Chapter Text
It was snowing in London.
Not the pretty, delicate kind of snow that lent a bit of beauty and tranquility to the atmosphere, though, because it wasn’t cold enough for that. It was snowing the kind of snow that became slippery gray slush as soon as it hit the ground, the kind of snow that was less of an inspiration for holiday cheer and more of a general nuisance for anyone who had to venture out of doors before it melted away in full.
Anthony J. Crowley regarded the errant precipitation with a dash of bitterness as he maneuvered the Bentley (whose backseat was currently ridiculously full of flowers and plants in various types of pots) into park in front of a long stretch of Soho businesses. He really hoped the snow wasn’t an omen of some sort. That would be just his luck.
Crowley really, really wanted this to work. He’d royally fucked up pretty much everything else in his life up to this point, and he wasn’t sure what he would do if something didn’t pan out soon.
Until quite recently, Crowley had been an actor. A pretty damned good one, too, he’d thought. Sure, he’d been a bit demanding, a bit full of himself, but wasn’t everyone who’d been in the industry as long as he had? Weren’t all celebrities a little arrogant, a little indulgent, a little bratty? Didn’t they all get into trouble from time to time?
Apparently, Crowley had pushed it just a little bit too far over the years. He’d known he was difficult to work with sometimes, known he wasn’t the most reliable, not the safest choice for a lot of directors out there. He’d honestly thought he made up for all that in pure talent, though.
It turns out that wasn’t quite the case.
He’d been out of work for a while, which was the consequence of a highly publicized cheating scandal and a couple stints in rehab for things Crowley would really prefer not to talk about. He was sure he’d bounce back, though, because that’s what he always did. He’d get into a spot of trouble, suffer the backlash, and then he’d punch out a killer role with rave reviews that had the public completely forgetting what it was they had previously been criticizing him for.
He had been up for the gig of a lifetime. A starring role in a film that was certain to be a huge blockbuster, with the promise of a sequel or five already lining up behind it. Crowley was more than well-off, monetarily speaking, but just looking at the pay estimate that Bee, his manager, sent him made him feel a tad nauseous.
Crowley’s resume certainly deserved the part. He knew that. If it had been the only thing in consideration, he would have snagged the job for sure.
It wasn’t, though. Of course it wasn’t. A couple months ago, Bee had called and told him the directors ended up giving the part to some nobody with ‘potential’ because they felt the fresh faces in the industry deserved a leg up every now and again. They said they wanted the part to go to someone who’d truly appreciate it.
Crowley was beside himself. He’d never even heard of the guy.
Since then, Bee had offered to book him some other parts, all smaller gigs, but Crowley had declined the lot of them, saying they were beneath them and that he was offended they would even suggest he go for them.
In a shocking breach of their usual character, Bee was kind enough not to mention Crowley should probably be grateful these offers were even on the table anymore, considering his last spectacular crash and burn along with the fact that he was approaching the bad side of forty. Crowley could do an award-winning impression of Bee muttering ‘acting is a young man’s game, you know’ into a wine glass given the amount of times they’ve said it, so he really was gobsmacked when they didn’t go there this time around.
Despite his manager’s sudden burst of what (for Bee at least) could be called compassion, Crowley fell into his dark place. He stayed there for a while. A month or two, at minimum. His dark place mostly involved refusing to leave his flat (in fear that a member of the paparazzi would ask him how he felt about getting turned down for the role of the century), watching daytime television reruns like a zombie in his boxers, eating nothing but Chinese takeaway, and slowly but surely emptying his wine cabinet. He knew it could have been a lot worse, could have gotten a lot more destructive than that, so Crowley decided he wouldn’t be that sorry about it.
After a while, though, he got restless. He got bored. He got, God forbid, a bit lonely.
Crowley didn’t get lonely. He hated people. But, during his vacation in the dark place, he’d come to the realization that he didn’t really have any friends. Or any family that didn’t hate his guts.
This revelation made him lonely in a sort of hypothetical, theoretical way. He didn’t really want company, not now, but the idea that if he did, there wouldn’t be anyone he could talk to… That idea made him a bit sad. In a hypothetical, theoretical way, of course.
