Chapter Text
The halls of the Midnight Hotel were deserted, Larrikin’s footsteps the only sound as he walked through them. Any other day, he would’ve been thankful for the change. Today, however, he just wanted to find Anton, and irritable door-slamming wasn’t helping him any.
After the twenty-third door closed after a guest who did not, in fact, know where the director of the hotel had gone off to and very rudely informed him of this fact, Larrikin finally threw his hands up and went straight to the twenty-fifth room.
It was the only room besides the twenty-fourth that was always unavailable, though for a much less dangerous reason. (According to some, at least. According the others, the inhabitant of the twenty-fifth room was equally as dangerous, if not more so, than the twenty-fourth room’s.)
It was tucked away in a corner, right next to the room that housed the Remnants, but not nearly as luxurious or even as large as any of the other rooms. Larrikin knew from previous visits that only a small bed, a slightly larger desk, and an ancient-looking chair filled it. Attached to the wall were thick chains that were flecked with what Larrikin had hoped, but doubted, was rust and not blood.
His knock yielded no sounds of protest, so he guessed that it was safe enough to enter. The entire room was dark, with the curtains drawn and the fire burned out, and for a moment Larrikin stood in doorway, blinking away dark spots and forcing down a bright flare of panic. He needn’t have worried; the chains rested limply and empty on the floor and as soon as his eyes adjusted, he could see that the bed was occupied.
Anton hadn’t responded to the knock or the light that filtered in, but Larrikin still kept his movements cautious as he went first to the fireplace and then to kneel next to the bed.
“Hey,” Larrikin said, pitching his voice so that it was just audible over the sudden crackle of the fire as it started to burn again. He’d learned to be careful on bad days, where even a too-sudden laugh could have Anton whirling around, wide-eyed and ready to attack.
When Anton didn’t reply, Larrikin lifted himself up with a soft grunt of effort to sit next to him. Black lines spread over the pillow like half-finished artwork, and ever so gently, he carded his fingers through them. Anton was still particular about touching and being touched, but his hair had always been the exception. Now, as it had every time before, his body twitched when Larrikin brushed through it.
Just when he’d given up on an answer, starting to relax and consider lying down and falling asleep next to his friend -- it wouldn’t be the first time he’d done it -- Anton sat up. “Hello.”
Exhaustion was clearly in every line on his forehead, the bruised purple under his eyes, how his body relaxed of itself despite the tension in his face. Clearly an appointment with his bed had been a long time waiting, but Larrikin couldn’t find it in himself to feel sorry when Anton obviously hadn’t been able to fall asleep.
“Are you alright? The guests missed you today.” Larrikin had only arrived at the Hotel an hour ago himself, but the mutterings had reached even him where he was seated at the front desk. He’d been awaiting an appearance himself so that he could rent a room and maybe -- just maybe, mind you -- spend some time with an old friend.
“I’m fine.” He shifted so that the shadows obscured his face -- nothing as blatant as turning his face away, but still hiding it -- and it might even have worked, except Larrikin’s eyes had always been good, and the relit fire brightened even the shadows considerably. The soft downturn of his mouth was a clear contradiction to his words. “I’ll apologize to them tomorrow.”
A century ago, before he’d learnt Anton’s quirks, Larrikin might’ve argued, pointed out how obviously untrue that was. Not even a few decades before that, he wouldn’t even have picked up on the lie.
Now, Larrikin said, “Alright,” and went back to playing with Anton’s hair. He’d done it before, during the war -- they all had, since Anton enjoyed it most and had the longest hair among them -- but back then it had been almost permanently caked with blood, grime, or both. These days Anton washed his hair regularly and had no reason to cut it, so that it was softer and lengthy enough to reach mid-back, and it felt like heaven to run your hand through.
Larrikin wasn’t the only one who thought so. Whenever they got together for one of their Dead Men reunions, one of them would inevitably end up with Anton’s head on their shoulder, despite him being taller, and their fingers in his hair. Ghastly liked to twist it up in the latest fashionable hairstyles, while Saracen tried to make it as messy as possible. Skulduggery always complained about how the strands got stuck in his finger bones, but never really stopped touching Anton’s hair. Both Dexter and Erskine just absentmindedly ran their hands through it while their attention was elsewhere.
