Hello all, welcome to my newest AU! I have always loved the "unexpected visitor in a shop" types of AU's, so I finally decided to write one myself. The first chapter is a lot of characterization and setting the scene, but then it goes wild after that. I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 1: Tuesday, End of shift
Morgan had exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes left in her shift.
Morgan's coworkers were scurrying about, gathering their things, eager to clock out and start their weekend.
"Have a good night!" Cassie was gone before Morgan could even reply, closing her mouth and swallowing the pleasantries as the blonde ponytail swished out the door. Jesse had at least stopped by, giving her a small hug before heading out.
"Don't work too hard, now."
"Pfft, you don't have to worry about that."
"Listen, we all know that you are the hardest worker in the bunch. You don't have to be so humble about it." Jesse's voice was dripping in sarcasm.
"I'm so very sorry, but I just can't help it. I just feel so badly that I outshine everyone, so I have to dim myself down a bit. I can't show everyone up all of the time. It'll make them jealous."
The two stared at each other for a moment before they both burst out laughing.
"Don't worry, no one is jealous of you right now," said Jesse. "We get to go home and you don't."
"Don't rub it in, asshole, or you'll come in tomorrow morning and find that all of your tools have mysteriously vanished."
"You do that and you're dead."
"You can't kill me if I hide your shit and you don't have anything to kill me with."
The two laughed again. Jesse, blonde, grey-eyed, his face only betraying his forty years of age when he smiled, shook his head at the younger girl.
"Hey, I have to stop and grab a few groceries, so I'll be close. Call me if it gets too crazy."
Morgan raised an eyebrow. "Like you would actually show up if I called you."
Jesse grinned sheepishly. "Look, it's the thought that counts, right?"
"If you say so. Have fun maneuvering your cart around all of the old people. I'll see you Monday."
Jesse grabbed his coat and gave Morgan a small wave before ducking out. The door clanged shut again, the shop finally falling into blessed silence.
Morgan was the youngest worker in the flower shop, which meant that she was at the bottom of the totem pole and ended up with the shifts that nobody else wanted. She was officially the night girl, the one who showed up in the afternoon after several cups of coffee and held down the fort until closing (and usually making another pot of coffee for herself once everyone left). The shop had been slow all day, the hours ticking by at a snail's pace due to the lack of work and things to do. Cassie had taken to dusting the menagerie of statues in the front room, and Jesse would wait until the head designer was occupied to sneak upstairs and make a bunch of calls on his cell phone. Morgan, bored almost to tears, had spent the day sneaking glances at her Kindle.
However, Morgan did love the silence. Her coworkers all worked in the back room of the shop together, eight different voices talking with and over one another. The four drivers flittered in and out every few hours, grabbing arrangements and maneuvering them around the workers and above their heads. The phone usually rang frequently, sometimes off the hook, the piercing rattle breaking through the cacophony. The small room filled with sound fast, and Morgan, naturally an introvert, often felt overwhelmed. The two hours before the shop closed were her time, where she didn't have to pretend she wasn't at the frontlines of the latest drama of her coworkers.
Morgan worked on her usual nighttime duties. She inputted and filed all of the invoices. She ran the vacuum through the area of the shop that serviced the customers. She doubled checked the potted plants to make sure they didn't need watered. She had now started her final tasks, which included sweeping the floors and making sure everything was in its proper place. Morgan grabbed the broom, surveying the shop.
A large table sat in the center of the room, the main worktable for four of the employees. The shop had been open for forty years, the table seeming to have been there from the beginning, chunks of paint missing from all sides, stained with god knows what, the wood broken off on the corners. Another table, just as old and beat up, was attached to the wall at the far side of the room, a work bench for the shop's two lead designers. The lead designer's table extended to a metal door, one that led into the back cooler where the majority of the flowers were kept. Two more tables lined the back wall, where the newer designers worked. A shelving unit, originally white and coated with red paint, now peeling, soared up to the ceiling in the corner, storing everything from ribbon to wires to different styles of scissors. It might have been organized at one point in time, but Morgan found out that attempting to keep anything in the place organized for more than a day was a lost cause.
