Chapter Text
“You know what this place needs?”
“What?” Ryan murmurs distractedly, barely glancing up from the appointment book. Jen’s got her elbows perched on the counter, morning sunlight blazing through her dark hair and a mischievous gleam in her eyes.
“Flowers,” she chirps, tapping a black-painted nail on the counter. “That’s what.”
Ryan huffs, half in amusement and half in exasperation. “Flowers, huh?” he asks, leaning back in his chair. Having just opened, the parlor’s quiet for now, just the familiar rustle of pages as he checks through the log for his appointments and the clatter of inks as Eugene readies his workstation for the day breaking the silence. “And where did you get that idea?”
“I mean, a splash of color never hurt anybody,” Jen says cheerily, tilting her head towards him. “Besides, it’d be a nice gesture on your part. You know, neighborly.”
“Uh huh,” Ryan hums, unconvinced.
“You know I’m right,” she counters, chin perched on the curl of her fist. “It’s been what, a week? Have you even introduced yourself yet?” At Ryan’s blank look, she tsks like a mother scolding a particularly stubborn child. “Really, Ryan? Mama Bergara would be ashamed.”
“That’s a little much – “ Ryan starts, though he quickly changes track when Jen narrows her eyes in a pointed glare. “Alright, alright, fuck. I’ll do it today, after work. Happy?”
Jen grins. “Very.”
And she looks it, though in a decidedly impish way. Ryan huffs.
“I know what you’re doing, you know,” he says, unimpressed.
“I would hope so, Boss,” Jen hums. “I’m not exactly being subtle here.”
Ryan opens his mouth to reply, but he’s interrupted by the ring of the bell above the door. Andrew slips inside with a drink carrier laden down with four steaming cups in one hand and a box of donuts in the other, and Ryan practically moans at the sight.
“Have I ever told you that you’re my favorite employee?” he asks, taking his coffee and a maple donut with a grateful sigh.
“Is that all it takes, Bergara?” Eugene asks, rising from his chair to snag a raspberry-filled donut for himself. “And you call me easy.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Jen interrupts, reaching for a chocolate-glazed monstrosity slathered with sprinkles. “No antagonizing the boss this early in the morning. Not until after I’ve had my breakfast, please and thank you. And thank you, Andrew. You’re the best.”
Andrew dips his head in acknowledgement. “You’re welcome, Jen,” he says, his lips twitching as Ryan and Eugene mumble their own thanks, abashed. “Ran into your new neighbor at the café,” he tells Ryan, moving to stow the box with the remaining donuts on the front counter.
“You saw Shane?” Jen asks, perking up. She heads to the window, munching on her breakfast as she goes. “Wonder if he’s on his way back.”
“If your face pressed against the glass is the first thing he sees, you’re gonna scare him off,” Eugene teases, laughing softly as Jen extends her middle finger in his direction.
“I said I’d go see him after work,” Ryan complains around a mouthful of sugary sweetness, joining Jen at the window and peering outside. The streets are still quiet and relatively bare this early in the morning, save for a pair of dogwalkers and a jogger pounding the pavement. Ryan wipes the crumbs on his fingers off on his jeans and shoots Jen a look. “Stop scheming.”
“I’m not scheming,” Jen protests. “I’m… fostering a sense of community by welcoming Shane to the neighborhood.”
“You pulled that straight out of your ass,” Ryan says, impressed despite himself. Jen’s only response is to stick her tongue out at him before her attention is captured by something – someone – outside. Ryan knows who it’ll be before he turns his head, and sure enough, there’s his neighbor, striding down the street with his phone cradled to his ear and a hot drink in hand. He’s tall, almost absurdly so, with a shock of messy brown hair and a smattering of stubble along his jaw.
“Why don’t you ask him out for drinks?” Eugene pipes up, tapping on the glass – since when had he joined them? – and inclining his head toward Shane.
“I already did.” They all turn their heads to stare at Andrew, sitting at his station and sipping from his coffee with a patient look on his face.
“What’d he say?” Jen asks excitedly, and Andrew huffs a soft laugh.
“Said it sounded like fun. I told him Ryan would fill him in on the details.”
“Of course you did,” Ryan sighs, rolling his eyes and turning back to the window –
Just in time to catch Shane staring bemusedly back at them.
“Oh shit, scatter!” Jen whispers, though she makes no move to do so. None of them do. Granted, there’s not much they can do to recover when they’ve all been caught with their faces glued to the glass.
To his credit, Shane doesn’t seem perturbed by their presence. He raises a hand and waves, his face open and friendly, and Ryan’s hand is inching into the air before he can stop himself. He catches Jen’s smirk and forces his hand back to his side, “What?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing.” She claps him on the shoulder and saunters away from the window, her voice trailing teasingly behind her: “He’s pretty cute, huh?”
Shane flips the sign on his door to Open and slips inside, but not before he shoots one last smile at Ryan, eyes crinkling behind his clear-framed glasses. He is kind of cute, Ryan finds himself thinking, before Jen’s words register in his brain and he scoffs, turning away from the window with an exasperated, "Jen, don’t start."
