Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The question Jyn gets asked the most when she tells people she works the overnight shift at a 24-hour diner is, “How do you do it?” As if she’s just admitted to shooting herself out of a canon for a living, which, to be fair, is a thing she wanted to do as a career when she was nine, but that’s beside the point.

The answer to this question is simple: you get used to it. Or, in Jyn’s experience, your life sucks for three weeks while you get used to it and then you get used to it. After that, the weird hours and irregular sleep schedule just become routine.

To be fair, she only started doing the graveyard shift in the first place because she wasn’t sleeping at night anyway and she could get more hours that way. Now, sometimes, she sleeps perfectly well in the daytime when everyone else is at work and then, other times, she doesn’t sleep at all and becomes convinced that she’s the first human being who was born with a biological indifference to sleep. Either way, she manages. 

And it’s not actually that bad. The tips are a little worse because there’s fewer customers and they tend to be drunks or insomniacs or plain weirdos who don’t get the concept of twenty percent for good service and usually leave her whatever change they have on them. And sometimes it’s so dead that Jyn literally counts the seconds on the big clock by the door. But it’s also calmer than any other shift at the diner, and sometimes people feel so bad for her being up all night that they tip her extra, which is nice. It all balances out, really.

That being said, the overnight shift doesn’t lend itself to regulars the way other shifts do. She has some, but they don’t tend to be regular regulars. At most, she sees the same drunk college students show up there for breakfast at two a.m. but not the same day every week. Her co-workers that work other shifts talk about old couples that come in for dinner three times a week and always want to sit in the same booth, or the father and daughter who get breakfast every Saturday together that the entire staff fawns over. Jyn doesn’t get regulars like that, and even if she sees the same people, most people don’t want to make conversation as they’re inhaling pancakes in the wee hours of the morning. They barely want to make eye contact with her, honestly.

Not that Jyn minds. She didn’t get into waitressing because of her bubbly personality. She’s good at it, can be pleasant and accommodating when she needs to be, but she’s also fine with customers not wanting to chitchat. It’s one of the perks of the shift, in her mind, and why it suits her to work it, rather than the breakfast or the lunch shift.

Then, she gets a regular of her own and it doesn’t change everything, but it changes enough.

The first time he comes in, the restaurant is so dead that for once the manager on duty isn’t on Jyn’s case about drawing in her sketchbook while she’s working. It’s that slow. There’s a couple at a table in the corner that started out their meal by bickering with each other loudly and now Jyn’s pretty sure one or both of them is asleep at the table. She already gave them their check, though, so she’s giving them at least an hour before she bugs them about it. It’s not like she needs to turn over the table or anything.

When the man comes in, the place is so empty that he actually looks around in confusion, which catches Jyn’s attention from where she’s hiding behind the cash register. 

“Sit anywhere you like,” she calls to him, half-relieved to have something to do and half-annoyed to have to do anything.

“Oh. You’re open, then?”

“As long as it’s one of the twenty-four hours in the day,” she replies, trying to sound sunny.

“Last time I checked,” the man says, sounding unsure, which makes Jyn smile for real.

She brings a menu over to the table he settles at and offers him her more standard customer service smile. “Hi, I’m Jyn. I’ll be your server this…morning. Can I get you anything to start?”

“Coffee, please.”

“Regular or decaf?”

“Regular, thanks.”

“Sure,” she says. Then she loses her mind momentarily, because she follows it up with, “You want crayons?”

That question clearly throws him, and for good reason. “What?” He asks, blinking up at her.

“Do you want crayons? To color in your placemat?” Jyn asks, less casually. She doesn’t know why she asked in the first place—he doesn’t look like the type, by virtue of not having any children with him and looking to be older than her, if she had to guess—but she does it anyway. Maybe she’s a little punchy from having no one to talk to all night.

Thankfully, he laughs, more like he’s surprised than anything else, but it still counts. “No, I’m good, thanks.”

