[Midnight Hotel] January catch-all

[gistful]

Characters: Anyone, everyone.
Date: Month of January, 2016 (2017 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!

As with last month, the Hotel’s wards are under stress owing to the fog. The effects are more pronounced in January; water temperature, in particular, fluctuates, and the staff will find it necessary to find a different way of disposing of the Hotel’s rubbish due to the incinerator being put out of commission. The doors still only exit onto Central.

Likewise, Anton is off his feet making sure the wards don’t fail altogether, but at least the work has made him too busy to dwell on the things that had been eating at him for the past few months. Even after the swell takes the turtle off the reef, most of Anton’s time will be spent repairing damage to the wards and making sure utilities are up to snuff as soon as possible.

Even still, the doors’ ability to access multiple sectors will remain offline for the remainder of the month, making it two months in a row that the Hotel’s access has been limited to Central.

[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]

Somehow Erskine manages not to drop out of the air like a stone when Skulduggery catches his attention. Maybe it's simply because he's expecting the dead man (has been for a while, though he's lost track of the time himself and isn't even aware that Skulduggery is a little late). Maybe it's the long years of familiarity.

If so, and if Erskine were thinking any clearer, he might have taken that as a good sign. That he can be a little surprised by Skulduggery without feeling the need to panic. That panic and that level of animosity aren't quite the kneejerk reaction they used to be.

"Better than last time," he says mildly. "I haven't fallen on my arse yet."

The hard floor of the lobby, it should be noted, is a good deterrent for falling.

Erskine even manages to turn in midair, moving himself back and down a little to get a better look at Skulduggery. The movement, without faltering or failing entirely, brings a slight smile to his face.

[skeletonenigma]

"That is an improvement," Skulduggery says with a nod. "You've been practicing."

It's not a question. Skulduggery hasn't been around Erskine long enough in between lessons to see for himself, but he knows how difficult even levitating can be. Levitating an object apart from you is hard enough, particularly in places where the air isn't still; levitating yourself takes a level of concentration usually broken by even the smallest of interruptions.

So the fact that Skulduggery can talk to Erskine without his losing height? Very promising.

"You can get from the second floor to the first," Skulduggery says. "Now let's see if you can get from the first to the second. Gaining height is a little different. You need to pay attention to it on top of everything else I've already told you, rather like driving a car or riding a bike. Come down here."

[edgeoftheknife]

He had indeed been practicing. Erskine was a bit of a perfectionist, truth be told; he didn't like doing anything he couldn't do well, with the possible exception of cleaning the Midnight Hotel... although scrubbing toilets wasn't exactly by choice, either. Besides, now that he was learning to fly it had become a point of pride. Not only was it a thing the Elementals back home couldn't do, short of Skulduggery, but it was Skulduggery teaching him to do it. He was going to figure this out, and he was going to do it well.

Unfortunately, something Skulduggery said caught his attention, and not in a good way. He'd been hovering a good five feet off the floor while they chatted. Now--right after Skulduggery told him to come down here, as a matter of fact--Erskine dropped like a stone. He didn't even have the wherewithal to catch himself on his feet, instead landing right square on his arse with a yelp and an immediate wince.

"Bloody--" He laid down on the floor of the Hotel, curled up on his side, and glared balefully up at the skeleton.

"Like driving a car, eh? Have I mentioned I can't drive?"

[skeletonenigma]

There was a brief, startled pause while Skulduggery stared down at Erskine on the floor. "You can't drive?" he asked, neatly answering the question without any intention to do so. "Why not?"

Skulduggery himself had learned as soon as it became clear cars weren't going to be just a passing phase. The Bentley's upkeep was expensive, yes, but still cheaper than the idea of hailing a cab whenever Skulduggery needed to get somewhere. Was that what Erskine did? Or did he own a bicycle?

[edgeoftheknife]

Erskine groaned--he was still in pretty damned good shape, all things considered, but he wasn't as young as he once was and this was going to ache like hell come tomorrow. After a moment of not answering, just laying on the floor, he finally levered himself back up to his feet, his movements a bit stiff.

"Because every time I've tried I've crashed the bloody car," he replied, a little archly, as he brushed himself off. "After a certain number of cars it becomes prohibitively expensive to keep trying." If he didn't have to mention the fact that he couldn't stop himself from paying attention to everything in his peripheral vision, trying to react to everything and not just the road, he wasn't going to. The reasons for the handicap, such as it was, were fairly obvious and certainly not his fault, but not being able to drive in the modern world took a bit of spinning to not be seen as extremely weird. "Besides, I happen to like taxis."