they were his favourite.
Children often brought them along to races for him, daisies and hyacinths, tulips and roses, he gathered them up throughout the days over the weekend and displayed them in his house throughout the week posting a photo on his instagram. Valentino had always told him that when he retired, he should open a florist, he knew so much about them and their meanings. Once someone had gifted them a bouquet of white lilies and chrysanthemums, he had never seen someone so offended to receive a bouquet of flowers, a funeral bouquet was insulting to him.
His garden was an explosion of colour, different species, colours from all over the world, tulips bought in Amsterdam, Sakura trees bought in Japan (some were admittedly gifts from Honda), others Valentino couldn’t remember but Marc had them all catalogued and recorded. Between the perennial and annual flowers Marc spent most of his free time dedicating his attention to tending the garden watching the bees, ladybugs and butterflies.
There was a time Marc had scolded him for making daisy chains with the daisies in his grass, he was unimpressed as Valentino crowned him with his poor creation, he wanted them kept for the bees. With so many of them flying about the property Valentino was surprised that Marc hadn’t started keeping his own bees, he suspected Alex’s fear of them prevented that.
He grew food stuffs too, strawberries of many varieties, Valentino’s personal favourite being the alpine strawberries that encompassed the ground beneath his cherry tree. Olive trees, herbs and poppies, Marc gave the poppy seeds to Alex to use in cooking, he added them to bread, muffins any many other things, it meant they were constantly in touch with the doping associations to inform them of their consumption.
That was all before they broke up, before everything blew up in their faces, where Marc retreated into himself focusing on his garden almost constantly, exclusively even and Valentino had fallen victim to more than one of Alex’s scolding rants.
He still sent him flowers, every couple of months or so Sunflowers in the summer with seeds he would be able to use, a small potted Poinsettia in the winter or a Christmas cactus if he fancied a change. More than once he had come very close to ordering a bouquet or purple hyacinths, he’d know what it meant, but it wasn’t something he was ready for, he wasn’t something he thought Marc wanted anymore.
When he did he decided to deliver them personally, he grew them himself, bought the bulbs two years prior and formed his own bouquet with some (store bought) baby’s breath to decorate it, he hoped they complemented each other beyond his own aesthetic preference. He noticed some lavender hedging out the front of the house and topiary shrubs as well Marc had never been great at shaping them, he wasn’t able cut swirls and animals into them so they were shaped to simple balls.
Alex answered the door looking down at the flowers in his hand, Valentino noticed the roses sitting in a vase in the hall, red and fresh with foliage and accompanying flowers. Wordlessly Alex stood to the side letting him in, it was a hesitant move, he had an air of nervousness about him the house was scarily quiet. He hadn’t been in their new Madrid house before, it was white, modern, clean feeling and to Valentino it didn’t feel like the Marc he knew, you could see through to the garden from the entrance to the living space.
His garden while different looked familiar, its colour was still there, the same type of flowers and he could see one of the trees he himself had bought Marc as a gift. Marc was sat in the middle of the grass leaning back resting on his elbows face to the sky basking in the sunlight, he glowed, looked ethereally happy.
And then there was Marco.
And it then made sense why Alex was so tense, him turning up to the house with flowers told him everything that he didn’t know. It made so much god-damn sense, he’d always been odd when it came to Marc, if he came up in conversation Marco would avoid it, Valentino had no idea what was going on. Now watching Marco in Marc’s garden with flowers tucked into his hair delicately placing a daisy crown on top of Marc’s head both of them laughing.
It was completely different to how Marc had been with him, his flowers had been his babies, Marc protected them fiercely, but with Marco, watching him picking strawberries off the bushes, he was softer more relaxed. It was bittersweet, Valentino knew he had lost the battle there and then, Marco leaning down to kiss him fingers gripping his chin.
He left the flowers on the kitchen counter, somewhere he knew Marc would see them, somewhere he knew Marc would know who they were from. He didn’t cry until he was in the car, reversing out of the drive, he should have expected for Marc to have moved on, he had given him to reason to wait for him, it hurt nonetheless.
He received a message later that night, once he’d caught a flight back to Italy, once he was sitting at home staring out the window at his own plot of land. Marcs name lighting up his screen making him nervous for what it might hold, what he might say to him. The picture of his flowers in one of his vases sitting on the coffee table quenched his fear that Marc would have thrown them out, Marc was arranging them still it seemed kneeling slightly to the side hands on one of the stalks, it was captioned;
Thank you, From Marco X