Cleaning up at the end of the day was one of the worst parts of working at Mostro Lounge. Floyd liked when it was busy. When getting orders out was a battle of you versus the customers, when you had to dart this way and that way and every way to get plates on tables (and to the right ones, he remembered, Azul yelled so much that first month when he just dropped orders wherever Floyd ended up).
Cleaning by comparison was boring. Dull. Floyd liked it better when Azul pulled in a bunch of suckers and got them to do it, even if Jade complained later about things not being perfect.
Speaking of Jade. Floyd looks up from the glass he's been cleaning behind the bar (the same glass he's been cleaning for ten minutes now) and hums questioningly. Oh...Azul told Jade about that? Floyd pouts. What did he think Jade was, Floyd's babysitter?
"It was a joke!" Floyd whined, slamming the glass down on the bar table. It was rougher than he should have done it, but it survived with only a little crack on the bottom. "Azul takes things too seriously. He's had a major stick up his ass ever since he started getting more and more contracts."
Floyd huffed and leaned down, resting his head on the bar counter. He didn't wanna clean anymore. He was tired and bored, but if he left Azul would yell and Jade would get that dumb, pitying look on his face that he got whenever he tried to tell Floyd he was having the wrong kind of fun. Floyd huffed again.
"Azul's a crybaby who gets upset about everything. He even threatened to make me the bitch prize." Floyd scoffed at that and shifted so his brother could see his face. "Isn't that stupid? Anybody who needs to do Azul's jobs would be some boring small fry. No fun at all."
Floyd glared. He hung around Azul cause he was fun. Not cause Azul was his boss or employer or whatever stupid title he put on it. "And Azul already knows what we'd do if he stopped being fun."
Jade had kept Floyd in the corner of his eye as he worked through the rest of the dining area, as he did most nights, but it didn't take his intuition to know that something was wrong this time. Floyd was slower with the cleaning than usual, and while there was rarely a rhyme or reason to his mood swings, there was always a reason for Azul's. The coincidence was strong enough that Jade was willing to hold the pieces in congruence and examine them side by side, where a picture was beginning to take shape. It wasn't the first time he had been caught in the middle of one of Floyd and Azul's spats, but between the outbursts and vitriol was a story that was - as far as Jade could tell - harmless. A joke that missed its mark. That, too, was nothing unusual.
"Mostro Lounge has been busier as well," he pointed out, resting the pole of the mop against the counter with one hand while he slid the endangered glass from Floyd's grasp with the other. As he checked it over, he continued: "Lately our weeknights see the same volume of customers that our weekends usually do. I don't believe that that and Azul's new scheme are unrelated."
There was a hairline fracture snaking in a crooked line from one edge of the glass' bottom, not quite reaching the other side. Jade ran a gloved finger over it thoughtfully, then set it aside. It wouldn't need to be replaced quite yet. Resting his elbow on the counter and his chin in his palm, he looked down at Floyd with bright eyes and a mischief-hiding smile. Even when Floyd pouted and glared and huffed, Jade still found him rather adorable. It was in those expressions that a child lurked.
"It takes the small fry, as you put it, to draw the barracuda. For now, we must simply wait." It will be fun soon, whispered in the space between words. More importantly, Jade wished to see exactly what the "bitch prize" entailed.