Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Of Textbooks and Temptations ❯ Not Quite a Celebrity Sighting ( Chapter 4 )

Disclaimer: GW is not mine. We all know.

Warnings: AU, Quatre's POV, language, yaoi, lots of restaurant jargon, humor, college angst

Pairings (so far): Walkerx2, 13x5, RxD, 4+3, 2+1

Beta: Harmonie Des Anges

A/N: Remember that perspectives alternate between Duo and Quatre. Odds are Duo, evens are Quatre. This is based on UCF and my experiences working at Ruby Tuesday. Gratuitous notes to follow. I'm really going to try to work harder on updating, now. I've finally got the time and whatnot, so I should be posting more often... I hope. Please let me know what you think.

Of Textbooks and Temptations
By Solanum Dulcamara

Chapter 4: Not Quite a Celebrity Sighting

Boring. Boring. BORING! Is this shift ever going to end? Closing bar is tedious... especially considering the only people who sit at a bar, in a restaurant, in the mall, on a Monday night are losers. I mean; it's easy enough because all I really have to do is tap shitty American beer, otherwise known as brewed cat piss, and listen to the customers... I mean "guests." That's why these people are here, after all; they want to listen to their own voices, so I'm the victim in their ego-fest. All I have to do is prompt with a few open-ended questions, and they're off, running at the mouth for a half hour or the rest of the night. The tips are usually good, more so if I do a lot of smiling and nodding. Well, shit. I need to re-ice the beer bath.(1) I wonder if Duo will do it for me... he should be clocking in soon.

Speak of the devil. Here he comes, queening with Justin (our resident flamer), and wonder of wonders, he's pushing the ice bucket. "You do love me," I coo across service bar. (2)

"Only when you're behaving yourself," he smirks. He's so cute when he's sassy. I'd fuck him if we weren't such good friends. Good friends= fuck buddies, right? Wrong. See, I actually care about Duo, so he's not joining the ranks of the anonymous and forgettable. Like the doll he is, he comes behind the bar to help me pour the ice. Neither of us is what you'd call advanced in the height department, so the fucking tub comes up to our armpits. (3) We can both do it alone, but it's just easier with two. Justin, with all his 5'10"-ness, leaves us to it calling, "Let Charles and me know about later." I just wish they'd let it go.

Duo looks at me with a raised eyebrow as he slips the bucket back onto its wheels. I sigh, not really wanting to elaborate on Justin's comment, but feeling obligated to do so. "Charles and Justin want me to go to Southern with them after work." (4)

As expected, my roommate frowns. "But it's Monday. It's not even college night. It'll probably be dead."

"I know. Problem is, I'm actually thinking of going with them... unless you have something better we could do." I give him my best pleading "help-me-I-need-an-excuse" look, but to my dismay, he's rolling the bucket around nervously. Damn. He's already got plans. "So, where will you be this evening?"

His face wrinkles in a rather unflattering grimace. "I'm... um... gonna talk to Walker tonight."

I'm dumbfounded, amazed, fucking speechless. Duo's finally getting rid of the ball and chain! If I believed in a god, I'd be praising him/her/it right now. My heathen self will settle instead for a gratuitous hug of my best friend. Feeling the tension in his body, I offer some trite words of encouragement (not my strong suit), "Good luck."

"Thanks. I'll need it." He straightens and starts pushing the bucket into the kitchen. This calls for a celebration! I spot Charles sauntering out to greet a table. He models and waits tables part-time, and is, therefore, incapable of simply walking. "Count me in for tonight, Charlez," I call.

"Awesome! Meet at our place, Q-muff." I'm going to kill Duo for that nickname.

After Duo's grand announcement and my RSVP, the minutes bloody drag by. At least it's 80s night, so the Musak's not bad. (5) I think I must have been lulled into a stupor by the rhythm of washing glasses, because the next thing I know Duo is in front of me stage whispering, "You've got to see what's at 304!!" (6)

"What," he says, not "who." He's right. I've got to see this. I turn, in a fit of responsibility, and look at my currently empty bar and can practically see a goddamn tumbleweed roll through. Yeah, no one's going to miss me if I step out for a few. We scurry over to the twos and threes and I peer over at 304 while Duo tries to stifle giggles. Wow... this guy is really something. He's got waist length weave and is sporting the most obviously fake tan I have ever seen. His ensemble just might be worse: a lime green vest with buttons the size of silver dollars over a purple turtleneck, tucked into blue glittery pants over massive platforms... and are those red Lee press-ons?! "Oh my god! It's Milli Vanilla." This comment just sends Duo into a new round of giggles, after which, he sings "Blame It on the Rain." My turn to laugh. Dammit. Now that song's going to be stuck in my head. (7)

Sure enough, Duo and I spend the rest of the night serenading each other and doing the not-so-dirty bump and grind in my deserted bar.

Out of sheer boredom, I end up helping Duo close down his station. You know you're bored when you voluntarily bissell to pass the time. (8) Just as I hand him the refill caddy, a new song starts playing. We both freeze at the opening lyrics to "Blame It on the Rain," before dissolving into laughter. "You've got to be shitting me," he wheezes, leaning over the now infamous 304 for support. I'm laughing too hard to comment. It takes awhile, but we eventually manage to pull ourselves together enough to finish cleaning and restocking his tables. It's been a weird shift.

