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teabiscs · 7 months

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Just to, like flip, the whole KaiRei script.

But ReiKai???

TLDR - Where Rei is the dominant one and Kai is more hesitant. Rei is the one chasing and the one with more experience.

Just bear with me.

A Rei who escapes WTH and lives for himself, is unapologetic in who he is and what he wants. Has a ton of life experiences. He travels. He dates. He works for the BBA, as Dickinson’s assistant (bc that’s how every headcanon of mine goes)

And then a Kai who hides away, i’ll touch on this later. Does his schooling. Takes over Hiwatari enterprises. Just hyper focused on becoming who he was destined to be. A CEO. Kinda miserable. Misses out of key life moments. Time blurs by and suddenly he’s 26. Has never dated. Never kissed. He smokes and drinks out of habit. It quells his anxieties. Fucking up his eyes from overuse from Looking over documents and staring at computer screens. He doesn’t care about his appearance and stops wearing his contacts. He’s told he looks more put together with his glasses anyway.

Kai’s not sure what possessed him or the vice chairmen of the company to suggest partnering with the BBA and donating money. But now he’s stuck in a fancy conference room with five old chairmen waiting for the BBA representatives to discuss their partnership.

And Kai could really use a cigarette. He can’t remember the last time he’s spoken to Mr Dickinson. But Kai’s 26 now and knows how to be professional and fake it with the best. He offers his most professional smile when the door opens and in comes Dickinson with assistants in tow.

And he should have done research. He should have done his due diligence and looked into who worked at the BBA bc now he’s face to face with not only Kinomiya but ALSO Rei. And it shouldn’t surprise him but it does.

Kai lets one of his chairmen-henchman do all the talking after exchanging pleasantries and hand shakes and bows. Ignores the way Rei had eyed him up and down. And is counting down the minutes for this to be done and he can retreat back into his office and down scotch over the pretense of them getting good publicity and not over him drinking his anxieties away.

But he doesn’t get that because of course. Someone had to mention getting food to celebrate. So now he’s nursing a drink at an omakase style restaurant as everyone is networking. This part has always been the hardest for him. He’d rather do the hard work than bullshit and make small talk to people who just wanted to suck up. But these are his old friends. People he hasn’t spoken to in almost a decade.

And he doesn’t know where that delicate line falls of asking them how things have been and keeping things as formal as possible. Delicate line of formality. He’s waiting for Takao to start talking his ear off and take control of the conversation like he used to. But he’s matured over the years and mellowed out. But he’s sure working for the BBA has given him a better bedside manner.

And rei’s just silent. Watching everything over his own drink. Which Kai also realizes is new. Rei never drank with them when they were kids. But things changed and they grew up. They all definitely grew up.

During their time apart Rei managed to surpass him in height while Takao managed to get just as tall as Kai. Kai can make out the outlines of Rei’s muscles arms through his shirt, and he can guess that under his shirt he’s just as muscular.

He obviously has more free time than Kai to exercise. While Kai manages to hit the gym occasionally during the week.

Kai feels uneasy, with Rei’s eyes watching him over the rim of his glass and he does his best to look away and try and focus on what Mr Dickinson and his vice president are talking about.

He can feel Rei’s eyes on him with a tangible gaze. Rei looks /hungry/ when they do make eye contact and Kai feels himself swallowing roughly. Thinking back to all the unsaid words of their youth and awkward exchanges and feelings.

Kai’s fine and more than happy to just forget all about it and move on, but this is Rei Kon after all. And Rei never lets things go. Even after a decade. He’s resilient and cunning. And Kai finds himself alone with Rei as the night goes on. Getting cornered in the bathroom together.

25 year old Rei is more ballsy and confident than his nervous and self conscious 15yr old counterpart that Kai remembers. And doesn’t seem at all concerned that anyone from their group or a stranger could walk in on them at any minute.

Kais heart threatens to break out of his chest as Rei approaches him. Invades his personal space. Kai doesn’t remember Rei like this. So forward and sure. Not hesitating like he did in their youth. Kai can’t remember anyone invading his space like this before. So close.

And Kai wants to believe it’s just the alcohol that’s making him this assertive. But his words are so coherent and clear.

That it’s been so long. And he was sure that Kai would have skipped out. But he’s pleasantly surprised to see him in the flesh. And it’s been too long. And they should have kept in touch better. And that Kai’s a hard guy to keep up with. No one’s heard from him and only knew he was alive because it wasn’t reported otherwise.