He’d briefly considered asking Bee to hang out, but he quickly decided that was out of the question when he pictured their potential reaction to that inquiry. He didn’t even want to imagine dealing with that carefully tempered mixture of disbelief, pity, and disgust. Not a chance.
In addition to the fact that he didn’t have any friends, Crowley had another, much more important realization during his time in the dark place.
He hated acting. He fucking hated it. He hated the whole damn business, hated it with more passion than he’d ever felt in his entire life. He hated how fake it all was, how he had to pretend to be someone else even after the cameras stopped rolling. Ironically, Crowley had gotten into acting because he quite enjoyed pretending to be someone else. After nearly three decades of that shit, it was safe to say he didn’t feel that way anymore.
He didn’t want to go back. Not now. Not for a long, long time at the very least, and Crowley knew he didn’t have the luxury of an extended vacation unless he wanted to forfeit his whole career in the process.
As it stands, that was exactly what he decided to do. He announced his retirement from acting in a very dramatic manner via social media without consulting Bee beforehand. This resulted in Crowley receiving several furious texts and voicemails from his lovely manager that he very politely chose to ignore.
After letting Bee cool down for a week or so, Crowley gave them a call.
“This had better be fucking good, Crowley.”
The week he had waited had apparently done nothing except make them angrier.
“Hello to you too, Bee.”
“What do you want?”
He could almost hear their eyes rolling through the phone. Crowley feigned shock.
“Must I have an excuse to telephone my charming manager? Are there laws stating I can’t call you up to make casual conversation?”
“I figured you wouldn’t need a manager now that you no longer have a career to manage.”
That was a low blow even by Bee’s standards, but Crowley figured they had every right to take out a little frustration on him given the circumstances.
“Just because I’m not acting anymore doesn’t mean I don’t still need an assistant. I’ll keep you on the payroll, I swear. Won’t dock your check in the slightest.”
“Listen here, asshole, I am not your assistant, I am your manager, and- “
“Yes, yeah, whatever, either way, you’ve still got a job. And speaking of your job, I have a favor to ask you, actually.”
If people could set themselves on fire out of pure rage, Crowley is sure that’s what Bee would have been doing in this moment. After a brief pause in which Crowley was certain he could hear them grinding their teeth, Bee managed to grit out a reply.
“What is it?”
Here Crowley paused with genuine apprehension. It was a stupid idea, he’d admit, but he was starting to go a bit crazy stuck up in his flat all day, and it was the only plan he could come up with that he didn’t foresee himself absolutely hating ten years down the line. It was also extremely personal and something Crowley felt he could truly invest his emotions in at some point in the future. It was something he might actually come to care about, and he wasn’t sure which possibility was worse: that Bee would make fun of him for being an idiot, or that they would see right through his nonchalance and understand exactly how important this idea was to him.
“I need you to see about purchasing some commercial property for me,” Crowley said, putting on the air of a man who didn’t in any way care deeply about what he was talking about.
“Some commercial- what? Are you joking? What the hell for?” Bee sputtered out in response.
Crowley’s dignity was still intact, so far. He decided it was safe to keep going. He redoubled his efforts to make himself sound as casual as possible.
“I’m thinking of opening a… flower shop.”
For a moment or two, Crowley was met with complete silence. He listened closely at the phone, worried briefly that Bee had actually stopped breathing. They knew that Crowley kept a good deal of plant life in his flat, but he’d never let on how much he truly enjoyed that particular hobby before. (He’d once gifted Bee a small aloe vera plant to keep in their office, but they’d rather pointedly allowed the thing to wither away to nothingness before dumping it in the trash without ceremony, so Crowley decided it was best to stick to expensive liquor on holidays and their birthday from then on.)
“A flower shop.” They sounded less than impressed, which was exactly what Crowley had expected.
“Yes.”
“You’ve abandoned your thirty-year acting career because you want to open a flower shop.”
Crowley dearly hoped they wouldn’t analyze it beyond that point. He could deal with disapproval on a sort of meaningless, surface level that lacked true understanding, but he wouldn’t be able to handle it if Bee got through some of his deeper psychological layers and ripped at him there.
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m ridiculous. I don’t give a shit. Will you do it, or do I need to start looking for a new assistant?”
