I guess this is my resbang? I mean for all you know it could be someone else's and you can't prove that, but it's for sure not Atsushi Okubo's. There's a sniff of a plot here, but to be candid, this is for sure a more 'slice of life' or maybe 'entire cake of life' type fic. Actually I've googled slice of life and Wikipedia has made it seem very unappealing.

Thanks so, so much to my baeta spooks and my art buddy thebeesnhis and everyone who put up with my nonsense which was probably most of you and the mods and whoever it was that mentioned me in passing once when someone was looking for a coffee shop au because you made sure I couldn't back out you sly fox. also the effervescent mods, as always.

Anyway, to those that celebrate and those that don't (for I am a cranky catholic set in my ways) Happy Christmas.


Chapter One: Snickers

It was a nice day, objectively speaking. The sun was shining, there was actually sort of a breeze and the air was cool enough that Soul could have an outside display that isn't cacti like his window boxes.

Soul was dealing with a customer, the kind of harried looking businessman who'd forgotten an anniversary or some other significant event. He was bald, and his head gleamed in the light. He did not know his significant other's favourite flowers by name. "The red ones?" "Roses?" "No!" It was only after Soul had named every red flower he kept in his daily stock that he suggested poppies.

"Yes!"

"I don't stock poppies."

"What do you mean you don't stock poppies? What kind of florist are you?"

Soul was about to launch into a well-rehearsed spiel about how, although he loved poppies, neither he nor any other florist in the continental US, or even the world, could stock poppies, because they wilted nearly as soon as they were cut. They were best left to being wildflowers. Or being pressed really quickly, if one was into that.

Soul tried not to sigh and suggested some sunflowers instead. Everyone loved sunflowers. They were bright, yellow, and fun, and after they wilted you could hang them outside your window to use as a bird feeder.

"Sunflowers? Are you sure he'll like those?"

"Do you have any other suggestions?" Soul asked. "Or can you tell me his favourite colour?"

"He likes green," the business man broke out into a small smile. "He wore it on our wedding day."

"Okay, I'll put something together."

Soul pulled a card out of the jar beside the till and handed it to the man, along with the nice pen he kept chained to the desk. It was actually really easy to get the pen off the chain, but no one had ever wanted the pen enough to try. "Write something heartfelt."

Soul headed out the open back door into the tunnel. He'd offered to bring the stubborn man out there to have a look around, but the man had declined. Soul have a few pre-made bouquets on hand for customers, and he had a whole selection of potted plants for sale too, but none of those had been to the man's taste.

Soul loved his job, despite the fact that his face was a permanent scowl, and this was his favourite part; cut some sunflowers, some ferns and nice grasses, shuffle them around in a bundle until it looks good, think about it for a minute, add some daisies, carefully cut a few delphiniums and thistles, stick those in the mix and boom. That was a beautiful bouquet right there. A goddamn work of art. He put it in a plastic vase as a placeholder.

He returned to the counter with the bouquet and cut a few sheets of the cellophane before jamming them into the handpainted pot his nephew Joel made for him in art class last year, then carefully filling the hollow in the cellophane with water. He gently transferred the bouquet to the water, and folded the cellophane up over it before tying it with a blue ribbon and curling the ends with his favourite sharp, dangerous looking scissors.

Soul taped a small packet of liquid plant food and accompanying instructions to the plastic before working out the price. He had found school hard, with the exception of maths, which made you smart. Kind of.

The equation Soul used for pricing flowers looked like this.

2(WHOLESALE PRICE OF FLOWERS+WHOLESALE PRICE OF FLOWERS(0.15))+2(WHOLESALE PRICE OF RIBBON+WHOLESALE PRICE OF CELLOPHANE+WHOLESALE PRICE OF CARD+WHOLESALE PRICE OF PLANT FOOD)+0.25[2(WHOLESALE PRICE OF FLOWERS+WHOLESALE PRICE OF FLOWERS(0.15))+2(WHOLESALE PRICE OF RIBBON+WHOLESALE PRICE OF CELLOPHANE+WHOLESALE PRICE OF CARD+WHOLESALE PRICE OF PLANT FOOD)]+ TAX 6.85% = PRICE

He didn't add his standard delivery charge for customers within the Death Valley city limits, because the man might decide that he was in the mood for giving it to his husband himself. Soul also didn't really like to do deliveries. He probably should have hired someone to drive the van and deliver flowers - he was making enough to hire. He'd post an ad in the paper next week.

