Invictus

Flowers

“Why are you drawing flowers?”

Magnus almost jumped out of his skin, bringing a hand over his heart as if it could steady it.

“Sheldon, quit sneaking up on me like that!”

Simon must have had some supernatural ability to move around undetected. As clumsy as he was, his steps seemed lighter than a feather, and he had developed a bad habit of lurking over Magnus’ shoulder as he worked on his designs.

Magnus hated it.

Simon ignored him, leaning on the desk next to his drawing. “So, why the flowers?”

Magnus shrugged. “Got inspired by all the flowers next door, I suppose,” he said dismissively.

Sometimes, it was hard to explain. Inspiration came and went, often unexpected, always thrilling and overpowering. Magnus worked essentially on instinct, and this morning, his guts had screamed flowers, so flowers he had drawn. It was as simple as that, but it was somehow a hard concept to explain to Simon, whose artistic skills limited themselves to the horrendous - Magnus was exaggerating, sometimes they were decent - covers he played with his band Sexy Vampire Mojo.

Simon hummed pensively, but seemed to deem his answer acceptable. He had learned long ago not to question Magnus’ quirks, especially when they were artistic ones.

“Your mom called,” he said. “Invited us to dinner tonight.”

Magnus blinked up in surprise, curving an eyebrow. “Us?”

Simon grinned, wide and self-satisfied. “You know Baboo loves me,” he said, with enough pride that Magnus had no other choice but to roll his eyes.

“Stop calling her Baboo,” he growled. “I’m the only one allowed.”

“She told me I could!” Simon protested.

“She also told you Salacious Mold was a good name for your band,” Magnus deadpanned, going back to adding colors to his drawing. “She didn’t want to upset you because she loves you for some reason beyond me. Don’t listen to everything she says.”

“Oh, would you be jealous?” Simon sing-sang, leaning in so Magnus could see him wiggling his eyebrows tauntingly.

Magnus flipped him off. What had possessed him to hire Simon as an assistant slash secretary slash permanent pain in the ass, he would never know.

He pushed his chair away from his desk and rose to his feet, wiping non existent dust off of his shirt.

“When’s my next appointment?” he asked.

“In half an hour,” Simon replied at once. At least, he was good at his job, which was equally infuriating and very helpful.

“More than enough time then,” Magnus said with a nod, and walked out of the door.

“To do what?” Simon called in his back.

“Get away from you!” Magnus retorted, and he winked at the young lady patiently waiting in the black leather couch that sat against the window in the entrance.

The sweltering heat of summer was almost suffocating as he walked outside the shop, the sun beating at Magnus’ unguarded shoulders ruthlessly. The window of Wanda’s bakery was reflecting the sun’s rays and he grabbed his sunglasses of his pockets, putting them on his nose before he marched decidedly to the florist next door.

He hadn’t talked to Alec since they had first met a week prior, but he had seen dashes of messy black hair every now and then when he came out to breathe in some fresh air after too long of a sitting with a customer.