Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

With the wine-colored apron tied snug around her waist, Rose couldn’t deny she resembled a summer sausage right out of the Salty & Savory Snack Bin. It was only the shiny gold name tag balanced on her right boob that confirmed she was the manager—ok, fine, the only employee— of the Cloud City franchise of the internationally recognized food and gift juggernaut, Hays Candies & More. 

And that—plus the fact that she knew deep red looked stunning on her—had to be worth something. 

Before last semester, a seasonal job at a holiday pop up had never been her plan. But she was nothing if not an opportunist. This job was right off campus and paid enough to keep her in fancy ramen ’till New Year’s. And the work wasn’t so bad—great experience, actually. She would run the entire operation, make lattes from a simple menu—despite the best efforts of a fancy First Order StarGrinder 3000 espresso machine constantly on the fritz—and sell gift baskets chock full of savories, fruit, and wine to shoppers needing to bestow something impersonal but overpriced at the very last minute. 

Her navy blouse spangled with stars, her dark denim jeans, and her black chucks were all cute, but the apron which covered them was a must. Anyhow, there was no time to second guess the outfit. It was nearly six in the morning on day one. Black Friday itself. 

Go time. 

And, sure, it started kind of slow. Through the Hays corporation, she’d rented a pocket-sized shop in the corner of an old strip mall and it didn’t get much traffic in the age of online shopping and box store sales. Plus, a Starbucks fronted the strip mall so no one came to her specifically for a drink. But she had a few browsers, mostly older women who looked like the type to have finished Christmas shopping for their grandchildren ages ago, but still went out on Black Friday to see what deals they could snatch up. She even made a few peppermint lattes and a couple of mochas to order with minimal fuss. 

So the store was deathly quiet and she was getting a little bored, which is the excuse she made to herself later when he walked in and she unabashedly, uncontrollably, rudely stared.

She had thought, maybe, that cheekbones that eye-catching and a jawline that sharp only existed in the movies. That elegant men in dark three-piece suits and silver-plated pocket watches didn’t just walk into your life, their sea-green eyes glittering in your direction with an intensity barely undercut by the Muppets singing The Twelve Days of Christmas boisterously in the background. Legs so long, if he’d taken the three or four strides necessary to cross her showroom floor, such as it was, he’d be close enough to kiss her, if he deigned to bend himself in half. 

Rose blinked. Perhaps she shouldn’t have lit all of the holiday scented candles at once. The fumes must be getting to her. 

Because of course, of course, she was Rose Tico, struggling student and seasonal charcuterie enthusiast, so that wasn’t what happened at all. 

He stood there on the welcome mat, twitching uncomfortably in his Burberry peacoat with the collar deliciously half-popped. His nose wrinkled as if he were deathly allergic to wicker, ribbon, vellum, or some combination of the three.

“Can I help you?” Rose finally called. If he stood in the doorway much longer, her proximity sensor would start to get really annoying and that, if nothing else, would ruin the extremely chill vibe she was hoping to project in his direction, even as she felt sweat trickling down her back, and the thrumming beginnings of lust in her belly.

He approached, his plush lips twisting and his hips deftly avoiding the display tables, before perusing her drinks menu and clearing his throat, his Adam’s apple traveling a long, distinguished path up a perfectly smooth column of pale skin. This close up, she could see his hair was in fact actually a pale sandy red, it wasn’t just reflecting the tacky LED fairy lights or all her childhood hopes and dreams. 

He was real. 

She suppressed the urge to lick at the corners of her mouth. 

“Good mor—” 

“Two shots of ristretto topped with whole milk steamed to micro foam.” His voice was clipped; he placed an order like he was an actual general issuing actual commands.

Rose drew back at his tone and spoke without thinking. “Excuse me?”

His lips thinned out. “Do I need to repeat myself, miss?” 

And if that—what was that, an honest to goodness Irish accent?—if that wasn’t an unfair kick in the crotch she didn’t know what was.

But even devastatingly sexy accents couldn’t entirely excuse poor manners. 

“Nope,” she replied flippantly, popping the p and mentally flipping him off. The drink took no more than two minutes to make, which she did with sarcastic precision, even with the steam wand wandering off to the side, forcing her to jam it in place with her hand. She hissed in pain. That little blister on the side of her thumb would be a callous by the end of the season, sure as sugarplums. 

A bitter scent hit the air and Rose pursed her lips in frustration. 

