Chapter Text
Mara wasn’t in the market for flowers.
She wasn’t in the market for much of anything lately, except possibly caffeine strong enough to dissolve guilt and a quiet place where no one asked her real name.
What she had been in the market for was a low-profile life - something with fewer burner phones and more chamomile tea. Witness protection had strongly suggested introspective hobbies, journaling, and avoiding confrontation.
So far, she was zero for three.
But the coffee shop she’d been walking toward had a busted AC, a line out the door, and a barista with a neck tattoo that looked uncomfortably familiar - possibly from a photo in a sealed dossier she'd once read in an Estonian airport.
So instead, she made a sharp right turn and walked into the flower shop next door.
The bell chimed overhead like it belonged in a dream sequence. Mara stopped two steps in.
The air smelled like wild mint and secrets.
Too many blooms. Too much light. Too many ways in and out. She didn’t trust it, but her pulse slowed anyway.
And behind the counter, wearing a faded gray t-shirt and an expression of sunlit concentration, stood him - carefully arranging a bouquet of violently crimson flowers she couldn’t name, each stem adjusted like he was defusing something dangerous.
“Oh,” she said, before she could stop herself. “You’re the hot yoga instructor.
He looked up, blinking with the mild startlement of someone unaccustomed to being accused of being hot before noon. He was blond with sky blue eyes, a little taller than she remembered, forearms dusted with pollen. There was a smudge of green on his cheekbone and a very earnest confusion in his expression.
“I - think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else?” he said, in the same patient tone one might use when correcting a dog’s name at the vet. “I teach ashtanga on Tuesday afternoons. You might be thinking of the other guy who teaches vinyasa Tuesday mornings.”
Mara blinked.
A beat passed.
Then another.
She realized, belatedly and with no small amount of internal horror, that he had interpreted her words literally: the instructor who teaches hot yoga, and not the hot instructor who teaches yoga.
A crucial difference.
One that she absolutely did not have the energy, dignity, or will to correct.
Not that it mattered. His misunderstanding was safer. More breathable. Easier to ignore than the fact that she'd just walked into a flower shop, opened her mouth, and immediately announced him as attractive like she was handing out merit badges.
“… right,” she said finally, clearing her throat with the kind of dry rasp normally reserved for bar fights and tax audits. “That’s. Yep. That makes sense.”
He smiled, like someone who’d just watched a cat miss a jump and was trying not to be rude about it.
The silence stretched out, ripe and blooming.
Mara coughed again and absolutely did not blush. “Well. As long as we’ve cleared that up.”
He nodded agreeably, wiping his hands on a towel. “Anything I can help you find today?”
“Sanctuary,” she said without thinking.
Then, realizing how that sounded, followed it up with, “From ... the espresso machine next door. It’s probably a war crime under the Geneva Convention.”
He laughed, and it did things to her equilibrium she didn’t like one bit.
“Well, lucky for you,” he said, motioning to the fridge case, “we have iced tea and non-judgmental seating. No charge, unless you want to pretend to buy something.”
“I’m excellent at pretending,” Mara said dryly, and slipped past him into the shop like she’d meant to be there all along.