[Midnight Hotel] July catch-alll

[gistful]

Characters: Anyone, everyone.
Date: Month of JULY, 2016.
Location: The Midnight Hotel.
Situation: Catch-all post! Feel free to use this post for anything that happens within the Midnight Hotel during the month, using the subject header to label specific rooms or for specific people. See also the OOC note at the bottom.
Warnings/Rating: Mark your threads if content warnings become applicable, please!

Though the attack on Anton and Jintou occurred outside of the Hotel, its effects can nevertheless be seen on the Hotel’s runnings during July. Jintou is absent, in the first place, though Anton keeps his room in the event he’s found.

For the last few days of June and the first couple days of July Anton is preoccupied with rebuilding the shops he damaged in his attempt to stop Jintou from being taken, and therefore a good deal of the Hotel’s daily running is in the hands of his staff and a handful of trusted ex-gang kedan.

Within the first few days of the month Anton’s health takes a nosedive. Though the chronic condition discovered by Raine and Tony wasn’t previously active, the poisoning attempt apparently changed that and for the rest of this month Anton is under enforced bed-rest—or if not bed-rest then an enforced holiday. For that reason, any and all offers to help out with maintenance, cleaning, cooking, accounting and other daily chores at the Hotel will be welcomed.

Provided, that is, that no one minds the Hotel proprietor hovering over their shoulders—when he isn’t being sat on by a giant wolf to make sure he doesn’t overtax himself.

Hotel rules are, obviously, still in effect.

[ooc: The Midnight Hotel’s status page is available here, with the rules at the top and ongoing status at the bottom. PLEASE POST TO THE STATUS PAGE IF YOUR CHARACTER WOULD LIKE A ROOM, JOB OR AREA IN THE GARAGE, OR ARE MOVING OUT. Anton will manufacture means of payment until Foreigners are able to properly offer recompense or choose to move out.]

Comments

[gistful]

"I've been resting all week." Anton was fairly sure it was messing up his sleeping schedule, as well. He was in fact napping--he was napping more than he'd ever had an opportunity to do so, which mean he was very rarely properly tired at night. He still slept, because for whatever reason his body was still rebelling--as it did now, as he made his way across the room.

He paused at Erskine's plaintive tone, and then reached out and turned on the record-player, and glanced back with a faint smile in the shadows. "I'm supposed to be resting today too, you know."

I'll be back. Just dressed and with a lamp on, to do some reading while Erskine tried to sleep a little longer.

[edgeoftheknife]

Anton disappeared toward the bathroom and Erskine sighed, somewhat mollified by the music and the knowledge that Anton would be returning, but still pretty well convinced that Anton was, in fact, insane. 'Almost five o'clock' wasn't a getting-out-of-bed time, it was a going-to-bed time... unless one was at war. Which they weren't.

He crawled back into the bed and burrowed under the covers despite not being overly cold, because he'd always had a liking for bedclothes. It came of spending so much time in them awake (for various reasons) and having spent so much time away from them during the war. Lying on his stomach, he faceplanted on the pillow that had become his and drifted in and out of a half-sleep state, enjoying the music if nothing else.

[gistful]

'Almost five o'clock' as a bed-time, if verbalised, would have gotten Erskine nothing less than the most scandalised deadpan stare Anton could muster. Fortunately, Erskine didn't verbalise it, and went unstared-at as Anton went into the bathroom.

He emerged shortly afterward, frowning and dressed, still carrying a comb in one shaking hand, but with his hair dried and yet still a unbrushed. He paused for a moment to look at Erskine in his little burrow of covers, and then said quietly, "Are you still awake?"

If Erskine wasn't, Anton's voice at that level shouldn't register as enough of a threat or a startle to actually wake him up. If he was ... well, then Anton won't have woken him up.

[edgeoftheknife]

"Mmph."

Erskine lifted his face from the pillow to stare blearily at Anton. "Does the pope wear a funny hat?"

Hopeless would've liked that one.

Ravel squeezed his eyes tightly shut as a yawn overtook him, then squirmed up through the mess of blankets to prop himself up with the pillow against the headboard. He'd dozed off briefly while Anton was in the bathroom, but then his body had jolted him awake again just as quickly. He scrubbed a hand over his face and stifled another yawn.

"S'matter?"

[gistful]

It was a good one, and even made Anton smile slightly. "I've heard that, every so often."

But then he sighed and came to the bed and sat by Erskine, and held up his trembling hands. The comb was held loose in one of them, not out of choice but because his fingers were too numb to hold it properly. "I can't comb my hair."

He probably wouldn't be able to braid it, either.

[edgeoftheknife]

It was on the tip of Ravel's tongue to ask why he couldn't comb his hair. Chalk it up to only being half awake.

And then he suddenly understood, the trembling of Anton's hands clicking in his mind. Erskine sat forward, up and away from the pillow he'd been propped against, and snatched the comb out of Anton's hand. Ravel's hands often shook when he was exhausted, but that was more to do with being imprecise rather than weak. A cup of tea wasn't safe in his hands. A comb? He could handle a comb.

He shifted a little on the bed, tucking one leg underneath him and moving to where he was actually behind Shudder rather than at an angle. Ravel hadn't had long hair himself in ages, but he had, back when it was more the norm for men. He could probably manage this.

"Can we make this a proper slumber party and paint our nails next?"

