Chapter Text
When Hux parks, turning the keys in his engine and taking a deep breath, his mantra begins. There are no words, as so often the English language fails him. Instead it’s a rhythm, a four count tapped from index to pinkie, his thumb moving down the line to a song only he knows.
His apron is sprawled over the passenger seat from last night and Hux tucks his red bull into one of the pockets and slings it over his shoulder. He opens the door, grabs his coffee, then Phasma’s, climbing into the late morning sun and wishing he was still in bed.
At half past ten, the doors to the Millennium Falcon are already unlocked. Mitaka stands behind the host stand, his gaze locked on the computer and his hands gripping a ceramic travel mug so tightly, Hux worries it might break in his grasp.
“How bad is it?” Hux asks, leaning over to look at the computer screen. Then, he feels his own hand start to flex, the straining of disposable plastic under his fingers.
“It has to be a joke booking,” Mitaka says. “Right?”
Before Hux agrees, before he says anything else, he walks around the stand and clicks to open the booking, reading the notes.
25 people, 12 children. 9th birthday party, bringing own cake. Allergies per child emailed to management last week.
“Who has their kid’s birthday party here?” Hux wonders aloud. “If they bother to email, though, I doubt it’s a joke. You check with Rey, but I’d set the tables up.”
“We’ll have to put them along the wine wall,” Mitaka replies, wrinkling his nose. They both leave the host stand and walk into the dining room, looking around. Truly, there is no other place to seat a party larger than ten at one table.
Since his first days of training, where he stood at Sloan’s elbow and watched her wait tables, Hux felt the existence of the wine wall was tacky. A dividing wall? Fine, a perfectly normal feature to have in a restaurant. It served to separate the main dining area from the bar seating. A dividing wall with over four hundred bottles of wine stored on it? Tacky, even if all the wine was good.
Hux has sampled every wine offered at the Millennium Falcon; most of it isn’t good.
“One of them is going to break a bottle,” Hux states before looking to Mitaka. “Make it Rey’s problem, I’ll let the kitchen know.”
“Be careful,” Mitaka says. “They’ve been in a foul mood this morning.”
Hux reads between the lines and heads back to the server alley so he can set his things down and clock in.
The half an hour before customers come crawling in is a sacred time. Hux opens the blinds, checks all of last night's side work, and starts the tea and coffee machines. He grabs drink pitchers from the dish pit, turns the key on the soda machine, and fills the ice bin. After ensuring that all the front of house trash cans have bags, he finally allows himself a moments of peace, leaning against the prep table that runs along the back of the alley. His view of the kitchen is clear.
Over a decade ago, Leia Organa and Han Solo were freshly married and looking to open their first jointly-owned restaurant. They followed the current trends in many places, when designing the dining room, and chief among them was the open kitchen. A chest high counter, a foot of space, and a shelf, the bottom of which held heat lamps, leaving the top clear for plates and to go containers. Here, at the start of the line, there was only the barest view of the kitchen. This drew the eye rather quickly to the end, where a large, plexiglass shield surrounds a wood-fired grill the size of a twin mattress.
The concept of open kitchens fell out of fashion right in time for both the marriage of Leia and Han and the economy to fail. Han spent most of his savings buying out Leia’s half of the restaurant, and had no money left over to remodel the inside, so the plexiglass stayed, just like the log columns and dumb, expensive dividing wall.
With his shit all sorted out and ten minutes to open, Hux’s morning becomes a waiting game. Phasma, at the station closest to the server alley, is still setting up her line. She's working on something at a cutting board out of view, so it would be useless for him to approach until she’s finished. But the clock will soon tick over to eleven and the doors will open. They’ll both have to do their job, leaving no time for idle chatter.
Luckily, Phasma piles something into a pan and cleans her knife and board, so Hux grabs both of the coffees and heads over. He closed last night, so he has at least seven more hours of restaurant gossip than Phasma does.
Before he says anything, he passes her coffee over the small section of counter with no overhang. Other servers use it mainly to place chilled forks and pepper mills. Hux and Phasma have turned it into a perfect space for conversation.
“You’ll never guess who’s officially dating,” Hux says, grabbing a soufflé cup of spiced pecans. Phasma gives him a look about it but says nothing, proving that she, at least, is in an exceptionally good mood.
“Dameron and Finn,” she parrots back, and Hux frowns.
“You could have let me have fun with the reveal,” he tells her, “I had a whole bit about their awkward flirting, and now I don’t feel like sharing it.”
“Finn has already made multiple sappy posts on Instagram about it,” Phasma says, pulling out her phone and turning it to show him a truly hideous slide show. “They’re children, honestly.”
“Gross.” He pauses a moment to drink his coffee, and then remembers the literal children’s birthday party that’s going to happen in their dining room. “Also, I hope you cut plenty of chicken tenders.”
It only takes a second to lay out the details of the party, during which Hux plays his favorite game, stealing croutons until Phasma hits him. Today, he almost hits a new high score with twelve.
As they’re discussing how strange it is to drag a dozen children to a nice steakhouse, a voice in the back of the restaurant starts screaming. Practiced in dealing with this, they continue talking, tuning out shouts about broken sauces and wasted product. When the yelling stops, Phasma shoots him a look.
“And yet,” she says, “women are the emotional ones.” Her joke is punctuated by a sip of coffee, and she raises the cup in thanks before setting it on top of the window, just out of customer’s sight behind all the plates and containers.
A few minutes to open Rey comes out of the office, clipboard in hand, and posts on the cork board the section chart and side work assignments. As opener, Hux already knows that he’ll have tables one through five until the full staff is on, where he’ll go down to just the first three tables, all of them booths along the entrance wall. His side work will be butter and forks and he’ll have to roll thirty silver; just another Monday.
