Chapter Text
“I’ll take it,” Cassian says once he’s walked through the retail space with the realtor. It’s the corner shop of a bustling downtown, and it’s all windows and potential. Besides, there’s a coffee shop two doors down – which is actually where they go to sign the lease.
Two hours later he returns, keys in hand and a truckload of tools out back to start working. The interior of the shop will need to be gutted if he wants an open layout, plus there are crates to build for the sidewalk display. He hopes his new neighbors won’t mind a little construction noise for a few weeks. But then again, the shop immediately next to his is a tattoo parlor, and it’s still closed. That doesn’t surprise him; it’s only eleven o’clock in the morning, and most don’t open until noon or later.
He takes note of the name – Guardian Ink – but he can’t see inside to get a feel for the place. He heads back to the coffee shop for a fresh cup before heading back and letting himself into his new business.
–----------
Jyn likes the first fifteen minutes at work the best out of the whole day. Baze is always there first, and the two of them open up the shop in easy silence before the others arrive. It’s nice to sip her coffee and prepare for the day before the others come in and crank the music up and customers start to arrive – although she loves the hustle and bustle, too.
Today though, not two minutes after she’s come in through the front door and dropped her bag at her station, she hears the shrill whine of a circular saw out back.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“New neighbor,” Baze replies, nodding to the wall adjacent to the empty shop next door without looking up from the sketch he’s working on.
“What’s he building?” Jyn goes to the back door and looks through the peephole. Sure enough, there’s a man leaning over the open tailgate of a pickup truck, presumably calculating measurements, if the boards of wood stacked next to him are anything to go on. He’s facing away from her, so the most she can tell is that he’s tallish and has dark hair.
“Don’t know,” Baze says. “But I hope it’s not another pet shop. Couldn’t stand the yapping.”
She wonders if she should go say hello – just to be neighborly, of course – but then the front door jingles as her first customer comes in, so she turns away to greet them with a smile.
–---------
Cassian has gotten so lost in the steady work of building that he loses track of time, and it’s not until the back door of the tattoo parlor squeaks open that he realizes it must be past six o’clock. He wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his workman glove as a petite brunette steps out.
He has to admit, she’s not the type he expected to be one of the tattooists. But then again, the only time he’s ever actually been inside a tattoo shop was to drag a drunk Han back out before he got the smiling poop emoji on his ass, and that place was a total dive for even letting Han in the door considering how intoxicated he was.
He can’t help but notice how pretty she is.
She’s pretty in a girl-next-door way, although it looks like she’s trying to change that image with wisps of purple in the brunette bun piled on top of her head and the dark kohl around her eyes. She has a loaded paper plate in her hands, which makes his stomach rumble as he remembers that he skipped lunch.
“We thought you might be hungry,” she says without preamble, extending it toward him. The motion causes her sleeve to ride up, revealing swirls of colour on the skin underneath. The plate is stacked with several slices of pizza, and his stomach rumbles again. “A client brought us a large and we have extra.”
He pulls a glove off and takes the plate. “Thanks. I’m Cassian.”
“Welcome to the neighborhood. I’m Jyn,” she replies, then nods toward the wooden crates that he’s almost finished. “What are those for?”
“I’ll stack them out front to display flowerpots,” he replies.
Her lips part in surprise. “You’re a florist?”
“For about six years now.”
Just then the tattoo shop door swings open and a woman with a head of wild, dark curls leans out, offering Cassian a quick wave. “Your next one’s here, Jyn.”
“Okay,” Jyn replies, then turns back to him. “We lock the back door at eight, but you can always come in the front. Let us know if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” he says, but the pizza is more than enough. She gives him another smile over her shoulder as she heads back inside.
–---------
Shara pounces on her the minute the door slams shut behind her.
“He’s cute, isn’t he? Did he say what he’s doing here?”
“He’s opening a flower shop,” Jyn replies as she goes to the sink to wash her hands.
“Really?” Shara plasters herself against the door, trying to get the best angle through the peephole. “Damn. That man is too… too… something to just be a florist.”
“Aren’t you getting married next month?” Bodhi asks around a mouthful of pizza.
“Hey, I can still look,” she grins.