Would they be hanging around the shop then? Because, no offense to people, but Soul didn't really go in for that sort of thing if he could help it. People are great and all, but he'd just… rather not deal with them on a personal level. He liked to keep it nice and professional. But what was he supposed to do? Maybe he could get one of those people who'd be on their smartphone until he told them to run out on a delivery. How do you advertise for that kind of person?

Soul took the fifty dollar bill from the man, opened the register, handed the man his change, and slotted the card into place. The bald man appeared to be delighted with the bouquet. He held it up, looked at it, and twirled it around to capture it from all angles. He inhaled the scent deeply, smiling softly at some memory or another, before drifting out the door. He was gone, caught in the soft May breeze, before Soul could remembered to tell him to have a nice day or that he hoped that his husband would like the bouquet.

Soul hoped that wouldn't result in a bad review on Yelp, the lifeblood of local businesses. His rating was still suffering from the woman who gave him zero stars last year because she thought he looked "terrifying and highly unprofessional".

Soul needed a coffee. Soul nearly always wanted a coffee, but the memory of that bratty woman and her flashing gold teeth had pushed him over the line from 'want' to 'need'.

Soul had a too-expensive coffee machine in his apartment upstairs, but it was so covered in dust he wasn't sure it was safe to use without a thorough cleaning first. He wasn't in the mood for that today. He would probably never be in the mood for that as long as he could afford to drop seven dollars on a cup of coffee everyday.

He tucked his wallet into his apron – it had been his grandma's and made of some kind of faded floral canvas. It always gathered a few looks whenever he wore it, so he took his wallet back out of the pockets designed for gardening tools and untied the apron. He hung the little sign - the one that implied he'd be back soon and that he was probably in the coffee shop if you were having a floral emergency - on the door and locked it.

He took a moment to hope that no opportunistic little fucks would steal one of the potted plants from the outside display-seriously what was wrong with people- because he didn't feel too much like dragging the thing indoors, and as was customary, nearly brained himself on the hanging basket nest to the door. He should really have gotten rid of that thing because the only plant life that could survive the extended amount of time outside in Death City, Nevada without withering to a crispy mockery of what they once were was cacti. Like his window boxes, the cacti in the hanging basket both looked ridiculous and were difficult to repot when they grew too large.

Star Tattoo was right next to his florist's, and that was where Black Star worked, with that Harvar guy. Black Star was Soul's 'best bro'. Soul supposed that was as much of a friend as anything- someone who'd wormed their way so deep into your life that you couldn't get rid of them without losing an arm or something. Also Black Star would never be able to comprehend the very idea of someone not wanting to be his friend.

So, they played basketball whenever Soul judged it safe to close the shop on a Sunday, them and the guy who owned the comic shop. Soul didn't really like him too much, and he didn't know his name either. It was a really awkward 'two years have passed since I started hanging out with you regularly and it is definitely too late to ask' type of situation. But sometimes Killik, the guy who ran the record store over the comic shop, came too- not as often as the others would like- but he was pretty cool and had a hell of a three-pointer arm. Killik had a set of twins who were still just little kids. Soul saw the pair of them in Dragon Records a lot, and he found the fact that they liked to follow him around while he browsed the selection leisurely both endearing, and terrifying.

The tattoo shop was an explosion of colour, covered in freehand graffiti. It was probably considered a mural if it was your own building that you'd defaced, and Soul wasn't going to call Black Star out one where the design had bled over to his wall. It had Black Star's enormous tag across the whole front, and Soul thought it was pretty cool, if incredibly egotistical. Eighty percent of Black Star was ego. Soul admired that kind of boundless, almost entirely baseless, confidence so that idiot was the one who had designed his sleeves. The door was wedged open, caught on a familiar lump in the uneven flooring.

Through the gap in the door, Soul could see a flash of golden hair. He tried not to linger outside, because getting spotted by Star meant having some kind of bro pun yelled at him. Hanging out with Star was fun and all, but you needed to be both mentally and physically prepared. He liked some notice before attempting it. Unless you were Tsubaki, the baker who manned the counter in Get Baked down on the even side of the road. She had a long dark ponytail and infinite patience for Black Star's antics.