Heading back into the alley, Hux ties his apron and takes a deep breath, tapping his mantra on both hands before adding sugar to the tea, his last task before the doors unlock. It’s then, of course, that Ben Solo decides to stalk into the alley, a glare set so deeply in his face , Hux worries it may get stuck.
“Who’s serving the party?” Solo asks, voice devoid of inflection. It could be worse, Hux supposes. He could still be shouting.
“That would be a question for someone else,” Hux replies.
“Aren’t you lead server?”
“It’s a loose role,” he says, aiming for a joke, but either way Solo chooses to take the comment is fine. Technically, Hux took the title of Lead over from Sloan when she went to part-time. In reality, she was still doing most of the duties alongside him. Either way, assigning large parties was not the task of a server, lead or no.
“I have things to do,” Solo says, and Hux rolls his eyes.
“I’d suggest you go do them, then.”
And then, Hux is left in blissful silence, allowed to savor the last few moments of quiet.
At least, until a pot drops in the back, and the sound of Solo’s wordless shout echoes up into the dining room.
Six months ago, Hux’s quiet mornings were ruined when Han Solo hired his son as a line cook and keyed manager. Family business, or something. But for all that Solo had, in theory, worked at a Michelin star restaurant, there was much left to be desired from his workplace behavior. If one server told another the kitchen was having a rough morning, what they meant was stay clear of Ben Solo.
A semester and a half from graduating and leaving serving behind, Hux has tried his best to bear through the insufferable nature of Solo. He just counted down the days until he never had to see his stupid face and even stupider pants.
-
There are many things that should be illegal, Hux decides as he searches the computer for a way to add Malort to a martini. This drink is the first item on his list. Second on that list is the reason for his suffering this lovely Saturday morning.
Brunch is the worst trend to ever take hold of the restaurant industry. The idea of breaking fast at a slightly later time, and every white, middle-aged partron in the city simply lost their minds. Business owners saw it as a way to get butts in seats, and so they build breakfast menus using only the ingredients already on the order guide. Each one inevitably served a bastardization of egg’s Benedict which, no matter the cost of ingredients, was eighteen dollars.
As Hux goes rifling through the folds of his server book in search of a scrap of paper he can continue his list on, he pulls out a torn piece of ticket paper. He stares at is for a second before his heart stops. Held gently between index and thumb is the order for table seven, and he never sent it to the kitchen. Ten minutes ago he jotted down their food order, grabbed them a refill on their drinks, and got double sat, thus entirely forgetting the proper way to do his job.
“Fuck,” Hux mutters as he does his best to ring it in quickly.
The standard practice in this situation included marking the ticket ‘sell now,’ and, in extreme cases, informing the kitchen of the error to ensure the prompt sale of the food. With the capricious nature of line cooks, this could often involve groveling. And while Hux would never mind admitting his faults to Phasma, he desperately wants to avoid speaking to the face that greets him through the window.
“What the fuck do you want, Hux,” Solo snaps, looking back down to where he’s staging buns and setting sides on plates.
“I just rang in a pocket check,” he says. Doesn’t apologize, doesn’t do anything more than admit fault. In the moment, he takes a stand. Solo will not bully him as he does the other servers.
“And?”
Slowly, Hux taps his mantra on his left hand. With a deep breath, he makes a futile attempt to calm himself. The choice between peace and violence becomes more difficult to make. Rey is somewhere in the dining room sorting out a problem with a bill and Han is… In the dish pit? Phasma isn’t working tonight and Sloan is taking the order for the party.
Simply put, there’s no one in ear shot to stop Hux from bitching out Ben Solo.
“What do you mean, and? I forgot to put in an order, so I’m telling you the check is running long. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. Surely they made you read the procedures before they gave you a key.”
Solo laughs, shaking his head and stabbing into a baked potato, no doubt wishing it was Hux’s face. The feeling is mutual, his tapped rhythm doing nothing to quell his rage.
“Procedure states you put the order in on time, so you’ve already fucked that bit up.”
“And procedure states you’re supposed to manage, but you can’t seem to do that without property damage. Are we comparing how bad we are at our jobs, or are we serving food?”
As if he’s programmed to come at the worst time, Han returns to the window, pulling tickets from the printer and shooing Hux off with the promise that his pocket check will be fine. Hux keeps his comment about wishing a cool head was genetic out of his mouth, and Solo turns around to the flat top, ignoring both of them.
In the server alley, Rey gives him a sympathetic look.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” she says, and there’s no condescension in her voice
“No shit,” he tells her. It’s impossible, sometimes, how earnest she is. Hux’s only weapon against it is savagery, and Rey doesn’t deserve that, so he directs it elsewhere. “Solo’s collection of broken glassware is evidence enough of that.”
Behind them, Finn laughs, and then instantly tries to pretend he hadn’t been eavesdropping. They leave it at that, each of them returning to their jobs, and Hux grabs the war crime martini from the bar, dropping it off at eight before promising seven that he’ll “see what has the kitchen backed up.”
Hux knows it’s not the kitchen’s fault their food is taking so long, but since neither party will ever speak, he has no qualms about shifting blame. There are two types of servers: the ones who blame the kitchen for their own mistakes and the ones who are lying.
It’s a staged play, really. His lean into the window as he yells a joke to Mas on the grill, ignoring Solo entirely. An exaggerated nod, as if the answers to the universe were revealed to him, and then a conversation with Han where Hux scowls while talking about a wild question he got from a table earlier this morning.
Halfway through the bit, Han hands Hux one plate, and then another, and it occurs to him that Han may not know he’s in the play. So often, Rey is his point of contact for the kitchen, and they’ve perfected the art of face conversations while people stare at them.
