100 More One Shots ✔️

Moments >> Griff X Reader

Title: Moments

Paring: Griff X Reader

Warnings: meet cute, dating, fluff, angst. 

Spoilers: nope!

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Some days were slow. Other days, they were painfully slow. Like whichever God in the sky watched you lazily, and swirled a finger through your day to make it drag a little bit longer. Your boss had little to no time on site, and you were practically the most well-trained out of all the other people. Thus, you were left to man the register, and take care of the little shop front.

Your boss was a cult-favoured artist, but that was years ago, and even now he still pumped out painting after painting, and had you (on a very low commission) to sell them.

Another reason days were slow was nobody wanted to just come into a gallery where there was mediocre art and no stupid doodads or weird postcards for sale. Like today. It was warm out, for a change, and dressed in your very best overalls, floral neck scarf and orange dr. martens, you greeted every possible patron who entered the store with compassionate vigour, and yet, none stayed more than five minutes around the terrible motel art.

Except –

Around eleven o'clock, you noticed a man outside the window, lingering across the street. To other people, you were sure that they'd be intimidated, or perhaps, induced into turning the opposite direction he was going. He looked like the kind of hardcore who'd be into dad music and dumb dancing, but also, fast bikes and drinking piss 'til dawn. You looked away from the window, and went back to cataloguing the sales of the last month (not enough for the studio to make rent) and alternatively, writing the essay that was due soon (for your grad school degree that you loved more than life).

But when you looked back out the window not an hour later, he was seated on a park bench six metres away from where you first saw him, using a newspaper to shelter from the oncoming shower as it spat upon the earth with distain.

In minutes of idle people-watching, you saw the droplets turned into downpour, and yet, while everyone else on the street fled to the dry interiors of their umbrellas, Ubers, the 7-Eleven corner store, the man sat there, like his two feet were fused to the concrete path.

From the side of the cash register, you grabbed the spare umbrella, and flipping the sign to sorry, closed! temporarily, you darted across the street, avoiding the stray puddle and awry taxi, to where he sat. The newspaper he used at first to shield himself from the rain has turned into a floppy rectangle of blurred text and dripping ink, and looking at him, you wonder if the pictures from the newspaper had transferred to his skin like a kid's transferrable tattoo.

He looked at you strangely, no words shared for a moment, and then, gracelessly, you thrust the umbrella out, and hold it over him.

"Take it," you tell him.

His fingers unlatch from the sodden newspaper, and curl over the handle, his smallest finger touching yours ever so briefly. As soon as he had it in his hands, you smiled, and as fast as you could, returned to the storefront you were supposed to be in, and out of the rain. As you flipped the closed sign back to yes, we're open! you wondered if you'd ever see him, or the umbrella again.

It was a Saturday, and just like the rest of the days worked on the weekend, it was dry. Not a single soul came through the door in all the four hours you'd been open already, and fed up with standing around like a terrible marionette waiting for the strings to be pulled the right ways, you sat behind the cash register, and pulled out your sketchbook. You were doodling a design.