She nods and heads off to get him his coffee. When she returns to his table with it, she doesn’t bother asking if he’s ready to order yet, because he’s still got his head bent over the enormous menu, reading it intently. She pops back over to her spot behind the register and resumes the sketch she’d been working on of the couple at the back table. She’s sure now that they are both, in fact, asleep, which is going to make it very awkward to get them to pay their bill.

A few minutes later, she hears the man at the other table clears his throat and she looks up, trying to mask her annoyance. When she does, though, she sees he’s not looking in her direction and probably didn’t do it to get her attention. Still, she should probably go check on him.

“Are you ready to order?” She asks, pulling out her order pad as she sidles up to his table.

“I—well, actually, I have to ask: why did you think I would want crayons?”

Jyn shrugs. “Technically, I’m only supposed to offer them to customers under twelve, but I think that’s bullshit. Kids aren't the only people who like to color.”

The man nods, processing this. “Okay. Not the answer I was expecting. I thought it was your way of saying I looked young.”

“No, no,” she says, and then winces. “I mean, you don’t look old or anything. You just definitely don’t look under twelve.”

“Then my disguise is working perfectly,” he says, half to himself.

Jyn snorts. “Is this your way of saying you do want crayons?”

“No, I’m all set. I think I’ll just have some eggs.”

Jyn gets the specifics of his order from him and goes to deliver the ticket to the kitchen. When that’s done, she decides it’s past time to finally collect her payment from the sleeping couple in the back. Under the guise of cleaning plates out of their way, she makes as much noise with the silverware as humanly possible, which causes the man to wake up. When she pointedly asks if there’s anything else they need, he grumbles a response in the negative and jostles his girlfriend’s wrist to wake her up too.

“You can pay right up front,” Jyn says, cheerily, before she swans away with their dishes.

After a few minutes, they come up to the cash register to pay her, even though it’s technically the manager’s job to run the register. He can’t be bothered when it’s this quiet. They don’t give her a tip then and there, but she holds out hope that they left her some cash on the table, which she checks as soon as they’ve gone. Of course, there’s nothing there and she curses under her breath before she buses the remaining dishes. She goes back again with a rag to wipe down the table, even though that’s yet another thing the manager is supposed to be helping with during overnight shifts. By the time she’s done with all that, the other man’s food is up and she goes to deliver it.

“Do you need anything else?” she asks, once she’s dropped off his food. “More coffee?”

“Yes, but could I switch to decaf?” he asks, looking like he’s asking for a kidney rather than something completely reasonable.

“No,” she says, automatically.

“Oh, I—what?”

“Sorry, that was—I was kidding.”

“Oh.”

“It wasn’t funny,” she says, feeling her face heat with embarrassment. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” the man says, waving a hand. “It’s fine.”

“It’s just—it’s a restaurant. You can have whatever you want.”

“Right,” the man says, smiling faintly in either amusement or confusion, like he’s not really sure what to do with her. And who could blame him for that?

“You were being polite. I shouldn’t have made fun of you,” Jyn says, fully mortified at this point. He’s definitely not going to leave her a tip now, which means this whole shift has pretty much been a bust. 

“It’s really fine,” he says. “I probably would have caught on faster if it wasn’t…”

“3 AM?” Jyn suggests.

“Yeah,” he says, with a full, self-deprecating smile that catches Jyn completely off-guard. People shouldn’t be allowed to be that attractive without warning.

“I’ll get you that decaf coffee,” she says, trying to sneak off and preserve at least some of her dignity. He thanks her as she’s retreating, and when she refills his mug, she says as little as possible so she doesn’t end up accidentally insulting him again. 