“I don’t have time to run food,” Hux says, still holding the plates. “I have to check on my pocket check. I told them I was coming to talk to the kitchen, I have to make up some bullshit to tell them on the walk there.”
Han rolls his eyes, handing him another plate. Hux shifts one to balance on his forearm, grateful for the sleeves of his black button up for providing meager protection from the scalding ceramic.
“This is your pocket check,” Han tells him, tucking a pepper mill into Hux’s elbow. He’s sent from the window with a curt nod, makes a joke to his table about how crazy a coincidence it was. The table laughs and Hux walks away, promising to bring a refill of seat one’s beer and to check in after they’ve been able to eat a little.
Curious, he goes back to the computer and pulls up table seven’s check, only to find that the total ticket time was less than five minutes. All that complaining, and Solo got his food out in faster than some of it needed to cook. A well-done salmon on the fire takes eight minutes, a mid-well ribeye that thick should take almost ten. And yet, his table was eating their food.
All that shit, only for Ben to do what he asked. They both wasted energy and time on that argument, ruining the mood of what had been, up until that point, an incredibly pleasant shift.
Dumbass, Hux thinks as he grabs refills.
-
Running the window for a few minutes might truly be Hux’s least favorite thing about taking over lead from Sloan.
Normally, Rey and Han would take turns, each trading off as they put out various metaphorical and literal fires throughout the restaurant. When both were needed elsewhere, Hux would get drawn in for no longer than five minutes. It was timed using the check clock, and another server covered his tables as he called for hands out seven times a minutes and lined orders up for servers who didn’t appreciate it.
“I need the chicken pasta for table seventeen,” Hux says, leaning down through the window to see if Baz is plating it on sauté. He isn’t, so Hux turns his attention to Solo.
“You’ll get it when it’s done,” Solo snaps, wiping the rim of a plate and setting it in the window.
“The check is at twenty-seven minutes,” Hux points out, but Solo ignores him, turning his back to the window so he can grab burger buns off the flat top. “Solo, I need the pasta, the steak is cooking up in the window as we wait.” A 9oz filet is sitting right under the heat lamps, slowly going from rare to medium in an attempt to keep it warm. “That’s going to be an expensive steak to have the house buy if it’s not on temp.”
“I know the price of a fucking filet,” Solo replies, topping baked potatoes and continuing to not ask Baz for the chicken pasta. With one headphone in, there’s no chance he’d hear Hux, even if he screamed. “I also know the steak will be fine.”
“It won’t be in another minute,” Hux mutters, mostly to himself as he tries to get their second check in order. If the lead isn’t ready to sell, he’ll just have to get other food out of the window, and seventeen will have to wait.
“I’m selling fifty-seven,” he says, then, and all three plates are lined up, ready to go, when Solo reaches a hand out to stop the grilled salmon from leaving the window.
“That’s for a different table,” Solo grits between clenched teeth. “Forty-four.”
Looking down the line of checks, Hux does indeed find table forty-four, and they do have a grilled salmon.
“They’re fucking identical plates,” Hux snaps. “That’s five checks down the line, and it’s only been in for ten minutes.” He rips the plate from Solos grasp, handing it to Finn. “It could not matter less which one it gets sold for, idiot.”
“I have a system.”
Hux laughs
“You have a disorder, that’s different. God forbid someone not listen to your precious instructions and follow them to the letter.” He hands Finn a pepper mill and sends him off with all three plates, pulling the ticket and stabbing it on the spindle. “Now, is that chicken pasta ready, or am I going to have to try and convince table seventeen that their mid-well steak is a rare?”
The bowl clatters into the window, nearly falling off the edge as Hux flashes up a hand to catch it.
“Get the fuck out of my window,” Solo growls, and Hux rolls his eyes. “I’m not selling you anymore shit.”
It’s not an empty threat, Hux knows, but looking at the state of the window, he thinks he can get two more check out with just the plates under the lamps, and by then, Han will back from… whatever he was doing.
“Enjoy your tantrum,” Hux calls as Solo stalks off the line. The rest of the line watches him go before getting back to their jobs. Everyone is used to Solo’s attitude, but only the other cooks seem able to take it in stride. Most of the servers are hiding in the alley, looking at Hux like a man headed for the gallows. “I need hands,” he tells them, gesturing for them to put their phones away and do their jobs. Rose is the only one who has the decency to look embarrassed, so Hux hands her the first plate with a quiet, tired ‘thank you.’
As the last server walks away with food, Han comes back to the window.
“That was a dumpster fire,” Han tells him, pulling checks from the printer and hanging them at the end. He leans down, then, calling to pantry for the lead check and rearranging a few chits.
“Restaurants often feel like that,” Hux commiserates. Sometimes, it was a wonder they made it through every service.
“No,” Han says, “the dumpster was literally on fire. I think someone threw their cigarette in it, but I didn’t want to call the fire department midrush, so I hosed it down. I’ll have Rey check on it in a few minutes, make sure it’s really out.”
Briefly, Hux wonders when this became a normal sentence to hear. At what point did his life become so absurd. He hunts down Frey, gets an update on his tables, and gets back to doing his job.
In the waning hours of his shift, after the last of his tables have made their way out the door and before silverware has been run through dish and sorted, Hux stands out back. He stares at the warped lid of the dumpster, the plastic hangs limply off the back. When Hux looks closely enough, he can still see smoke trails in the lights of the parking lot.
Taking a drag from his cigarette, Hux wonders who would be stupid enough to throw one into the dumpster still lit. While he often has little confidence in his coworkers abilities, this strikes him more as a customer act. Someone nicotine deprived, full of food, and a little drunk, unable to see the logical conclusion from their actions.