"I’m just saying,” she presses, even as she slips into her chair and starts fiddling with her inks. “It’s not every day an opportunity like this lands in your lap. Think the universe might be giving you a little nudge here, Bergara.”
Eugene snorts. “The universe has got nothing to do with it,” he says. “You’re just trying to unload Ryan on the newbie so he’ll stop spending his weekends cockblocking you, which, to be clear, I totally respect.”
“I’m not cockblocking anybody,” Ryan scoffs, though he can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt at the somewhat blatant lie. Since his last break up he kind of has been monopolizing his friends’ time, not that Jen or Andrew or any of the others have called him out on it. Well, until now, obviously.
“When was the last time you went on a date?” Eugene asks, one slim brow raised. “Or got laid? Or hell, got a person’s number?”
Ryan opens his mouth, thinks for a moment, and then closes it. Eugene hums, like he thought as much.
“So I’m going through a dry spell,” Ryan mutters. “Big deal. Doesn’t mean I have to throw myself at the neighbor.”
“The cute neighbor,” Jen pipes up, grinning sunnily when Ryan shoots her a look.
He doesn’t bother protesting, though. There’s not much use in it, not with all three of his employees banding together and rallying against him. Ryan might as well resign himself to a night of awkward matchmaking now, if he knows them half as well as he thinks he does.
Oh well. It’s a small price to pay to get them off his back, and who knows – maybe he and Shane will get along great and he’ll have made a new friend out of the venture. It’s worth a fucking shot.
*
It’s a little after six when Ryan steps into the flower shop, the bell atop the door signaling his arrival with a merry chime. Andrew and Eugene have already left, but Jen idles outside until the door swings shut behind him, like she can’t trust him to keep his word unless she’s there to make sure he does. Ryan sticks his tongue out at her through the window and she blows him a kiss back, mouthing good luck! before she finally leaves.
“This is your chance to get off on the right foot," she'd said earlier, clasping him on the shoulder and pushing him toward the shop with a grin. "So don't blow it! Be neighborly!"
“Be neighborly, my ass,” Ryan grumbles, peering curiously around the empty shop. It’s cheery inside, the walls painted a neutral yellow and covered in shelving, vases, pots, and planters of all sizes. The rest of the shop is filled with a variety of stands, racks, and tables loaded down with flowers, plants, and the tools to care for them, with glass door refrigerators housed in the back and cards and gift packaging in the front.
There’s a sweet, earthy smell in the air, strong but not cloying, the faint hum of the air con the only sound in the shop aside from Ryan’s own soft breaths. It’s strangely soothing, being surrounded by plants and flowers of various hues and shapes and sizes, some breeds he recognizes but others completely alien to him. He’s taking a step toward a display of colorful gladiolus, wondering faintly if they’d look good in the shop and if he could even keep them alive long enough to justify buying them when there’s a thud and a curious mew from behind him.
Startled, Ryan twists around and jerks backward at the sight of two large, dark eyes nestled in a furry orange face, peering curiously up at him from among a table of carnations.
A cat, he realizes, one hand pressed to his chest, feeling the thud of his heart pounding against his palm. Just a cat.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, taking a cautious step towards it. He refrains from reaching out, not relishing the idea of getting fur all over his hands and sneezing for the rest of the night, but he does gentle his voice and bend down to offer an awkward, “Hey there, little guy,” to the curious feline.
"I see you’ve met Obi."
Ryan jumps, brows scrunching as a warm burst of laughter spills from the doorway behind the front counter – a doorway through which his neighbor ducks, clad in a dirty apron and thick gardening gloves and wearing an impish grin on his long, scruffy face. "Dude."
"Sorry, sorry," Shane chuckles, though he sounds anything but. He regards Ryan with a little tilt of his head, and Ryan tries not to fidget self-consciously in his t-shirt and ripped jeans. “You must be Ryan.”
“Uh, yeah.” Ryan holds out a hand, echoes of Jen’s voice chirping Be neighborly! in his ear. “How’d you guess?”
Shane grins, reaching out to take his hand and pump it twice. “I've met Jen and Eugene already. That makes you the only lookie loo I haven't been introduced to yet."
Ryan coughs, recalling the amused expression on Shane's face when he'd caught the three of them with their noses pressed to the window. He rubs idly at a spot of dirt on his hand left behind by Shane’s gardening glove and mutters, "Sorry about that, man, we were just - "
"Scoping out the new neighbor," Shane interjects, a teasing lilt to his voice. "I figured. Hope I didn't disappoint."
"No, no, of course not," Ryan fumbles, annoyed by the warmth in his cheeks and glad that his skin tone doesn't show it too easily. "I wanted to come by earlier, I just got caught up with work.” It's a half-truth mixed with a lame excuse, but he's not about to tell Shane that half the reason he'd put off introducing himself was because his employees would use it as ammo in their matchmaking schemes.
Shane waves his apology off with an easy smile. "It's alright, man, really. I kept meaning to introduce myself too, but y’know." He waves a gloved hand, encompassing the space of the shop. "Getting this baby off the ground kept me pretty preoccupied. This might actually be the first time since opening day that I haven't panic-sweat through my clothes by closing time. Lucky you."
