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The door clicked open with the sound of someone trying not to slam it but failing anyway.
A woman pushed it with her shoulder, sweat-slick from the heat, and kicked her shoes off near the door.
“New York summer is insane,” she muttered, as she setting the grocery bag on the entryway counter.
She peeled off her clinging hoodie and tossed it over the nearest chair.
Beneath it, she wore only a grey sports bra, muscles catching the light.
“Root,” she called, her voice half deadpan, half fond, “the most handsome boy in the house.”
Bear let out a soft huff, clearly understanding she meant him, and sat obediently by her side, eyes bright and attentive.
“Stupid John’s got a date with Zoe,” she said, bending down to unclip his leash, “Go. Be free. Just don’t ruin the furniture.”
And the dog bounded off, claws clicking on the floorboards.
She grabbed the grocery bag, wandered into the kitchen.
Leaned over the sink to splash her face with cold water, letting it chase away the city heat.
“I swear, if he still doesn’t tell Zoe he wants to be more than ‘occasional friends,’ I’ll do it for him. So much courage for a spec ops guy who used to be a Green Beret.”
She casually wiped her face with a towel, “Why does everything have to be so complicated? If she feels the same way, great—together, then. If not? Okay, bye. That’s it.”
Silence.
No synchronized banter from her cuckoo girlfriend.
She glancing around the open-concept apartment. The kitchen was empty, though the faint smell of coffee still lingered.
Popped open a cold beer.
“Root?” then took a sip, and called again, louder this time.
A voice drifted in from the terrace, bright and sweet. “Out here, sweetie.”
Then she made her way toward the glass door. The afternoon sun hit her full in the face as she slid it open.
Her girlfriend was on her knees near the railing, back turned, a cap pulled low over her face and her long hair tied into a loose ponytail, fiddling with an open cardboard box and a small army of gardening tools.
“What are you doing?” the dark-haired woman asked, slowly sipping her beer as she leaned against the doorframe.
She didn’t turn, only hummed. “Reckless guess, engaging in highly suspicious activity?”
“Yeah. Usually, mostly, normally,” she muttered and stepping closer, eyes narrowing at the terra-cotta pots scattered around her knees.
Each one had a little label.
“…You’re planting?”
A flicker of disbelief in her tone.
Her girlfriend hated physical exertion and the blazing sun. Even at the beach, she always insisted on a parasol, ensuring she stayed in the shade, and that a cold margarita was within reach.
The brown-haired woman finally glanced over her shoulder, brown eyes sparkling. “Machine said our apartment could use a little decoration. So, I thought—why not some flowers?”
“We could really use a room to store our guns and your tasers, Root.”
“Decoration, not an arsenal, Shaw. In case you don’t know, flowers are aesthetic expression.”
“Well, give it three days,” she said dryly. “You’ll find their leaves start drooping. Within a week, you can say bye bye.”
“So pessimistic, darling.”
“It’s a fact. Flowers are like—if you don’t water them, they die. If you do water them, they still die. Just everything turns out opposite of what you hoped, so spoiled.”
She laughed softly, low and amused, the word bringing a little smirk to her lips as she thought of someone.
Then returned to her task, hands gentle as she pressed soil around the base of a sprouting stem.
“That’s kind of their charm.”
“If you want plants, then herbs. They’re more useful, and we could save some money too.”
“I like flowers,” she said simply. “They bloom, they’re beautiful, they die. Very… poetic.”
She just rolled her eyes, half amusement and half surrender, turned back toward the room. “Cool. Enjoy your ‘poetic’ flowers and summer then.”
As she sank into the couch, enjoying the blessed air conditioning with the dog sprawled beside her, her gaze drifted back to the terrace.
That woman was still out there, fiddling with the soil, her head swaying slightly—like she was humming a tune.
She couldn’t quite understand a hacker who hated sunlight and sweating, yet now was kneeling in both, clearly having the time of her life.
Then—
The glass door slid open again.
Without looking up, still focused on her task, “Are you going to join me?”
Second later, something icy pressed against her cheek.
She yelped, head snapping around.