“Idiots,” he mumbles to himself, and with one last pull, he’s putting out his cigarette against the wall of the building and dropping it into the five gallon bucket he put out back just for this purpose. Once a week, he changes out the sand, and his coworkers have stopped accidentally setting the inside trashcans on fire with their cigarette butts.
Behind him, the back door opens, and the milk crate by the door is kicked across the parking lot.
So, Hux thinks, Solo has joined him. In his head, the bell for round two dings.
“Go away,” Solo snaps, and Hux rolls his eyes. That had been the plan, but if he can annoy Solo, surely it was better to stay, stare up at the stars.
“I haven’t even started my cigarette,” Hux lies, pulling out his pack for another. He lights it, relishing in the way Solo’s face morphs as the smoke curls. “You don’t own the break room.”
“You must think you’re so great, with your impassive face and your bullshit.”
There’s a long list of replies, really. The honest one, that his composure is a carefully practiced mask. The snarky one, that maybe Solo should try being in control for once. The rude one, that he couldn’t angst about his parent’s divorce forever.
Instead, Hux takes another drag, wishing he hadn’t decided to smoke two cigarettes in a row and coughing a little.
“I do think that,” Hux replies, only feeling a little bit like he’s lying.
“Such a piece of shit,” Solo says, quiet enough that Hux knows it wasn’t meant for him to hear. Instead of ignoring it, which would undoubtedly be the proper thing to do, Hux starts laughing.
“You cut off your nose to spite your face, but I’m the villain,” Hux says, rolling his shoulders. “I’ve truly heard every stupid thing you can say, now.” The milk crate clatters against the wall of the restaurant, landing on its side, and Hux looks at Solo, raises an eyebrow. “Do you feel better now? Is that why you break so many things? Is this some aspect of being a man I have yet to experience, or are you just incapable of controlling yourself?”
Solo doesn’t answer, stalking past him and back inside the restaurant, leaving Hux as he was, cigarette loose between his fingers and alone with the stars. Hux takes one last drag and puts it out, hoping that Marin has finished running silverware. If he rolls his silver quickly enough, he’ll have time for a full six hours of sleep before he needs to start getting ready for his first class.
-
Once a month, the stars align for Hux to have a perfect evening. The line is double staffed, most of them working on various cleaning tasks during a lazy night. Phasma, for example, has a wire brush to the inside of her stand up, detailing the shelves. When he brought plates to dish earlier, Ap’Lek was using a pressure washer on the drying racks, and just outside the pit, Fyodor has the ice machine pulled apart, leaning inside to wipe the walls down.
Inventory is Hux’s favorite day of the month. A Wednesday night where the shift goes smoothly, food comes out at record speeds, and he gets handed fifty dollars out of the till to cover the time he stays after close counting every tea bag in the server alley.
By the hour before close, he’s the only server on the floor. His last table is debating dessert, a choice Hux would normally encourage. Today, he’s hoping they skip cake so he can cash out and get started.
Behind the bar, Dameron and Rey are passing an iPad back and forth as they take down the volume in each bottle of liquor. Han has no doubt already started pulling produce from the walk in to get weighed on the industrial scale. Solo is looking in the top of each table, taking note of their contents. Phasma hasn’t wrapped desserts just in case, but the fryer is filtered and off, the flat top and the grill are cleaned, and Baz is chipping away the carbon build up on the range.
They are, in essence, a perpetual motion machine waiting for the first push. Hux provides it as he takes the check and card off twenty-two, closes the bill, and comes by the window to give the kitchen the good news. Rey takes a second from her counts to cash Hux out, and then he pockets the cash she hands him and grabs a clipboard, making his way into the server alley.
Halfway through counting the bags of Earl Grey someone shouts from the back of the restaurant, followed by a slam of the back door. Hux knows what happened in the abstract, but as always he’s curious what caused Solo to snap this time. He’s better than a common gossip though, so he keeps going, finishes with the Earl Grey and moves on to the green tea.
When he looks up next, Han Solo is standing there, turning the key in the soda machine and getting himself a Sprite. There’s an overly casual air to him, the obvious mark of someone who’s trying to pretend nothing is wrong. Hux can spot it because he’s doing all the same things constantly; an over-loosening of the shoulders and too still hands, a near blank stare and arms hanging down at the exact same angle.
“Everything all right back there?” He’s going more for rote information about the state of the count than any juicy details. Despite his curiosity, he cares little about personal issues in the back of house, so long as Phasma is fine. “It’s a big walk in.”
“Ben’s just getting used to it, is all.” Hux doesn’t point out that Han hasn’t answered his question. “He’s been in restaurants all his life, but he’s never had much responsibility at them. It’s a big change; he’ll calm down.”
“Has your son ever been calm?” Hux asks idly, half his mind on the conversation and the other half on how many bags of peach green tea are shoved into a each caddy.
It takes a second for his brain to catch up with what his mouth said, and when Hux has processed that he all but called the boss’s kid a prick, his head snaps up. “I just- I mean-“
He’s going to be fired, Hux is certain. Five years building a reputation here, regulars who come back just for him and friends who’ll cover his back on a rough shift, all out the window because he was a tired and a little too loose with his lips.
Instead, Han laughs. Do bosses laugh, before they fire people? Hux has never been fired, so he wouldn’t know.
“He did,” Han replies. “He was actually a quiet kid, though I know it’s hard to imagine it, now. Shy, even. Weirdly, I’m just glad he’s learned to stand up for himself.” Han pauses, taking a sip of his Sprite. “He’s over corrected, sure, but give it a year, I think he’ll have leveled out.”
