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Cowardice & Bad Timing >> Armitage Hux X Reader

Title: Cowardice & Bad Timing

Paring: Armitage Hux X Reader

Warnings: none! This is an AU. Features Modern AU, Florist AU, and Tattoo Parlour AU. 

Spoilers: None!

Author's Note:  Based on a tumblr post from www.dailyau.tumblr.com . And well; you all know me -- I couldn't help myself! And here we are, hope you enjoy! P.s. sorry for not updating (I've been swamped with holiday things, home renovation, the whole family over -- the whole shebang. I hope you understand. 

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Flowers had always been your thing. Your father always brought your mother a bouquet every Monday, their blooms lasting a ripe fortnight. They were never the same arrangement of blossoms; roses and chrysanthemums, small poppies and daisies. Whatever they were for, an apology, an anniversary, they brought a smile to your mother's lips, and, thus, to yours too. When your father passed on, and left his father's florist store, Hosnian Harmony, all to you to inherit, to work in, to practically live your little life out of.

And it was a lovely little life; you met brides-to-be who worked out their arrangements for tables, nosegays for the bridesmaids, you had boyfriends and girlfriends rushing in for apologetic eyes and their regular order for their regular posies, the odd wanderer who bought flowers for their smell, the need for a centrepiece upon their dining tables at home. You met strange people, and never had a customer who was disgruntled; maybe it was because everyone who came in for flowers came out with flowers, and there was nothing bad about gorgeous blooms and better service.

Across the road in recent times, a tattooist had moved into the abandoned warehouse, renovated into apartments upstairs and industrial-like stores below. It was quite a sight to see, but from the front of your store, it was almost an eyesore with all the glaring metal and concrete aesthetic.

In that store, worked the famed artist Armitage Hux, and his hipster associates Phasma (an ex-drummer from a big name punk band), and the black-clad Kylo Ren, who only worked evening shifts to fit with his metal-head convictions. Not that you really paid them any heed - perhaps you knew the three main tattooists because their receptionist, Dopheld often came in for gossip and bunches of flowers for his poorly mother. He came often; you heard much about Kylo's aggressive history, and affinity for being the one to go to for tattoo sleeves, and of Phasma's no-crap attitude, and love for English Mastiffs. He also talked of Hux, never by his given name, but that he was a hard-headed, driven man, came from rich roots, and explored the world for more meaning in life than dosh and girls painted like dolls and sold off to marry.

By the way you heard of Armitage Hux from Mr. Mitaka, you almost felt sorry for him. You couldn't imagine coming from a home where you had every single thing you wanted, except freedom; you always explored as a child, often falling off bicycles and backwards off roller-skates, bruised and loved, covered in floral band-aids since day one.

It was a slow Wednesday afternoon with three hours until closing time when the bell to the door rang. You expected it to be a weepy friend coming for a few flowers for a funeral, or maybe the delivery of cellophane you were waiting on. Not the ginger crop with a shaved underside and a sleeve down his arm to come in. Unlike the other times you had seen Armitage Hux, he wore thick glasses, and smelt faintly of a cigarette he had politely snuffed out before entering, and walked like he owned your property and knew it. But unlike the time his associate Kylo Ren had wandered drunkenly in, you didn't spray him in the face with pepper spray, and you most certainly did not scream blue murder.