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.

He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. "Movies don't really move. They're just pictures, just lots and lots of pictures, all of them still. none of them moving, just frozen moments."

A few seconds passed. No reaction from her, so she probably didn't hear him. He opened his eyes and saw her staring at him, face expressionless. They stared at each other for many, many more seconds. Then she turned away, staring at her blank phone screen.

"Way to be philosophical. You want a prize for that?"

Holden nearly fell off his stool.

She rolled her eyes. "Sit much?"

Outside of a few select greetings and the phrases "thank you" and "order's up" and "you're welcome", he had never really talked to her. Although they both worked the same times on the same days - ten to three every day of the week except weekends and Wednesdays - neither of them saw the need to get acquainted. At first, Holden thought maybe she was racist, which was why she didn't want to talk to him. That wasn't the case, since she had walked in with a Black Lives Matter pin once. Maybe she just liked peace and quiet. That was fine. Maybe she didn't want to befriend him. That was fine too.

"I thought you were listening to music."

She took out her earbuds, wrapping the white wires around her phone. "My phone died ten minutes ago, and I left my charger at home, and you don't have an Apple phone so I couldn't ask you for one."

"You were just pretending to listen to music?"

"I don't have homework, I don't read books, and we don't talk. What else was I supposed to do?" She looked up at him. "If you always talk to yourself, I guess I don't talk to you for good reason, since you're probably insane."

"I was seeing if you were actually listening to anything."

"Well, Einstein, guess what, I wasn't." She yawned, the corner of her eyes growing wet with tears. She wipes away her tears with her arm. "I'm so tired. The minute I get home, I'll just lay down on the couch and doze off."

"Same though." He leaned back and stared up at blinding lights. "You could sleep here, you know. I'd wake you up."

"It's literally two in the morning. By the time our shift was over, you'd be too tired and forget to wake me up and lock up and leave me here."

"I would not do that."

"Right." She looked down at her black screen, sounding like she didn't believe him, like she was speaking from experience.

"Wait, did that actually-"

"I snore anyway, so you'd be annoyed."

"Maybe I'll listen to music." He hadn't intended it to be that funny, but she snorted, a grin growing on her face as if he had genuinely been funny. She looked cuted somehow. "I mean, I might as well. I don't have anything else to do. No classwork or anything."

"Oh, right, you're actually productive during our downtime while I listen to music." She ran a hand through her hair, a bob that barely reached her shoulders with a pale blue streak on the right side. "Okay, unrelated question, but what shift did you have before this? I doubt you'd stay up this late if you had a choice."

"Before this, I usually had the six to nine, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday." He yawned.

"Cool. Ever since I started uni, I've been working here seven to eleven on weekends and Tuesdays and Thursdays, pretty much without break. Unfortunately, this semester I unfortunately got stuck with a morning class and had to change my shift."

Wait. She had been working here longer than seven weeks? He thought she was new. "If you worked seven to eleven, we would've had overlap on Sunday, right?"

"I meant seven to eleven in the morning."

"You purposely work in the morning?"

"I'm not a morning person, but having a job in the morning made sure I was up, and by the time I had class, it ensured I was awake."

"That makes sense, actually. I usually always end up with a morning class, though, so it doesn't really matter." Holden then thought back to what she said earlier. "If you've worked here for so long, how are you not a manager yet?"

"I was the manager. Then I changed shifts, and they didn't need a manager."

"Oh, so you got downgraded to chef?"

"Yeah, sort of, but money's money, right? Next semester I'm going back to the morning shift."

"Wow. Next semester I'm still stuck with this shift. I might ask and see if I could be chef."

She laughed. "Have fun, with both this shift and being chef. I worked as chef for a year and a half, and it's not the funnest thing."

"Well, there's hardly customers during the night shift anyway."

"I do do less cooking now than I did before. That's actually pretty smart, Holden." He almost fell off the stool again. She laughed, the sound echoing in the empty kitchen. "Why do you act like a toddler?"

"How do you know my name?"

"We've been coworkers for the past seven weeks. I think I would know my coworker's name." She unwrapped her earbud wire from her iPhone, then wrapped it again. "You don't know mine, do you?"

"No."

"That's hilarious. Try guessing my name."

Holden thought back to seven weeks ago, when the night manager - their name was Verena, Holden was 99% sure - introduced him to her. He remembered thinking that she was cute, but he cannot remember what her name actually was. "Riley?" he guessed.

"Nope."

"Naomi?"

"Whose name is actually Naomi?"

"My roommate's girlfriend."

"You think I share a name with your roommate's girlfriend."

Holden thought harder. "Peyton."

"Wow, you're bad at this."

"What is it?"

"Sloane."

"Sloane?" Holden frowned, thinking back to what Verena said when Sloane first started working here. "That does not sound familiar." Sloane laughed. "It's been nice working with you so far, though."

"Hey, what's your major?"

"Social work and theatre."

"Double majoring?" Sloane raised an eyebrow. "That's impressive. I can barely one major."

"What's yours?"

