Omg! Its late and I have to go to bed soon but shout out to Sifberg on tumblr for allowing me to write this! THANK YOU!I'm so happy to be doing so and I enjoyed writing this so so so sooo much! So much more to come and I hope I got everything down :D ENJOY! Comments/likes/ follows (me: YAY!) and check out Sifberg's AU! Her art is beautiful! And I wrote what I thought would make the story more reality based and what Bunnymund would think of in day to day life as a restaurant AU. And everyone in this AU is human (just for clarification ;) ENJOY!
Prologue- The Warren :
Aster Bunnymund woke up to a buzzing alarm clock 2 ft away. His hand almost smashed the snooze button in annoyance and the incessant ringing stopped for a minute. But just a minute. At 6:45 the alarm went off again. This time he got out of bed and hit the off button. He put both hands on his unshaven face and rubbed one hand through his hair.
He was exhausted.
Last night at The Warren was the craziest night he could possibly imagine. The restaurant was a complete and utter disaster until he came in to manage everything. The slacker he just fired was having a piece of gum and talking to the dish washer in the kitchen on a Friday night! Oh yeah, he fired her too. She wasn't doing her job, or caring for that matter, either. She was just staring at that good for nothing that didn't care about his business. When Bunnymund came storming in he didn't even pretend to do anything, let alone try. Bunnymund sighed. Another day another slacker.
He had fired so many already. Every time they showed up in an interview they seemed to have the right qualifications, maybe lacking here and there but nothing that couldn't be fixed. Or he thought could be fixed. They were all just plain lazy. They didn't do anything but sit there and waste his money. One of them (a particular favorite to laugh at) actually slept during 4 busy dinner services in a row. He was drooling on the menus and making the customers leave as soon as they came in. Fired. Another one hung the light bulbs wrong and they crashed on the dinner guests as they were eating and he laughed as he stuffed his face with Tooth's order. Fired pretty quickly, right after Bunnymund had yelled his head off at him. Another screwed up the new menus so that all the letters were backwards. Didn't seem to care and walked out. Bunnymund would have fired her anyway. Another broke nearly every single dish in one night and didn't pay for it. Fired. Fired, fired, they were all fired. Now it was just him, the owner, Tooth, the best waitress he could ask for, Sandy, the cook who basically kept the restaurant alive and a couple of other workers who drifted in and out of the restaurant on busy nights.
He put on his normal dark blue T-shirt and black slacks and walked into his living room. All of the furniture was green and the walls were a nice wooded color. The fireplace had a beautiful hand painted egg collection. Born on Easter, Bunnymund always had a special affiliation with them. After he moved from Australia, the eggs were one of the only things that reminded him of his mother and father who also enjoyed the wondrous "googies." He smiled at a distant memory of one of his birthdays, when his mom and dad looked for eggs with him in the yard outside his house. They all played hide and seek afterwards and had a beautiful chocolate egg cake after dinner. "Easter is the best holiday!" he giggled to his mom and dad. Even better than Christmas, his (un-admittedly) second favorite. Then he sighed when he looked at the egg shaped clock in the center on the fireplace shelf. 6:56.
It's too early in the morning.
Bunnymund left his apartment with his bag and walked down to his usual coffee shop three blocks away. While he was getting his usual cup of coffee he thought about how Tooth and Sandy were doing. He had become so close to them in the past three years it was almost a natural habit for him now.
Tooth was in college studying dentistry, why he wasn't sure, but she seemed to enjoy it and lit up every time she talked about it.
"Did you know that not flossing for a specific amount of time can cause…" Gigantic smile
"Did you know that certain children are actually born with teeth?" Eyes fluttered and she almost dropped a plate as she was cleaning up.
"I know blood and gums can be a little gross at times, but after you see the beautiful tooth underneath, the blood isn't so bad and the gums almost look… happy"
"Happy?" he had asked.
"Yeah! The gums are happier when the children lose their baby teeth! So the big ones can grow in you know! And although I said I was thinking about being a regular dentist that looks at everybody's teeth you know but now I'm studying more about children's teeth and I love it! I think I want to be a children's dentist but I wouldn't mind about the old folks or anyone in between either. Ah teeth. I could talk about them all day. So, how are you, Aster?"
"Good."
Honestly he didn't know how someone could get so excited over just… just teeth. But if it made her happy, Bunnymund was happy too. Ever since Tooth came into the business about two years ago, he saw the efficiency of the diner improve tenfold and she promised only to talk about her teeth after work so as not to disturb the customers. She put a nice and kind air to the restaurant and smiled at every single person that came through the door. She gave everyone a good conversation and she seemed to not be laden down by anything. It was refreshing to see her every day and if she slacked then Bunnymund would consider himself a cow that could turn into a magical flying fish every time he would change his hat… No. Toothiana never slacked.
She was probably running around college and learning about how to prevent cavities and coming up with floss that could keep children's teeth cleaned without it being annoying.
And then there was Sandy. An interesting little fellow. Silent most of the time and he really was very tiny, almost 1/3 of Bunnymund's height. Granted, he was tall but Sandy was super short. "Big things come in little packages" he mused. Sandy could cook like no other chef he had ever met, without sacrificing any quality of the food. But Sandy had one rule. Only Tooth and the other servers were allowed in when he needed orders to be picked up. Other than that, NO COMING IN THE KITCHEN. Bunnymund would have questioned this but he was allowed in and watched over Sandy's cooking and bought Sandy's food supplies. Each dish Sandy made (after thoroughly looking over Bunnymund's ingredients) was exquisite and came with his signature, a little pinch of salt. The salt made it taste interesting and reminded Bunnymund of the sand on beaches. And he always had good dreams afterwards. It was weird, how magical Sandy's food was. But Bunnymund didn't take it for granted. Everything about the food had barely any complaints, even from high end critics.
Then there was Bunnymund's worst nightmare, Pitch. Pitch Black was the diner down the street and it did business almost as good as Bunnymund's. It mainly was a fancy winery but served gourmet food as well. Bunnymund griped his coffee as he walked down the street to the market.
What was Pitch's deal anyway? Bunnymund knew he owned a good restaurant but that didn't mean that Pitch had to try to ridiculously out compete him all the time.
After Bunnymund had carefully picked out his vegetables and fruits and breads from the freshest markets (they were out so it literally took him hours) , he walked to his restaurant with arms full of bags and greeted Tooth at the door.
She smiled and took some bags.
"Ready for Lunch Service? How was your morning? Did you brush your teeth?"
He sighed, seeing Sandy nod to him with the morning paper. He was going into the kitchen and was bringing a ladder with him.
Bunnymund looked back at Tooth.
"Yes, Tooth. I brushed my teeth."
She grinned and he smiled wearily.
"Another day, another dollar" She chirped.
"Another day, hopefully not another slacker." He replied.
And twenty minutes later, The Warren opened up for lunch service.
