Hugo Peterson (tarriance) wrote in summerview, @ 2019-03-23 17:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | complete, julius fírinne, zhugo peterson |
Bonding with the Boss
Hugo sat at his usual place at the bar once the restaurant had officially closed her doors and most of the serving staff had gone home. Some remained, finishing their shift by helping to straighten the chairs and prep the dining room for another day of service tomorrow. Hugo liked the dining area to be spotless. It was always a rule he had before the last of the night shift went home.
He had a leather-bound binder open in front of him that contained a detailed layout of the coming week’s schedule and who was working when and what position. It was carefully curated based on staff availability, potential sick days, vacations and shortages, as well as the business’ projected needs based on last year’s sales and some flexibility accounting for events going in in town that week. A special at Boudin, for example, would impact their sales, thus impacting their overhang and labor. He made edits with a pen, long fingers and refined handwriting adding notes in the margins before he reached for his glass of wine. This was a nightly ritual for Hugo and something that, as such, calmed him down enough to go home and meditate and prepare for another day. Tonight had been a long shift with several troubles arising that he’d been able to keep from escalating. And now, as he made a final pen stroke, he looked over his work and smiled contentedly. It was perfect. Julius had been in a mood lately, which was putting it mildly. It had been over a week since he’d heard from Briar, other than a terse I’m Busy text back which was… Well, rude. Who wasn’t busy? They both owned businesses, obviously they were both busy, but clearly he had five seconds to send a message, it seemed a bit cruel and unusual that she couldn’t text back properly. So he’d been working… A lot. Much more than usual. Being at home or even just sitting in his usual booth made him fidgety. He needed to be doing something. So he’d tended bar all night. They hadn’t actually needed an extra bartender, but in the end, he’d wedged himself in and just started filling orders because doing anything else (ie going home) sounded terrible. He’d just finished counting out the drawers for the evening--another thing he liked to do when he was feeling twitchy--after having sent home the bartenders who’d normally have the honor of doing such a thing home once they cleaned up their stations, when he re-emerged from the office to pour himself a glass of bourbon, eyes peering over Hugo’s schedule for the next week. “I’m planning an event on Friday. We’ll need to make sure we’ve got enough staff for it,” he commented, tapping on the schedule for Friday the 15th. Ides of March. In his estimation an incredibly important holiday. Woefully overlooked. Hugo blinked, staring at the date that Julius had pointed at. “This Friday?” he looked up at the fae. “That’s in three days, Julius.” Stress was entering his voice and he hovered his hand over the schedule like it was some kind of sacred text. “This is—It’s been out for two weeks and you’re just telling me this now.” The question was really only rhetorical, because of course Julius was breaking this to him now. His eyes swept over the staff trying to imagine who’d be willing to work an extra shift or an extra long shift on a Friday night. “I mean, I guess we could… make it work somehow.” He hunched forward, resting his temple on his fingertips. Julius’s eyes narrowed for a moment, trying to decide if Hugo was just pulling his leg or if he was actually baffled by this announcement. No, he seemed genuinely confused. How, he wasn’t sure. He’d even given a buffer time. “How are you surprised by this, it was posted online earlier this month. It’s not like I just pulled this out of thin air right this minute.” Which, to be fair, he’d done before. “I’m positive I told you,” he murmured, drumming his fingers against his glass before shooting back the sizable pour like it was water and pouring himself another. “Oh well, you know now. I can work a triple if I have to.” Honestly, he would be anyway. He’d work from open to close if it meant it kept his hands and mind busy. “It’ll be good for tips. Should make it easier to pull in some extra help.” “Oh, well if it was posted on the internet then I must have heard.” Hugo replied with a bit of dryness. With a sigh, resigned to have to rearrange the week to account for this Shakespearean holiday, Hugo began a new lineup for Friday. Julius was right in that it would bring in more tips, although that didn’t always make up for having to work on your day off. A concept that lately, Julius seemed to have forgotten. “Why don’t you take it off?” he suggested carefully, keeping it as casual sounding as he could. “I mean, you’ve been in every day for the past… a while. And you should be able to enjoy your own event. I’m sure I could handle it.” Julius raised an eyebrow. “Well if you can keep up with the events happening with the competition,” he said, pointing at the note about the Mardi Gras event happening at Boudin, “you could certainly keep up with the events posted about the restaurant you’re currently employed in. I did hire you for an attention to detail.” It was perhaps a bit of a backhanded compliment, but it