And her girlfriend stood there, smirking and holding out a bottle of Coke beaded with cold condensation,
“I’m not taking responsibility for those stupid plants if you die of thirst.”
She accepted the love-filled bottle, the fizz crackling softly as she lifted it to her lips.
Cold bubbles bursting on her tongue, sweet and sharp all at once, like the kind of summer moment that was gone too quickly.
She watched her retreat back inside without another word, a slow smile touching her face.
The Machine might have called it decoration.
But her analog interface would definitely call it domestic life.
Two weeks passed.
Those fragile creatures hadn’t started dropping leaves and dying within a week.
Much to her mild disappointment, she never got the chance to say I told you so—or sing “Bye Bye Bye” right to someone’s face.
They were still alive.
Thriving, even.
Every day, she watched her fuss over them—watering, trimming, rearranging them, or even talking to them every single day.
In the mornings, they handled irrelevant numbers, and some of them really exhausting as fuck.
But no matter how late they came home, every night before bed, she knelt at her little garden, whispering to the plants in a voice too soft for anyone else to use in this city.
And she would stand at the glass door, sipping her whiskey, watching her cuckoo girlfriend talk to the fragile things.
Didn’t get it.
Seriously, she didn’t get it.
Her cuckoo girlfriend literally talked to green things as if they were really listening.
And lately, the brown-haired woman had started naming them. She honestly couldn’t tell one from another—everything was just green, unless it was taller or shorter.
Like the tallest, a Zinnia, she called her Sunny, “Because she’s brave enough to face the sun.”
And the shortest one, a Sweet Alyssum, was Dot. “Tiny but strong and determined, just like y—”
“If you don’t want anything to happen to your determined Dot, then swallow whatever you’re about to say.”
But she kept listening, though half-tuned out, when her girlfriend talked about them—photosynthesis, soil pH, nutrient something-something.
It was all the kind of nonsense she was guaranteed to forget by morning.
But sometimes, when she was away on a mission assigned by the Machine, she’d call before takeoff and say in that syrupy tone,
“Sweetie, don’t forget to take care of our kids.”
“…You mean your kids.”
Ad she obviously ignored her reminder, “You don’t need to do much. Just water them—Sunny, Mellow, and Salsa get half a cup at sunrise, but Mellow and Salsa only need it every two or three days. Dot gets a light mist in the late afternoon. And Goldie, half a cup in the morning. The water shouldn’t be too cold or too warm. You’ll be fine.”
The dark-haired woman was already zoning out halfway through the plant-care lecture. She sighed—it was long and deep—but when her girlfriend hung up, she did it anyway.
Not because she cared about the plants.
She didn’t want her girlfriend nagging her from halfway across the country—or worse, crying over a dead potted plant when she got back.
So every morning, she stood out on the terrace with a watering can in one hand and her coffee in the other, face unreadable, fulfilling her temporary caretaker duty.
She’d never admit it, but the apartment felt a little less empty when she did.
Instead of remembering the names her girlfriend had given them, she started labeling each in her head by caliber.
“This one’s a .45 bloom,” she muttered one day. “That’s a .50 bloom. That one’s a .38. And—” she eyed the smallest plant, “you’re a .22.”
She gave herself a small approved nod.
Handling this flower nonsense efficiently, just like a pro, as always.
“Shaw—!”
The sudden shout sliced through the early dawn.
Her eyes snapped open.
Left hand instinctively reached for the pistol beside her on the nightstand.
The Order of Lenin medal hanging on the lamp swayed faintly with the movement.
In the same heartbeat, her bare feet already hit the floor before her mind fully caught up.
Her long black hair was a tousled mess from sleep, but her gaze was sharp—ready for anything, any situation.
Gun raised, she quickly and cautiously stepped out of the bedroom—only to see her girlfriend emerging from the terrace at the same time—
Smiling?
“Root? What's wr—” While she was still blinking in confusion, she grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the sliding door.
“Sameen, look!” she said, voice bright with excitement, both hands gripping her shoulders as she positioned her in front of the pots.
Look at what?
Her brain grumbled. There was nothing.
The hacker pointed eagerly at the buds on the “.50”.
