Chapter Text
Adore sighed, wiping some sweat from her forehead as she dragged a heavy cement flower pot from the outside display of the shop back inside. Adora had just spent the last seven hours getting Perfuma’s dusty shop back into working order after being empty for two long months.
“Don’t mind me,” She muttered to the cool summer night, looking at the empty street that would tomorrow be littered with tourists and townies alike. “Just… running a flower shop… because that is something I totally know how to do!” Eh, fake it till you make it, right?
This was all still pretty new for Adora.
Her life had completely changed over the past week. Like… completely.
She had finally aged out of the ‘Fright Zone’, or at least, that’s what the teens unlucky enough to have survived through ‘The Right Zone: Hordak’s Home For Unwanted and Wayward Youth’.
That’s right, her eighteenth birthday was last week, and she was a goddamn success story! She had successfully made it out of a Group Home, a lifetime in an orphanage, not pregnant, without a drug addiction, not a single poke and stick tattoo, and a high school diploma, thank you very much.
Still, despite her studying her way to the top of the honours roll, there was no hope for a kid with zero support system, and no money to have enough to make it to university.
Sure, she had been a success story, but success after aging out of the system was to just get by with a nine to five job.
This was still the real world, remember.
Sighing to herself, Adora took a look at the front of the way-too-pink store, she had always preferred red herself, but this wasn’t her shop after all. ‘Perfuma’s Flower Emporium’ was displayed in gold, cursive letters across the store’s large window, and also on a small wooden sign that hung over the sidewalk.
“You can do this, Adora.” She mumbled to herself, after spending the entire day getting the store ready for its grand re-opening tomorrow. “You can… run a flower shop. How hard can it be? You are totally not in over your head…” She breathed to the night air, trying to believe in her words.
“And here I thought I was lucky enough that that eye-sore was finally being shut down.” She heard a disgruntled voice from across the street yell. Adora spun around on her heel at the noise, but was honestly surprised when she realized that the comment was aimed at her. She wasn’t used to getting yelled at, she was used to keeping her head down.
Adora saw a thin, tanned woman with one full sleeve tattooed on her left arm. She had wild, untamable brown hair lazley thrown up into a ponytail, with half of its contents falling at the sides of the woman's face. Not to mention, she was wearing an honest to god leather vest.
She was the picture of ‘bad kid’ from Grease, and Adora had to suppress the urge to laugh at the sight of her.
Adora had grown up around actual bad kids, and she means bad, drug peddling, will make a knife out of a toothbrush, have nothing to lose type of kids. She knew a wanna-be when she saw one.
“And I come to work to see that the one annoying, peppy blonde girl who used to run the flower shop, has been replaced with another peppy blonde girl.” The darker woman continued to speak from where she sat in the brick windowsill of the tattoo shop across the street.
Adora huffed, crossing the quiet road to the woman, most likely a tattoo artist out on a smoke break. “I’m sorry, did I do something to bother you?” she asked, cocking her head to the side a bit and debating if she could take this girl if she had to.
The woman scoffed a bit, smoke coming out as she did so. “Your existence bothers me, Princess.”
“Princess?” Adora asked, “wow, you really think you can just look at a person and know everything about them, huh?” She said, crossing her arms as she spoke. The woman obviously took this as an invitation to glance at her chest. Adora rolled her eyes.
“Blonde ponytail,” the woman spoke, never moving from the windowsill, but putting out her cigarette against the brick as she spoke. “Tells me you must have been a cheerleader in highschool, and just never go out of the habit.” Adora smirked a bit at the strangers comments, as the thought of her being a cheerleader in highschool passed her mind. She had always wanted to, but the Fright Zone didn’t exactly have ‘extracurriculars’. “Rich kid, only child, proud parents…” The woman listed. “But you decided that before you went off to your Ivy League school to become a lawyer or- no, even better, an elementary school teacher,” the cocky woman laughed at her own jokes as she mocked, “you decided to come to the sleepy little retirement town of Brightmoon and work in a freaking flower shop, because you think it’d be good for your instagram feed. Is that about right?”
‘Instagram?’ Adore thought, but didn’t dare ask.
She knew the girl was trying to insult her, but Adora couldn’t help but smile at her words, because of how badly she wanted them to be true. But you know what? This was a new town, a fresh start from a lifetime of no fun. This woman’s story would have to do.
“Wow,” Adora breathed sarcastically. “Are you just a magician or a stalker, Cat-Girl?” She said, referring to the large cat tattooed into the girls sleeve.
So this stranger didn’t have to know that Perfuma was an old friend from the Fright Zone, and that she had been opening a new flower shop in California in order to build a chain after this one took off, and… that she had given Adora the job as a favour after she aged out.
Adora liked the tattooed strangers story better.
