tie your napkin round your neck cherie

[iampretty]

WHO: Hans & Ruka
WHERE: ....the Hard Rock Cafe
WHEN: Feb 17th, sometime between 9 to 5.
WHAT: two imports with shitty service jobs bitch about their shitty service jobs
WARNINGS: copious whining?

Hans had only worked at the Hard Rock Cafe for three days now but he absolutely hated it. What were hot wings? What was the difference between a Coke and a Pepsi? Who was Jimi Hendrix and what made his guitar so special? Everybody at the restaurant was helpful for answering his questions, but Hans knew that he was getting on their nerves with all their questions. Besides, he was a prince, soon to be a king. He had people to do this for him! The idea of having to wait on people and bring them new hamburgers even though he knew that she hadn't mentioned she didn't want ketchup on it was absolutely degrading.

So, it was just after the lunch rush that Hans found himself waiting on a table. Thankfully, there was only one girl there and her hair was an odd shade of green. He forced himself to smile and be peppy as he walked over towards Ruka.

"Hello! I'm Hans and-" wait, oh drat, what was the rest "-and I'll be your server today?" He couldn't help the questioning tone in his voice, as he wondered if he managed to get the greeting right.

Comments

[dragony]

Holiday had meant no school, but not no work; the salon had been extraordinarily busy to counter it, and Ruka had wound up starting earlier, leaving later, and a great deal more miserable than usual. Her hands were still pruned from so much time spent washing each new patron's hair before the cut, and every conversation would up turning back to her looks, her appearance.

If she had to say "it's naturally this color" one more time today, she was going to rip someone else's hair out. But it was over, she was starving, this place had been on the way "home"—she wasn't expecting much, but at least the service seemed timely...

Maybe?

Ruka had only been half-listening to his introduction, but when the tone shifted to a question, she lowered the menu to glance up, a question tugging her one visible eyebrow. The other—along with the eye it would rest above—were hidden beneath a red eye patch.

"... Will you?" she asked in return, uncertain as to the source of his uncertainty.

[iampretty]

"...yes, I will. I will take your order." Hans smiled weakly as she looked at him. The girl's eyepatch certainly took him aback, but he was able to keep his composure. He nodded, as if to convince her that he knew what he was doing.

He didn't. Even while wearing a Hard Rock Cafe polo shirt and apron with a perky nametag affixed, Hans didn't really look like someone who was a waiter. His hair was too neat, his stance was too strong, and his nervousness too palpable.

"It's my first week here," Hans remarked, as if giving her an explanation-which he felt she deserved. After all, none of the other waiters were this incompetent. "And I haven't ever done anything like...this before."

[dragony]

He didn't fit the role at all; she could tell that much, getting a better look at him. Hans didn't have the build of the skinny college student that often got roped into positions like this, and his hair style certainly wasn't local.

(Secretly, she hated that she was already starting to be able to tell which hair cuts belonged to this area, and which did not.)

With a slight narrowing of her eye, Ruka's head tilted to one side, leveling Hans with a look so analytical it may well be peeling back the skin on his face to find what lay beneath.

"You're new," she said, the word weighted for something more than at the Hard Rock Cafe. It didn't sound much like a question, either. Then, satisfied with her own deduction, Ruka's expression relaxed, the stare dialing down to a normal gaze.

Deliberately, she looked at his hands. At his wrist, where she thinks his tattoo might be lurking.

A little softer—both in volume, and in tone, something sotto with camaraderie—she added, "isn't that right?"

[iampretty]

Hans brightly smiled, trying to seem simply incompetent. However, as Ruka spoke, Hans got the inflection behind her words. New to this world, not just new to the Hard Rock Cafe.

"I am," he responded, lightly touching where his tattoo was with his free hand. "Are you new as well?"

He's putting just as much weight on 'new' as she did when she spoke. Inwardly, he hoped she was. He'd prefer a kindred spirit over someone who just wanted to give him sympathy for being ripped from his world.

[dragony]

A nod first, confirmation, and her lips tugged back in a weak approximation of a smile. "Yeah, about a month ago."

It was strange to think it had been so long already, but the calendars had matched up, as had the day cycles (and that, she thought, had been strange enough). Anniversaries were piling up on her, and the more she considered them, the more miserable the passing dates seemed.

No matter. This Hans character (what was that, short for handsome? It wasn't often that imPorts arrived looking this attractive and this in-her-age-bracket (not that she was looking (definitely not (she wasn't looking to get anyone gutted and left for the sharks either)))) was definitely not getting paid enough to stand around while she moped about.

Instead, her grimace was for sympathy. "Rough job placement," she added. Honestly, it seemed like they were being dropped carelessly into whatever vacant jobs nobody in their right mind would want to take.

[iampretty]

Hans smiles slightly at her words. After a day of serving people and multiple complaints about his complete failure at being a waiter, it was nice to meet someone who could understand what he was going through without him giving a massive, long, explanation.

