If Only You Were Here

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫

If he saw her, Alcor would be laughing in Saiph's face right now. Dirt sits under her fingernails, and the sun blares down on her. She dabs the top of her head with her bucket hat to get rid of the sweat dripping down her face. Saiph isn't sure gardening is for her, but she'll continue trying. Alcor would want her to, no matter how much she would tease her about it.

Saiph looks over to Ansel, who is planting various vegetable seeds. She can't read his face to see if he's enjoying this. Saiph goes to look away but can't help to look back at Ansel's face, which he later on notices. Ansel looks up from what he is doing and smiles. Saiph blushes and looks down at the flower she's planting, now squished from the dirt she accidentally kept putting dirt over.

"What did you do?" Ansel chuckles as he makes his way over to Saiph.

She sighs and takes the itchy gardening gloves off her hands. "Just goes to show how great at gardening I am."

"Here, let me show you how to do it properly."

Saiph frowned and watched Ansel walk away to the table where all the plants were. There, he picks up a plastic pot filled with daisies and makes his way back to Saiph. He kneels beside her, gets her to put her annoying and itchy gloves back on and creates a new hole for the flowers.

Saiph sits there waiting for his instructions. She would say she knows how to plant correctly, but it would be embarrassing to say why the flowers she worked on were destroyed. It would be embarrassing to say that she could notice the faint freckles dancing on his cheeks. There are more on the left than the right.

Instead of Ansel telling her what to do, he grabs her hands and cups them with his. Saiph's rose blush for early returns to burn her cheeks. She's doesn't look up at him so that he can't catch the sight of her cheeks. Saiph's eyes are set on the ground where they're planting the daisies.

She follows Ansel's movements, softly moving the dirt to the bottoms of the stems to cover. He gets Saiph to cup her hands more to set the dirt and put pressure so the daisies stay up and won't fall. Ansel then removes his hands from Saiph's, and her heart sinks from losing his touch. But it quickly gets back up once Ansel gets the watering can and lifts Saiph's left hand again to cup.

"I know how to water a plant," She rolls her eyes.

"And how am I supposed to know that? Did you see what you did to that poor flower before? I can't trust you to water these plants alone," Ansel jokes.

Saiph laughs and looks back to the ground to hide her blush. This time, Ansel doesn't let her hide as he leans his head down to meet her eyes.

"How's it going over here?" Mrs Han, the teacher head of the gardening club, goes over to them.

Saiph's eyes snap away from Ansel's, and he looks up at the teacher. "Great!" Saiph says, trying to convince Mrs Han and herself. Mrs Han, however, picks up on Saiph's tone and raises her eyebrow. "I accidentally destroyed a plant." She admits with her shoulders lowering with her enthusiasm.

"Saiph was distracted by my good looks, miss," Saiph's head whips to Ansel, who is smirking.

"Don't tease the poor girl, Ansel."

"Can't help it, miss," he winks at Saiph this time.

She bites her bottom lip and shakes her head at Ansel. She can't tell what's going on with him. The things he has been saying all day seem...flirty. But no one has ever flirted with Saiph before. No one has been interested in her to do so. It's a new experience for her if that's what's going on. Not only that, Saiph is horrible at flirting back.

She kicks out her foot to hit Ansel, attempting to cause him to lose balance. He wobbles a little bit but gets his balance back before he leans over to try and knock Saiph down. It was like Mrs Han was no longer there as the two tried to knock each other over.