Tiny buds had formed on the stem, still closed but glowing faintly in the weak morning light.
“Sunny! Sunny’s blooming!” she said, eyes wide with delight. Then she pointed at the smaller buds, the “.22”, “And look, Dot too!”
That was it.
That’s what she had screamed about. At six in the damn morning. When the sky was still mosty dark.
That woman practically vibrating with joy. “Isn’t it beautiful, Sameen?”
No, my bed is way more beautiful than the stupid greens.
But she just sighed, lowering her gun and her anger at being woken up — only full of speechless exasperation, and too sleepy to even summon sarcasm.
The brown-haired woman wrapped her arms around her girlfriend’s shoulders from behind, resting her chin gently on top of her head.
“It’s like watching them wake up for the first time,” she murmured softly.
She let out a long yawn, her eyes half-lidded. “Still too early to say if they’ll survive, Root.”
“Not everything has to survive to matter, Sameen,” she said, smiling against her hair, “Hmmm sometimes... Sometimes even if it’s brief, it’s enough just to live once and be seen.”
She tilted her head slightly back, letting the quiet morning hum fill the space between them.
“You’re so damn poetic for six a.m.”
“Actually, it’s 5:20,” she laughed quietly, pressing a light kiss to the top of her head.
“…Make me coffee. Now.”
Behind them, the buds swayed gently in the early breeze—softest green and purest white against the gray of the waking city.
It was such a small thing, really.
But they stood anyway—
Ready to bloom and spill just a little color into this quiet corner of the world.
One morning.
The sunlight bled slowly into the apartment, gold and soft.
At eight o’clock, the woman slipped into the neatly folded black tank top and pants waiting on the nightstand, and finally dragged herself out of bed.
Her body still sore faintly from last night’s exercise, but the muscle ache was the kind that made her remember, not regret.
Even after freshly washed, she still looked half-asleep when she wandered into the kitchen.
Long dark hair hung loose, brushing her bare shoulders and the curve of her biceps as she poured coffee from the pot into her mug.
Steam curled up lazily, and the scent was almost sharp enough to bite through her grogginess.
She stood there, taking that first sip, waiting for caffeine to perform its small miracle.
That’s when she noticed it—
The apartment, the air smelled… different.
It was floral—heady and soft.
Too sweet to be offensive, and too persistent to ignore.
Kind of like… someone she knew.
Her gaze shifted.
The sliding glass door to the terrace was open, and the curtain swayed gently in the morning breeze, letting in streaks of gold sunlight.
She stepped closer, and closer…
Her bare feet made no sound on the floorboards as she stepped forward.
And—
stopped.
Every pot was in full bloom.
Some blooms burned bright red and pink, others glowed in shades of gold and soft orange.
Even the smallest plant by the railing had turned white overnight, tiny blossoms clustered like snow caught in sunlight.
The air shimmered faintly with color and scent.
For a second, she thought she’d stepped into someone else’s dream.
And she saw her.
Sat cross-legged among them, wearing a loose white long-sleeve shirt.
Morning sunlight poured over her, kissing her hair, turning brown into molten gold.
The wind lifted the fabric and loose strands like a slow, gentle water.
When she turned at the sound of her step and smiled—
And something in the moment went still.
She’d seen her in a dozen versions of herself.
But this… surrounded by blooming life, sunlight and peace curling around her—
It looked absurdly tender, as if she’d stepped through the glass door into a storybook.
“Morning, sweetie.”
The words drifted through the sunlit air like the scent itself.
“Sam?”
It took her a few seconds to recover.
And she masked it instantly, cleared her throat.
Her voice came out quiet and hoarse, “…What the hell happened to the jungle out here?”
And her eyes…
They were bright with delight as she reached out with a soil-dusted hand, “Come here. You have to see this one. Our Goldie’s first full bloom.”
So she stepped forward without a word and let her take her hand.
Just stood there, silently listening as the other woman chattered on—
Let the sunlight spill between them.
Let the wind wind through their hair, tangling dark and gold together.
And let the flowers dance gently around them.
“Didn’t think you’d actually keep them alive this long, Root.”
“That’s what love and good data do, sweetie.”