He couldn't help but chuckle slightly at her grimace. Rough job placement was an understatement. "I know absolutely nothing about how all of this works," Hans replied, gesturing at the restaurant itself. From the service industry to the music icons lining the wall of the cafe, Hans was equally clueless and befuddled. "And really, I never expected to be working something so menial in the first place."

Harsh? Absolutely. But he had already hated this place and hated the cafe.

[dragony]

That at least she could sympathize with. It was one thing to be fetching coffee or sorting paperwork for the Mayor, but this sort of work... Ruka didn't much like working at the salon, either, but at least that was better than being a waiter.

Although, if he was as clueless as he claimed—

"You know that," she interjected, sitting up a little straighter, her voice a touch quieter to keep from being overheard, "the money left on the table after your customers leave is for you, right?"

[iampretty]

Hans couldn't help but smile at that, nodding at Ruka.

"They have told me that. Thankfully, my fellow waiters haven't left me entirely out in the cold." Just mostly.

[dragony]

"Small mercies, then." With a small measure of relief, she relaxed back into her seat, hands fussing to straighten the menu on the table. Knowing how bad some customers can be, especially about tipping, it was good to hear that he wasn't being swindled outright.

"Though, I should probably order something, yeah?" Her smile looked easy, comforting, though it did not spring unbidden to her face. "I'm sure you have other people to take care of."

[iampretty]

Hans looked around. The restaurant wasn't as crowded as it had been. And really, he knew nothing about the restaurant industry and assumed they wouldn't have problems with him just taking a break here, talking with someone here and now.

"You can order something if you want," he responded, shrugging slightly. "Or, we can continue to talk. Whatever works best for you."

[dragony]

It was nice to just talk to someone that wasn't... weird, but Ruka had come here for a reason.

"Maybe a coffee first, I think—if you'll be my server today, then we can pick up when you get back. They do make coffee here, right?" She added, attention diverted back to flipping over the menu. She hadn't had much time to look, but more than that—"Is it the instant stuff? How bad will I regret picking that, do you think?"

Because of course Hans knows anything about coffee.

[iampretty]

"They do!" Hans responded, happy. He remembered that! But...that was all he knew about coffee. He had no idea if it was instant, what made a coffee 'black,' things like that. So, at Ruka's question, his face fell slightly. Pausing for a moment, he responded, with a weak smile.

"...I really don't know. I like it, at least?"

[dragony]

Her mouth pulled a little at the corners—less at Hans' admittance of ignorance, but that the corollary meant she didn't know if it would be, or not. He seemed nice enough, but if he couldn't tell the difference, then she clearly couldn't trust his sense of taste.

"Just water, then, for now," she decided, turning her attention back to Hans with a practiced smile. "I'll have the rest figured out soon enough."

[iampretty]

"Water it is," Hans remarked, nodding at Ruka. "I'll be right back!"

And with that, he headed back to the kitchen, to pour her a glass of water. While he was there, he took time to ask about the coffee (was it any good? what places had better coffee? And so on and so forth.) After a minute or two of crowdsourcing coffee opinions from his fellow waitstaff, Hans returned to the table, setting down a glass of water in front of Ruka.

"There you go. Have you decided if you're going to order anything yet or not?"

wow i thought i replied to this already w2g self

[dragony]

"Mm," she hummed in the affirmative, taking the glass in a delicate grip flush to the base—where the dish would be handled the absolute least. (Restaurants were always tricky business for a tactile empath.) At least straws were wrapped in paper, and never handled in their basic state, so the act of drinking itself was not quite so tenuous. Of course, to someone with no idea, noticing grip of the glass would lead only to how odd, at the most.

With no further preamble than a sip of her water, Ruka tapped one of the specialty burgers listed on the menu, echoing the name, before rolling into a chain of specifications that sounded longer than the menu itself. Medium-well this, grilled this, raw that, extra here, exceedingly light there, leave off that other thing entirely unless it comes from—is she still speaking English, at this point? Maybe it's Urdu. Or Portuguese. Do people still speak Aramaic? Maybe it's that one.

"—and dressing on the side, of the salad."

The shifting of ice sinking in the glass cut through the pause, but at least when Ruka looked up to meet his eye, her expression was apologetic. "... Did you get any of that?"

a+ job

[iampretty]

As she pointed out the burger, Hans nodded...then realized that wait, he had a notepad, he should take this down. By the time he had found where that notepad was and had started jotting down her order, he was hopelessly lost. Wait, which vegetable did she want raw? And she wanted extra what? And he hadn't even heard of that salad dressing before, was she making something up?

Thankfully, Ruka gives him an apologetic look, so Hans at least feels a bit better. He fixes her with a look equally apologetic. "I know you want a burger and a salad," he says, with a weak little smile. "But really...I didn't get the rest. Can you say it again?"