WOOO IT'S KIBAINO WEEK!
anyways. this is the first part of a kibaino florist/tattoo artist au i've been working on for the last week; it started because of a post on tumblr, and originally, i wasn't gonna write it, but then it wouldn't get out my head, and then i started writing it in my head, and now here we are. i'm at 7.1k with the full version as i'm writing, and i'm predicting it'll end up being over 10k by the end, hopefully 15k or more (that's my goal, though i don't know if i'll hit that). that's why i've decided to split it up into chapters; i personally prefer big fics to be split into chapters, because it seems less intimidating somehow.
i'll be posting this over the course of kibaino week, for the days it applies to—today (day one, in the beginning), tuesday (day three, in another world, aka au aka what this was originally started for), maybe thursday (day five, battle; depends on whether or not i get far enough for a scene that complies to the prompt), and saturday, free day). if it's not done by saturday i'll just post as i get it done, probably. c: i'm hoping to have it done by or before saturday, though i make no promises. definitely no promises.
ps - if you're wondering why karin's listed as a character, there's A LOT of her (or there will be anyways) in this.
i don't know anything about running a flower shop/tattoo parlor so i apologize for any inaccuracies! if there's anything wrong that needs to be fixed, PLEASE tell me in reviews or private messaging or whatever. i want to be accurate.
still don't own naruto!
nor do i own anything else mentioned in this, except some of the jewelry and clothes. most of the outfits were found via google images, if you're wondering.)
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Ino props her feet, swathed in slightly oversize boots in a warm brown, up on the counter of her florist's shop, jingling the bronze and gold bangle set around her thin left wrist as she balances a thick paperback on her thighs and takes a sip of her pumpkin spice latte, taking care not to spill any on her cheery orange sweater or dark skinny jeans or cream infinity scarf, one of her favourite outfits for this season. She loves fall—the colours of it, the chance to unpack her huge collection of oversize, comfortable sweaters, the pumpkin-flavoured everything—but business is always slow during autumn, which is the only downside of the season, in her opinion. Otherwise, she's delighted with the fall.
Her blond hair, loose and long, falls on top of her book, and she sets down her coffee to pull it up into a sloppy bun on the top of her head; it won't stay up long, she knows, but it will keep her locks out of her way long enough for her to finish this break. Then she has to get to work—a new shipment came in today, all sorts of flowers in pretty autumn colours, and she needs to make up at least four more new combinations to put on the shelves, since she's already done three of the needed seven today. There'll be a rush for decorative fall flowers soon enough; it always comes about a week and half to two weeks after the official beginning of the season (September 23rd, also known as her birthday) and it's the last day of September now, a week past the start of fall, meaning she doesn't have long to get the shelves stocked for the rush. She's got twenty-four arrangements done now, and she always aims to have at least forty-five, so she needs twenty-one done in the next three days.
But for now, she's on her lunch break, which means she can kick back with coffee and a book and maybe text Sakura or Karin, see what they're doing, maybe pester them into coming into the shop to inspect her new flower arrangements. It's a ritual, now; ever since she opened the shop five years ago, every time she starts on a season's arrangement collections, she calls in either Sakura or Karin or both of them to look them over, tell her what they think. They're honest about it, but nice, too, and that is always a good thing to have when working on new pieces. Usually, their responses are positive, but every once in a while she makes a dud, and if she does they'll tell her to her face; she likes that, because she prides herself on only having the best combinations on the shelves of her store.
Speaking of having only the best, she does need to get to work; she's been on break for forty-three minutes, which is longer than she usually takes, especially on days preceding a rush. She sets her latte cup, now half empty, down next to her slouchy taupe leather purse (which is described by various peoples as being slightly too large to be considered a purse; she's heard a lot of different things about it, but her favourite had probably been when Karin's boyfriend Suigetsu had seen it and promptly called it a "monster disguised as a purse.") on one of the numerous shelves in the back of her counter, stands up and stretches her legs out. Once she actually has blood flowing properly (or what she considers to be a proper blood flow, at least; Sakura, with her medical school degree, would probably look at her and cluck her tongue and call her crazy, tell her the blood flow was perfectly fine before) she turns and walks into her storeroom to collect what she'll need for her work today—she's thinking oranges and reds, with a hint of gold buried in between.