It makes things a little weird, realizing he’s cute at the same time as he becomes her only customer in the entire diner. She’s supposed to be checking in to see if he needs anything but it also feels suspiciously like fawning over him. Has it really been this long since she’s had a hot customer at this godforsaken place? She tries to distract herself with drawing, but her latest subjects just left. She’s also not supposed to be doing that where customers can see and the man is seated right across from the counter, putting her directly in his sight line. It’s unfortunate, really, in more ways than one, because he’d be fun to draw, with his messy hair and his stubble and the lines around his eyes, but doing so would involve watching him even more intently and that’s a level of weird she just isn’t willing to stoop to.

While she’s absolutely not staring at him at all, she does just so happen to notice the moment he takes off his jacket. His table is directly in the path of the draft from the front door, so it didn't seem weird for him to keep it on, because that section of the diner is always freezing. Now, though, with the jacket off, she can see he’s wearing some sort of uniform—crisply pressed navy blue pants with a matching shirt that has a patch over the pocket that she can’t read from this far away. He’s got an ID badge too, which she also can’t read, clipped to his pocket. 

To her surprise, he’s not distracting himself from his lonesome meal by messing around on his phone, like most customers and honestly even she would be doing while eating alone in a restaurant. He is occasionally throwing a glance in the direction of the TV hanging in the corner, which is set to a channel playing reruns of “Murder, She Wrote” for no other reason than there’s nothing more interesting on at this hour.

Jyn hates the feeling of having too little to do and she especially hates having just one customer and feeling like she’s creepily watching their every move, so after what feels like an appropriate amount of time, she makes her way over to the man’s table, doing her best to seem casual.

“How is everything?” she asks when she gets there, even though she could have just as easily asked that from the counter. It wouldn’t have been professional, she decides, even if there is literally no one else around. She, of course, manages to catch him right in the middle of a sip of coffee, which is a special kind of superpower one only develops as a server.

He swallows and offers her an apologetic smile. “Everything’s great, thank you.”

“More coffee?” she asks, when she notices his mug is close to empty.

“Uh, sure. Thanks.”

“Decaf still?”

He laughs at that, for some reason. “Yes. I promise I won’t switch back and forth the whole night.”

Jyn shrugs. “Doesn’t matter, really. It gives me something to do.”

“Still,” he says. “Decaf would be great.”

“You got it.” She heads off to retrieve the pot of decaf and swings back to refill his cup. After he thanks her again, she asks, “Coming or going?”

He blinks at her in confusion for a moment. “I’m sorry?” he asks.

“No, I’m—” Jyn stops short, feeling ridiculous. “I just meant—are you coming from work, or going there?”

“Oh,” he says. “How did you—?”

“The uniform,” she replies, gesturing gingerly to his clothes with the coffee pot.

“Right. Of course,” the man says, looking down as if he hadn’t realized she could see him at all. “Uh, coming from.”

“What?”

“To answer your question,” he says, looking pained. Not that Jyn can blame him; this has been a trainwreck of a conversation so far, thanks mostly to her. “I just got off work.”

“So this is dinner, then?” Jyn asks.

The man laughs and it’s a strange, reluctant sound. “I guess so.”

“That explains the decaf.”

“Sure.”

“Not the one cup of regular coffee, though.”

That gets another laugh out of him, though he appears less surprised by it this time. “Does everyone who comes here have to justify their caffeine habits?” he asks, not sounding offended.

“Only the people unfortunate enough to sit in my section,” Jyn replies. It’s not worth pointing out that the entire restaurant is her section at this hour.

“I see,” he says. “Well, the cup of regular coffee is to give me enough energy to get back to my apartment without falling asleep at crosswalks, if you must know.”

“Ah, makes sense.”

“I’m glad you approve. You had me worried for a second there,” he says, and it lands somewhere between outright sarcasm and flirting, which is enough to make Jyn want to pull back.

“Yes, well, now that we’ve got that figured out, I suppose you deserve the chance to finish your meal in peace,” she replies, formally, and fights the urge to wince at how stupid she sounds.

“Okay,” the man says, sounding amused again as Jyn turns around and retreats back to the safe haven of the cash register to hide from the awkwardness she’s created. 