More often than not, it was Larrikin who ended up sitting next to Anton. He always pretended not to know why, and then pretended not to notice to amused side-eyes the other Dead Men shot him. Sometimes, when he was feeling nostalgic -- and that had been strange, finding it harder rather than easier to conceal his melancholy after Anton picked up on it -- he would braid it, like he used to braid his sisters’ hair, so long ago.
If they’d both been mortals, if Anton had lived in the same town as him (a stupid thought; Vietnam was nowhere close to Ireland, and Anton was much older. Even if he’d been born in Ireland, a mortal Anton would’ve died before Larrikin was even born), Larrikin might’ve gone walking with him, might’ve twisted braids into his hair that meant something else.
Larrikin guiltily ripped his thoughts away from the direction they’d been going in, disguising the twitch his hand gave as a light tug on Anton’s hair. “Did something happen today?” It was a plausible enough. He’d seen Anton before when the Hotel showed up unexpectedly at a former battle site. And it must’ve been today, because one of the few talkative guests, while ignorant of where Anton actually was, had known that he had been amiable enough yesterday. A haunted Anton was many things, but amiable wasn’t one of them.
“The Midnight Hotel’s previous location was in Vietnam,” Anton said, voice quietly wrecked. Larrikin frowned at the confession, slowing his hand until it was just cradling Anton’s head. While he doubted Anton was lying, the Hotel had been in business already for almost a century and moved location twice a day, which meant it must have visited Vietnam at least once before. And while Anton didn’t exactly have good memories of his country of birth, a mere second (or third) visit should not have left Anton as shaken as he still was, half a day later. Which meant...
“The town?” Larrikin asked, a sick feeling at the bottom of his stomach. “The town where you grew up? Is that where the Hotel showed up?”
“Yes,” Anton replied, and his smile was grotesque. Like a dying animal’s. “It’s a city now, actually. They’re calling it Lạng Sơn. I went to the place where the orphanage was.” The smile dropped, and Larrikin was horrified to find himself missing it. Anton with that smile was dying. Anton without it was already dead. “It’s a graveyard now.”
Larrikin sucked in a deep breath, closing his eyes and then his free hand around Anton’s tightly. When he could breathe around the knot in his throat, he opened his eyes to see Anton staring at him. Belatedly, he realized that their hands were still joined together.
“Sorry,” he said guiltily. “I know you don’t --”
“It’s fine,” Anton interrupted, hand steady under his and eyes never wavering from his face.
“Are you?”
This time, Anton actually seemed to think about it. “No,” he replied finally. “No, I’m not. I don’t think I’ll ever be. I don’t think any of us will ever be.”
“Yes, well. I don’t think any of us has memories that compare to yours.”
Anton frowned. “Of course you do. You of all people --”
“By the Faceless Ones, Anton, I probably have the best childhood out of us all! What’s going hungry a few times compared to seeing your whole live destroyed before you even reach eighteen?”
“Trauma isn’t something that should be dismissed just because it’s -- lesser than someone else’s!”
“I agree,” Larrikin said, struggling to keep his voice from matching Anton’s intensity. “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t dismiss your own trauma, especially not today. You’re allowed to be upset. It’s hard to see the world move on without you, to realize that no one will ever know that your loved ones even existed.” As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. Not for Anton -- Anton would understand, might feel better for hearing it, or so he hoped -- but for Larrikin himself. It had been too truthful, too applicable to Larrikin’s own life, and that honesty went against all of his instincts.
For a moment, he thought Anton might let it go, which showed that while he might know Anton’s quirks, and it would take a few more centuries to discover all of him. “Did you ever look for your sisters?”
“Sure,” Larrikin replied readily. “I asked around, but the people had never even heard our family name. I thought I would visit the graveyard, see their graves maybe. Turned out there was a new one, and the old one didn’t survive.”
“Larrikin,” Anton said, and now it was his hand that went to Larrikin’s hair. Larrikin had never been as partial to it as Anton was, but he still shivered when warm fingers curled around his nape.
“It’s not so bad. It was a long time ago. Right after the war ended. Remember when I told you that after the war ended, I would eat anything in sight and then sleep for a week?”