How unfortunate, Hux thinks, that he will have graduated before Solo reaches his stride. As nice as his time at the Millennium Falcon has been, Hux is excited to leave waiting tables behind and put his degree to work. A few firms in the area have seemed interested in hiring him, after he has his diploma, and soon after he walks the stage, Hux will put in his two weeks, say goodbye to his coworkers, and make empty promises to see most of them. Phasma, Sloan, and Mitaka, he will no doubt see. Everyone else? Hux doubts he’ll notice their absence in his life, save Solo, who’s loss Hux will savor.
Obviously done with idle chit chat, Han doesn’t even bother to segue way out of the conversation; he just leaves Hux alone with his thoughts and thirty-eight bags of raspberry herbal tea.
-
For some god awful reason the heat is on in the restaurant. It’s early August, the chill of winter is months away, but it was under fifty degrees outside yesterday and no one has changed the thermostat back. Ben would, but the second he does Rey will come out of the office, stand in the window, and tell him guests are complaining about how cold it is as she pulls her cardigan around her like a blanket. So instead, the entire line is suffering. Even in a black shirt, Ben can see the pool of sweat at the small of Ushar’s back as he stokes the fire of the grill. Twice now, he’s had Finn bring them a bucket of ice water, and they’ve all dipped towels in to hang on the back of their necks.
Down at pantry, even Phasma is sweating, though Ben knows she’ll never show that the heat is getting to her. When the person farthest from the literal fire is struggling, Ben decides that Rey can complain all she wants. He’s not having someone faint from heat exhaustion on the line.
The kitchen door swings behind him as he crouches down at the thermostat, trying to remember which one controls the back of the house. The first two, he just turns off. The sun climbs higher in the sky every second the restaurant is open, and by noon, the temperature is supposed to crest over seventy. The third he turns to cool, hoping to counteract some of the heat pouring off all the equipment.
“I’m not great with names,” a voice says from the server alley. “But I’m pretty sure yours isn’t Han Solo.”
Ben glares at Hux as he stands. The extra inch he has over the other never seems to bother Hux, which is a real shame. Ben’s used to being able to use his height to shut people up.
Hux is, of course, referring to the hand-written sign taped above all the thermostats that says “Do not touch unless your name is Han Solo.” It’s the same sort of thing he put on the thermostat at the house growing up. It lasted all of three minutes before his mom tore it down, laughing as she crumpled it and threw it in the trash.
“You’re more than welcome to call him and bother him on his day off,” Ben says. “I’m sure he’d love to hear about whatever other petty complaints you have while he’s running his errands.” He pauses, pushing his way into the alley to get something to drink. “Maybe you could just make him a list instead, though.”
“I don’t know what I expected from a child,” Hux mutters, and Ben decides not to point out how small their age gap is. It wouldn’t serve his point any, really. “When people start complaining that it’s cold in here, I’ll send them right up to your window, let them lodge their issue in a more formal manner.”
Ben laughs. He doesn’t mean to, doesn’t particularly want to give Hux the satisfaction of having made a joke successfully. Still, the idea of someone’s grandmother scolding him through the window, her ancient foundation melting in the heat lamps, it’s funny.
“You do that,” he replies. “Walk them right up there, but be careful not to jostle that stick up your ass too much.”
And Ben walks back into the kitchen, pleased to have gotten the last word. It’s a rarity in his arguments with Hux, and the victory tastes sweeter than the gross, southern tea he accidentally poured for himself instead of unsweet.
-
The clatter of dishes hitting the ground is the first thing Hux hears, and he turns to see a new hire standing in front of the pit, her hands empty and pile of plates shattered on the ground in front of her. The hand of the new dishwasher is obviously pulling away from her ass. There are things Hux should do, he knows, but all he can think to do is help the server step away. He doesn’t even remember her name, he’s not her trainer, but he takes her elbow and gets her behind him, turning around to check on her.
Then, there’s screaming.
When Hux rights himself the dishwasher is on the ground, Solo standing over him with a sauté pan help loosely between his fingers.
“Coming around hot,” Solo mutters, and it takes Hux a moment to put together what happened, looking from the pan to the quickly growing, circular red mark on the dishwasher’s face. Solo looks up at the server, setting the pan down. “Hux, if you could find someone to cover her tables for a few minutes, I have to find Han for the incident report and then call 9-1-1.” He spares a glance at the body on the floor, no longer screaming. Hux can see small bits of blood on the slip-resistant tile, cuts from porcelain shards along the floor he no doubt fell on.
For once, Hux is glad Solo has anger issues. There’s a first time for everything.
-
It’s not often that Ben experiences a first in a restaurant. In fact, it’s something he’d prefer never to do again, if these are the only firsts left.
In the office, Han is writing the incident report. It’s a formality, of course. Mark has been fired. He has third degree burns on his face and needs multiple rounds of stitches for the wounds he received from falling on broken plates. Ben doesn’t feel any remorse. Personally, he hopes Mark ends up disfigured, has to tell the world for the rest of his life why his face is a gnarled knot of scar tissue. Ben hopes his nose broke on impact.
His dad is furious, of course. He’ll sit through the shouting and nod at all the right times, promise to get his temper under control and not mention that the chef’s knife in his other hand was what he wanted to lash out with. That Mark’s lucky he wasn’t dealing with a stab wound to the stomach.
Trudgen took over his spot on the line after it happened so Ben could move to the dish pit. Han thought this would be a punishment, but loading racks and running them through the machine is meditative. Servers will push racks of glasses over to him and he’ll carry them out after they run through the machine, each time searching the dining room to make sure the new server is still doing okay. Han had offered to let her go home, but she’d decided to stay, to finish out her shift.