And that Kai looks good. Very good. His eyes doing a full sweep of Kai’s tense body. And it’s at That point Rei realizes how uncomfortable Kai looks and backs off. Gives him his space.

Kais skin still feels prickly and tight. Still feels uncomfortable and out of control. And Rei can sense the uncertainty and the hesitancy in Kai.

Rei treats Kai like a caged animal. He eases off and tries a gentler approach. Suggesting that they meet up for coffee when Kai has the time because Rei knows he’s very busy, or drinks. But that seems out of the question and maybe too intimate for old friends who need to reconnect. He slips his business card into Kai’s hand and leaves the restroom.

The paper is crisp in his hand and HEAVY. Kais fingers brush over the embossed lettering tracing over each character and the phone number on it. He could just toss it in the bin and ignore it.

But he knows Rei, 15 year old Rei would chase after a response. He can only imagine how much worse 25yr old Rei is. So he slips it into his slacks pocket and takes his leave.

It takes three long days for Kai to email. EMAIL. Rei about meeting up to discuss whatever it is that Rei wanted to talk about. Kai feels over dressed in his tailored collared shirt when he sits down at the cafe he made reservations at. He has a leather bound book and pen resting on the table, waving off the waitress as he waits for Rei.

The feeling of being over dressed only intensifies as Rei sits opposite of him in jeans and a T-shirt. And this looks way less business than Kai intended.

Rei raises an eyebrow at Kai as he sits down. Making a comment that he didn’t intend on talking business but he should have assumed when Kai emailed him. Instead of texting calling or sending a Line message.

Kai flushes and looks down at the table. Unsure how to respond. It’s been so long since he’s spoken to someone about something other than work. Unsure of anything to say. He only knows how to talk shop at this point. Numbers and projections. Quarterly and profits. And maybe he should have had them go out for drinks instead. So he could hide behind alcohol and smoke breaks.

The waitress takes their order and sets their drinks down and food. Rei smiles fondly at Kai that some things never change. Eyeing the black coffee. Making a comment that they could have went somewhere cheaper if that’s all he wanted. (Kai doesn’t say that he remembers how much Rei enjoyed trying new things, and that he was suer Rei would probably love the pastries the cafe sold )

And Rei takes the lead. Giving him an updated history on himself. Ten years worth of achievements and accomplishments. How he left China, but still visits. How he came to work alongside Takao with Mr Dickinson. What Max is up to, and his new sister. What Takao’s been up to.

He looks expectantly At Kai when he finishes. Kai swallows, picking up his cup and takes a brief sip.

It’s black and white monotonous. After he graduated high school, he shadowed some people and then took over the company once he hit 20. Rei continues to stare as if he’s waiting for more info. But it doesn’t come. (Kai 100% did not respond well to BEGA and just 100% threw himself into Hiwatari enterprises as a trauma response. He keeps tabs on Borg and sends money when it’s needed. Like buddy, you should have gotten therapy, instead of hiding away.)

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve been up to?”

Kai nods, hidden behind his coffee, a buffer a barrier. Something to keep him safe.

Rei doesn’t believe him. He remembers a different Kai. But people change. Rei wouldn’t be poking or prodding or pursuing like he is now.

He glances down at Kai’s left hand then asks, “no wife?” Shake off the head, but it should be obvious from the lack of ring. “Are you seeing anyone?” Another shake

Rei laughs, “I’m surprised none of those old farts from your company are trying to marry you off to any of their daughters.”

At this Kai chuckles. But it’s short lived.

Rei assumes that Kai must then be seeing multiple people or sleeping with multiple people. And Kais like I don’t have the time for that. I barely get out of the house.

And Rei doesn’t want to believe that because this isn’t the Kai Hiwatari he remembers. The Kai of his memories was always doing something. Up to something. Not saying he’d sleep around. But surely he’d have someone or something in place. Kai was a loner. But he always had someone.

And their whole coffee date thing dissolved into awkwardness.

Kai feels obligated to ask Rei if he has a someone, he sees no ring either. And Rei waves him off that he has nothing serious going on right now, but there’s always the chance of something serious. If the right person comes along.

Kai chooses to ignore the connotation of his words. There’s still too much unspoken from their youth that he doesn’t want to get into. Never wants them to get into. That ship had sailed… well it never docked or boarded. But. It wasn’t gonna happen. Not now. They weren’t kids anymore. They weren’t the same people. Not even close.