[gistful]

"Larrikin did get together some of what he called vital supplies, when he was here," Anton said dryly, turning so that Erskine was at his back, and could properly reach all sides of his head. The last time someone had combed his hair ... well, it probably was Larrikin, actually. Before then, Sadh.

But it was soothing, in its own way. Made him think of home. Of when home wasn't a place, but the people. Like now. It wasn't often Anton felt cared-for, at least not in this explicit manner.

"I could always find them, if you wished to paint yourself polka-dotted or something equally ridiculous."

[edgeoftheknife]

Despite his fatigue, Erskine chuckled. Of course Larrikin would consider paints to be 'vital supplies.' "I'll pass, for now," he replied. "Though polka dots are very tempting. Wouldn't want to look too fantastic, now would I? None of your other staff would ever get any work done, and then where would we be?"

It was said teasingly, of course. Ravel hardly ever made mention of his own looks, except in some off-handed way like that. The people around him seemed to be more than content to mention it for him.

Erskine had never really had anyone to do this sort of thing for--hair combing. He'd been an only child, without cousins. The Dead Men had been his only real experience with that sort of domestic intimacy, though at that time they hadn't really thought of it as such. It had simply been necessity.

"What else did Larrikin do, while he was here? Aside from take five thousand pictures of himself?"

[gistful]

"Take another five thousand," said Anton deadpan, and while some might read that as facetiousness, it wasn't far off the truth. Larrikin had enjoyed having the technology. He'd enjoyed a lot about being alive again, actually.

The comb caught in a snarl and Anton grunted as it tugged. That was the only drawback to having long hair, though Anton's wasn't as difficult to manage as it could have been. "Careful. You're meant to be a raveller, aren't you?"

[edgeoftheknife]

It was a good thing Anton was facing away from Erskine, because the eyebrow that shot up at that....

"Very clever," he drawled, reaching up to tug on a bit of Anton's hair teasingly--but closer to the scalp, so as not to actually cause pain. "I shudder to think what sort of pun you'll come up with next."

Nevertheless, when he ran the comb through Anton's hair next it was slower, more cautious. Just because he had little experience with the fine art of long hair didn't mean he was incapable of learning. "I still think you have too much bloody hair. I know--war--but it looks better short. More modern."

[gistful]

"I thought so." Anton grunted again at the tug in his hair, but from affected belligerence rather than pain. "You didn't exactly try very hard yourself, did you?" Stupid puns. Stupid puns were the bread and butter of a war-time unit. It was calming and familiar. Even the fact Anton's fingers still trembled was, in its own way, calming and familiar when combined with having his hair tended.

"You do recall, I hope, that the styles of short hair you last saw me wear were over a century old," Anton pointed out. "Hardly 'modern', unless by 'modern' you mean everything after the industrial revolution."

[edgeoftheknife]

"And you will recall, I hope, that I'm from farther into the future than you are. The last time-" Ravel choked on the words, hands faltering briefly, but he fought to keep it together. He couldn't fall apart every time he so much as thought about it. If nothing else, Anton must be getting sick of it by now. Ravel swallowed heavily before continuing. "Lately you've had short hair. It looks good."

He finished combing the section he was working on and tapped the comb softly against Anton's shoulder. "Makes you look a bit less like something out of the Addams Family." Anton wouldn't be able to see his face but the slight smile echoed in his voice. "Of course then I'd have no choice but to jump you, silver fox and all, and then you'd only break my heart. So maybe it's all for the best. Spare my poor feelings for another day."

He fell quiet for a while, focusing on the work at hand, and then finally the comb stilled and Erskine leaned back to eye his work. "I think that's it. Can you manage a plait, or...."

Please say yes, please say yes.

Erskine's experience with plaiting hair was somewhat comparable to his experience swallowing swords or tuning pianos. Which was to say non-existent.

[gistful]

"I couldn't even comb it," Anton pointed out dryly, turning his head just enough to indicate he was looking in Erskine's direction without actually being able to see him. "What makes you think I have the fine control to plait it?"

It was true. It was also said for the sake of the amusement. Anton could have put it in a ponytail. It would have been annoying, but he could have done it. He wasn't going to, just because it amused him to make Erskine do it fo him.

"I hope you took pictures," Anton added. "I've hate to have become a heart-throb and not have evidence."

He did not, in any way, acknowledge Erskine's little choke. It didn't seem like something Erskine would want him to point out right now, and Anton didn't particularly want to dwell on those scars either.

[edgeoftheknife]

"Wishful thinking, I suppose," Erskine sighed. He'd adopted shorter hair earlier than most of the others in the unit--short of Skulduggery and Ghastly, of course--and had usually left the braiding duties up to either Anton himself or Larrikin. He theoretically knew how, and had probably done it a few times, but that would have been centuries ago.

Where was Google when you needed it?

"I don't know, I probably have a picture on my phone. I seem to recall taking a few around the time we inducted Valkyrie into the unit. Alas, my phone did not follow me here." He worked as he spoke, slowly and carefully, learning as he went. "Hence why I actually get work done for you and don't spend all of my time hiding in the broom closet playing Candy Crush."

The plait came out passably well, and Erskine managed to avoid falling back into his more destructive thought processes for the rest of the morning--with a little help from Anton, of course. The little impromptu slumber party even went well enough that when Erskine laid back down to sleep he managed to pass right out, leaving Anton his run of the Hotel for the morning.