[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

[edgeoftheknife]

"They sound pretty smart, then," Ravel replied lightly, still twirling the cup in his hands and smiling a little. "You'll have to introduce us. Never enough smart people around."

He shook his head, as if to banish the joke. "I wouldn't expect anyone to mingle if they don't want to. Not when I don't even want to. I hadn't really intended this to be much more than cake, but apparently people needed a party."

It hadn't been the best month, for a lot of people. Erskine himself hadn't been having such a tough time of it, short of trying to keep Anton's books (which was now thankfully out of his hands), but Anton had been laid up for most of the month and Erskine himself had carried Valdis back to the Hotel with enough blood on her to scare the daylights out of him.

Speaking of which...

"Everything all right with you?" He shot a sideways glance at Bakura. "I saw the aftermath of that little scuffle a while back."

[denyamenti]

"I'll add it to my calendar of things to do," Bakura returned the jest. "Agreed, on the not enough smart people."

He looks back at the people filling the common room, the noise, the general feel of ebullience that pushed outward from the crowd like a swell of air, all the way back to where they were sitting. "Sometimes you just don't have the mind for it," was all he said. He knew that feeling very well.

Bakura shrugged at Erskine's question regarding the right with Valdis. "The sefatjiw and I were just renegotiating a deal of ours," he replied, like it had been a mild argument over espresso rather than a literally bloody brawl in the street.

"You ever notice how some people get to keep making mistakes, and getting more chances? And yet other people only seem to get one shot before they're written off."

[edgeoftheknife]

"Really? That's some negotiation. Remind me never to cross you."

Again, it was said jokingly, though Ravel couldn't help but remember the blood that had lingered on his waistcoat, on the inside of the jacket he'd wrapped around Valdis. By all rights he probably ought to have been angrier about the whole thing. Valdis was the closest thing to a friend Erskine had in Keeliai, short of Anton, and she'd nearly died because of that renegotiation with Bakura. But she hadn't accused Bakura of anything outright, and hadn't asked Erskine, or anyone that he knew of, to intervene on her behalf. He hadn't been able to get many more details about the fight out of her that day... maybe he ought to ask again, now that she was on the mend.

At Bakura's question Ravel could feel his chest tighten, could feel his heart trying to climb into his throat. Oh believe me, I've noticed. He swallowed hard and nodded slowly in response.

"It does seem to work that way, doesn't it?" came the hoarse reply.

Admittedly, his had been one hell of a mistake.

[denyamenti]

"I doubt you'd make the same sort of deals with me that she does," Bakura returned easily, in a tone that mimicked Erskine's own: a jest, but one that wasn't entirely based in humour or parody. "So it's unlikely you'd need that reminder."

He could almost feel the man sitting next to him tense, like it was a sound rather than a motion, and at the roughness of Erskine's reply, Bakura rocked smoothly to his feet without a word and seemed, at least for the moment, to have simply walked away without explanation.

But he returned a couple moments later with a second plastic glass, and stood in front of Erskine, holding it out for the man to take. "You were empty," he said lightly, nodding at the one Erskine had already drained. "And your throat sounds dry. Bad circulation in an old building like this can do that."

It didn't have anything with the ginger ale or the Hotel's air quality. It had everything to do with giving Erskine a few minutes to get hold of himself, and Bakura standing in front of him just so happened to block him from the view of the other partygoers.

[edgeoftheknife]

The jest about Valdis drew a raised eyebrow but not much more than that. Ravel was so entirely out of the loop with regard to the two of them that he couldn't even begin to conjecture, and wasn't much in the mood to force it.

Likewise, he didn't quite know what to think when the man simply stood up and walked away. It was so abrupt that Erskine found himself staring after where Bakura had gone in a sort of daze. He wasn't necessarily hurt, by anything other than the memories he'd dredged up himself at least, but... was it something he said?

He wouldn't be surprised if it was something he said. He tended to have that effect.

The glass of ginger ale that returned with Bakura was wholly unexpected and drew a more genuine smile from Erskine. "Thank you," he replied, trying to copy Bakura's light, noncommittal tone and failing badly. He took the cup and slid it into the empty one, then lowered his head and took a deep breath to steady himself. Ravel didn't consciously notice that Bakura had positioned himself as a shield but some part of him knew enough to take advantage of it anyway.

"I think you're right. I'll have to have a talk with Anton about the air in here."

[denyamenti]

Bakura knew better than Erskine might realize about saying things that offended people and drove them away even when that wasn't the intent. He stays where he is, standing like it's a normal thing to do, and even just the way his posture is subtly deflects people's attentions away. He does that until he gets the sense that Erskine's got a better grasp of the mask again, then flops back down into his seat.

"You should," he agrees, like there had been no thank you in the conversation. "Except then he'll wear himself out checking on all the sigils, so perhaps you should called the sha-kharew over to do it-- I assume she knows better than to try any of her tricks here. I didn't pick up enough from the few lessons I had on sigils to be of much use, there."

[edgeoftheknife]

He didn't know all of Bakura's little pet names for people, or what most of them meant (his own included), but Erskine could deduce enough on this one by context alone to come up with a name.

"China?" He frowned, eyebrows knitting together. "She should know better, but I wouldn't trust that to mean anything. She's already set at least one spy in the Hotel that I know of. I don't think I'll be inviting her over any time soon."

Never mind the fact that he'd basically invited every Foreigner over for cake. With any luck China wouldn't risk the damage to her waistline.

"You studied sigils?"

[denyamenti]

"I knew you were one of the ones from your world with some sense," Bakura muttered, in regards to China. Despite the silent standoff she and the thief had, he certainly looked for no reasons to interact with her except when he had to.

Erskine's question gave him a pause, like he was thinking over how to best answer, as he retook his seat next to the man. "I wouldn't say study, no. Shudder asked me to take a look at some of the wards on the Hotel, shortly after he and it arrived. Almost a year ago, now. Or two years ago, if you count the year they spent in the Dreaming. I stopped in to see what the fuss about the Hotel was, got the standard speech upon entry with an extra emphasis on what happens to thieves, and he asked what an Egyptian would see in a section he'd been working on."

And then for context, since he didn't know if Erskine would make the connection, Bakura added, "Hieroglyphics and sigils are built and written in much the same way. Newer languages get too caught up on direction and form, but it's the patterns in them that I see. As thanks for the assistance, he showed me how to make a few simple ones. There were a few other times after that, but things with Malicant came to a head not long after."

It was strange, because before the final battle with Malicant -- and before Bakura had gone back to his world, and lost the Memory RPG -- he and Anton had been on decent terms. Bakura didn't trust him, but he'd not felt overly intimidated by him, even knowing about the gist, by Anton's own description. Hell, Anton had given him Christmas socks.

But then he'd come back to Keeliai in the state he'd been in, against his will, and everything had felt off. Anton's steadfast neutrality had morphed into an ugly thing for him to deal with, in the months where Bakura had desperately felt the need to shore himself up against everything. So he'd just stopped coming around the Hotel at all, and dropped the perusal of sigils entirely, in an effort to minimize the time spent around the Hotel's proprietor, when he felt like his guard always needed to be at its highest.