“Manager,” Bee snarled.
“Manager,” Crowley corrected.
Bee deliberated for a moment. Crowley knew that’s what they were doing, because they always deliberated very loudly, even when they were doing it inside their head.
After what seemed like a small lifetime, they let out a long-suffering sigh.
“Fine. Whatever. I’ll do it. Do you know where you want this shithole to be, or do you want me to figure that out for you?”
Ah, there it was. Sweet, dignified victory. This was exactly how Crowley had wanted this conversation to go.
“Just somewhere around London, don’t really care where. Make sure it’s a decent size, mind you, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands that I could be filling with plants and money.” Crowley had already made quite a few plans for his not-yet-existent flower shop gig. He’d really wanted to do it right, didn’t want to half-ass it like he’d been doing with pretty much everything else so far in his life. “And watch your mouth, Bee, you don’t know that it’s gonna be a shithole yet.”
A couple weeks later, Bee emailed him offers for a few different spaces, and Crowley eventually decided upon a quirky-looking spot in Soho with lots of big windows surrounded by aging red brick. It didn’t look all that welcoming, really, but that was alright. Crowley wasn’t really worried about the place being successful, seeing as he’d have more than enough money to get by even if the shop didn’t make a single cent in profit.
It had taken a few months to get everything finalized. The place was officially his come November, and it was ready to open for business after about a month of painting and arranging counters and shelves. Bee had dropped by periodically during this process because they didn’t really have anything else to do other than keep track of the shop’s financial business and deflect calls from gossip magazines asking why Crowley had decided to disappear and what, exactly, he was doing now. Bee was shocked to discover that Crowley had chosen to do most of the physical preparation of the shop himself, but they chalked that up to him being an annoying, perfectionistic micromanager and nothing more. That was good, because it meant Bee still had no idea how much Crowley genuinely cared about this little project, and he sincerely hoped it would stay that way.
Soon enough, the shop was ready to open, and Crowley found himself driving to Soho on a dreary, slush-filled Saturday morning in early December, the last of his display plants in tow. He spent the day lugging them into the freshly painted shop and making sure everything was sufficiently watered and properly arranged for his first day of business, which was to be the following Monday.
There wasn’t going to be a grand opening of any kind, because Crowley really wasn’t interested in garnering attention from the media. He just wanted to be an average, run-of-the-mill independent flower shop owner. He didn’t want any sort of ridiculous special treatment, and he certainly didn’t want paparazzi showing up unannounced, scaring away the actual customers and asking all kinds of invasive questions about his career or his plans or God forbid his mental health. He knew people would eventually catch wind that Anthony J. Crowley was running a flower shop in Soho, but he wanted to stave off that moment for as long as possible and make it as gradual and non-disruptive to his life as he could when it finally arrived.
He wanted this to work. He needed this to work. He needed his work to become something he cared about, something that didn’t send him into fits of panic that ended with him making all sorts of terrible, reckless decisions. He wanted this to be something he looked forward to when he went to bed at night, wanted to wake up in the morning and happily leave his bed because he was eager to get to the shop.
He thought it could be possible. He wasn’t sure he felt better, not yet anyway, but he was sure he felt different already, just from setting the place up.
After his preparations were done for the day, Crowley sat down behind his brand-new checkout counter with a well-deserved cup of coffee from the lovely little place around the corner that he’d recently discovered. He gazed through his windows at the street outside, where the lights had just begun to flicker to life and the slush had finally gotten itself together to become actual snowflakes.
“Maybe I should invest in some Christmas decorations,” he muttered to himself, catching sight of the shops across the street, a few of which were already decked out in festive regalia. The bookshop on the corner was especially adorned, with strings of multicolored lights hung outside, a huge wreath that was wrapped in red and gold ribbon, and what definitely looked like a live, full-size Christmas tree in the window. Even Crowley had to admit that it was a pretty picturesque view.
He’d never been much of a festive person, but this year he thought he might actually be able to muster up some yuletide spirit. Before finishing off the last of his coffee and packing up for the day, he made a mental note to buy at least a string or two of lights, and even considered picking up some poinsettias to scatter about the shop.
It was the holiday season, after all.