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Kiba finishes hanging up his shiny, brand-new sign, then climbs back down the ladder, perched uneasily against the front side of his new store. He leans his head back and looks up at the sign—Show Me Your Ink, it reads, in loud, bold font and colours. He'd gotten Naruto's cousin, a graphic designer, to do it—Karin, that was her name, who'd been outfitted in dark skinny jeans and white Keds, with an oversize cream coloured sweater and a red scarf darker than her own spiky crimson hair, and large, dark red frames perched on the bridge of her nose; he remembers thinking she looked a bit hipster-y for his taste, but she'd turned out to be a cool girl, and she did amazing work, worth every cent of the two hundred dollars he'd paid her. Plus, he'd gotten a new friend in her—she'd told him up front she had a boyfriend ("an extremely protective one," was how she'd put it) and he'd gotten the feeling she got hit on a lot, and probably by not so great guys, and it made him upset, to think that someone as cool as her had to use the fact she had a boyfriend to ward off guys. He hated guys who did that sort of thing, got into girls' personal space; he personally thought that one should court a girl, not just hit on them and hoped that they felt too uncomfortable to tell them to, for lack of a better phrase, fuck off.
He shakes his head and sighs—nothing he can do about it, not now, at least, no matter what he wishes he could. Right now he needs to focus on the shop, anyways; he officially opens for business in three days, and the shop needs to be completely finished by the night before. The skeleton of the inside of the shop is done, his tools and display cases, but he still needs to hang his examples, put out some of his portfolio, and generally decorate. He's not planning to paint the walls, at least; he thinks it will look better to have his work put up against blank white, instead of some flashy colour, making his work stand out more. He'll see if he can get Karin over to the shop sometime to tell him how it all looks; she does design for a living, after all, and she has a good eye, will probably be able to help him make the shop look good.
Until he can get her over to help out, though, he has to rely on his own eye; he isn't bad, of course (he's a tattoo artist, after all; this is his living) but it'd just be nice to have another set of eyes. Maybe he'll text Naruto or Sasuke, see if they can come over and help him sometime soon. He'll need help hanging some of the displays, of course; they're heavy and unwieldy, barely able to fit in the back of his Impala. He can lift them by himself, sure, but he definitely can't hold them up with one hand long enough to nail them in. Plus there's organizing, and he's terrible at that. Sasuke is crazy organized, though, thanks to his medical student of a girlfriend; she keeps things organized, and Sasuke picked it up from her. He'll be able to get everything put away and labelled neatly, no problem.
For now, though, he's on his own, and he will be for a couple more hours—Sasuke's at work, Naruto's spending time with Hinata, and when he'd texted Karin earlier, she'd never responded, probably meaning she was working, too. That just leaves him until everyone else stops being busy, so he supposes he'd best get to work. He might go get a latte first, though—there's a Starbucks across the street and it's fall, which means that they'll have pumpkin flavoured drinks, one of his favourite things ever. He might check out that flower shop next door to him, In Bloom; Karin had told him that a friend of hers ran it, and that she made beautiful arrangements, and also that she thinks meeting would be good for the two of them. After he has his latte, he thinks he'll go talk to her about getting custom made floral decorations for his shop.
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Ino can hear hammering coming from somewhere, but the shop to her right, a cute little boutique where she got most of her sweaters and jewelry, was closed today, meaning it couldn't be coming from there. The shop to the left has been empty for almost two years, now. When she'd first gotten this space and began In Bloom, it had been a bakery run by Hinata, who was now a dear friend of hers and made absolutely delicious brownies. They'd been her excuse for taking several breaks in a day; she used to pause her work and head over there whenever she got a craving, stopping at Starbucks to grab two lattes and bringing one over to Hinata. That was ages ago, though; two years or so ago the bakery got too popular to stay in such a small space, and so Hinata had ended up moving to the other side of town, to what was admittedly a bigger store, but which she didn't like as much as the old one. Ino still went over there whenever she had the chance, despite it being almost forty minutes out of any of her normal paths—but, well, Hinata is a complete sweetheart, and those brownies are good. So, worth it, in her opinion.
Brownies from Hinata's did sound good, now she thought about it; maybe she'd text Hinata, see if she could talk her friend into bringing some over once she got back from her thrice weekly lunch date with her longtime boyfriend, Naruto. Right now, though, she had a job to do—two down, two to go, and then she needed to rearrange the front of the store; her summer deal posters were still up, and she needed to change those out for the autumn set, and then work out some new placements on her shelves. Also, make new coupons to slip in bags for people. Must remember to do that. Therefore, for now, brownies were going to have to wait; they could be her nice, tasty reward for getting all of her work for the day done.
Before any work could get done, though, she needed to figure out where that hammering was coming from, and ask whoever it was to try and keep the noise from whatever work they were doing down, pretty please and thank you very much. She figures that the once-empty store was probably the best bet—maybe someone was moving in? If so she hoped it was another bakery; they'd never be as good as Hinata's work, probably, but it'd be nice to have another bakery nearby—so she marches herself into the front room, retrieves her precious bag (she never left it alone when she went out of the store, not even to walk next door; she kept half of her life stored in this thing, including her notebook for arrangement ideas, and besides, it took her nearly four months to track down this purse, and she was so not going through that again) and walks out of In Bloom and onto the nice, open sidewalk in front of it.