was in there. Buried. The disparaging look cast in Hugo’s direction over the rim of Julius’s bourbon glass was withering. “I’m trying to stay busy,” he replied flatly. It was like he couldn’t win with this one. First he didn’t work enough, now he worked too much. Hugo raised an eyebrow as he saw Julius’ point. It was always humiliating to be called out like this, something he’d beat himself up for later. “No, you’re right. I should’ve caught that.” He rubbed a hand through his hair and didn’t meet Julius’ eyes, feeling like he’d just taken ten steps back from the compliment he’d been wanting to hear all this time. Buried though it was, that bit about the detail-oriented skills he possessed, he’d just proven otherwise and had let Julius down. When he did look up, it was in time to catch the withering look sent his way and Hugo knew he’d stepped in the wrong direction. It was hard to tell with Julius sometimes. Either he was always there working, or he was frequently in and out. Hugo knew enough about the fae to sense that something was wrong that drove him to wanting to occupy himself with work that he’d hired others to do. Wanting a bit of redemption from his slip up with the Ides of March event, Hugo hedged a guess. “Trouble in paradise?” That had maybe been a little harsh, but Julius was already on edge, and he expected a bit more from Hugo than everyone else. They’d met before, he’d seen him in action in the 1920s in Chicago, so the fact that he’d nabbed him for his first real venture as a business owner had felt like sheer luck. He probably could be a bit nicer, but did people really learn when they were coddled? He certainly hadn’t. Straight into the fire, that was his motto. Not really, but it was sort of the way he operated. “It’s fine. It’s fixable,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. Julius, already feeling maybe a little bad at the snap over the schedule and the internet posts, sighed and decided to respond to Hugo’s question earnestly, since (frankly) no one else seemed either brave enough, or thoughtful enough to bother asking. “Something like that. Suffering from a bit of the cold shoulder.” He wasn’t exactly sure what Hugo knew, but Maeve had been in Veritas often enough recently that it was likely some attention had been drawn. Perhaps. “Ah, I see,” Hugo murmured and set his pen down to give Julius more of his attention. It wasn’t often that his boss confided in him for matters unrelated to the business – though it could be argued that the emotional instability of the owner was considered business related. He picked up his wine glass and sipped, giving Julius some space in the pause. “In my experience,” he began cautiously. “When someone gives you the cold shoulder, it’s usually because there’s something there to give a cold shoulder to. If that makes sense.” Hugo was by no means a relationship expert and had, in fact, a terrible, horrible track record of keeping a romantic partner. But this was a moment he didn’t want to let slip away between him and Julius. If he could do something, maybe even just make him laugh, Hugo felt like it would be a groundbreaking new place for them. And besides, he had an idea of who it was Julius was referring to. Gossip on the street and all that. Well. Since he was offering advice… It was sort of odd, to be having this conversation with Hugo, but it wasn’t as if he could talk to Maeve about his problems with… Maeve. Who else was there, really? At least, as far as people he’d known nearly the same amount of time and under similar types of circumstances. It would be good advice if they were actually fighting. But they weren’t. He was 99.9% sure. Which made this all the more strange and complicated. Julius took another sip from his glass and shook his head. “It does, but if there is something, I don’t know what it is.” This wasn’t one of those dumb man situations where he’d said or done something stupid to deserve this either. “Anyway, it’s sort of hard to fix whatever it is if I can’t get a text back.” Not that he thought he needed to fix something. “A text?” Hugo gave Julius a critical look that normally he reserved for the employees when they claimed to have been late to work due to a flat tire or some other incident while smelling rank of alcohol that even a human nose could pick up. “Please don’t tell me that you’re sitting around waiting for this… person to answer a text message? You’ve surely gone to their place of work or residence to seek them out directly, yes? I know you’re smarter than the average teenager we’ve got these days.” Hugo chuckled and shook his head. Youths. Julius had already done the storming over to Briar’s house thing once, and he didn’t feel that it would be quite as well received this time. So no. He hadn’t gone over there, nor had he gone to The Long Way Down, because while Julius didn’t mind throwing his own employees for a loop, having her stop in and make eyes and innuendos at him, he wasn’t exactly sure if she was of the same mind on that one, and especially now when she was basically refusing to discuss… Whatever it was that had made her freak out in the middle of the night and flee his house. He rolled his eyes at the insinuation that he could possibly be as dumb as the teenagers of today and shook his head. “It’s not that simple. It’s not like they haven’t responded. They’re just