The quip startles a laugh out of Ryan. “Yeah, yeah, I get you.” He remembers the first few weeks – the first few months, really – after he’d opened the parlor, how much stress and anxiety had plagued him over the future of the place and how desperate he’d been to make it a success. “If you ever need help, or like… a drink? Or two?“ He waves a hand toward the wall separating Shane’s building from his. “All you gotta do is ask.”
“Andrew did mention something about drinks,” Shane muses, stroking his stubbled chin thoughtfully before making a face at the dirt caked on his gloves and working them off of his hands. The cat – Obi, apparently? – seems to take that as his cue to sidle up to Shane’s side and tilt his head for pets, which Shane delivers with a smile that slides right past affectionate into pure soppy contentment as Obi immediately begins to purr.
Ryan huffs a laugh at the display, a little endeared despite himself. “It’s no wonder you and Andrew hit it off,” he says lightly.
Shane quirks an eyebrow. “Not a cat person, I take it?”
“Don’t really have a choice in the matter,” Ryan offers with an apologetic shrug. “I’m allergic.”
Shane’s eyes widen, his expression momentarily so crestfallen that Ryan almost laughs again. “Oh, shit. I can take him upstairs if he’s bothering you – “
“Dude, it’s fine. I won’t break out into hives just from being in the same room. It’s the fur I’ve gotta watch out for. As long as I chill over here, I’m good.”
“If you’re sure… “ Shane murmurs, patting Obi once on the head before softly coaxing him off the table. “He doesn’t like to be cooped up in the apartment and the customers seem to get a kick out of him so I’ve kind of given him free reign.”
“I can see that,” Ryan teases, chuckling at the amused resignation on Shane’s face. “I’m the same way with my dogs. If they didn’t spend most of the time at my parent’s place, I’d be letting them run amok in the parlor.”
“I bet that’d be great for business,” Shane muses with a goofy grin. “Excitable pups plus needles in close proximity to delicate skin? Fun times, babey.”
“God no,” Ryan groans, slumping in abject horror against a table of brightly colored succulents at his back. “Most of my clients wouldn’t give a shit but the newbies are nervous enough.”
“Needles in close proximity to delicate skin,” Shane repeats, as if that explains it.
“It’s really not that bad. People tend to make it worse when they overthink the process.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Shane agrees, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. With Ryan stooped he seems even taller, an amalgamation of long limbs topped with floppy hair. “You’ve got some horror stories, I take it?”
Ryan gives an exaggerated shudder. “Oh yeah. There’s a reason I send most of our first-timers to Andrew. He’s chill enough to calm ‘em down, usually.”
“Hmm.” Shane strokes his chin in thought, eyes roaming around the interior of the shop. “You know, I might have something that can help with that.”
“Oh yeah?”
Shane hums an affirmative, plucking a pot from a nearby stand. It’s brimming with sprigs of spiky violet flowers, and a faint sweet scent emanates from the petals as Shane passes it along to Ryan.
“Lavender,” he explains, gesturing with a wide palm at the simple bouquet. “Good for soothing stress and anxiety. Might come in handy with those nervous clients of yours.”
“Thanks, man,” Ryan says, genuinely touched by the gesture. He already knows the perfect spot for it, too. He cradles the pot in one arm and reaches into his pocket for his wallet. “Here, let me – “
Shane holds up his hands. “Nah, it’s on the house. Neighbor to neighbor.”
Ryan grins. “Does that mean I owe you a tattoo?” he asks, only half-serious, and Shane barks a laugh.
“Hate to break it to ya, Ryan, but I’m what they call ‘a major fucking weenie’ when it comes to pain. Not a lot of great client potential here, I’m afraid.”
“Eh,” Ryan scoffs, giving Shane a casual shrug. “I’ve dealt with worse, believe me. Besides, I’ve been at this a while. Can’t say I can make it painless, but I bet you’d get a taste for it, if you gave me a try.” He realizes how that sounds a second after it leaves his mouth, and knows that Shane does, too, if the mischievous twinkle in his eyes is anything to go by.
“I might hold you to that one day,” Shane says, letting the comment slide for now, and Ryan breathes out a laugh, half-exasperated and half-relieved.
He leaves Shane to the task of closing up shop after they work out the particulars of grabbing drinks with Jen and the others, and by the time he’s climbing the stairs to his little apartment situated over the parlor, he’s smiling in a way that he’s glad Jen and Eugene can’t see. Shane’s an interesting guy, funny and acerbic in a way that Ryan knows he can mesh well with, and the thought of getting to know him more, kindling some kind of friendship, is an exciting one. He’s looking forward to those drinks, even if he has to deal with a certain pack of nosey employees with far too much time on their hands and a disturbingly vested interest in his love life.
All of whom give him silent, knowing looks the next morning as he places the lavender on the front counter, so that its vibrant violet petals are the first thing his clients see when they enter the parlor. Ryan merely smiles and flips them all the bird before getting to work.