Ben’s not sure how he feels about that decision, so he’s glad it’s none of his business. He’ll make sure she gets to her car okay after they close, take the trash out at the same time, or something. Until then, he’ll run plates to the line, scrub sauté pans, sort ramekins.
When he turns around to grab a new rack, Hux is standing there with a plastic cup of water in his hand.
“It’s a little early to be asking for silverware,” Ben says, looking at his watch. “Dish is gonna be half an hour behind for the rest of the night, anyway.”
Instead of a reply, Hux holds out the water, and confused, Ben takes it.
“You did a good thing,” Hux says.
“I knew you pulled her out of range,” Ben replies. “I didn’t have to worry about hitting her, too. It was more instinct than anything else.”
“Still.”
“Sure.”
Standing there for a second, Ben tries to make sense of the moment. Feels condensation from the cup in his hand, hears servers stacking plates, the scraping of food into the trash can and the roaring of water in the dish machine.
With a small nod, Hux strides out of the dish pit, and Ben watches him go, taking a sip.
-
“Do you know how embarrassing it is every shift you have a fucking tantrum?” is the first thing Hux hears when he comes to the back of house for silverware. The rest of the line went home half an hour ago, and Fyodor got sick halfway through the shift, so Han and Solo had were left to finish it out. All night, Hux has caught snippets of their bickering as he’s dropped off plates and glasses. He’d taken the long way around, heading past the manager office and down the prep line so he could chug the half a Red Bull he had left.
Thankfully, he hasn’t turned the corner yet, still hidden by storage shelves and a reach in. He stands there, trying to decide how badly he wants to go home. There’s still silverware left to be rolled and he was the only server who didn’t have time to grab and polish silver during the tail end of service.
Still, to interrupt this fight? To put himself in the middle of his boss and his least favorite coworker?
There wasn’t enough money in the world. Besides, he wasn’t sleeping when he got home; his essay was due at 8 AM when his first class started. That made for plenty of time to edit, revise, and double check his citations. This late in his degree, essays were becoming increasingly laborious, each one more and more a scientific study than the act of putting fact on paper. His analysis of the St. Louis Arch wasn’t ground breaking, but it was solid in ways the Arch itself wasn’t.
“I’d imagine it’s as embarrassing as having your dad be the manager who texts when he should be working and regularly forgets to put in the produce order if someone isn’t holding his hand.”
Right. This is, despite his hopes, still a real situation, and not a nightmare.
“I was doing just fine before you deigned grace me with your presence here,” Han snaps, and Hux hears dishes slap, but not break. A gentler rage. Solo must get his energy from his mother, a side of Leia he never saw during his time working under her.
“You were limping along without mom here, and we both know it,” Solo says back, a rack of glasses shaking as it’s carried harshly and set down.
“Leave your mom out of this.”
“How can I, when it’s obvious you don’t leave her out of anything? Or are you still pretending that the divorce was a mutual affair? Because I was there, dad, and she fucking left you. Got tired of your bullshit and let the door slam on her way out.”
“And how long before I get tired of your bullshit and fire you?”
Solo laughs. The noise of a fist against stainless steel. Hux knows he should turn around, walk out of the kitchen and pretend he never heard any of this, but his feet won’t move.
“You’re more than welcome to.” A pause. “You can go back to closing this place, handling all the temp logs on your own, cleaning out the walk in every day looking for expired product, and never having a day off. You brought me here to make your life easier, dad. If I’m not doing that, why would you keep me?”
Non-slip shoes squeak in the water of the dish pit moving his way, and Hux flees. Keeps his steps light as he can make makes his way out into the dining room, sits at the table where Rey is waiting for him. She takes one look at his face and raises an eyebrow.
“Everything all right back there?”
Hux nods, too quickly, too sharply.
“They’re still working silverware,” he tells her. “I’m just going to have to wait a few minutes. It’s okay.”
She doesn’t believe him; her expression makes that much obvious. But Rey lets the matter drops, and Hux is grateful.
-
For once, Hux didn’t see the outburst, just catches Mitaka heading to the bathroom and follows him in there, locks the door. He runs a calming hand over Mitaka’s back and asks him to take deep breathes, shows him how to calm the redness on his skin with a cool paper towel. He finds Frey and drags her into the men’s room as they put concealer under Mitaka’s eyes and Hux promises that it’s only a matter of time before Han decides Solo is more trouble that he’s worth and fires him. Hux leaves out the details of the argument he overheard, but they’re still fresh in his mind.
“How awkward,” Hux says, “to be fired by your dad,” and Mitaka laughs, his eyes looking a little less bloodshot by the time the three of them leave the restroom. It never occurs to him to ask what Solo was yelling about. For two years, Mitaka’s hosted with little issue. He’s efficient, considerate of seating times and their effect on the kitchen in ways previous hosts never had been. In all their shifts together, Mitaka’s never made an error worth shouting about. A double seating every so often, but nothing life ruining.
The shift continues, as restaurants always do, and by the end of it, Hux can’t even tell Mitaka had been crying at the start.
Hux is a few minutes late taking his break, but he’s grateful for the time to light a cigarette and leans against the wall.
It’s calming to watch the smoke leave his lungs, to watch trails curl upwards into the sky and disappear. Each inhale reassures him his lungs still breath and his heart still beats. Despite everything, despite his worst fears, he still lives. There’s hope for the future in each exhale.
Hope is fickle, though, and so it’s ruined when the back door opens and Solo comes walking out with a stack of cardboard. Both their noses twitch in disgust, a mutual hatred between them strong enough that even good moments only manage to strengthen it, in the end.
