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Luke's, Monday

"A cupid costume," Eliot said. "Seriously?" He didn't normally bring up the things his staff did to torment Kanan, but then Kanan also didn't usually report on those things in any detail on the radio reports. "And did you have to put his shirt in the freezer?"

The kitchen staff exchanged looked. "Um," said the busboy. "It's what we do."

"He's not even the new guy anymore," Eliot said. "He's been working here forever."

"You're all the new guys," said the cook. "We only really answer to Luke."

"No one knows who that is."

"Sure we do," said the dishwasher, rolling his eyes. "He's the guy who founded this place. The original was in a former hardware store in Connecticut. Used to have a ban on cellphones. Those were the days."

Eliot stared at him.

"What, did you think someone just decided one day 'You know what would be a great name for a diner? Luke' for no good reason?"

". . . Yeah!"

The dishwasher just sighed at him and shook his head.

Today's specials
Ricotta cheese burger with pickled zucchini
Sweet potato buffalo fries
Strawberry mascarpone milkshakes

Luke's was open.

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Probably while playing on your phone.

He's spending most of his day today in his office, looking for paper evidence of this Luke guy the dishwasher was talking about.

"The entire kitchen staff is a menace," Kanan said, tone actually pretty light as he stepped into the diner and slid into an empty seat. "But I'm sure you know that already, huh?"

"I have met them," Eliot agreed. "Glad to see you've got a shirt on."

"And I intend for it to stay that way," Kanan agreed. "Miguel was kind enough to fish it out of the freezer. I think he might have shoved somebody into the pantry in the process."

Sure, Kanan could have used the Force to get it out himself, but they never would have let him get through another shift without doing it again if he did.

Very, very true. "Glad to hear it," Eliot said. "You and Miguel been hanging out a lot?"

"I wouldn't say a lot," Kanan replied with a shake of his head. "He swings in for my shift now and again, and I sometimes swing in for his. Neither of us has really gone out of our way to spend time together besides that, exactly."

He shrugged.

"He seems like an okay guy, at least."

Eliot nodded. "That he does." He gave Kanan a small smirk. "Nice to hear you're socializin' with more than just teenage girls, is all."

Not that Eliot had a lot of room to talk about taking teenage girls under one's wing.

"Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of carrying on conversations with adult men as well," Kanan agreed, rolling his eyes and smirking a bit. "It's still weird to me that there's such a strict focus on age around here, though. Hera's not twenty yet, either, but I sure as hell wouldn't consider her a kid."

It didn't hurt that she was the daughter of a revolutionary and something of one in her own right.

It probably also didn't hurt that, for a guy of twenty-three, Kanan was super fifteen.

Eliot shook his head. "Trust me, son, that all looks a hell of a lot younger from the other side of forty." Oh god, he was old.

"Where I'm from, not many people seem to make it to that side of forty, these days," Kanan replied, shrugging. "Leaves you with a kind of skewed perspective on the whole age thing too, I suppose."

It was really less about years and more about where you'd been and how you held your chin when the scary men in the buckets walked by.

"Ain't a whole lot of us on this side of it from my line of work either," Eliot admitted. "Which honestly just makes y'all seem even younger to me."

Funny how that worked.

"If I ever make it to that side of it, we can bond over how stupidly young everyone else is," Kanan mused. "Though, I suppose then it would be a matter of you looking at everything from the other side of sixty, wouldn't it?"

"Good god, man," Eliot said with a growl. "Sayin' crap like that's just mean."

Eliot had been sixty before. He'd had to walk with a cane and Hardison had still managed to get kidnapped and need rescuing. He was perfectly happy to pretend it was never going to happen again.

Kanan just smiled and held up his hands in surrender. He'd spent a weekend as a forty-something blind man once, not that he remembered details, really.

"Hey, hey, that's a long way off," he replied. "But there's no shame in living a long life. You've got plenty worth sticking around until then for, don't you?"

"'Course I do," Eliot grumbled, like that wasn't also kind of a new concept for him, all things considered. "Don't mean I wanna go around thinking about it."

Planning for the long-term future had never been one of his strong suits.

"Say no more," Kanan replied, hands still held up. "We're talking about a time that's purely hypothetical, anyway. Maybe an asteroid will get knocked off course and fly into the island tomorrow or something, anyway."

This seemed highly unlikely.

"Or we could get run over by rampaging alots." Was it sad that that thought briefly made Eliot brighten? Look, having a big future full of important people was a little bit terrifying, okay? "Anyway, you want me to talk to the guys about messin' with you? I can't promise it'll do much good," or any good, "but I can give it a shot."

Kanan cast a dubious look toward the kitchen at that offer.

"Knowing them, it'll probably just encourage them," he noted. "Usually they're not even that bad. I think they just got carried away yesterday, once there was a customer willing to back them up even slightly."

There was a long pause, and then he added, "I mean, rampaging alots would probably be easier to handle than those guys, anyway."

Eliot shook his head. "It's my own damn fault. I been threatenin' to fire 'em about once a month since I started running the joint. They ain't afraid of me anymore."

Oh honey. They'd never been afraid of you. Not since that truth day when you bragged about not having killed anyone in years and promised you didn't do that anymore.

Maybe what they really needed was another truth day, soon. Then Kanan could mention how weird it was to be back in the business of ending lives these days.

"That'll do it," he mused, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "You've got them desensitized to it, now."

He could do that! But then Eliot would just end up worrying even more about him than he already did.

"Yeah, I know. Honestly, I'm not sure I could actually fire 'em even if I meant it. Their contracts are pretty iron-clad."

He'd blame Luke for it, but they seem to have started working sometime around when that Priestly kid had taken over. Also, he wasn't totally convinced yet that Luke had ever existed.

Who made a diner out of a hardware store?

Someone who was really serious about renovations?

"I guess all that's left now is for me to start making good on my threats to leave them tied up for the bears in the freezer to find."

Kanan was probably kidding.

"Usually it only needs to happen the once, and then the rest learn by example."

"You know, normally I might object, but they did throw your shirt in there."

"They made it personal," Kanan agreed with a matter-of-fact nod. "I needed somebody to rescue it for me. Next time I'm going to just see if there's still a tentacle thing living in there and I'm going to ask that to throw it back to me."

He paused.

"Not that I'm anticipating a next time."

The shirt was staying on, from here on out.

"I mean, seriously. If there's a next time, I'm going to be very disappointed in you."

Eliot was a dad now. He could wield disappointment like a deadly weapon.

Huh.

Kanan was still getting used to having dad types around. Eliot was no Okadiah, but the differences were mostly apparent in ways that made him scarier.

"... Yeah, I'm definitely not aiming to disappoint you," he replied. "I've seen you in various states of disappointment. It's my personal goal to avoid those whenever possible."

Eliot chuckled. "Got some sense in you after all."

"I do have my moments," Kanan agreed. And then, a moment later he added, "but I could do with having both my moments and one of those milkshakes on the specials board."

Kanan's sweet tooth was showing again. It was a wonder the guy ever ate anything healthy in this place.

Why does Monday have to happen every. single. week?

I love this post so much.

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Luke's, Monday

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