Across the room sat a bench, a wood panel connecting the two legs showing that it used to be a desk, used for working with very wet or messy things. The flower buckets sat underneath it, stored and out of the way. A double-sided sink hung off the wall about two steps away, a hose attached that reached almost ten feet long. The secretary's desk, the one Natalie tended to use, sat near the sink, facing the back wall, the doorway to the main part of the shop separating her from the newer designers. The workroom was small, too small for amount of tables and people that occupied it. It was a close place where you were always dodging someone, working around someone, trying not to bump someone. Morgan was happy when she was put on phone duty, because the secretary's desk was the farthest away from everyone else.
Due to the mind numbing dullness of the day, Morgan had tended to her normal nightly duties at a much earlier hour. She was barely fifteen minutes into her alone time and the floor was still clean from the last time she swept about an hour ago. Morgan groaned.
Great, she thought. I have almost nothing left to do. These last few hours are going to be even slower than the past six.
Sometimes, particularly on Fridays and Saturdays, Morgan's end shift would be busy, full of people, mostly men, walking in to grab flowers for a romantic evening. She would be flying around, bursting in and out of the cooler, pulling together multiple arrangements at the same time, attempting to do the jobs of three people by herself (although, Morgan would never call Jesse in. That would be admitting defeat.) However, today was Tuesday, and usually, during the week, most people went home after work to have dinner and spend time with their families.
Except for me, of course, Morgan would often think to herself. Someone has to work the night shift. Who cares about my plans, right? I mean, it's not like I have any family or friends to spend time with, but it's the principal of the thing.
This Tuesday was no exception; the doorbell was silent.
Morgan plopped herself in the wooden chair that sat in front of the main store computer, grabbing her purse from underneath the desk. She unzipped it, reached inside, and pulled out her Kindle. She got yelled at for reading today, but now she'd get away with it. The door had a bell, and the phone's ring was loud enough to wake the dead. If anyone needed her, she'd know.
Morgan tapped the screen, returning to the last place she left off. She had read the Return of the King more times than she could count, but she never grew tired of it. She had owned the paperback version since childhood, but eventually, the spine broke and all of the pages had fallen out. Morgan ended up throwing them in the fire at camp, sending her favorite book off in a glorious, Viking-esque funeral display. It was the first thing she bought when she got her Kindle for Christmas. Morgan settled in, leaning back in the chair, her feet on the cushion and her knees leaning against the table. She settled down with the device, and, after finding the spot she left off at, began to read.
Morgan had one hour and thirty-seven minutes left in her shift when the phone rang. She had been so engrossed in the story that she nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound. She rested it on the table and picked up the phone. She spent the next few minutes attempting to help the nearly-deaf elderly woman on the phone try to navigate the store's website, only for her to say she'll call back tomorrow and hang up without saying goodbye. Morgan barely had the phone out of her hands before it rang again, a different customer wondering if they still had the angel statue she was looking at earlier in the day.
Morgan put the woman on hold, walking into the front room. The actual shop, the shop the customers saw, was split into two rooms. The first room is what they saw when they stepped through the front door. It was brightly lit and colorful, decorated in shades of pink, yellow, and green for spring. After a sea of red for Christmas and Valentine's Day, the employees, sick to death of crimson, had overhauled the place and turned it blindingly pastel. Morgan cared for pastels even less than red, but again, as the "shop baby" as she was called, she had little say in the matter. The room held a few statues, some cute knickknacks and little trinkets, and a massive front cooler, where the arrangements were stored once completed. Morgan poked around, trying to figure out where her coworkers moved everything when they redecorated. She turned to the left, walking around the corner to the side room.
The side room connected to both the front and the workrooms through a doorway cut out from the wall. The side room was full of natural light, one wall and part of the other consisting entirely of windows. This room held all of the silk flower arrangements and examples of arrangements that could be done for weddings and funerals. There was a large wooden desk with three matching chairs and a computer that probably as old as Morgan and liked to freeze when you were attempting to process an order. It especially liked to freeze for the most impatient customers. Morgan looked around for a moment, finding the angels on the shelf that used to hold Valentine's day- themed stuffed bears, but couldn't find the one the lady wanted.
Shit. We must have sold it.
She stepped up through doorway, entering the workroom again, and picked the phone, taking the woman off of hold. Morgan, occupied, didn't notice that the sun was starting to go down, bathing the shop in orange light.
When she left the room in the first place, hunting down the statue, she also didn't notice the face of the young man, dressed in an emerald green uniform, peering through the workroom window.
Morgan didn't know it at the moment, but her world was about to get thrown upside down.