[Midnight Hotel] October catch-all

[gistful]

Characters: Anyone, everyone.
Date: Month of October, 2015 (2016 in-game).
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!

The Hotel clears out this month – what with the weather cooling down, many of the patrons who had been finding respite from the heat no longer need to do so. Windows are kept open and linens are aired. The result is that the Hotel seems roomier and far less bustling, and it’s an opportunity to relax for the staff. Mostly. Somewhat.

Though there are fewer patrons this month than before, there are a number of gang-kedan holding little workshops for the building of spirit houses or little planterboxes. These are primarily for impoverished kedan who can’t afford their own materials (which are provided), but anyone is willing to help out or ask for advice, and donations are welcome! The most notable thing about these little workshops is that they are, quite frequently, being run by kedan from different or even rivalling gangs, working together.

The spider infestation has tapered off, but there’s some new signs in the kitchen stating that the only free ingredients provided by the Hotel are on two very specific shelves in the cupboard and in one of the fridges. (Not including the food cooked by Yuri, or pre-cooked into packages by Anton.) There’s also a sign asking anyone who sees Klaus and Raine in the kitchen together to please alert the Hotel staff, as this will result in a health hazard.

There’s also a very loud and obvious newcomer to the Hotel – someone some might recognise from the network. Rue is loud, brash and always appears in old-style frock-coat, breeches and heels, all brightly coloured and perfectly representing a period-era dandy. He’s also got a taste for massive wide-brimmed hats and facial rouge, and is mostly obvious due to his English accent and outrageous flirting, and the fact he apparently knows Anton. Fortunately, he doesn't spend a significant amount of time around the Hotel, and frequently goes out on the town to explore (and flirt).

[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

Skulduggery and Anton | Early October | Probable spoilers for the SP series

[edgeoftheknife]

It was entirely possible that they could have done this over the handsets. Erskine's question was simple enough, and he could have even asked Anton in person. Called Skulduggery. End of story.

Only... the three of them hadn't managed to be in a room together, alone, since just after the Vile incident. Just after he and Skulduggery had fought and Skulduggery had shot him. And before that? Erskine's arrival, maybe. He couldn't remember. The point was, they were the only three Dead Men in Keeliai--Rue notwithstanding. Anton at least was still acting as if Ravel counted as a Dead Man, and Skulduggery hadn't been quite as murderous around him as before. If nothing else, maybe they should meet up and try to get on the same page.

Even if that page wasn't much of a page at all, these days.

Anton's office had seemed like the best place for this kind of thing, given the level of privacy it afforded, so Erskine sat back in one of the chairs with his hands wrapped around a thermos of coffee. Waited for the other two to get settled.

[gistful]

When Anton had gotten the call he had debated, at first, making a muchness of it. It wasn't characteristic of him to do so, which was entirely why on this occasion he did. Calmly he cut the cake he had on the tray, setting three pieces on three plates and sharing them out--including one, with an air of innocent pointedness, to Skulduggery.

There were tea too. He poured for three and shared them out despite the fact that Erskine was nursing a large thermos already, and took his own seat with tea and cake and no indication he'd done anything untoward whatsoever.

"I hope this isn't a call to maturity," Anton observed. "I may go senile from the shock of the suggestion coming from either of you."

[skeletonenigma]

It was strange how, by that point, Skulduggery had been alone with Ravel more often than with Anton. That was completely the fault of the chain and shackles, yes, but the point still stood. When he entered the office and found both Anton and Ravel already there, he wondered for a moment whether he'd walked into the wrong room.

But of course he hadn't.

Skulduggery took the cake - after a moment of still disbelief, it had to be said - and then, just as pointedly as Anton's innocence, took the cake over to the desk against the wall and left it there by the finance books. Then he walked back over and sat down.

The tea he left where it was. Tea had done much less to offend him lately.

"I need to make the suggestion more often, then," he murmured.

[edgeoftheknife]

Erskine eyed the cake and the tea, though not with quite so much suspicion as Skulduggery. After a moment or two of deliberation he sat his thermos aside and picked up the tea Anton had poured, simply because it would be a shame to waste a good cup (and because the thermos would keep his coffee warm in the meantime). The cake was delicious, and not nearly as offensive as Skulduggery seemed to think either, although Erskine had never claimed much of a sweet tooth and worked through the piece slowly.

"What, to make Anton senile?" he asked blithely, without looking up from where he was poking at his cake with his fork. "And then you'll be stuck with a senile gist-user and me. Cheers."