Well, Black Star had had a thing for her ever since he had first tasted her fresh churros, so he did act a little different around her. A little less 'fight me' and lot more 'I will fight anyone you tell me to'. That baker could totally hold her own though, seeing as she got her start selling the best pot brownies and other baked goods money could buy. Soul had bought from her before, back when he was still a music major and she still sold laced brownies and honestly those brownies hadn't even need any pot they were so damn delicious.

She'd been shrewd even then, selling both the brownies and, once you were stoned, over-priced baked goods for the munchies.

Soul couldn't blame Black Star for being in something close to love with her, he was probably a little bit in love with her himself. Soul doubted that anyone could encounter Tsu and not fall a little bit in love, especially after trying a slice of her toffee apple cake- I Put A Spell On You. She was gentler than soft summer breeze and sweeter than Halloween.

All the buildings on Caberallo Street used to be residential, a long time ago. Some of them still had apartments attached, like Soul's, but not many. For most of them, the shop either extended into the upper story, or the upper floor was leased to a second business, like Dragon Records and Oxford Commics.

Number Seven, the building after Star Tattoo, was empty. The only other vacant building on the street was the one across from the coffee place. Wes bought it up just after Soul started the florist, declaring it to be prime real estate. So far, it seemed more like a miss rather than a hit, but Wes claimed he was withholding it from the market until it increased in value. Sounded like bullshit to Soul, but it was Wes's money, and therefore none of his business.

Number Seven used to be a boutique, if Soul's best guess at the few remaining, peeling letters was right. It'd been vacant since before Soul had opened his shop, and by the looks of it, long before. Soul'd been in operation for just about six years now, since it was just him and the coffee shop and a whole lot of vacant lots, but street was crowded and cheery now, foot traffic at an all-time high, business was booming and the cost of rent, or buying a premises had risen since those early, barely scraping by days. The sign affixed to the grubby glass door of Number Seven, the one proclaiming it for lease, was gone; so either the tape had finally called it quits and it had fallen, or the place was rented.

After Number Seven was Deathbucks, which was the best coffee shop in the city, and Soul's destination. Deathbucks was cool. Instead of a large glass shopfront window there was a tight row of tall, narrow, wooden window frames that arched to a point at the top and the negative space between the points was filled with stained glass circles. The door was covered with chalkboard paint, and the staff wrote the daily specials on it and drew pictures that looked like they were done by a seven year old child.

Inside, there was a collection of comfy mismatched chairs and spotty wifi and high bar stools you could sit on to look out onto the street and people-watch the hipsters that frequented the shops of Caberallo Street. The plaster had been cracked off the walls, exposing the red brickwork underneath, and the décor consisted mostly of broken, spotted antique mirrors that had to be a health and safety hazard. Upstairs there was a little platform for Slam Poetry night and whatever else it was that happened in hipster coffee houses. At the bar, there was a selection of freshly made pastries and goodies, all from Tsubaki's bakery.

Soul tried to regulate his daily coffee fix to a time when he would encounter a minimum number of people. The shop was pretty empty at the minute, excluding the man that always wore a suit- he never left before closing time. He was typing loudly on his typewriter like the next Quentin Tarantino. Patti and Liz, the owners, affectionately called him 'Kiddo'. Patti was manning the counter today, along with the other three baristas that worked there. Liz rarely did front of house anymore, because she was too busy doing all the accounting and stock-taking and business running she used to do at three A.M.

Soul kind of missed seeing Liz around, although sometimes he did run into her in the record shop. He'd met her in a bar once too, but they'd mutually agreed that that much sharing and anything else that had allegedly happened had never happened and would never happen ever again, under pain of death. He didn't know how to ask for her number so they could just hang out without it seeming like he was asking for her number because Liz was intimidatingly attractive, like the femme fatale in a Bond movie.

Patti looked up when she saw him, and smiled. Soul was her favourite customer, apart from Mr. Remington over there.

