Every Universe

‣ restaurant AU

pairing ‣ Holden x Sloane

prompt ‣ work at the same restaurant and have all the same terrible shift times AU

notes ‣ here's the AU that introduces Holden and Sloane, whose last names are spoilers... how they are related to the rest of the Delayed Messages gang is a spoiler too... pretty much everything about them is a spoiler... anyway, hope you enjoy!

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Holden did not hate his job, but on nights like tonight, in the middle of winter break at a college town at two in the morning, eyes barely open, he found his job incredibly unnecessary and could be persuaded to start hating his job.

Although it made sense that the restaurant wasn't closed, since students and faculty and tourists did need to eat, there was no justifiable reason to keep the restaurant open until three in the morning. For one, the night manager left at midnight. For two, it was winter break, and employees had lives outside of work. For three, hardly anyone came after eleven anyway, so staying open those last four hours until three in the morning were barely worth it.

Since the start of his shift at ten, there had only been two customers. One of them was the professor of a class Holden often skipped, in a suit for some forsaken reason even though it was snowing outside, who ordered a pasta salad with extra dressing. The other was a student, walking in wearing pajama pants, an unzipped jacket with no shirt underneath, and ugly sneakers sneaks, who had ordered a cheeseburger and a bag of barbeque chips and a bottle of soda. Holden had served them both to the best of his abilities, despite the fact his eyes were fighting to stay open, because he liked his job.

He really did. Being both a cashier and a waiter at the small restaurant late into the night wasn't bad. Granted, there were more customers during the day shift, and they paid more during the day, and the few customers during the night were very weird or very drunk, but his classes this semester prevented him from actually having a normal shift here, so he dealt with the late shift. Plus, less customers meant more time to do his readings on the job.

That didn't make up for the fact that his pay was still low. He had asked for a pay raise, and he felt like it was justified for one, considering he was the substitute night manager three-quarters of his shift and he did do two jobs of both cashier and waiter, when there were usually two people for the two separate jobs, and he did technically have seniority over the cute chef who had only worked here for seven weeks. His manager, however, told him they unfortunately couldn't give him a pay raise for so-and-so reasons that his tired mind wouldn't provide.

However, he still didn't see why. He was technically managing the chef, the chef as bored as he was, her back against the wall as she sat on the floor, listening to something through earbuds and yawning every few minutes like him. Holden had never seen her do anything outside of cooking but listen to music and play on her phone. She had to be a student - she looked around his age, if not younger - but he had never seen her do coursework. Maybe she did it all at home, like a responsible person.

Did he just roast himself?

Anyway. Right now she was listening to music (or maybe she listened to podcasts), eyes closed, her phone screen black and hands in her lap. Since there were no customers right now, and probably no customers for a while, he had joined her in the kitchen, not seeing the point in waiting behind the register. He sat on one of the wooden stools, keeping his ears open in case the bell at the entrance rang, and watched her as she yawned again. Was she really listening to anything? She wasn't bobbing her head along to anything or drumming her fingers against her arm.