"Do you have Sparkle?" I ask as I stow the bissell in its cubby. (9)

"Did it already. Lamps." Tedious. Bleh. I'm glad bar has less Sparkle.

He follows me to the bar and perches on a stool to count out. (10) I leave him to his server report for awhile, busying myself with wiping down the beer taps. I can't abide the silence for long, however, and have to ask, "Are you really going to give Walker the pink slip?"

He looks up from the cash he's counting, obviously nonplussed, before answering, "First, to answer your question, sort of , yes. Second, there's no pink slip involved. We're just breaking up."

"Same thing. You chose him according to a set of credentials, but found he didn't fulfill the requirements of the position."

"Well, when you put it that way..."

"He's fired." He gives me this look that's somewhere between exasperated and amused, and goes back to counting.

Assuming he's not in the mood to talk, I move on to wiping under the grates at service bar. (11) So it should be no surprise that when he suddenly speaks I nearly knock a grate clear over the counter. "So, what's your music appreciation teacher like?"

I blink at him. I hate it when he catches me off-guard (and have a running suspicion that he does it on purpose), and use the time it takes to replace the grate to gather my thoughts. "Tall... like 6'2"-ish. Medium brown hair in one of those mod geometric cuts. Really vibrant green eyes. Thin, but not too, and leanly muscled..."

"Yeah," he interrupts, "but what's he like?"

"I want to play with him."

"That's Quatre for you."

"Duo! For the love of- Get your mind out of the gutter."

"If it weren't for the gutter my mind would be homeless... and so would yours for that matter." (12)

"We really need to get you laid. I meant play instruments... ensemble."

"Why?"

I shrug. I don't fully understand it myself, really. So, it's difficult to explain. But for Duo, I'll try, "He's more than just a hot body and a pretty face. At least, I think he is. So far, it seems he not only has a brain, but a creative and intriguing mind as well. But I don't think I'll ever really know him, until I've played with him. Although, a little of the other sort of playing wouldn't bother me a bit."

He shakes his head. "You sounded serious, at first, and for a second there, I was worried about pod people." (13)

"And well you should. If this were a cheesy, horror, B-flick, you'd be next. The queers never live." And thus, any somber mood is broken, and I can return to sarcastic apathy, hiding deeper thoughts for a time I'll be alone.

Duo disappears into the back to cash out. There are no customers, it's five till close, and the kitchen boys are already shutting down the salad bar. I suppose I could close shop, too. Wiping down. Mopping up. Tedious (is that the word of the night?). But it gets the bills paid.

After the manual labor (eww: dishpan hands), I eject my drawer, grab my tip basket, and head for the office. Beth, closing manager of the night, is on a personal call, as usual. She waves vaguely for me to do my own count out, once again as usual. I do the little "check, double check" and get her to sign the calculator slip. (14) Ah, freedom! Now to clock out and head home, so I can slut up for a night of clubbing to celebrate Duo's liberation.

TBC


1. Beer bath: a large tub filled with a variety of bottled beer, which has to be re-iced periodically as the ice melts.
2. Service bar: the area to the side or back of a bar in a restaurant where the servers pick up the drink orders for their tables.
3. Relative to the beer bath I worked with, this would make Quatre and Duo somewhere in the neighborhood of 5'5" give or take. I know because that's where the bath came to on me. >_<
4. Southern Nights (or just Southern as the natives affectionately call it) is one of the better gay clubs in Orlando.
5. Musak: the radio stations assigned to corporate places like restaurants, stores, etc. They aren't regular radio stations, but they do have themes like "80s," "country," "hit list," and so on.
6. Restaurant tables are numbered according to section for seating organization purposes. In this case, each row of tables is in hundred increments, so twos refer to tables designated 200 something.
7. From beginning to end, the "Milli Vanilla" event actually occurred. Justin and I just about died. In case you don't know, it's referencing the 80s poseur group Milli Vanilli, whose one (fake) hit was "Blame It on the Rain."
8. Bissell: a tool for cleaning carpet. You roll it over the floor and it (hopefully) picks up the crumbs and other stuff. They are usually broken from mistreatment or shoddy to begin with.
9. Sparkle: extra chores around the restaurant specified by the day of the week. By lamps, Duo means the giant Tiffany lamps that hang over every table in the restaurant. And the bar, actually does have less sparkle than the servers (but it is just one person verses an entire floor).
10. At the end of a shift, servers print up a server report which tracks all of their sales and the like and count out the money in their apron to pay the cash sales to the manager on duty.
11. The grates are where drinks are actually made, so that spills seep through instead of puddling on the bar. You still have to clean under them, though.
12. For Shiji!
13. For HDA
14. Cashing out for bar is slightly more complicated because you have a cash drawer to deal with. You have to make sure that the amount of money that was in the drawer at the beginning of your shift plus the amount of cash sales according to your server report equals the amount of money currently in the drawer.