Nursery Blues

[Maira]

((ooc: I totally blame the damn garden shop for this one... and it looks like i'll be out there ALOT through at least April if not longer.))

Wrath couldn't help but smirk at the back of the raving customer as he stormed out of the Nursery. Once the older gentleman had exitted the store, Wrath turned to his poor traumatized employee and asked with a laugh, "You gonna make it Eli?"

The look that Eli shot Wrath in answer to his question, spoke volumes. Patting the younger man on the shoulder, Wrath gently shoved Eli toward the break room. "Take 20 and eat something, you look pale," Wrath instructed his employee before gathering up the torn pieces of check and reciept that Mr. Cooper had thrown at poor Eli.

For some reason, probably not even known to Mr. Cooper, the older man just refused to accept that the price posted on the chicken manure fertilizer was correct. It was posted at $1.99 per back and even though the "1" was big, bold, and impossible to miss, Mr. Cooper had. He kept insisting that he shoudl only have to pay $0.99 per bag. After all, that's what he had been paying for the last five years. Only, the previous year Wrath had sold it for $1.79 and they had gone through a very similar scene.

Once he had all the scraps of paper, and all the other paperwork needed to void the transaction, Wrath headed back into his office. He needed to get an official incident report filled out because,unfortunately Mr. Cooper had a tendancy to report people to the police for harassment when he didn't get what he wanted.

[Demeter]

Eli flopped onto the faded couch in the employee’s room. He really hated this job at times, he thought as he rested his head back against the couch’s back. Most of the time, the customers were fine and he was learning about all sorts of plants and landscaping things. And he was starting to think that he wanted to go to college to learn about horticulture and design. Maybe, if he got a degree and was good enough at it, Wrath would hire him as part of the landscaping crew.

But first, he had to go the college. He started in a few months and had gotten in only because his long-lost uncle was willing to pay the hefty cost of a college education. As far as his grandmother and mother knew, college would be because of a scholarship and the work he did here at the greenhouse. He sat up and hauled himself up from the couch to go over to the refrigerator and get his lunch when the door opened. His boss’s daughter bounced into the room, greeting him. Eli straightened up and gave Hope a little wave. “Hi, Hope.” As usual, he was impossibly shy and nervous around Hope, “what are you doing here?”

[Demeter]

It had been three years since he found his Uncle and two since he'd accepted his uncle's offer and flown off to London. He'd bumped into the man during a party that the greenhouse he'd worked for had hosted a party for Wrath and his then Fiancé Cissa. Apparently Uncle Lysander was a coworker of Cissa's and Eli's first thought had been small world.

Throughout his senior year of high school, Eli had gotten to know the man. Not just disgraced by the family, Uncle Lysander had been disowned by Eli's grandparents for his lifestyle choices. After all, leading an alternative style was scandalous to his family even now. It had been a relief to find Lysander; someone he could talk with about certain feelings. He hadn't had many friends during high school; him being the weird kid and even the other kids in the church groups had avoided him. It has been that way even before he'd acquired Zero's companionship. He supposed he'd could have talked with Hope but she'd gone to a different school and, since he'd had a massive crush on her at the time, he hadn't wanted to let her know about his lusty thoughts about boys.

If she'd known, she might have started setting him up with the less uptight boys of her otherworlder school. And while seventeen year old him might have appreciated the favor, it wouldn't have gotten him any closer to her.

Not that it had mattered. Nothing had ever happened and then he'd run away to England to attend Oxford on his uncle's dime. And been disowned just like Lysander. It had been bound to happen; he'd been a teenage boy who was interested in other boys, as well as girls. He'd found a boy with similar interests as his own and had him over. His mother and grandmother had been away on a woman's church retreat. They'd come home early to find him and the boy on the living room floor with their hands down each other's pants. There had been yelling and claims he was no son of the family, he remembered, before he'd run off to his Uncle's home.

They next day, Eli had had the pleasure of seeing his mother and grandmother go white when he'd turned up on their doorstep, backed by Uncle Lysander. Who was older then Eli's mother by several years but still looked to be in his twenties. Lysander had rambled on about how he'd preferred to keep his lifestyle quite back then and he'd done them a favor by staging his own death but how now-a-days, things were different and alternative lifestyles weren't so taboo. And really, could Eli's mother really say anything because that ring on her finger was a cheap lie, she'd conceived Eli outside of marriage and couldn't narrow down Eli's father beyond the possible three or four men she'd banged while touring the country in a weed drenched hippie van.

They'd made nice, signed papers naming Uncle Lysander as Eli's legal guardian and he'd finished his senior year living under his uncle's roof. At the end of that summer, he'd said his goodbyes and flown off to England to take part in Oxford's horticulture program.

Now, two years later, he was back in Cedar Valley because something was up with Uncle Lysander. The flurry of cryptic warnings and requests to use Eli's accounts to store money, and a promise to make sure Dominic and Lani were taken care of had Eli and Zero's hackles raised. He wanted to know what hell was going on and apparently he needed to do that in person because Lysander wasn't answering his emails.

So, he'd booked it back to Cedar Valley without telling anyone, crashing at the flat one of his London friend's family kept there. Ironically, according to Saiyuri, Lysander and Dominic had just left for a week long trip to London. He'd shrugged and decided to check in a few of the other people he'd left behind.

He'd stopped by his grandmother's house and eyeballed his mother. She was still alive and he'd made her shriek after she'd asked what he'd been doing. His joking reply that he'd just attended to wedding of two men and shagged the twin brothers of one of the grooms was not appreciated.

Now, he pulled the car he'd borrowed from Dominic's mother (who was awesome and had appreciated the twin brother reply) into the parking lot of Wrath's store. His first thought as he wandered the aisle was that Wrath had been able to expand. He eventually found the man himself and grinned when he asked if he needed any help.

Eli knew he looked different. Nearly six inches of height, more muscle mass and hair that was actually styled made a difference from the scrawny high schooler he'd been. Plus, that scrawny high schooler would have never worn a fang as an earring.

He grinned and asked if Mr. Cooper was still paying under a buck for chicken shit. He watched as Wrath blinked a few times before asking "Elijah?"

He spent some time catching up with his former boss and then headed out in the direction of Three Willows. Wrath said Hope now worked, rode and lived the horse farm full time. Eli wasn't all that surprised. He found Trey first and was told that Hope was probably in the main barn, brushing down her horse after his morning work out. Eli wandered that way.

He didn't like what he found. There was Hope backed up against the door of an empty stall with some strange guy pressing up against her. The guy was saying something but too quietly for Eli to make out. He guessed it was something unpleasant given the way Hope cringed and clenched the hoof pick in her hand when the guy reached out to, well pet was the only word Eli could think of with the way the guy stroked her abdomen. Still, she didn't use the pick; not even when the guy grabbed a handful of breast and squeezed. Eli growled when Hope whimpered but still didn't use the pick in her hand. Still growling low in his throat and his eyes flashing between feline and human (Zero and he were a whole lot closer these days), stalked forward. He open the occupied stalls of certain horses as he went. He grinned at the sound of measured hoof steps behind him.

As he closed in on them, Eli's pace increased and he slammed his fist into the guy's side. With him stumbling away, Eli stepped in front of Hope. The horse heading up the herd in the barn, Hope's mount, dove after him. As the horses chased him from the structure, Eli turned around. "Hey, you okay?"