“Please don’t be over-extracting,” she mumbled, repeating it a few times like a mantra, worried about the length of time the machine allowed scalding water to pass through the grounds, potentially burning the coffee. She didn’t expect repeat customers, but she would like to sell palatable beverages and not stink up the room while she was at it.

To her horror, a pleasant Irish tenor piped up behind her. “Perhaps I could take a look at it?”

She snorted. She knew it was quite unattractive, so she didn’t turn around. 

“I’m quite serious, miss. I’m—”

She suppressed a consternated sigh. This was the story of her life. No one wanted to chat up Rose for Rose’s sake. But men couldn’t help interjecting themselves into situations where machines were concerned. By the looks of him, this guy was some sort of paper-pushing captain of industry. He wouldn’t know his way around an industrial grade brew tank or drain hose valve. Humoring him—playing the silly girl who didn’t know her way around a basic engine—would be a waste of both their time. 

And it was only the ten thousandth time it had ever happened to her in her short life, so she pushed back, maybe a little rougher than was called for. 

“Well how magnanimous,” she exclaimed, finishing up his beverage. “Such seasonally appropriate charity. But I’ve got it all under control. So no thanks!”

The drink was $3.76 with tax and while she waited, fingers drumming, he paused abruptly over his open wallet full of credit cards, the shiny black leather creaking expensively and smelling unfairly of a Tom Ford cologne.

She sighed silently through her toothy smile. Must be nice, she thought—wondering, but not really doubting, if the deep red gem in his tie pin was real —to have multiple options for payment. 

In the end, he seemed to realize how long he was taking and how she was glaring at him expectantly and—thank the sweet baby Jesus—a couple of shoppers walked into the store, forcing him into swift, if jittery, action.

He slapped a single bill on the counter, took his drink from her hands and turned on his heel in one silent pirouette that emphasized the elegance of his frame and the quality of his shoes. 

“Happy holidays,” she called, overly loud, watching his broad shoulders disappear out the door. “Two shots of ristretto,” she muttered in a terrible mock-Irish accent, wrinkling her nose. She glared at the back of his head—his mid-fade, slicked-back bougie head—disappearing into the distance. “You could just say flat white, cranky pants.” 

Out in the parking lot, he paused, looked to the sky, and with a shake of his head, disappeared stage left at a quick march. 

And then she noticed the unwrinkled one hundred dollar bill with shiny gold numbers lying on her countertop.

She gawked at it for a moment, before shaking her head in disbelief and stuffing the bill under the cash drawer. The closing register gave a seasonally pleasant ding. There’s no way he’d meant to—no one intentionally left tips of $96.24—he must have thought it was a tenner. 

Good thing he hadn’t stuck around. She couldn’t have made change for him anyway.

Balancing her register tonight just got a lot more difficult.

Thanks a lot, General Cranky Pants. 

She tried not to give him much more thought—Rose Tico didn’t ever let anyone with negative energy get her down—but the fact that such a turd of a man came wrapped in such an appealing package just reemphasized the world’s unfairness, even at Christmastime. But she was Rose Tico. Not merely an opportunist, but persistent to boot.

Rent and tuition increasing in the new year? Paige still in Bucharest and her parents visiting family overseas? Rey obsessed with her reportedly amazing new boyfriend and never around anymore?

Well, sounds like someone could use that time to get another head start on her education. To create work that—with a contract to work ten to twelve hour days seven days a week for six weeks—took up all her time and paid well. No energy leftover to dwell on her miseries. Sleeping like a stone for the few short hours she wasn’t up busy and after that bread. 

Even if the charm of being a holiday shopgirl in a naturally lit store that left her smelling of peppermint bark was occasionally tarnished by tactless older men. He had a decade on her if he had a day, with those silent movie star looks and most likely, more money than god. Pointedly reminding her of all the things she didn’t have—money, style, an amazing new boyfriend. 

With a sigh, she pulled the chain on the hot pink neon Open sign, making a mental plan to squirrel away her tips until she could break that hundred dollar bill and keep the register balanced.

What's one more thing on her holiday to-do list, anyway? 

It was surprising, though, when he walked back in three days later on a rainy Monday morning. He looked shockingly much the same—perhaps the tie was a touch more charcoal than plain pitch black—but to her credit Rose didn’t let it phase her. She knew why he was here, after all, and pulled open the cash drawer.

“Back for this?” 

She tried to keep her voice light while waggling the hundred dollar bill between her fingers and checking him out as he approached. He’d removed his wet jacket when he entered, revealing a smushable tush under an appallingly flat stomach.  

“Excuse me?” 