And Kai wasn’t even sure if he wanted to let someone in. He was happy… well he was content… he was okay with how things were. He wasn’t interested in changing things. Messing with the status quo.

And he should have said that. Instead of agreeing to meet up with Rei Kon again.

And this is a painfully slow burn. Because they are both dumb adults.

Rei threads their fingers together on their second coffee meet up. It’s something to fill the silence, holding Kai’s hand. Or it was supposed to be.

Because Kai panics, pulling back his hand And is like you can’t be doing this now. Not when you left all those years back to go blade for China.

And Rei like we all made mistakes when we were kids. What’s important is to not make those same mistakes in adulthood.

Kai sees red. “You didn’t even say anything you just left with Max. You two decided on that. You two always had something going on.”

And down hill the whole meetup goes. Accusing Rei that he had something going on with Max, and then Mao. And Rei accuses Kai of having something going on with Yuriy with all people, as if Yuriy didn’t hate his guts after going back to Volkov after everything.

They leave on bad terms, just agree to be civil enough to get through this partnership.

And this is Rei we;re all talking about. He can’t stay mad long, but Kai means everything that was said. They would remain civil. But Rei wants to apologize and try being friends since Kai seems content to just be lonely. Rei wants to change that because this Kai seems like a shell of who he used to be (And he wants to get to the bottom of it)

But its not like he can just apologize at one of their meetings. No. Not in front of Kai’s company and definitely not in front of Takao and Mr. D. Kai has always been good at avoiding things, so Rei struggles to speak to him. Kai doesn't respond to any call, text, email or line message. Everything goes unanswered, so Rei get’s sneaky and sends an email to Kai from Mr. D’s email to meet up. It’s unprofessional, but he’s sure Mr. D would be okay with it.

Kai is not happy or amused when it’s just Rei sitting in his conference room, but sits down just in case this is actually business, he didnt have the patience to deal with that if he assumed wrong.

Rei apologizes and Kai begrudgingly accepts. Rei asks for them to meet up again outside of work but this time he won't touch him, nor would he accuse Kai of anything, when it was him and Max who had put past events into motion.

Their third meet up is at a park, and Rei shows up with coffee. They sit on a bench in silence, until Rei just starts filling in the silence like he used to. It’s not easy and it's not simple. There's still awkwardness. Their past gets clarified. There was a could have been. Would have been after V-Force. If things were different. Max and Rei had talked and decided to split from Bladebrakers and that's when it all went wrong. Both were scared back then to make a move, change things, but maybe they should have, maybe things would have been different.

They talk about what happened to Kai. What changed after the fall of BEGA. The regret Kai had once things died down. The magnitude of his mistakes. He wanted to hide away from it all and forget. And he did and now it was a decade later. Kai admits to feeling like he’s behind everyone else in terms of life experiences and Rei the romantic is like its never too late you can always live them.

And Kai lets out a pathetic chuckle. And is like yeah okay sure. I’d have to find someone to live them with. And Rei looks at him with too soft eyes, like melted amber, and Kai swallows thickly. Because he knows that look. Knows what it means and knows what it could end with.

And fuck it. He let’s Rei thread their fingers together this time and let’s the raven haired man kiss him.

And bada bing bada boom. Thats my silly lil slowburn ReiKai idea. with an epilogue of them finally sleeping together.

THANKS.

#kairei #kai x rei #beyblade fanfiction idea #maybe i'll write this in like 15 years #we just never see this dynamic #or i dont see it #let rei top.#reasons i could never write one shots: this idea is 2500 words long #i am a menace to myself #i will take comments and suggestions on this idea.#me wondering if i could make this a three shot #but im not attempting it because my lil ideas turn out to be mosnters.#also its been a minute since i drew these two so coming soon i guess

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weaselle · 4 months

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it was too much i had to make my own post

line cook here. ACCURATE

if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.

it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.

The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.

So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.

(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)

Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.

More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.

So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.

all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.

while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays

Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.

Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.

The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.

Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself

you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)

If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there

Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in

oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?

water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.

Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!

The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.

You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)

THE POINT IS

by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.

For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.

if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.

you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.

See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?

those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...

And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...

Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.

In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO

open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.

Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.

It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.

but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.

#long post #sorry #i just have a lot of DO PEOPLE UNDERSTAND feelings left over from all my years in restaurants #restaurants #line cook #service industry

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