"A Business Deal" - Written for Jupiterra for the @creatorsofhetalia Back-To-School Exchange
Pairing: RusAme, platonic
The Russian man sighs. Another slow business day, same as usual. He gets a lot of orders around major romantic holidays, but this isn't one of those seasons. Worse yet, the landlord's jacked up the rent, and most customers to the building are actually here for the coffee shop next door. Oh, here's a customer now... Nope, they're here for Alfred's Java Jam and entered the wrong door, sigh. It looks like Braginsky Bouquets is not long for this world... Perhaps he could move into his sister's vyshyvanka shop across town, see if he'd do better in the Ukrainian embroidery market instead. He's sure Katyusha would be willing to take him in...
Out of boredom, he looks at the clock. Closing time already? Blin... Walking over to the door, he flips the sign to closed, walks out, and locks the door. The shop still needs to go through closing duties, but he needs a drink, a stiff one. There's that vodka distillery down the street... Nyet, he's not in the mood. Coffee will have to do instead. Resignedly, he enters the coffee shop next to his soon-to-die flower shop, and looks around at the place. It's fairly quiet, understandable since the dinner rush ended two hours ago. He walks up to the counter and greets the shop owner with a muttered "Privyet..."
"...Oh, hey dude! How you been? And whatcha wanna drink?" Alfred says in his perpetually cheerful voice.
After a moment, the Russian man replies, "...More customer. Also, coffee. Large. Strongest blend. No sugar." before putting $5 on the counter and shuffling his way to a table.
Alfred immediately senses something is wrong, but a customer order is a customer order, and he quickly whips it up for him. Setting the cup on his table, Alfred sits across from him. "...Something's up with you, Ivan. What happened?"
Ivan sighs. "Landlord raise rent again. Not many customer in off season. I have two month of savings left before store is closing." He drinks his coffee, eyes opening a bit as the bitter taste wakes him up.
Alfred frowns. "Dude, no, you can't quit like that! We've been neighbors for years!"
"..." Ivan sets the cup down. "Is nothing we can do, Fredka. We cannot force customer to come in, da? Actually..."
He begins to chuckle darkly, but Alfred shakes his head. "No. That breaks the very first rule of customer service: Let the customer come to you. So... what's the problem here? Why don't you have customers coming in?"
There is a soft thud as Ivan's face hits the table, nudging the coffee cup out of the way. "I am bad at market myself? Cannot get customer to realize that they are needing my flowers. Da, I have many business around holiday in February, but is September now..."
Alfred frowns. "Yeah, that's always a problem. I'm drowning in customers sometimes because I'm the only coffee shop in this part of town, and people have an existing need for it. But, flowers are kind of a special thing..." He puts his hand under his chin, thinking... "Ivan, I'm going to propose something, and you might not like it, but hear me out."
Ivan glances upward, a confused look in his eyes. Alfred pauses dramatically for effect... "We merge into one shop. Ask the landlord for permission, bust down that wall, and split the rent between us. My profits are more than enough to cover both of us, plus you can piggyback on my marketing, too! I can see it now: 'Buy a bouquet while you wait for your coffee!'"
"...Fredka, you are more crazy than my older brother and younger sister combined." He chuckles in his thick accent. "...But da. We will become one."
"Labas, you two. What can I do for you?" The landlord greets the duo as they enter his office.
"Um..." Ivan begins. "You know how you raise rent again, Tolys?"
Tolys nods, frowning. "Was forced to by the city, I'm afraid. Taxes keep going up, and I'm barely staying afloat as it is myself."
"Ivan says he can't afford to stay here anymore, and he'll have to close up shop in two months if we don't do anything! You gotta help us, dude!" Alfred's excitability was always a bit hard on the Lithuanian, but considering the income of his tenants practically doubled when the coffee shop opened, he's more than willing to tolerate it.
"I..." Another sigh. "What do you want me to do? I cannot force customers to come to you, Ivan!"
Ivan pauses for a moment... before saying bluntly, "Is only one way. Make us become one."
Tolys holds up a 'wait a second' finger, reaches for his water bottle, takes a swig, then spit-takes to the side. "WHAT?! Um... you know there is a chapel down the street..."
Alfred and Ivan look at each other, turning redder than Vargas brand tomatoes. "H-he didn't mean it THAT way, dude! He meant, let us merge our shops together!"
"Da. Fredka is saying, if we become one shop, I can... 'piggy back' off his customer."
"Exactly! My coffee sales alone would easily cover the rent of two shops, plus what income Ivan gets..."
Another sigh from Tolys. "I... I get what you are proposing, but are you really sure? There's paperwork to do, all sorts of taxes, and a thousand other things involving the legal redefinition of two suites into one..."
"Then do not do that. Just let us make two shop into one by breaking wall down. Then let Fredka cover my rent." Ivan smiles at the landlord, knowing the plan will work.
"I... ugh... fine, I'll consider it." Tolys groans. "Don't do any construction work yet! I have to have a contractor come in and verify which beans are load bearing!"
"Bah. In motherland, we do that with sledgehammer. If building falls, beam was load bearing. Then you rebuild building." Ivan's candid statement gets an eyebrow raise from both the Lithuanian and the American.
"J... just come back in a few days, please... I need a drink..."
"Ivan knows a good vodka place down the road! He never lets me have any--" "Fredka, drinking age here is 21. In motherland, you could drink. Not in Amerika." "--but he at least lets me have some of that fake-beer stuff... what's it called?" "Kvass?" "Yeah, dude, that stuff!"
Reluctantly, Tolys nods, standing up from his desk. Ivan leads the three of them out, heading for Viktor's Vodkas, where precisely none of them end up getting drunk. One isn't a legal adult, one doesn't have enough money to buy enough to get drunk, and the third is too intimidated by the second to attempt to buy vodka, so he follows the first's example and buys kvass.
About a month later, the work is finally done. Ivan and Alfred stand in the middle of their combined shop, looking out at the customers awaiting the "Grand Re-Opening".
"It sure was a fun time getting here, wasn't it, dude?" Alfred pulls out his phone, and begins scrolling through a photo album of the construction process.
"Da, Fredka, it was. But is done now." Ivan leans over, and looks at the pictures.
Alfred flips through what seems to be a "highlights reel" of the past month. Tolys and Alfred staring at the wall, trying to determine what parts are safe to break down. Ivan just sticks his foot through the wall, earning a glare. Ivan looks awkwardly out from under a pile of rubble. Alfred clears out debris while Tolys makes a phone call. Alfred and Ivan are duct-taped to a chair, while a professional construction crew makes repairs. Ivan starts painting the new wall, while Alfred lurks behind with a can of red paint over his head. Ivan, now with a paint can on his head, chases Alfred off-camera. The pair stand in front of a finished wall remodel like nothing ever happened. Everything falls off the wall. A picture that appears to be a thumb over the lens. A final picture of the finished, decorated, and furnished room.
"Memories, huh dude? Well, we better get going, the shop's gonna open soon-- URK!" Alfred says, before he's pulled into a bear-hug by Ivan. "W-Watch the merchandise!"
"Oh, is that so?" Ivan pulls the young American over to his side of the shop, before tying a yellow ribbon around his neck, the same kind he secures bouquets with. He then dangles a "Buy Two, Get One" price tag from Alfred's ear. "Now you ARE merchandise."
Alfred tries to blow the tag out of his field of view, to no avail. "Whatever, let's just get ready. I need to teach you to make coffee later, don't let me forget..."
"And I am needing to teach you to cut flower, too." Ivan grins.
Together, they open the doors of their new shop, and their new life as business partners.