A man with his shoulder-to-waist ratio should have nothing on this earth to complain about. How he managed to sound offended when she was giving him his money back was really something else.

“Your drink last week. It was not even four bucks. You left a one hundred—” 

“Wait—” and again, it sounded more like an order than anything, he may as well have barked halt. “If you have that, then how—”

And to his credit, it didn’t take him that long to figure it out, especially after she blurted, “I balanced my register with the tip jar.” 

His lip curled in distaste. “You what.” 

It was not a question. He demanded an explanation. 

And while the world might be patently unfair, sometimes it was pretty darn great, especially when it lobbed softballs in your direction and your bat was raised and ready.

“Do I need to repeat myself, sir?” Rose beamed at him. Internally, she gave herself a high five. 

Sadly, she had not given any thought to how he might react to her snarkiness.  

His pupils widened, the green of his eyes sinking into an inky blackness, and she was treated to another frankly obscene show from his neck. The tendon there flexed and danced, alluringly lickable, as he took a step up. 

Oh, she’d riled him for sure. 

His voice dropped half an octave. “So, technically, you bought my drink.” Truly, sexily unfair of him to murmur conspiratorially at her in that accent. She shivered as goosebumps puckered and tightened her skin from shoulders to knees. 

Rose crossed her arms to hopefully hide the evidence. “One way of looking at it.”

His narrowed eyes flicked down to the bill lying on the counter between them, his voice still thrillingly husky. “Even though I did leave funds to cover my purchase.”  

Suppressing the competing urges to roll her eyes and rub her thighs together, she instead gave him her cheekiest grin, the one he seemed already disposed to dislike. “With a hundred dollar bill? That would keep you in flat whites plus tip every weekday from now until Christmas—”

As she spoke, his eyes lit up, latching on to the idea she had unthinkingly proposed. No no no. She didn’t need his grumpy butt coming in here every day. It was probably illegal to lust after your customers. There was a Starbucks right over there. No no no no no…

“Consider it payment in advance then,” he insisted before she could object. “Surely a place like this—” Here, he looked trepidatiously around the room before looking down his nose, “—is not unfamiliar with the concept of punch cards.” 

Well, fuck.

And so November passed into December. 

He must work in the C-suite of one of the many businesses that took up space in the office complexes and business parks surrounding the strip mall, she decided. He never spoke about his schedule, or the convenience of her location, but Mondays through Fridays he arrived every morning by 8:15 on the dot. An executive’s prerogative, certainly. And the way he dressed? Accessorized to the nines? The man had excessive disposable income and excellent taste, much as it pressed her to admit it. 

For the first few days, they hardly spoke. He would wait in line, if there was one, and she would make the drink when he approached the counter. When he left, she would tally a mark on the sticky note she’d attached to the side of the register labeled, “General Cranky Pants’ Flat White.”

But even as the temperatures outside dropped as the days careened towards the solstice, the thaw came for Rose and her unlikely loyal customer. He never failed to thank her properly. If she was helping someone else, he waited patiently. If he was alone in the store, he responded to her rote, customer-service-based greetings with short, polite replies. They even managed a brief exchange about the weather one day—dreary, worsening—that launched other polite, observational conversations, many of which involved him making quippy remarks in that spine-tingling accent that did nothing to check Rose’s at-first-sight crush.   

When he’d asked her if she’d had any trouble with shoplifters, or worse, she’d waggled her brows and theatrically patted her hip, announcing, “I have a taser.”   

The following look in his eyes could only be described as bloodthirsty, panty-melting, and proud. She was, she realized, in point of fact, in actual danger. And not from any would-be robbers, but from Cranky Pants' good girl face and ready wit. 

“Who runs this place on the weekends?” he asked one particularly quiet Thursday morning. He had a way of asking questions that compelled a quick response.  

“I do,” she replied, stifling a yawn as she poured out his shots. “I’m the only employee here.”

“Well that seems—” He shut his mouth so fast his teeth clacked and she gave him a cheeky side eye.

“Not going to say?” she teased.

He cleared his throat. “It was recently expressed to me—in no uncertain terms—that my unasked for opinions were—” He visibly struggled to find the right word. 

“Unwelcome?” she offered, beginning to steam the milk. “Obnoxious? Unnecessary?” 

He allowed himself the slightest twitch of his lips as he nodded. “Just so.”

She couldn’t help but giggle. “And who was this person who dared to challenge you?”

He stifled a roll of his eyes, a strand of red hair falling between them for a moment before his long fingers slotted through it, everything back in place so fast she wasn’t sure she hadn’t dreamed it. 