responding… Tersely.” Yes, he supposed that was the best word for it. “Alright,” Hugo nodded as he listened and carefully laid the ballpoint pen at the top of his chart, balancing it there. “Tersely.” Glancing at Julius, Hugo once again went out on a limb. “And you’re afraid that, should you show up to discuss in person, as adults tend to do, you’ll be rejected on sight? And that would hurt much more than a terse reply to a text message.” Hugo was taking a risk by insinuating that Jules was acting, well, immaturely. Handling this badly, as though he’d taken cues from high schoolers. But maybe if he was a little critical of his boss, he’d go talk to this individual and everything could be resolved – which would go a long way in making Hugo’s job easier at the restaurant. A tense and stressed out Julius was good for no one. There was definitely a thought in the back of Julius’s mind that Hugo’s was not being purely altruistic in his assistance, but then again, who was? Still, no one else was offering, and in spite of the fact that he’d been reduced to the assumption that he couldn't manage his relationship better than a sixteen year old (and alright, to be fair, having left home at about that age, he hadn’t matured terribly far beyond that in a lot of respects, maybe early to mid twenties though, at least) Julius was willing to listen to advice. Or at least argue with it. But, as usual, Hugo was annoyingly perceptive (why he couldn’t function the same way with the internet was beyond Julius, who was older and clearly knew how to internet properly) and his question was met with a tense nod. “It seems like a distinct possibility.” Hugo sipped his wine, taking his time to think about his response and how it might be taken before he came out and said it. “In that case, consider the lesser of two evils – to turn a phrase.” He smiled lightly and put his glass down. “You could either go on like this, working yourself,” and others, “out of your mind wondering why she—ah, they,” he gave a small inclination of his head to Julius’ preferred pronoun for this person. “Why they are giving only terse replies or none at all. Or, you could face the problem head on, confront them face to face.” Hugo nodded and crossed one long leg over the other at the knee. “Lay all your cards out on the table. If someone is driving you this mad, to the point of needing to be constantly preoccupied to avoid thinking about them, then I think your energy would be better spent finding answers. Be it rejection or a better outcome, at least you’ll know.” Julius’s fingers tapped along the side of his glass contemplatively. He threw back the rest of his his bourbon and reached for the bottle to pour some more. Yeah, he could do that or. He could also not do that. Obviously it didn’t help that he wasn’t really offering that much information, but he didn’t have that much to work with himself, so it wasn’t like he was being completely cagey. “Or, I could give them space. Because it seems like that’s what they want.” Even if it definitely wasn’t what he wanted. But he was at least mature enough (or it had been hammered into him from a very young age) to know that not everything was about him. He rested both elbows on the bar, leaning into it, hands wrapped around his glass. “There are definitely worse ways to occupy my time. I could be doing something far less constructive than planning whiskey tastings,” he pointed out. So he wanted to work a lot more in the meantime while he gave his Person the space they seemed to require. What was so wrong about that? “Yes, well,” Hugo exhaled more out of habit than for a need for his body to breathe. A habit that showed he was running out of ideas. “You’ve got a point there.” If it had been Hugo, he’d want space. But again, he was no relationship guru. Hugo picked up his wine glass and finished it off, then held it up in silent request for Julius to fill him up again, since he was within reach of the wine. “Whatever this is that’s going on between you two, I’m sure it’ll sort itself out, given time. These things usually do. In the meantime, let’s get you that triple shift on Friday.” A sardonic teasing smile touched the vampire’s lips. He didn’t know why it was, but he was feeling sympathetic to Julius. Even if it meant him taking a triple, Hugo decided he’d manage somehow. Extra meditation sessions, for sure. When he had his glass refilled, he raised it. “To giving time?” “I hope so,” he murmured into his glass. But, exactly. Julius would also probably be the type to want space—and often did put a vast metaphorical void or literal miles of space between himself and anyone who threatened to get too close to him, wanted more out of him than he could (or wanted to attempt to) give. But she’d more or less kicked the door down, guns blazing, so none of this really made any sense to him. Or maybe it did. Maybe they were going about this the wrong way? Diving in too quickly? Maybe that was what had pinged at her nightmares. An anxiety that things were happening too fast. Space. Yes. The only cure for that was space. At least with an event like this Julius would be mostly out from under Hugo’s feet, more concerned with the customers and their needs--providing the best recommendations was kind of his schtick--than bossing around the Front of House staff. “To giving time,” he agreed, raising his half-full glass as well. |