The Midnight Diner (Issy)

Issy's birthday fic- late night diner adventures with Baurus, enjoy!

 By some unknown means we had forgotten to eat dinner at a reasonable hour, and by the time we remembered the clock was striking midnight. Looking around I realize there isn’t much to eat, and Luther has most likely gone to bed by now leaving the bar downstairs closed. “Well, Baurus, any ideas?” I ask the blade while we continue searching the room for anything remotely edible, the feeling of hunger growing by the minute now that it’s been realized. Baurus stops rifling through the container he’d been looking in and stands still for a minute seemingly thinking before his face changes and he throws up a hand, like a light had gone on in his head. “There’s a diner a few streets over that’s open all night.” I mean to ask him why he hadn’t remembered that before but then again for the amount of time I spend in the imperial city I hadn’t remembered either, and so I hold my tongue. Baurus adds he can’t remember the name of it but he knows where it is. With a plan in place we manage to quickly put on shoes and coats, and head off into the night.

The air is getting colder now with the changing of the seasons, something Baurus has never liked, and complains about as we walk. The district is almost eerily quiet with everyone asleep on this cloudy almost starless night. Luckily for Baurus the diner is not far and we reach it quickly, sitting down in one of the booths by the window. A waitress comes and gives us menus to look over, asking if we’d like coffee while we decide on what to order. Coffee, or any warm drink, sounds delightful on a night like this. With an order for two coffees, one black and one with cream and sugar, she leaves us to browse the menu. “I feel like you’d come here often, Baurus, with how frequently you seem to wind up in the city.” He shrugs, saying he used to come here more often while being a member of the emperor's guard and was living in the city itself. Now he really only comes to gather information to bring back to Jauffre. The conversation falters after that as we silently look over the menu deciding what to eat. I settle on pancakes, it’s been too long since I’ve had them and I’m rather tired of eating scrambled eggs.

The waitress returns the two cups of  coffee and awaits our orders, leaving with a paper to give the cook saying one order of pancakes and an omelet. While we wait and drink our coffees  I tell Baurus of my newfound borderline dislike for eggs and he shares he feels the same way about oatmeal. Both fine every now and again, tiring if you have them frequently because there’s no other options worth eating. The streets remain quiet in these early hours of the morning, only the guards patrol outside the window. Eventually the waitress returns with our food and the check to pay when we’re ready. With a brief midnight toast Baurus and I tap our mugs together before beginning to eat our meal that I’m not quite sure whether to classify as dinner or breakfast. It is a meal, and it is not a bad one at that. In the end, as Baurus and I sit with our unclassifiable meal of eggs and pancakes under the dim glow of the diner lights at a strange hour of the morning, I think that’s all that matters.