“Stand any closer to the door and they’ll smell your cancer stick in the dining room,” Solo snaps, throwing the boxes in the baler and hitting start. The noise of the motor and the crushing cardboard is too loud to speak over, so Hux takes another pull, wonders if he blows enough smoke, he’ll disappear from Solo’s sight and be allowed his break in peace.
When the machine stops, Solo looks back to him.
“Each of those takes eleven minutes off you life,” he says as if that’s supposed to mean anything.
“I’ll have to work harder then,” Hux tells him. “If I chain smoke a pack, do they all blend together?” It’s a joke, Hux knows, but only sort of. Like most of his humor, it hangs on the barest edge of a real thought. He’s only a year past his suicidal ideation era, and now he’s moved into more subtle self-destruction. No more standing in fields during thunderstorms or walking on this ice, but he’s so anxious he vomits more than once a week and each pack of cigarettes feels like a cheap way out.
Soon, he’ll graduate, get a job with health insurance, and start dealing with his issues. For now, all he can do is survive.
“Besides,” Hux continues, “it’s not like you give a shit about any of us. I don’t know what you think Mitaka did, but it wasn’t worth making the kid cry. He’s better at his job than you’ll ever be at yours.” Mitaka would resent being called a kid, Hux knows, but he's just about to turn the corner on twenty-one and had the fresh face of a sixteen-year-old. He is, in effect, a child.
With a pause, Hux throws his cigarette into the sand bucket. Maybe it’s the nicotine, maybe it’s rage, but a confidence comes over him.
“We don’t just exist to be your punching bags, Solo. We’re people doing a job. Cogs in a capitalist machine, just trying to get by. Your bad day isn’t our problem. It’d be nice if you started remembering that.”
There’s no time for Solo to reply as he heads inside, and even though Ben has a key, Hux lets the door close all the way behind him to make him deal with the inconvenience.
-
Hux doesn’t like hiding in the server alley. It’s the move of either a server too novice or too jaded to do better, because there’s always something to be done and no reason to dawdle with their meager hourly wage. Even he does his best to get out as soon as possible, and he makes a slightly higher wage than the other servers so Rey can ask a little bit more of him.
The alley isn’t even a good place to watch the restaurant; the best angle to see the entire dining room and line is right where window stands; the only thing hidden is the bar section, placed behind the wine wall.
Still, he has no tables, and he’s only waiting a few more minutes for the servers scheduled in at 3PM to come in and set him free. His silverware is rolled, his side work is done. So of course Solo comes out of the kitchen in his moment of peace, stalking past the alley towards the host stand.
Something protective flares in him; it’s not an emotion he often experiences. Hux was raised to show no weakness, and it’s something he respects, in a twisted way. He’ll pay a therapist's second mortgage someday with the issues in his head, but for now, they’re useful, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and the urge to shield Mitaka from Solo’s rage this time is ruining his self-preservation instincts.
Hux forces himself to stay planted, keeps himself leaning on the shelf of to-go cups and boxes and listens. If he strains, he can hear the barest hint of conversation. A few steps, and the entire thing would become clear, but…
One foot moves, then the other, and then Hux is standing right around the corner. If Solo backed up, he’d see Hux, no doubt, and have some sharp comment about eavesdropping that meant nothing, all bark and no bite. But he stays, decides he’s sealed his fate either way. He might as well make sure Mitaka is okay.
“I’m… Sorry I was so harsh to you,” Solo says, and the words sound like they hurt, sound like they’re scraping against his esophagus as they come out, burning his tongue and fighting their way from between his lips. “It’s stressful, when all the tables get sat at the same time. It gives the kitchen a rush of orders that can be difficult to pace.”
“It’s all right, Ben,” Mitaka replies, the sweet, sweet summer child that he is. It’s not all right, Hux wants to scream. They're adults, and Solo can’t have a temper tantrum every time his work gets hard. They’re all in the same trenches, fighting the same war, and if he can’t get on board with that, he needs to get out.
A small part of him wonders if this is the start of something. Was Han right? Is Solo finally adjusting to the pressure of his responsibilities, to slowly become a better manager, a more pleasant face to have on the other side of the window?
It feels impossible, but more than anything, it feels cruel. Why should Solo get months to find his place? How many line cooks are hired and washed within weeks here, their temperament driving them out the door?
Solo doesn’t notice Hux as he heads back to the kitchen, but Hux glares at him all the same.
-
Often, when a large party is on the books, Hux is one of the two or three servers assigned to it. There’s a risk involved, as there always is with his line of work, but he’s become exceptional at handling them. As with so much of the job, it’s a balancing act, a group of people all pulling their weight and hoping to reap a hefty reward. Tonight, there was a twenty-two top sitting along the wine wall, tables pushed together and plates and silverware waiting for them when they piled into the lobby. Hux and Sloan took the drink orders while Frey got waters started, and in less than four minutes, every drink they could serve from the alley hit the table. Three after that, bar drinks were run and martinis poured from the shaker with table-side service.
At the head sat a stern, quiet man. Hux knew only three things about him, at this point. He was unhappy to be eating out, despite that he wanted his wife to have a good birthday, and he was covering the entirety of the check. So Hux, the three had decided, was going to schmooze the absolute shit out of this idiot. Nothing obvious, but it was Hux’s job to stand in the window and make sure his food was perfect.
A job that Ben fucking Solo was making incredibly difficult.
“That’s not mid-rare,” Hux all but screams, his jaw tense in a poor attempt to keep the volume down. “Put another steak down, hold the food in the window, and get me the right plate, because I’m not sending it out.”
“You can choose not send it out,” Solo says, “but that’s the plate he’s getting, so if you don’t run it, I guess he’s not eating.”