“Don’t you need a florist for the wedding?” Jyn says.
“You might be onto something there,” Shara replies, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “I wonder if he’ll be ready to take business by then.”
“I wasn’t aware I was running a hang-out,” Baze grumbles from the door to the break room, although he’s all bark and no bite.
“I’m on break,” Bodhi says innocently.
“Jyn’s just been ogling the new guy,” Shara says as she wafts out, laughing at Jyn’s indignant huff.
–---------
Cassian really doesn’t see much of his neighbors the first few days, probably because it’s the weekend and they’re busy with clients. On Monday evening the owners of the tattoo place, Baze and Chirrut, came over to introduce themselves and formally welcome him. They don’t comment on how unlikely a florist he is, which he appreciates. But he mostly just works in silence.
Then Tuesday afternoon rolls around, and he’s covered in sweat and wood stain when Jyn appears in the back doorway, which he left propped open to try to keep the fumes low.
“Can I come in?” she calls.
“Sure,” he replies, wiping his hand across his forehead before belatedly realizing that he’s probably just smeared stain on his face. He would rub it off, but there’s barely a clean patch on him.
“I was taking out the trash and saw the door was open,” she explains as she steps over the folds of a heavy drop cloth that he had started to spread out and then abandoned this morning. “Thought I’d come see your progress.”
“Slow day at the shop?” He quirks a brow at her and goes back to wiping off excess stain.
“My three o’clock cancelled,” she says, a sour look crossing her face. “Bastard. I blocked out four hours for him.”
“I’m sorry,” Cassian offers.
She shrugs, closing the distance between them to get a better look at what he’s working on. “Are these the crates you were making a couple days ago?”
“Yes. I want to finish them before I redo the floor, so I don’t have to worry about drips.”
“Good idea. Got an extra brush? I have time to kill before my next client and Baze is doing payroll, so… you’d be doing me a favour.”
“Isn’t getting paid a good thing?” he says as he rustles around for a second brush for her to use.
“It is, except Baze hates paperwork so he sits in the breakroom and grumbles the whole time.” She takes the brush from him and pours herself a little bit of stain from the big tin can.
“I think I agree with him on that,” Cassian says. “I had no idea how much paperwork it would take to open this place, and I’ll have to start payroll and all that soon.”
Jyn folds up cross-legged on the floor to reach the smaller crates better. She’s wearing cut-off jeans, and there are tattoos all up her legs; constellations across her thighs, a full-body portrait of Joan of Arc on one calf, swirling patterns across her knees and down to her ankles. Cassian gets the feeling that it would take hours to learn them all – and then he looks away, because studying Jyn’s legs is really not something he needs to be thinking about.
“Aren’t you worried you’ll miss a walk-in?” he asks to change the subject. “I mean – do tattoo shops get walk-ins?”
“They do,” she replies, already engrossed with filling in all the niggly seams where the corners join together. “But Leia will text me if somebody comes.”
“Leia?” he prompts, mostly just to keep her talking. She has a nice voice, especially after several days of just his own thoughts.
“Leia Organa, our receptionist slash shop manager.” Nice voice notwithstanding, Jyn is either too absorbed in the work to talk much, or she’s naturally concise.
“Any relation to Mayor Organa?”
“His daughter.” Jyn looks up at him long enough to smile a little mischievously, as if she’s daring him to comment. “She’s a poli-sci major at Coruscant University, so she works with us part-time.”
“How many people work in the shop?” he asks, wisely not taking the bait to comment on the unlikely politician’s daughter.
“Baze, Shara, Bodhi, and I are all full time artists, and Wedge works weekends.”
They spend the afternoon talking, and sometimes not talking, and Cassian discovers that he doesn’t find the silence awkward with her.
–---------
“So, did you ask him to do the flowers for the wedding yet?” Shara asks when Jyn returns to the tattoo parlor with stains all the way up to her elbows.
“What? No,” Jyn says, pulling a face. “I’m your maid-of-honour, not the wedding coordinator.”
“Just feel him out, would you? Or feel him up, either one.” Shara shrugs innocently.
“Shara.”