“I’m just a good judge of character, Blondie.” The woman spoke. “So, Perfuma really got a teenager running her shop now?”
“I’m an adult, first of all.” Adora said confidently. “Well… eighteen, so, technically a teen… but also technically an adult!” She mumbled, not so confidently… so close. “And Perfuma’s opening a new one,” Adora shrugged, “needed someone to run her shop in Brightmoon for a few months, what’s it to you? You hate flowers or something?”
“I hate some frilly little shop next to my badass tattoo parlor.” The stranger replayed.
Adora couldn’t help but laugh. “Badass? I think you just mean ‘bad’.” She said, eyeing the dark, run down shop, decorated with what she could only assume were old Halloween decorations.
“Hey!” The stranger yelled. “Better than the Barbie Dreamhouse you’re running.”
“Well, looks like we’re neighbours now, Kitty, so you better get used to me.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that, Princess.” She said, hopping off of the windowsill and making her way up the stairs of ‘Horde Scum: Tattoos and Piercings’.
“Have a good one,” Adora rolled, turning to cross the street.
“Hey, cheerleader!” The woman called after her. “What’s my character?” She smirked, hoping to catch the girl off guard.
“I’m not sure yet,” Adora called back as she made the way up her own steps. “I’m not one to think that you can judge someone's character off of one interaction, unlike, you know, some people.” The blonde woman veered, closing the pink painted door in the process.
The woman smirked a bit to herself. “Well played, Princess.” She mumbled to herself.
………
Catra was pissed, to say the least.
She had been enduring the pink, frilly shop across the street for too long. It’s roses, Sunday Morning Tea, and meditation circles had been killing business for years. Most of the underage kids in town wouldn’t get tattooed at the Horde Scum anymore, fearing of getting caught by the gossiping Grandma battalion that hung out outside of the shop. Their mothers would most definitely find out if one of those old bats caught them.
Catra had been over the moon when Flower Girl closed the doors of her shop, and two blissful months passed without any issue. Well, except for her fellow tattoo artists being softies on her.
Scorpia had been heartbroken because she was completely in love with the Hippie who ran the place, and Catra was all but sure that Huntara had had a fling with her (man, how was the hippie looser getting more action than her, come to think of it?).
That hippie chick decided to take her flower show on the road, and broke her best friends heart in the process. Though Catra would never admit that she cared for Scorpia, Perfuma had hurt her friend, and that meant that the flower shop was enemy territory.
And just like that, some other blonde, happy-go-lucky kid with a heart full of dreams and a store full of flowers decides to open the doors back up, great!
“How’d it go?” Scorpia asked, “you weren’t mean were you? Oh gosh, tell me you weren’t mean! Not saying you’re a mean person…” She rambled on. She had a habit of doing that. “Just saying you have mean… tendencies?”
“Relax, Scorpia,” Catra breathed to the woman following her as she walked through the shop to her chair. “I made nice, okay?”
Huntara scoffed from behind the counter. “Yeah, right.”
“Hey!” Catra hissed, “I am delightful, okay? I wouldn't be surprised if ponytail asks me out by the end of the week.”
Huntara laughed, “bet.” she said.
“I’ve seen what you pay me, neither of us can afford a bet,” she smirked.
“That, and Blondie is out of your league,” Huntara smirked.
“Hey, the last blondie to work at that shop was out of your league, and you got pretty far…” Catra smirked.
Scorpia knocked over a mental tray of ink at Catra’s words, clattering loudly against the tile floor. “Oh, Gosh, that was… that was my fault entirely,” She mumbled as she tried to pick up the vials that were emptying quickly against the floor. “Take that out of my paycheck, Boss, I deserve it… I’m just gonna… I’m gonna grab a mop, sorry again!” She called, making her way out of the room and into the back.
Catra didn’t have enough time to duck away from Huntara smacking her upside the head. “Nice going there, Kitty, you know she’s still reeling from Flower Girl’s moving.”
“I know, whoops, I’m sorry.” Catra said, sounding more annoyed than apologetic.
“And I cut off our fling the second I found out about Scorpia’s little crush, alright?” Huntara spoke, “Because that’s what friends do. Something you need get the hang of.”
“I don’t need friends.” Catra grumbled, “Scorpia can go and cry if she wants, it’s not my fault that she’s sensitive. I’m fine on my own.”
………..
Adora fell onto the creaky bed in the small attic of Perfuma’s shop. “Just until I get on my feet,” Adora spoke to the empty room. “Wait…” She breathed to the nothingness. “I have… my own room.”
As Catra clocked out around two in the morning, she got on her motorcycle and cast one last, resentful look at the flower shop. One light was on in the attic, and in the quiet streets, in the dead of night, Cata watched as the new girl jumped on her bed.
Catra didn’t know why, but she smiled.