“The quite young, extremely opinionated girlfriend of my business partner.” He scowled, slightly. “We didn’t get off on the right foot.” 

A bark of laughter escaped her. “You don’t say.”  

“Apparently telling my business partner I thought his new girlfriend was too young for him and too opinionated for her own good was not welcome insight.”

Rose cackled, which must explain the compulsion that came over her next: the desire to prolong the novelty of this conversation. “Well then I’ll ask— what is your opinion of my work schedule?

He considered a moment. “It just seemed to me that a person like you—” 

She narrowed her eyes at that auspicious beginning, but couldn’t stop the smile that accompanied the look. He’d thought of her? Enough to form an opinion?

In spite of her stink eye, he carried on. “A young person, energetic, and… cheerful, would have a holiday season rife with social engagements. Not one entirely appropriated by employment.”

Though she was standing mere inches from a machine that spewed steam in her face all the livelong day, she could feel her cheeks heat from the inside out. 

“Ah, well,” she said, “My sister and parents are all traveling this month. My roomie has a mysterious new boyfriend she’s with all the time, but won’t tell me anything about—”

He clucked in sympathetic accordance. 

“Aaaand… I took my finals early so I could open this place up. I’ve got no other, um, engagements,” she finished, using his word, her voice slipping into the exaggerated Lady Catherine de Bourgh impersonation she’d perfected after Rey had forced her to watch that lovely movie. It never failed to make Rey laugh. 

To-go lid clicked into place, she pushed the drink across the counter towards her suddenly inscrutable customer. 

“Good day Rose,” he said abruptly, taking the drink and leaving as she made another tally on her sticky note.

Well then. Cranky Pants must not be a fan of Pride and Prejudice.  

Rose tamped down the espresso grounds and locked the bed into the portafilter. It fell loose, hitting the drip tray with a messy bang.

With a groan, she scooped another shot worth of grounds and cranked it into place with a whine. “This machine just will not give me a break.” 

Over her shoulder she could almost hear Cranky Pants’ grimace as she hastily swept away the mess. 

“And these early mornings are killing me,” she mumbled, raising her arms over her head, pulling on her upturned elbows one at a time to stretch out her sides as she waited for the water to heat.

“Provide caffeine to others, yet can’t get enough for yourself?” General Cranky Pants pondered rhetorically as she steamed his whole milk. Since that first day—when she’d rejected his offer of help with the StarGrinder —he stared daggers at the machine every time she complained about it as if performing some mental calculus on how best to prove himself. She’d catch him staring and he—smartly—would bite his tongue. 

“Something like that,” she managed to say through a humongous yawn. Pushing six ounces of espresso and milk into his hand, she slumped, forearms down on the counter and hung her head. She wondered if there was a way to trip and get Cranky Pants to catch her; to enjoy the benefits of being held in his arms without the downside of splashing hot milk all over his wool coat. “I’ll get used to it.” 

She yawned a few more times. It was killing her inside, just a little, to have such a put-together adult like Cranky Pants see her dozing like a baby up past bedtime, but she couldn’t bring herself to wish he left sooner, either. He never failed to get her motor running—in all senses of the term—their morning repartee imparting all the energy she needed for a busy day, while thoughts of him and silly fantasies kept her awake and on her toes. 

“Your necklace,” he said after a moment of silence. “It’s unique.”

The conversational pivot surprised her and she jerked her head up. She hadn’t realized. The paisley curl of metal she wore strung around her neck had fallen out of her collar, hanging loose. She stood and it slapped back down on her sternum, in the center of her apron bib. 

She peered down skeptically at her chest; with the word he’d chosen, she couldn’t be sure he was entirely approving.

“That was a compliment, Rose,” he huffed when she didn’t respond. “Wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise.”

“Aww, thanks,” she replied brightly, and not-so-secretly delighted he had made use of her name—obviously gleaned from her ever-present nametag. “I made it at camp, when I was a kid. I’ve always liked it.”

All that was a bit of an exaggeration. She’d been seventeen, at STEM camp, conducting a metallurgical analysis. The necklace was a happy byproduct of her research. But he didn’t need to know the extent of her nerdiness. 

“Well, I can see why,” he agreed, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s very pretty.”

She kept her eyes down, focused on her breathing, commiting the musical way he said pretty to memory even as she convinced herself it meant nothing. She didn’t trust herself to speak; the pink suffusing the apples of her cheeks as she wiped down the counter and restacked the cups was all the thanks her sleepy self could give.