Luckily for her, after only a few minutes, she gets another table to distract her. It’s four people who appear to be college students and they thankfully don’t seem to be wasted, which is a surprise, even for a Tuesday morning. It’s a nice change of pace for the typical night shift. If Jyn had to guess, they probably just came from studying late at the library. Then again, she never did the whole college thing, so she could be wrong. All of her knowledge of what it’s like comes from TV shows. The college kids are nice enough, if a little boisterous for this time of night, when she takes their orders, which is what matters. Once she gets everything in to the kitchen, Jyn decides it’s probably safe to check on the man who’s there alone again.

When she approaches his table, she sees that he’s done eating and that he’s gotten distracted by his phone. He’s reading some message with his eyebrows drawn together in concern, but he looks up as soon as he hears her coming and his face clears in a deliberate way that suggests he knows he was pulling a face and that he doesn’t want to be asked about it. Not that she would, honestly, even without the signal. It’s one thing to be weird about his coffee ordering habits—she’s his waitress and she’s bored; sometimes people like to banter with their servers—but she doesn’t know him at all. She’s not going to ask who’s texting him. That’s none of her business, even if her curiosity seems to be piqued by everything he does.

“Can I get you anything else?” she asks, as pleasantly and professionally as possible, even as her mind fills in a fake backstory of an emotional affair with a co-worker that’s turned sour and now results in petty 3 AM text messages that make him scowl at his phone.

“Just the check would be great.”

“Of course,” she says, and goes off to fetch it. She returns and drops it off at the table with a breezy, “You can pay at the counter whenever you’re ready.”

“Thanks,” he replies, without looking up, and Jyn retreats again behind the counter, to wait for him or for her college students’ order to be up, whichever comes first.

The man takes a few minutes to finish his coffee and get his jacket back on, but he doesn’t hold up the table, which is nice. Even when the restaurant is empty like this, Jyn hates when people linger. It shouldn’t bother her, really—they’re paying customers, after all—but it still drives her nuts. She pushes off the back wall when she sees him approaching the counter and he has the audacity to look kind of shy when their eyes meet. Has this guy never met a waitress before? Is he a shut-in or something? And most importantly, why does she care? Hot people shouldn’t be allowed in the diner, she decides. It’s confusing, especially in the middle of the night.

He hands her the check along with the cash to pay it without a word, and she sets about getting him his change out of the diner’s ancient cash register. She hands over the bills and a few coins and thanks him for coming in.

“You have a good night,” she adds, sounding folksier than she means to. “Or morning. Whatever it is.”

He smiles at that. “Thanks, you too.”

“I will, thanks.”

He’s already turning to go when he adds, casually over his shoulder. “See you around, Jyn.”

By the time she’s remembered that she introduced herself when he first came in and recovered from her surprise at hearing her name come out of his mouth, he’s already gone. Apropos of nothing, there’s some buzzy feeling in the pit of her stomach that she kind of wishes would go away, but it’s also the most exciting thing that’s happened to her all night, tragically. The cook ringing the bell to tell her that she’s got orders up is the only thing that startles her out of her reverie. 

She brings the food over to her table of college students, and then goes over to clean off the cute guy’s table. As she’s moving plates around, she notices he left a tip in the form of cash tucked under his water glass. It’s a little over twenty percent, which, given the night she’s had, basically makes this guy the love of her life. She’s pleased enough that she almost forgets to be disappointed he paid in cash, rather than with a card, making it impossible to learn his name. Almost.

Chapter Text

It becomes very clear to Jyn that her life is actually very sad when, a few days later, during a phone call with Bodhi, she feels compelled to tell him about the cute guy from the diner.

In her defense, Bodhi has just finished telling her a long story about some crazy issue he’s dealing with at work and then followed it up by detailing where he and his husband are at in the adoption process. When he turns it over to her with a thoughtful, “And how’s everything with you?”—well, she rightfully panics.