“What? He’s hot and you’re lonely. I think the universe is doing you a big fat favour in the form of a beautiful florist man right next door.”
“He could be seeing someone, for all we know. And I’m not lonely, thanks very much.”
“Oh yeah? And what exactly were you doing over there for hours today?”
“I was just helping him stain some wood. Oh– my god Shara!” Jyn throws up her hands as Shara wiggles her eyebrows with a suggestive smile at the potential double entendre.
“Listen, I’m trying to do you a favour. I’ve practically given you a gift, a.k.a. a reason to talk to him again. Go forth, with my blessing.”
“Fine,” Jyn says, telling herself that it’s just to end the conversation. “If I happen to see him, I’ll ask.”
“You’re welcome,” Shara says airily over her shoulder on her way out.
–---------
“Hey, nice place,” Han whistles when he strolls in the following afternoon, his impossibly giant dog shambling along at his heels.
The crates are done and stacked in the back storage room, and Cassian’s working on pulling out the ugly built-in shelves along both walls. “Are you actually here to help out?” he asks as he takes a break to lean against what will eventually become the checkout counter. The dog sniffs his boots and then begins to make the rounds of the perimeter. “Hey, Chewie.”
“What do I look like, free labour?” Han says, tossing Cassian a bottle of water that’s not quite cold anymore.
“Right, I forgot you’re just going to work here,” Cassian retorts, but there’s no bite in his bark.
“God, this must have been a depressing pet store.” Han looks around at the absolute disarray the shop is in. “No wonder you’re overhauling the whole place.”
“Speaking of which, break’s over.” Cassian pushes himself off the counter and gestures to the wheeled trashcan filled with rubbish that he’s pulled from the built-ins. “You can start by taking that to the dumpster out back.”
“You work too much,” Han says as he drags the heavy bin out the door.
He’s probably right, but Cassian figures that for it be worth the savings in labour by doing the remodel himself, he shouldn’t lose that by taking too long with no income. The sooner he finishes, the sooner he opens. So he goes back to unscrewing nails from the built-in’s metal fixtures.
“We’re next to a tattoo shop?” Han sounds incredulous on his way back in.
“You only just noticed?”
“I didn’t really peg this part of downtown as a tattoo kinda place.” Han rustles through the open toolbox and comes up with a hammer and crowbar to pry the baseboards off so they can refinish the floor another day. “You met any neighbors yet?”
“Just the owners and one of the artists,” Cassian says, suddenly – and stupidly – reluctant to tell him about Jyn.
“They nice?”
“Yeah,” he replies noncommittally. Luckily, between his power screwdriver and now Han’s hammering, it’s too loud to really talk.
----------
Jyn has another cancellation a couple days later, but she really doesn’t mean to go over next door. If she notices that the front door of the flower shop is open as she passes by on the way to the coffee house, then it doesn’t stop her. That is – until she gets to the register, and decides to order two iced lattes to go.
Coffees in hand, she heads back. The door is still propped open with a wedge of wood, so she peeks inside to see that the walls are a mess of drying putty where the built-in shelves used to be screwed in.
“Cassian?” she calls as she steps inside.
But instead of Cassian, a boy somewhere in his late tweens with a shock of pale blonde hair and thick-rimmed glasses pops out from behind the counter.
“Who are you?” he says, half-scowling.
“I’m Jyn,” she replies, taken aback. “Who are you?”
He squares his shoulders, clearly trying to get some height on her – which really isn’t hard, considering she’s five two and an eighth. It instantly, irrationally makes her dislike him.
“What are you doing here?” he asks instead of answering her.
“I brought Cassian a coffee.” She kind of regrets coming now that there’s a child questioning her.
“Cassian doesn’t like iced coffee,” the boy says down his nose.
“Well, it’s hot outside,” she retorts. “Nobody drinks hot coffee on a hot day.”
“Cassian does.”
Things are really shaping up to spiral downward when the man in question walks in the back door.
“Oh, Jyn,” he says, to her relief. “I see you’ve met Kay Two.”
“Kay Two?” Jyn echoes, unsure if she misheard.
The boy throws his head back so that he can look down his nose at her. It almost looks like the farce of snobbery, except he’s fully serious. “Keaton Sebastian Osbourne the Second.”