Anton smiled. “Yes?”
Larrikin wondered if his memory of that night was as crystal-clear Larrikin’s own. Sometimes, he dreamt of warm lips pressed to his cheek.
Clearing his throat and fighting down a blush, he continued, “Well, I did do that. But first I went looking for my family.”
The fingers that had been teasing at Larrikin’s hair paused. “Why didn’t you tell me that when I asked?” He hid it well, but there was still a hint of hurt in Anton’s tone. The next moment his eyes widened, then lowered in shame. “Forgive me, I forgot we didn’t know each other as well then. You had no obligation to tell me, just as you have none now.”
“It’s fine, really. It was just that I got the feeling that you wanted happy stories, and wanting to find your dead family wasn’t exactly part of that.”
“You were right. Thank you for taking it into consideration.” Anton’s words were an eerie parallel to his last ones that night -- or rather, early morning --except this time he didn’t kiss Larrikin’s cheek. Larrikin would’ve denied that he was disappointed, but he didn’t tend to make a habit of lying to himself.
Casting desperately around for a change of topic, Larrikin’s eyes landed on the chains. This close, he could see that while several of the stains were definitely blood, at least as many were just rust. And none of the bloodstains looked particularly new. “How long has it been since you’ve used them last?” he asked, nodding at them.
Anton followed his gaze. “A while. It’s -- easier now. I don’t use the Gist as much as I did during the war, so it’s easier to control it, and the Hotel is usually peaceful enough that it can’t escape without a struggle.”
Larrikin hummed agreeably, but made no reply. While he agreed that the Midnight Hotel’s tranquillity went a long way to keep the Gist under control, he sometimes thought it might be too peaceful for Anton. Anton had never enjoyed fighting with the Gist, but he was good with his fists and better yet with Daisy. And beneath it all, he was an adventurer at heart. In a better world, in a fairer world, he might’ve gone traipsing through countries as he wished, instead of being forced from location to location every twelve hours, looking after guests instead of himself. If Anton had let him, Larrikin would’ve liked to come with.
There was something else off about what Anton had said, though. Something -- “Usually peaceful enough. Today wasn’t, though, was it? Did the Gist give you a hard time?”
Anton gave him a careful look, and said, “Yes. Well, earlier, at least. Your company helped.”
He didn’t say it with anything other than his usual truthfulness, but Larrikin couldn’t quite contain the warmth nestled in his ribs, nor the smile that spread across his face. It was small, and more honest than his usual grins, but somehow Larrikin couldn’t find it in himself to suppress it.
“Thank you for letting me help you,” he said, and without really thinking about it, moved the hand in Anton’s hair to cradle his face instead. Anton glanced down towards it before staring back at him, and Larrikin’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of Anton’s eyes. They were no longer cautious, but as bright and blazing as the stars used to be back in the day, before pollution had painted the night sky orange.
Now might be his turn to steal a kiss, Larrikin thought, and leaned in. If anything went wrong, he could pass it off as gratitude, as Anton had surely meant it that night.
Anton didn’t seem to object, though. He held perfectly still as Larrikin drew nearer, until at the very last moment he tilted his face so that Larrikin’s mouth met his instead of his cheek.
There was a moment where he was simply surprised that it wasn’t Anton’s cheek he was kissing, and then the shock of realizing Anton Shudder was kissing him, and then panic as he tried to figure out how to respond. After that, he was quite sick of his whirling mind, so he just closed his eyes and kissed back.
It was everything Larrikin would ever deny thinking about. It was Anton’s lips -- much warmer than they’d been the night he’d kissed Larrikin’s cheek -- moving against his, and Anton’s hands on his waist, and the squirming of his stomach that was much more awful than the quaint little expression ‘butterflies’ made it sound, and the breathy sound Anton made as Larrikin accidentally tugged at his hair that he hadn’t even realized he’d wrapped around his hand --
With a start, Larrikin wrenched himself away, breathing heavily and trying to ignore his pounding heart. He wasn’t the only one. Anton’s lips were parted around his quick inhales -- and Larrikin tried not to look at them, he really did, but he of all people knew when a battle was a losing one -- and his hair was as disordered as whenever Saracen played with it. When his eyes opened after a long second, Larrikin could only bear his gaze for a moment before looking away.