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Kiba reaches over with his free hand and turns on his stereo system—which was, of course, the first thing he set up; how can he be expected to do work without the classics playing?—and choosing shuffle as he pumps the volume up high and starts to bob his head to the tune of "You Shook Me All Night Long" as it blares throughout the store, almost but not quite drowning out the sound of hammering. It's loud, but that's how you're supposed to listen to AC/DC; everyone knows that. It's loud enough that he doesn't hear the door open, the bell overhead ringing out and going unheard. The only reason he figured out that someone came in at all is that he's singing along under his breath to his music when it disappears in the flash of a couple of seconds. He looks up at that—and, standing next to his radio is possibly the most beautiful girl he's ever seen.
She's got ridiculously long blonde hair—it's down to her hips; he doesn't think he's ever seen anyone with hair past their mid-back, so this is weird to look at (she's still crazy gorgeous, though, despite that fact)—and blue blue eyes that remind him of the sky during spring, pale but still bright. Her outfit—orange sweater, with a set of gold and bronze bangles going slightly over the sleeves, dark jeans that mold to her legs like they've been painted on (no he's not kidding it really does look like that), brown knee-high boots, and cream circle scarf—is dressy, but he's always liked girls who dress like supermodels, for some reason; he's never been able to explain it, but there's something about it that just attracts him.
And damn is he attracted to the girl standing in his empty, not even open shop and glaring at him.
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Ino was right—someone's moving into the shop to the left of In Bloom, and, sadly, it's not a bakery owner. She's not really sure what this store is meant to be, honestly; if she had to guess, though it's some sort of an art studio, based on the huge displays leaning against the wall, decorated with small designs—and, wait a second, those are tattoo designs, definitely tattoo designs. So a tattoo parlor, then? Interesting, she supposes (she's never even been in one, though the thought of getting a tattoo has crossed her mind once or twice), but she bets it'll be terrible to be next door; he's not even open for business and yet she can already hear him through the wall.
He's probably her age, maybe a bit older; his hair is shaggy and brown with a hint of red in it (if she didn't have blond hair, she'd probably want hair like that) and his eyes are dark dark brown, almost black, actually. His jeans are loose but not too loose—just the right amount of looseness, actually; she likes that—and he's got a simple red and brown plaid shirt on, but there's a sweater slung over the counter over there, which he probably took off because it's hot in here, wow. And that's not because of him. Mostly. (Okay, fine, partially because of him because wow.)
That is not the point, though; the point is that he is loud and she came over here to kindly and politely inform him that he needs to lower his volume, and that's what she needs to do, so she files away the image of him staring down at her, dumbstruck (for what, she doesn't know why; maybe because she just came in and turned off his music?) for later daydreaming about, and gets to the point so that she can go back to work.
"Mhm. So, 'kay, here's the deal: your hammering is loud, and so is your music—good taste, though, I approve wholeheartedly of your musical choices. However, that is not my reason for coming over. I'm in the shop to your right, In Bloom, and I can hear you hammering from the storeroom, even with my music playing, and I play my music pretty loud. So, if you could just try not to smash the hammer against the nail, that would be lovely. Thank you, and have an absolutely lovely day." She reaches for his volume knob and puts the volume level where it was (he's missed the rest of his song; now it's on a song by blink-182), turns on the two-inch heel of her boot and walks out of the door, her head held high, and then turns and sticks her head back in. "By the way, very nice artwork over there." She points at his sample work, leaning against the far wall, and then pulls her head back outside and walks back to her store.
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"What the hell just happened?" His voice echoes around the empty, open space, bouncing and reverberating.
That was probably the weirdest thing that's happened to him in a long time, and he does some fairly weird stuff with his friends on the occasions when they're all free. That, though... that was absolutely just plain weird.
He's talked to girls before, but he's never met any girl—no, any person at all—who would walk right into his own space and flat out demand something. That was brazen and ridiculous, and hey wait a second. If she's the owner of the shop next to him, the flower shop Karin had told him about, then she's one of Karin's best friends. He picks up his phone and opens a new text conversation, types out, "kay, so that girl you told me about who owns the flower shop next door? she just walked in, turned down my music (IT WAS AC/DC. WHY DID SHE DO THAT.) and then told me off for hammering too loud. please translate this." and hits send. Hopefully, whenever she sees it, she'll be able to tell him what it is that just happened, because he has no clue.