“Kay for short, like his dad,” Cassian says.
“Hence Kay Two. Got it.” Jyn summons a smile. “I, um, I brought you a coffee, but I’m told you don’t prefer iced.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Cassian says with a quick glance at Kay. He takes the coffee when she offers it, but she notices that he doesn’t take a sip. “That was very thoughtful, thanks.”
“But you always say–” Kay starts to exclaim.
“Kay, why don’t you finish up your homework,” Cassian suggests.
“Can I borrow your phone in case I need a calculator?”
“Nice try. There’s a desk in the office you can use. You have a calculator in your backpack.”
Jyn half expects the kid to grumble, but Kay doesn’t seem put off by the prospect of homework. He slings his backpack over his shoulder and trudges off toward the office in the back of the store.
“Is he, um–” Jyn stops just short of asking the question. Cassian looks too young to have a son that age, but another explanation isn’t coming to mind even if it does rearrange her preconception of the florist next door.
“He’s my little brother.”
“Oh gotcha, I definitely see the resemblance,” she nods, over-the-top thoughtfully.
“I mean he’s my little brother, from Big Brothers Big Sisters,” he says, finally taking a sip of the iced coffee with absolutely no expression change, which probably means he hates it. “I’m not actually in the program anymore, but his parents sometimes ask me to watch him.”
Kay’s voice is slightly muffled through the office door but distinctly peevish all the same, “I’m old enough to not need a babysitter!”
Cassian doesn’t miss a beat. “His parents sometimes ask me to hang out with him, since he’s old enough to watch himself.”
“You better watch yourself.” Kay probably didn’t mean for them to overhear that mutter.
“Charming,” Jyn says with an arched brow.
“He means well,” Cassian sighs.
Jyn laughs and gestures vaguely around her. “You’re making a lot of progress with the place.”
“I hope to open by the end of the month.” He casually sets down the coffee under the pretext of leaning against the tall front desk, but Jyn isn’t fooled. He just wants to get rid of it. “Summer is a big season for weddings and I feel like I’m behind already.”
“Speaking of weddings,” she says, “I actually need to talk to you about one.”
“Oh?” Something in his posture shutters just the faintest bit. “Are you engaged?”
“No,” she blurts out. “My coworker Shara is. She’s getting married at the beginning of July and she still doesn’t have a florist. I know it’s short notice, but she wanted me to check if you would do it.”
“Of course,” he replies immediately, cracking a grin that might be relieved. “That would be great, actually.”
“Great,” Jyn says. She’s never ordered flowers before, much less for a wedding, so she has no idea where to go from here. Does she ask for a price list, or…?
“I’ll stop by sometime to consult with her,” Cassian says, perhaps sensing that she’s at a loss. “Thanks for the suggestion.”
Just then Jyn’s phone pings and she glances at the message. “Leia said there’s a walk-in consult. I should get going. I’ll see you around…?”
“Before you go,” Cassian says, ducking behind the counter to rustle inside for a moment. He reemerges with a small flower arrangement in hand. “I meant to bring this by later today, as a token of my gratitude for helping stain those risers.”
Jyn accepts it. The flowers are tucked into a small white vase with a ribbon around the neck and a tiny notecard attached. “They’re beautiful. I’ll keep them at my work station.”
Her phone pings again, twice in a row.
“Have a good day,” Cassian says, picking up the now-sweating to-go cup. “Thanks for the coffee.”
Jyn realizes she hasn’t had a single sip of her own, and the ice sloshes inside it as she waves a dismissive hand on her way out. “No problem. See you around.”
She spends the short walk back to the tattoo shop kicking herself for the lame goodbye.
It’s not until after Jyn finishes the consult that she remembers to look at the note attached to the vase. She expects it to be something like a business card, but instead it’s a few lines of text written in a tidy hand.
campanula, plumeria, blue periwinkle
A bit perplexed, she shrugs and brings the flowers close to her nose. They are softly fragrant, and though each of the three varieties look completely different, she can’t distinguish a unique smell between them.
Returning the vase to a prominent spot at her station, Jyn pulls out a sketchpad to get back to work.