“Uh…there was a really hot guy at the diner the other day…well, night. The other morning. Whatever,” she offers, pathetically. After a year of working overnights, you’d think she'd know what to call it.

“Really?” Bodhi asks, obviously intrigued. Because he’s the best, and even if her life is objectively less interesting than his, he still cares about how she’s doing.

“Yep.”

“And?” he presses. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” Jyn says, trying not to scoff. “He was a customer. He came in, he ate, he left.”

“Like the proverbial panda.”

“What?”

“The panda. From that joke? ‘Eats, shoots, and leaves?’” Bodhi explains. “Never mind. It’s just a dumb joke.”

“Speaking of dumb jokes,” Jyn says, laughing, “I made like eight around this guy and made a huge idiot of myself.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” he says, charitably, but also sounding a little distracted. Jyn assumes that Taidu has walked into the room and started asking him about something. She remembers that well from living with Bodhi before they moved away.

“I’m not losing sleep over it,” she says.

“But you brought it up,” he counters, still sounding like he’s struggling to focus on their conversation.

“Yeah, because otherwise I would have nothing else to talk about. My life is boring!”

“That’s not true!”

“Yes, it is,” Jyn says. “I don’t have anything going on. The most exciting thing to happen to me all week is that a hot guy remembered my name.”

“That’s pretty exciting, in my book!”

“Bodhi, please. You’re trying to adopt a kid! You do something impressive with computers for a living that I don’t even understand. I work in a diner. My life is boring, both by comparison and in general.”

Bodhi takes a second to think over his response to that, which Jyn takes as a sign of her point’s validity. “Any developments with the illustration stuff?” he asks when he’s regrouped and it’s just about the worst possible thing he could have asked.

“Got another rejection, from that place I submitted my portfolio,” Jyn says reluctantly. “And I haven’t been drawing much in my free time.”

“Why not?” he asks, and from anyone else, it would be an accusation, but from Bodhi, it comes out as friendly interest.

“I haven’t been feeling particularly inspired lately,” she replies, adding a shrug that he can’t even see to really sell the whole nonchalant vibe she’s faking at the moment.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” she answers, before she has a chance to think about it. “Creative energy comes and goes in waves, you know. And I’ve been working a lot, picking up extra shifts wherever I can. I’m just tired, probably.”

It doesn’t sound completely convincing to Jyn herself by the time she’s done saying it, so she’s sure Bodhi doesn’t believe a word of it. Still, it’s mostly true, except for the nameless exhaustion and pessimism that lurk beneath all of those other reasons for not doing the actual thing she loves. But telling Bodhi that will just worry him and he won’t be able to do anything to help, which will make him sad and Jyn doesn’t want that or know how to handle it, so she keeps it to herself.

“Have you thought about maybe seeing a therapist or something?” Bodhi asks, trying to sound both casual and delicate about it and only managing the latter.

“I can’t afford that. My insurance is garbage.”

“I could help,” he says, lightly. “Chip in, maybe?”

Jyn groans and puts her head down on the kitchen counter, which she belatedly realizes isn’t as clean as she thought it was. “Do you really want to have this argument at six in the morning your time?” she asks.

Bodhi makes a noncommittal noise at that and Jyn can picture exactly what he looks like when he does it, for all she hasn’t seen him in months.

“You’re not paying for me to go to therapy,” she says, closing her eyes against the sudden, overwhelming urge to cry.

“I just want to help,” he says. “I want you to be happy.”

“Well, then. Move back.”

Thankfully, he laughs at the suggestion. It’s a familiar joke at this point, even though it’s only a joke on Bodhi’s end. For her part, Jyn wants nothing more than for Bodhi to move back to town. But he’s got a great job on the west coast now, and so does Taidu, and they have a beautiful house that they love, and pretty soon they’ll have a kid. If she didn’t love him so much, she’d probably resent him. Instead, she just feels an existential ache whenever she thinks about how empty her life feels without her best friend nearby,

“You could move out here, you know,” Bodhi says, and this is a familiar line, too. “It might be easier to get freelance work around here.”