Mostly because Soul's usual order was 'just fuck me up' and that meant that Patti got to make the kind of drinks always she wanted to make, the ones that nobody but Soul ever wanted to attempt drinking. She busied herself making something with enough caffeine to kill a horse. Soul didn't know the names of the other baristas, and that was entirely because Patti practically vaulted over them in order to make his coffee, but there was the one who wore the cute frilly maid apron; the one with the expensive Cath Kidston print apron; and the one who normally folded down one of Liz's wine mom aprons into a half apron. That girl didn't have her head screwed on right, but apparently she was a valuable team member who could make coffee in her sleep.

Patti's aprons were all some kind of giraffe motif. He didn't know if it was a running joke or if she collected them, but she had at least fifteen of them. A writer like 'Kiddo' over there might've described her as having a sunny, childlike exuberance.

She handed Soul his regular coffee and he gave her ten dollars. Patti fumbled with the change, and he put half of what she gave him into the large empty mason jar labelled tips. They had a system. A system that confused the other patrons of the coffee house, who were required to pay upfront, but a system none-the-less. The coffee tasted like a Snickers bar, plus more espresso shots than Soul wanted to think about. But it was good and boasted a tower of physics defying whipped cream.

"I like this one," he instagrammed the cup – you could see Patti's broad smile in the background of the filtered, square photo.

He checked his watch, and decided that he could run down to one of his favourite shops; At Knit's End and regret spending so much time with his Gram when he was younger but maybe they'd have some more alpaca in stock and he could wonder how the fuck a wool shop in Death City, Nevada was doing so well. He was a little old lady, he couldn't help it. Maybe he was possessed by his grandmother? Not the one who believed in corporal punishment and that God had sent Hurricane Katrina 'because of the gays' - she wasn't going anywhere and she was pushing for octogenarian status next year - but Gram, the one who'd bought his love with barley sugars and Werther's Originals, and had died when he was twenty-three.

He trekked all the way to the end of the street, sipping his scalding coffee. At Knit's End stocked embroidery and quilting supplies as well as yarn, but it was the high, well stocked shelves of soft, brightly coloured wool that drew Soul into this shop every damn time.

At Knit's End had a peeling, faded shopfront, with small paned windows and difficult to read lettering. After months of trial and error, Soul had established that it read Deihl's Apothecary. Soul knew that was old timey speak for pharmacist, but he didn't know why the only thing they appeared to have changed about the external appearance of the shop was the swing sign that announced them to be the home craft supply shop Soul knew and loved.

The angry pink haired capitalist was manning the register today. Good. Her strait-laced girlfriend would cough loudly and glare at him if he dared enter here with his cup of coffee. He was an adult with a healthy appreciation for yarn, he wasn't going to spill it. The pink haired woman didn't know anything about any kind of crafting, unless you counted witchcraft. He thought that it was all bullshit, but he'd still rather not get on her bad side and die or something. That'd be uncool.

She was reading one of the This Was The End books, and she didn't look up when Soul came in. Well, it was either that or she was reading something wearing the fourth instalment's dust jacket. Soul wasn't a big reader but when HBO had begun adapting Archimedes Reaper's series for television, he'd started listening to the audiobooks at his nephew's insistence. They were pretty intense.

At Knit's End didn't have any new alpaca in, but they did have that cool hand-dyed gradient wool that made bitchin' lace shawls. Soul didn't have any use for a rainbow coloured shawl, but something reasonable as that wasn't going to stop him picking up a ball of it anyway, and then because the deep red 400g Aran balls were on offer, he grabbed enough of those to make a nice jumper. Maybe something with cables for the winter?

He breezed past the needles with some pride in his self-control – god and his entire family knew he had enough of them – and dumped his purchases on the counter. Her choppy pink hair was poking out of her watermelon beanie and she snapped her gum while she rang up the purchase. She looked like she was working up to asking him something, and she packed the wool into the brown paper bags slowly while she thought.

"You're the florist, right? The one in Number Three?" She said, crumpling the ends of the bags together in a way that might've been rolling, if you were generous.

"That's me."

"Do you, do like, weddings and shit?"

Soul had done exactly one wedding and it had been his brother's. His Gran(not the nice one, the other one) had tried to make his cousin use him for her wedding, but the highly recommended, expensive wedding planner had his own people. Also Rosanna was definitely a Bridezilla, so he'd probably dodged a bullet there. A whole lot of bullets, seeing as her husband was linked the mob. Distantly linked, and allegedly reformed, but still.