"Physics. It's always been interesting to me, but some of my professors are sexist. I guess that's what I signed up for, huh?" Before Holden could think of a response, Sloane pushed herself off the ground and walked across the kitchen to the fridge. She began rummaging around. "Hey, you want some food? We do get a free meal, technically."

"If you're offering."

"I am." She took out a few materials and placed it on a nearby counter.

"Are you even a good cook?"

"I do have to serve edible food that won't kill people, so yeah." She turned and gave him a look. "What about you? Are you even a good cook?"

Holden winced. "I did give a date of mine food poisoning once. I didn't know the milk was expired."

Sloane shut the fridge and held the handle for support as she burst into laughter. "You can tell milk is expired when you use it!"

"My roommate did that part of the baking!"

"Oh my God." She wiped tears from her eyes. "Was that even your worst date?"

Holden preferred not to answer that question. He went on dates fairly often, and some of them, most of them, had gone wrong. Especially two semesters ago, when one of his dates ended up with the other in the hospital with a broken arm and another of his dated ended with the two being mugged in the city. Therefore he had sworn not go on dates last semester, but then there was the carefree person who played the lead in the musical that had no right to be that good at singing, and the attractive woman who lived in the same building as him that was constantly helping him carry his groceries, and the quiet man who worked at the movie theatre that had the same taste in movies as him, and the-

Well, Holden found a lot of people attractive.

"You must be cursed."

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"I was just kidding."

"Well, the truth hurts the most, I guess."

Sloane turned on the grill and put her hand over it in case it was immediately hot for some reason. "That sucks. I think my worst date was when I spilled apple juice over the two of us, but then again I've only been on, like, ten dates, total."

"No relationships?"

"One. Seven of my dates were with a girl I knew in high school. She was nice, but then some stuff happened. Her depression relapsed hard, and it just got to the point where she couldn't handle having a girlfriend and didn't want to treat me as an afterthought. We're still friends though."

"Oh."

"Yeah. She eventually got together with this other guy, and he's really cool, and they're a lot better together than she and I were. It's not like we loved each other or anything. It was mostly lust. I'm glad she found somebody." Sloane put the beef on the grill and grabbed a spatula. A pop of oil. Sizzle. "You want a burger?"

He went to search for the sliced tomatoes. "Can you grill my tomatoes?"

"Sure." She put another slab of beef on the grill. Sizzle. "By the way, you were quoting Doctor Who earlier, weren't you?"

Holden grinned. She was cute and cool. "I might have."

She chuckled. "Look, I guess you aren't so terrible if you watch Doctor Who. You want to watch an episode while we eat?"

"I think I have an episode or two on my phone." Holden jumped off the stool and went to find his phone in his bag. When he found, he started looking for any episode he might have downloaded.

"What kind of phone do you have?"

"A Windows phone."

Sloane nearly dropped the spatula. "That's a sin. Do you seriously have a Windows phone?"

"Yes? It's just a phone."

"It's a Windows phone. It's so... random."

"That is my middle name. My full name is Holden Random Zachary."

She flipped the burgers over. "No, no, Windows phone are actually the worst. It's worse than random. You'd have to be intentionally random. A flip phone is more justified than that."

"Why do you hate Windows phone so much? It works."

"You realize they discontinued Windows phones? By 2020, the phone'll stop getting updates. Why haven't you just gotten a new phone yet?"

For some reason, that question offended him, and he shouted too loudly for his own comfort, "I'm a broke college student!" Why was his voice so loud?

"Get your parents to get you one! I'm sure your parents have the money to buy you a phone! Oh my God, you literally have an outdated phone. You could sell that for a fortune in ten years."

"You can play rock, paper, scissors with Cortana," he said, as though it would justify it. It didn't.

"Oh my God. I can't believe you. You aren't cool anymore. This is insane. I can't be your coworker anymore. I'm changing shifts."

"Sure. Whatever you say."

"I... I'm horrified. I'm pretty sure I put my iPad in my bag before I left, so let's watch something on that, like a sane human being."

Holden opened his mouth for a comeback but found himself yawning. "You know, our shifts are over in like twenty minutes. I'll take a nap and take the burger home."

"Sure." Sloane gestured to the expanse of the kitchen. "Take a nap anywhere. I won't guarantee I won't step on you."

"Okay." Holden put his phone away and laid down in the space next to his backpack. "Remind me to tell you the story of a date I had where it ended with me with a sprained ankle and my date threw up all over me."

"Yeah, I'm never going on a date with you. All your dates sound horrible."

"Not all my dates." Holden yawned and closed his eyes, putting his arm over his eyes to block out the light. "Some of them go well. Those are the ones where the other person wants a second date. Usually nothing bad happens at movie theatres, so that's a safe date. Well, except the time the earthquake..." His voice trailed off. "We should go together there some time."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Holden smiled and relaxed, trying to melt into the floor. "Good night, Sloane."

She laughed softly, her voice melodic. Or maybe she was laughing normally, and his sleep-deprived mind was twisting reality. "Good night, Holden Random Zachary. I'll pick the movie while you're out."