The champagne tasted like dread.
It fizzed on Rev’s tongue, a bitter mimicry of celebration.
The contestants of Floral Gladiators were gathered in a plush viewing lounge, a producer-mandated “Premiere Party” that felt more like waiting for a verdict.
The air was thick with the scent of expensive hairspray and forced camaraderie. Across the room, Julian Thorne stood with a small, stiff circle of contestants who gravitated towards his polished quietude.
He held his flute of champagne like it was an accustomed accessory, his posture as impeccable as the crease in his trousers. He hadn’t looked at her once.
Rev was grateful for that. Ever since their charged encounter in the supply room—the brush of hands, that shocking, unwanted jolt—an invisible wire had been strung taut between them.
She could feel its hum even from across the room, a low thrum of animosity and something else she refused to name.
“Nervous?” asked Mateo, a kind-faced landscaper from Arizona, nudging her with his elbow.
“I’d rather be wrestling a thorn bush,” Rev muttered, taking another defiant sip. “I can’t stand watching myself on camera. They twist everything.”
“Tell me about it,” he sighed.
“I think I spent my entire first interview talking about native bee populations. I’m pretty sure they’re going to edit it down to me just saying the word ‘pollen’ over and over in a weird voice.”
Rev managed a weak smile. The lights dimmed, and a cheer went through the room, thin and reedy.
The screen flared to life with a dramatic montage of exploding roses and shattering vases. Then, Magnifico’s voice, slick as oil, boomed from the speakers.
“Ten artists. One champion. This is… Floral Gladiators!”
The first half of the episode was a blur of introductions and the initial challenge. Rev watched herself on screen, a stranger with her face, her movements clipped and jarring.
And then came the interview snippets from the “Hostile Takeover” challenge.
The on-screen Rev smirked, a cruel twist of her lips Rev didn’t recognize. “Julian’s work is… classic,” the voice-over began, and Rev’s blood ran cold.
She remembered that interview.
She’d been talking for ten minutes about the historical significance of Dutch Golden Age floral painting and how Julian’s style honored that tradition, even if it wasn’t her own.
The editors had taken the word “classic” and drenched it in acid. They cut to a shot of her rolling her eyes—a clip from a completely different moment when a sound guy had dropped a boom mic.
They spliced it together so it looked like she was reacting to Julian’s elegant, if predictable, arrangement.
“It’s safe,” her televised voice continued, sharp and dismissive. “It’s what you’d expect from someone who’s never had to get their hands dirty. Pretty. Lifeless.”
A collective gasp rippled through the lounge. Rev felt the blood drain from her face.
They’d butchered her words, stitched them into a Frankenstein’s monster of arrogance.
She’d said “lifeless” in reference to using only fully bloomed flowers with no buds, a technical comment about capturing a moment in time.
They had made it a personal attack. She risked a glance at Julian.
He was staring at the screen, his jaw a hard, unforgiving line. His knuckles were white where he gripped his glass.
Then it was his turn.
The camera zoomed in on Julian’s face, catching a slight, weary lift of his eyebrow. He’d been asked what he thought of Rev’s aggressive, modern style.
“It’s certainly… loud,” on-screen Julian said, his voice clipped and cool. The show’s editors had layered a subtly condescending music cue underneath.
“There’s a certain lack of refinement, a brute force approach. One must remember that floristry is an art of subtlety, not a demolition derby.”
Rev flinched as if struck.
Demolition derby? Had he really said that? She searched her memory.
It sounded like him, but also… not. It sounded like a caricature.
They cut to a shot of him looking down his nose, a shot that could have been him looking at a stray petal on the floor, but here, it was aimed directly at her work.
He was the Privileged Snob, the Floral Aristocrat, looking down on the scrappy upstart from the streets.
The narrative was clear. He was the polished establishment; she was the vulgar rebel.
They were painting a rivalry, and they were using the ugliest colors they could find.
When the credits rolled, a suffocating silence fell over the room. The forced smiles were gone, replaced by wary, calculating glances.
The game had just become real, and it was uglier than anyone had imagined. Rev felt a dozen pairs of eyes on her, their judgment a physical weight.
She set her untouched champagne on a table with a sharp click and pushed her way out of the lounge, desperate for air.
The hallway was blessedly cool and quiet. She leaned against the wall, pressing her forehead to the cold plaster, and took a shuddering breath.
They hadn’t just made her look bad. They had made her look like everything she hated: a bully, arrogant, dismissive of another artist’s work.
They had erased her passion and left only poison.
“I assume you’re as thrilled with your portrayal as I am with mine.”
The voice was low and resonant, laced with ice. Julian stood at the other end of the hall, his own champagne flute abandoned, his hands shoved into his pockets.