Alright, so they needed to start this thing before someone snapped. Or maybe they just needed to snap and get it over with. He wasn't really sure which would be more constructive at this point.

"I want to tell Valdis about Rue." Erskine looked up from his cake to gaze at each of them in turn, without moving his head, to judge their reactions.

[gistful]

"The saying is 'misery loves company', I believe," Anton observed, watching Skulduggery abandon the cake while sipping his own tea. "Not 'insanity loves company', which I've heard is the opposite."

Then he fell silent, not because he was precisely stunned by Erskine's suggestion but because it was coming from Erskine. How often had the Dead Men discussed changing long-term policies? Almost never. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake; so many terrible secrets might have come out sooner, if they had.

This one wasn't a terrible secret--just a customary one. Rue had always been a secret. One of the few secrets the Dead Men had held collectively, apparently, so Anton was fairly sure that was the reason behind his immediate refusal.

Then he actually thought about it. Valdis would delight in the secret. She'd appreciate the prank. There was no reason to keep that particular secret here, and the last thing Anton wanted was to re-encourage either Erskine or Skulduggery back toward secret-keeping. So after a minute of thought, by which time his cup was half-empty, he said, "I've no objections. Is there a particular reason why?"

[skeletonenigma]

In contrast to Anton, Skulduggery was completely silent. He was half-surprised he was being included at all, if he was being perfectly honest, given what Erskine had found out about him just a few short months ago. But even after the flash of surprise faded, Skulduggery still had mixed feelings, and he couldn't immediately parse what any of those feelings were.

He got up, walked over to where he'd left the slice of cake near the finance books, and brought it back over to his seat. It was something to do, however small and irrelevant. He then took one glove off and carefully picked the slice apart with his bare skeletal fingers, waiting for the answer to Anton's question.

[edgeoftheknife]

For a moment Erskine was caught up in watching Skulduggery's odd little movements, moving the cake and then fetching it back again. The skeleton almost had him mesmerized it would seem, though whether out of the sheer oddity of his actions or due to Ravel's own unique state of mind was anyone's guess.

After that moment, however, he shook his head as if to clear it and turned back to Anton.

"The alibi," he replied. "We don't have enough of us here to keep up the misdirection like we did. There's too few Foreigners and we're all too close. And we're not dealing with the whole of Europe here, we're dealing with one city on the back of a turtle. I'm either going to have to shelve Rue for a while or I'm going to need a serious alibi to use him. Valdis can do that."

He paused. "Plus she's a friend, and I think she'd get a kick out of it."

[gistful]

It was a good reason. A reason which indicated Erskine had thought it over. A reason which didn't change Anton's lack of objections. "I still have no objections," he reiterated, and glanced toward Skulduggery, watching him deconstruction the cake crumb by crumb. "Skulduggery? You're spectacularly silent."

[skeletonenigma]

"Spectacularly?" Skulduggery repeated. He didn't stop picking through the cake slice, moving large crumbs to the outer edge of the plate and leaving the rest in a crumbling pile in the center. "I didn't realise I could be so impressive without saying a word."

Which was, of course, a bold-faced lie. Skulduggery was always aware of how impressive he was.

He stood up, put the cake back down on the table, and moved a few steps backwards toward the door, leaving his tea untouched. "If Saracen ever gets here," he told Erskine, "you're the one in charge of explaining who knows about him and who doesn't."

[edgeoftheknife]

Once upon a time an awkward conversation like this, between brothers, would have made Erskine's heart lurch. Not now. Not with so much bad blood between them. In fact, Erskine was pretty sure this was going better than he'd actually hoped. No one was yelling or shooting or trying to kill anyone else.

That was what made his heart lurch this time. The knowledge that this kind of conversation was the best he could have hoped for.

"I'll also have to explain why he's regressed to an English poof," he replied with a shrug. "If he's not trying to kill me. I'm not getting my hopes up."

[gistful]

"Liar," said Anton at Skulduggery, and he got up and started clearing Skulduggery's cake, picking up his tea to move it closer to Anton's own chair. "Saracen has always been an English poof," he observed, taking a sip of Skulduggery's tea. "He just hides it better these days. Come back anytime, Skulduggery."

For Anton's part, he was hopeful. The bad blood had felt thinner, this conversation; less awkward, more a return to the discussion of process. It wasn't a complete return, by any means--but it was a start.