“Nice try,” Jyn says, rolling her eyes fondly. “But you can’t blame my location for my inability to get remote work. I can be an illustrator from anywhere. Well, I can’t be, clearly, but hypothetically, someone could.”

“Right. So why not struggle here, with me?”

“I can’t afford it,” she says. “And don’t offer to help or I’ll scream!”

“I wasn’t going to,” he says, lying through his teeth. “But maybe you could visit? A change of scenery, however brief, might cheer you up. Jumpstart your creativity, or something?”

Jyn smiles, even though she doesn’t feel particularly happy. “I’m saving my time off for when you have your kid. That’s when I’m going to visit.”

“I see. You only want to see the kid. You don’t want to hang out with me at all.”

“That’s it. I’ve never loved you. It’s all been an elaborate scheme to hang out with a baby!”

“Playing the long con, I see,” Bodhi says, before murmuring something away from the phone. A voice in the background responds and they go back and forth a few times. “I’m sorry about that,” he says finally, to her.

“No worries,” Jyn says, looking over some mail she found that her roommate conveniently hid behind the toaster. “Did Taidu lose his keys again?”

Bodhi laughs, sharply, at that and then repeats what she said to his husband. Jyn can’t hear Taidu’s response but even the muffled noise she hears in the background sounds offended.

“Okay, I have to help him look, I’m sorry,” Bodhi says.

“That’s fine. I’m going to bed.”

There’s some rustling sounds on the line from Bodhi’s end, like he’s switching the phone from one ear to the other. “I just…I want to say, before we hang up…”

“Yes?” Jyn asks, after giving him another moment to finish his thought.

“I think things are going to get better soon,” he says, sounding like he’s bracing himself for her to snap at him.

The fight goes out of Jyn instantly at that. She’s not an optimist by nature and she can be a downright brat when she puts her mind to it, but even she’s not immune to Bodhi’s particular brand of positivity. It’s not just that he thinks things will get better in a general sense; he’s saying that he believes in her and in her ability to make things better for herself. And she can’t be a brat about that.

“Thanks,” she says, overwhelmed. “I hope you’re right.”

“I always am,” he jokes, even though it’s true. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good luck with everything.”

“Good luck finding Taidu’s keys,” Jyn says, making him laugh.

“Thanks.”

“And take a picture of the ocean for me,” she adds, quickly. Their house is near the beach and Bodhi sends her the best pictures of the water, or sometimes, he’ll just send her videos of the sky and she can hear the waves crashing and seagulls calling and little kids shrieking as they play on the sand with their families. They go a long way in cheering her up when the miserable winter weather in Chicago is getting her down, especially when she has to sleep during the precious few daylight hours to survive her shifts at the diner.

“I will,” Bodhi says, kindly. “Send me pictures of the hot guy.”

Jyn laughs so hard and so suddenly that she nearly chokes. “I’m not going to do that,” she says, after she recovers. 

“Why not?”

“Um, because that would be crazy?” she suggests. “Besides, I’m not going to see him again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s very unlikely.”

“Well, keep me updated,” Bodhi says, as if this is a matter of great importance.

“I definitely will,” Jyn promises with as much faux solemnity as she can manage.

“Good.”

After that, they say their goodbyes and hang up. As she gets ready for bed, at 8 in the morning because her life is weird, she keeps thinking about what Bodhi said, about life getting better for her, and forcing herself to shake those thoughts–too serious for when she’s about to go to sleep–out of her mind. This gives her thoughts plenty of space to drift back to whether Bodhi’s right and she will actually see the guy at the diner again. Not that it matters, really, she thinks and tries to turn her attention to literally anything else. She only partly succeeds by the time she falls asleep.