The perfect posture was still there, but a weariness clung to him, a slight slump in his shoulders that the cameras would never have shown.
“They made me sound like I chew on glass for breakfast,” Rev said, not bothering to turn. Her voice was raw.
“And I, apparently, am a villain from a Merchant Ivory film, one monocle short of tying a damsel to the train tracks,” he retorted dryly.
He took a few steps closer, stopping a careful ten feet away. “For what it’s worth… ‘demolition derby’ was not the context in which I used those words.”
Rev finally turned to face him. The studio lights in the hall were unforgiving, and she could see the genuine frustration etched around his eyes. It mirrored her own.
“And I didn’t call your work ‘lifeless.’ I was talking about the ephemerality of a single moment in bloom.”
A flicker of something—surprise? understanding?—crossed his face. “I see.”
They stood there in a strange, suspended truce, two unwilling characters in a drama not of their own making.
For the first time, Rev saw past the crisp shirts and the perfect hair to the man beneath, a man who loved flowers just as fiercely as she did, who was just as horrified to see that love twisted into a weapon.
The animosity was still there, a simmering bedrock, but on top of it was a new, thin layer of shared misery.
The memory of her hand brushing his, the electric spark, felt like a premonition—a warning of a connection she couldn’t afford.
“It’s what they do,” Julian said, his voice devoid of its usual clipped precision. “They manufacture conflict. It makes for better television.”
“Well, congratulations, producers,” Rev muttered to the empty hall. “You got your conflict.”
***
The next day, the atmosphere on set was glacial. Contestants who had been friendly were now distant.
Giselle, a florist with a penchant for saccharine arrangements and cutthroat ambition, gave Rev a look of pure venom. It was clear the lines had been drawn.
Rev was the villain. Julian was the snob.
And everyone else was choosing a side.
They were assembled on the main stage, a symphony of gleaming steel and bright lights. Magnifico burst onto the set in a suit patterned with neon green pitcher plants, his energy painfully high.
“Gladiators!” he boomed, clapping his hands together. “Welcome back! Last night, the world met our floral superstars! The ratings were divine, the drama delicious!”
He winked, a gesture so theatrical it was practically a special effect. Rev felt a hot coil of anger in her stomach.
“Now, for your next challenge,” he continued, his smile widening. “We saw your individual brilliance in the ‘Hostale Takeover.’ We saw your ambition, your fire!”
He paused for dramatic effect, letting the tension build. “But floristry, my darlings, is not always a solo performance. Sometimes, it is a dance. A duet! For your next challenge, you will be working… in pairs!”
A wave of murmurs swept through the contestants. Rev’s heart sank.
She didn’t work well with others. Her vision was her own, singular and uncompromising.
Working with someone else felt like trying to paint with another person holding the same brush.
Magnifico beamed.
“The producers, in their infinite wisdom, have already chosen the pairs, creating what we believe are the most… dynamic combinations. Your challenge will be to create a ‘First Date’ bouquet. One that tells a story of nervous excitement, of burgeoning romance, of dangerous possibility!”
He held up a tablet, the screen glowing. “Our first team… Mateo and Giselle!”
Mateo gave Giselle a hopeful smile, which she returned with the warmth of a freezer door. One by one, Magnifico read the names, each pairing a calculated mix of styles and personalities.
Rev’s stomach twisted into a knot. Please, not Giselle. Not anyone who believed the TV edit.
Finally, only two names were left. Hers and Julian’s.
It couldn’t be. It was too perfect, too cruel. A script written by a sadist.
Magnifico’s eyes glittered with malicious glee. He knew exactly what he was doing.
“And our final pair,” he purred, drawing out the words. “A team I personally cannot wait to watch. The one I’m calling Fire and Ice… the Privileged and the Provocateur… Julian and Rev!”
The studio fell silent.
The cameras, all of them, swung to frame their faces in a split screen. Rev felt the blood roar in her ears.
A cold, heavy dread settled in her gut, an anchor pulling her down.
This wasn’t a challenge. It was a punishment. It was a producer’s dream, feeding the beast they had created last night.
Slowly, as if moving through water, she turned her head. Across the stage, Julian was doing the same.
His face was a mask of stoic disbelief, his elegant composure shattered, revealing a raw, unadulterated horror that perfectly mirrored her own. His eyes, the color of cool moss, met hers.
There was no trace of their brief, grudging truce from the hallway. There was no flicker of shared humanity.
All she saw in his gaze was the reflection of her own disgust.
They were trapped. Tethered together by a narrative they didn’t write, forced into a collaboration that was doomed from the start.
This wasn’t an alliance. It was a sentence.