Who: Dean Winchester dean & Hisoka Kurosaki hisoka_k What: Plant shopping When: Sometime in October Where: Greenhouse Hisoka frequents Rating: General Audiences Warnings: None. Status: Closed/Abandoned Partner Thread
~*~
Pools were always fun to landscape around. Dean Winchester had gotten contracted to do a pool job in a customer's backyard which looked like a lush jungle already. They'd lost a lot of their existing foliage courtesy of the crew who'd dug the in-ground pool's new housing. Whoever they'd hired? Dean would have shot them for wrecking his lawn the way they had his client's---dirt tracks where thick grass once had been, red clay stirred up all around the dig site, and uneven edging on all sides of the pool. It was inexcusable in his opinion.
Naturally he kept his opinion to himself because he didn't want to sound like a psycho stating he'd shoot someone over a lawn, but he thought it nonetheless.
Dean had been looking into options for plush moss for a while. He liked the earthy smell of it plus it helped to encourage the good kind of insects as well as frogs. There was something incredibly alluring about a night swim with the frogs and the fireflies all around. His Dreams made him wonder what was wrong with him for wanting to be out after dark doing anything other than hunting, but Dean refused to let his Dreams turn him into a different man. He might not have a choice in that other life. In this one? All bets were on him.
"Hey, you look like a guy who might know a thing or two. Looking for a good moss. Something of the friendly creeper variety. Any idea if you have anything like that to hand here? My usual haunt doesn't have anything I can use."
He had approached the first person who looked as if they worked on site. Dean hoped he wasn't talking to some kid who had only taken the job for mad money. It was frustrating beyond belief to have to explain plants to someone who was supposed to be selling them to him. A good work ethic went a long way for Dean. He could excuse anything from being an asshole to being zero percent sane if a person worked hard enough. It was most of the reason why he kept Nux around. Kid was a Helluva worker.
~*~
With his parents actually being home for once, Hisoka found himself spending more and more time at the greenhouse after school and on the weekends. The work didn't bother him and he actually loved being around all the plant life. There was something peaceful about it all. Not to mention it gave him some time to spend with his friend. Knowing that both he and Tsuzuki had the same dreams was a comfort and it helped that the teenager had someone to turn to when they were particularly bad or if it felt like he was losing control of his abilities.
He had been making himself busy by transferring a few seedlings into larger pots to grow when a man came up asking about moss. It wasn't a request he heard often but still not entirely out of the ordinary.
"We do actually," the boy replied politely as he turned to face the man. "We offer a few different types actually. But if you're looking for something for the 'friendly creeper' variety, I would suggest fern moss."
~*~ Nodding, Dean said, "I've seen that before. Didn't know they sold it commercially. Can you show me your stock? I'm going to bed it down on an invisible matting system so it doesn't dry out. The pH here is terrible for moss, but my client really wants a moss garden to give their backyard lagoon a wild look."
It wasn't the strangest request Dean had fielded. He'd been forced to deal with people who thought he could turn grass purple for them the way they dyed their hair. Worst client had been the woman who begged him to find a way to make a black walnut tree stop producing walnuts. Dean had spent hours explaining he was a landscaper, not God. He could clean up the nuts for her, but no one could make the damn tree stop producing nuts. That was like asking a person to stop breathing out carbon dioxide.
Walnut trees produced nuts; people produced carbon dioxide.
That was how things worked.
"I'm not sure how much I'll need. It depends on whether yours have spores on them already or if I'll have to fertilize them. I've done both. People ask for all kinds of things, man. I tell you."
~*~
“Of course” The boy said brushing his hands off on the apron he wore. The man thankfully sounded like he knew what he was talking about. That was good as it meant that there wouldn’t be an angry customer back three weeks later when it wasn’t cared for properly and it died. Motioning for the other to follow, he led him to a different area of the greenhouse where they kept the moss. They sold a few varieties so it took him just a moment to find it before showing the stranger.
“This one sounds like it will be good because it will grow on just about anything and is very low maintenance.” He explained, Showing the man the product. “It is slow growing as well.”
~*~
The nursery had a lot more options in stock than Dean had expected. He was glad the attendant pointed to a good option. His day would have been a lot longer if he'd have had to spend hours reading labels for care and management before picking up something to take with him. They had enough on hand to cover the rock figure Dean was sculpting for his client. She had a general idea which Dean had been too happy to help her flesh out. If he had his way? Her backyard would double for the set of the freaking Blue Lagoon.
Using his phone, Dean did the math on how much it'd cost him to invest in it right away, "Yeah. That's a good one. Thanks for knowing what you're talking about. I hate spending half my day reading care and maintenance tickets because a place has hired some guy who just wants to get paid. You like working here?"
It was something to ask while he pulled over a flatbed cart to start stacking the squares of bedding moss onto. He'd have to cover it with a tarp. There were already spores on it. Good for him -it would take easier and spread faster- but bad for the moss in transit since having the spores break off could kill it before Dean got it to its new home. Once upon a time, when Dean had first started out, he'd made a lot of those kinds of mistakes. Those had been the days he worked double shifts at the garage to pay back what he lost on landscaping jobs.
He'd paid for more jobs than he'd gotten paid to do starting out.
"I won't be cleaning out your stock, but I am needing most of it. Got a rock figure to cover. Lucky for me? You guys have decent prices. My client has a tendency to be tight with the purse strings. She wants results then a bill. Love it."
~*~
“I enjoy volunteering here very much” Hisoka replied with a small smile as he watched the man look over their inventory. The greenhouse was one of the few places he could actually relax and loosen up. Well, loosen up as much as he would let himself. “And it’s rare around here to find people who don’t have at least some knowledge of the plants that we house here.”
With the flatbed cart in place the teen began to load it up with the moss, mentally figuring in his head the cost with each square foot. He hoped that this worked out well for the landscaper and it made his client happy. He knew all too well how picky and unreasonable people could be with their lawns. His parents unfortunately fell into that category, much to his own embarrassment. “How long have you been doing landscaping?”
~*~
"Too long and not long enough. I'm getting out of another line of work to start up my own company. Right now I've been plugging away at it for a few years. This is the first where I've had enough steady work to cut my hours at my other job."
Dean didn't mind talking about his work. He wasn't ashamed to be a mechanic. His old man had been a mechanic back in the day before all the drinking had gotten to him. It was a toss-up as to whether Dean thought on the other reason John Winchester had ceased to be a simple man fixing cars in a garage before going home to his wife and two sons. That life came from the Dreams. It could stay in the Dreams as far as Dean cared. There might be nothing he could do about the life he was tortured with recalling---that didn't mean he had to embrace it.
If there were things which went bump in the night in the OC, Dean Winchester didn't have to care about them. All he had to do was make sure they wouldn't be deadly to moss beds.
Finishing with the stacking, Dean stretched to pop his spine, "Never gets easier to have to go in for a job you don't like so take it from me: stick with the one you want. It'll make your life a lot more pleasant."