Anton’s hands were still on his waist, still keeping him there, and as soon as he noticed, he started to draw them away. “You kissed me,” Larrikin blurted, and the hands froze.
“You kissed me first,” Anton replied, careful again.
“Yes, but I didn’t --” He shouldn’t have done it in the first place. If Anton had kissed him on the mouth, but just because -- if Larrikin held onto that hope, but it was just -- “It wasn’t because of Vietnam, was it?” he asked, suddenly desperate. “Or -- or -- my family?”
The possibility of it being either of the two made him feel sick to his stomach. At least if seeing the graveyard in Lạng Sơn was the reason, he would know he had helped Anton somehow. But if Anton had only been trying to make him feel better out of some sort of misplaced pity, Larrikin really would be sick.
“No,” Anton said, thoughtfully. Honestly. “I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you. Maybe Vietnam reminded me of how fleeting these things are, and how quickly those you care about can disappear, which in turn encouraged me to act, but that is all it has to do with this.”
Despite himself, the words caused a tidal wave of warmth to spread throughout Larrikin’s body, including, he had a feeling, his entire face. Still, just to make absolutely certain everything was cleared up, he asked, “And this isn’t just you seeking company because you’re emotionally vulnerable?” A horrible thought occurred to him. “Is this me taking advantage of you, kissing you when you’re emotionally vulnerable?”
Anton seemed to consider himself, and then said, “A no to both. I don’t think I’m emotionally vulnerable anymore.”
Larrikin couldn’t quite tell whether he felt light-headed because of the relief that swept through him, or because of their gazes meeting and locking. “Well, that’s alright then,” he replied faintly, and kissed Anton again.
It was, in his opinion, far more enjoyable than the first one, especially because he was actually participating instead of freaking out. It took Anton a bit longer to get with the program, but his eventual response was enthusiastic that Larrikin didn’t mind. When they drew apart once more, they were both out of breath and Anton had an elegant flush high on his cheeks. Larrikin might’ve been more self-satisfied at seeing it if he wasn’t certain he was an unappealing shade of red.
“I’d like to keep kissing you,” he admitted, all in a rush. “Today and tomorrow and the rest of our lives, preferably. But you’re definitely a little emotionally vulnerable at the moment, so I won’t go any further than kissing.”
Anton smiled at him, and it was far wider and with more feeling than any of the ones he’d ever seen. Before seeing that smile, Larrikin had thought the idea of your heart stopping at the sight of something beautiful was terribly cliché. Now, he thought he might understand.
“I’m afraid I have no complaints about that arrangement. Though that you would think I’d... go any further before even a first date is terribly insulting, Larrikin.”
Larrikin pulled him in for another kiss, but started laughing loudly in the middle of it so that they were forced to break apart. Anton didn’t move far, kept his forehead pressed against Larrikin’s as Larrikin silently gasped.
“So a date is definitely in the books, then?” he asked when he finally got his laughter under control. The lovesick smile was a bit harder to wipe, and Larrikin didn’t even try as he swept gentle thumbs over cheekbones and lips and jaw, mapping the face he’d been thinking about for so long. “Because I could totally go for that. It’s getting late, though, so maybe I should go fetch us both a meal, and then maybe you can organize me a room?”
“You can stay here if you want.” Anton seemed to have difficulty tearing his eyes from Larrikin’s mouth, which wasn’t distracting at all, oh no. It was only when he finally managed to meet Larrikin’s eyes that the words registered, and Larrikin stared cautiously back at him. “Just sleeping. We’ve slept in the same bed before, and we’ve already established that we won’t go further.”
“Well, don’t know about you, but I’m not opposed to a bit of kissing --”
“Sleep,” Anton commanded, holding a pillow aloft threateningly. “We’ll talk more in the morning.” He hesitated for a mere second, and then brushed a soft kiss on Larrikin’s cheek.
Larrikin wondered if it was possible for one’s heart to overflow with love. He wasn’t opposed to testing it. Still, that was concerns for tomorrow, so he settled down, tugged Anton’s arm over him, and fell asleep to the sound of the fire crackling, the wind outside the window, and Anton’s breathing.