Title: Twice Over
Fandom: Culture Club
Pairing: Boy George/Jon Moss
Rating: G
Length: 585 words
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: A smaller oneshot this time!
Written for: Challenge 509 - Plant
Summary: George is not, he would like it noted, a naturally nurturing person. Jon comes home to find the plant dying. This is not, strictly speaking, a surprise.

The plant had been dying for three weeks.

Jon noticed it the moment he walked through the door -- the drooping leaves, the soil so dry it had pulled away from the edges of the pot, the general air of something quietly giving up. He set his keys on the counter and stood there for a moment, just looking at it.

"George."

From somewhere upstairs: "What?"

"What happened to the plant?"

A pause. Then footsteps on the stairs, and George appeared in the kitchen doorway in paint-stained trousers and a silk dressing gown that had absolutely no business being worn while painting anything. He looked at the plant. Then at Jon. Then back at the plant.

"It's fine."

"It's dying, George."

"It's resting."

Jon picked up the pot. Bone dry. He turned to look at George with the particular expression he reserved for moments like this -- not angry, not even exasperated, just very, very patient in a way that George had always found slightly maddening.

"When did you last water it?"

George opened his mouth, then closed it. Then looked at the ceiling with great concentration, as though the answer might be written there.

"Recently," he said finally.

"George."

"It might have been… a fortnight."

Jon set the pot down and went to fill a glass at the sink. George watched him from the doorway, arms crossed, which was not an apologetic posture but was the closest George usually got to one.

"I've been busy," George said. "I had the thing with the album, and then the interview, and Frankie rang four times in one day last Tuesday which you know takes it out of you--"

"I know," Jon said.

"--and I did look at it. Several times. I looked at it and thought, that plant is looking a bit peaky, I should do something about that."

"And then?"

"And then I went and did something else."

Jon poured the water carefully around the base of the plant, slow and steady, the way his mum had shown him when he was small. He did it twice. George watched in silence.

"Is it going to live?" George asked, after a moment. His voice had gone slightly quieter, the performance stripped out of it.

"Probably." Jon sat the glass down. "It'll take a few days. Needs a bit more light too." He moved the pot to the windowsill, angling it toward the afternoon sun. "There."

George came to stand beside him, looking down at the sad, drooping thing on the windowsill. In the better light you could see it wasn't entirely hopeless--there was still green in the leaves, still something worth saving.

"I'm not naturally a nurturing person," George said, with great dignity.

"I know that too," Jon said.

"Some people aren't. It's not a character flaw."

"I didn't say it was."

George was quiet for a moment. Then, almost reluctantly: "You're good at it. The looking after things."

Jon glanced at him sideways. George was still looking at the plant, chin lifted slightly, expression carefully neutral, which meant he was feeling something he hadn't quite decided whether to admit to yet.

"Takes practice," Jon said simply.

He didn't say: I've had practice. He didn't say: I've been doing it for years, with you, the same way, slow and steady and twice over when needed. He didn't say any of that.

He just moved the plant a little further into the light, and George stood beside him, the afternoon becoming gold and quiet.