"Yeah. I mean. Sometimes."

"Yeah, well, Jackie agreed to, you know, marry me and shit, so…" She was trying to play it cool, like she wasn't over the moon. Soul could see the pink flush spreading across her cheeks and the smile poking at the corners of her mouth and the actual twinkle in her eyes. "You up for it?"

"Up for…? Your wedding?"

"Don't make me change my mind," she said, still holding his precious wool hostage. He wasn't going to get them unless he agreed to do her and the strait-laced girl –Jackie-'s wedding, was he? He needed to weigh his options carefully. People who were as active on Pinterest and Instagram as millennial crafters were high risk for 'fairytale dream wedding ideals' syndrome. But that shade of deep red was beautiful, and she might curse him if he didn't...

"Yeah, that'd be cool, just call into the shop during the week and we can start working things out if you want," Soul shrugged, taking his purchase as it was finally offered to him. He clutched it to his chest. "Do you have a wedding planner or anything yet?"

"No, stupid, she only said yes last night."

"You should probably, uh, get one of those, but, yeah, stop by the shop whenever you guys, y'know, do that," Soul started to leave. "Planners normally have their own people, though."

"Yeah, but you're like our number one customer- " that's how they were staying open "-Aren't you going to congratulate me, you idiot?"

"Oh. Right. Great job," he paused, "On the whole engagement thing."

She sighed loudly. "What's your name anyway?"

"Soul, uh, Evans."

"I'm Kim Diehl," she grinned for the first time since he's known her in his extensive patronage of the shop, "I'm getting married, Soul, to the love of my life, and it better be the best goddamn day of my life."

"That's the plan," Soul said, eager not to draw the resident witch's ire. "I have to go somewhere. Else. Not here. Back to the shop. My one."

She rolled her eyes and went back to her book, trusting him to have learned where the exit was by now.

He headed back to the shop, and Number Seven seemed to have some life in it. The door was open and he could hear the drone of a vacuum as someone tried to clear away the years of accumulated dust. There was a pile of junk the previous occupants had left behind, heaped on the curb in boxes to be collected. There was a big old terracotta pot that looked like an ugly man yelling profanities. Soul checked it for damage, but apart from a thick layer of dust it was in perfect condition, despite being the ugliest thing he'd ever laid eyes on. Anyway, he wasn't one to let a perfectly good pot get thrown away, so he put the brown paper bags of wool with his coffee wedged carefully in between inside the clay pot and picked it up.

The yellowed layers of posters hadn't yet been torn away from the shop front window, but he could hear the bright laugh of the new occupant. It made him smile like an idiot in the middle of the street, holding the pilfered plant pot. That was a laugh that caught you and made you grin along with the joke, no matter how terrible or unknown it was.

Soul realized he'd been slowing down to a snail's crawl to try and find out more about his new neighbour, and picked up the pace. He chanced one more glance inside the door that'd been propped open with a heavy stack of old yellow pages. All he could see was a stack of cleaning supplies, ready to be called into action to tackle the years of grime.

He hurried back to the shop, in case they'd seen him taking the pot. He was forced to put it down in order unlock the door to the shop to let a woman who was jogging a toddler on her hip in. She frowned at him before breezing ahead into the shop.

Soul rolled his eyes at her back, before plastering his 'happy to help' face on.

He put the pot behind the counter while the woman turned a critical eye onto the pre-made bouquets. His shirt was filthy, streaked with transferred dust and grime, but there wasn't anything he could do about that right now, so he re-tied his apron over it to hide the worst of the staining. He washed his grimy hands quickly, shaking the water off to reach a suitable state of damp. Soul extracted his miraculously unspilled coffee from its woollen nest inside the terracotta head, and took a long draught, hoping that it would keep him going through the exchange.

"Excuse me," she shifted her weight. "Is this all your stock?"

"No," Soul said. "I can make up a fresh bouquet if you'd like."

"That's not necessary," she waved her hand, ignoring her son's chubby hands tugging at her hair. "What you have here will just have to do, won't it Kyle?"

She didn't even fucking buy anything.

Please R&R.