By his elbow, Sloan is watching the situation, eagle eyes darting back to table enough that Hux knows they’re getting impatient waiting. The ticket time is rolling over into twenty minutes, more than long enough to get all their food out on a lazy Monday, and yet, Hux is stuck here arguing about temperatures with Solo.
“We’re going to have to sell,” Sloan mutters. “I’m going to find Rey, she’ll talk to the table, but if we don’t sell now it’ll be worse.”
Sloan, unlike him, is a career server. She’s been waiting tables since he was still in diapers, starting at a train car diner and working her way to an open offer at half of the restaurants in town. She trained Hux, took him from an 16-year-old, recently kicked out and trying to graduate high school, to an exceptional server. Still, no matter how good Hux was at his job, Sloan would always be better. It wasn’t a matter of self-deprecation, wasn’t holdover gratitude from the months he slept on her couch, it was a matter of truth.
And so, Hux glares at Solo, promises to ream him out for it later, and barely hears Solo’s joke to someone on the line about a “spoiled rich boy not getting his way without daddies money.” From the look on her face, Sloan hears it too, goes to set her plates down in the window, but Hux refuses to have this table’s service disrupted any longer. They share a look as Hux puts the plate back in her hand, and sends them all off. He delivers the steak himself, sets it down and asks the table if everything looks okay. Takes a beat, walks away.
And then he comes back.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, “I believe there was a mix up in the window. Another table had an identical order, but with a mid-well steak, instead. I’ll absolutely get your plate taken off the bill for the trouble, but would you like me to get that steak out of your way and bring you the correct temperature?”
Just like that, Hux is walking back, making sure to take the plate by the window so Solo can watch him take it to dish. Rey is standing in the window as he comes back and leans down to look through.
“Sent it back for being over-done, just as I told you he would. Can I have the right steak, now?”
“Fuck off,” Solo bites, taking his apron off and tossing it on his board. “You can get your steak when I get back.”
This, Hux decides, is officially becoming a problem big enough he has to talk to Han about. To have the honest conversation about the fact that his son is officially putting server’s livelihoods at risk. If Hux weren’t willing to lie to anybody for any reason, that man would still be eating the wrong steak.
While Hux is grateful for the autograt of 18%, he’d rather make more, since this will be his only table of the night.
“I fucking hate him,” Hux mutters, leaning his head against the top of the window. “Vic, can you sell me this refire check?” He hands the red slip of the paper through the window, and after a second, he nods, looking at the steaks on the grill and pulling one off.
“You’re lucky, I have another one down the board I can use,” he says, turning portion bags of broccoli out onto the plate and scooping a new order of mashed potatoes. Before Solo can come back inside from his tantrum, Hux is setting the new plate on the table, apologizing again for the error and offering a dessert for the birthday girl. No one has to know it was the plan all along.
-
When their table is bussed and Hux finally has his cut card, grateful for a short shift so he can go home and study, he volunteers to take the trash out for another server. He’s not even sure who’s side work it is, but he’s got a plan, because Solo is dumping the glass bucket and Hux is feeling stupid.
“Careful, Ben,” Hux says as they almost run into each other at the door. They both know Hux should have moved, but he’s never been above petty behavior. “You know, you should really talk quieter if you’re talking out your ass. It would be less embarrassing for you.”
“What’s not true about it?” Solo asks. “Hair gel helmet and rigid posture, it’s obvious you think you’re better than the rest of us wagies. Destined for bigger and brighter. What, daddy make you get a job because he won’t buy your booze anymore?”
More than the feeling of skin on his knuckles, Hux hears the trash bag hitting the ground as he drops it, hears Solo’s nonslips scraping the asphalt as he stumbles back with a hand to his jaw. Watches with sick satisfaction as he ends up ass first on the ground, and maintains an air of cold indifference as he shakes the sting from his hand.
“If one of us is surviving on out parent’s privileged,” Hux bites, “it’s not me. The only reason you haven’t been fired is your father. Every morning, you wake up and look at a nepotism baby in the mirror. When was the last time you earned something on your own?” He picks up the trash bag from the ground, swinging it over his shoulder. “If you keep screaming at people, you’re going to find you run into more and more people willing to fight back. How tired will you be, then?”
Hux leaves Solo on the ground, wondering vaguely if he’ll have a job in the morning. Perhaps Solo will be too emasculated to say anything, will explain away the bruise and the blood.
For once, Hux doesn’t really care. If nothing else, he got to take out the trash before he left.
-
Laying on the asphalt of the parking lot, Ben takes a moment to take inventory of his body. His face aches, his tail bone is sore from stopping his fall, and in his chest, there’s a tightness he can’t place, a feeling for which he has no name. It’s not anger, not the familiar bitterness in the back of his throat, not the heat at his collar or the shake in his hands. Something else is afoot, Ben knows, a softer feeling he hasn’t felt in years.
He stays on the ground and looks up. The starry sky is mirrored in his scattered thoughts, and it takes a moment for Ben to place the constellation of ideas.
“Fuck,” he mutters as he does, puts the pieces together and remembers the meaning of the emotion tucked somewhere between his rib cage and his lungs. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He goes back inside, cleans up his station, and tries to rationalize the situation. Instead of denying it, Ben tries to track how this came to be, plots moments and scenes from now to the start, when he walked into his dad’s restaurant for the first time as an employee and introduced himself to a server with more freckles than there were galaxies.
It’s true, he decides. Can see the logical progression of first impressions to fights, but the bruise blooming along his jaw proves there will be no easy path to victory.
At the end of the line, Phasma is staring at him, her brows furrowed as she wipes down the lid of her table. He ignores her, collects empty pans to take back to dish instead.
Ben has a list of questions, but he knows the answer to some of them, thankfully, as he watches a head of red hair move around the restaurant.