Work Text:
The Midnight Hotel still stands in its usual place in Ireland. It hasn’t moved since the war between the Sanctuaries started, since the Monster Hunters and Tanith Low disabled it.
Saracen stands in front of it for the longest time, doesn’t even look inside. He’s scared of what he will find, how much has been broken and damaged. There were several fights in and around the hotel during the war and it already hurts enough, knowing that when he walks through the door, Anton won’t stand behind the reception desk to greet him.
He finally walks up to the entrance and places his hand on the space next to the door in greeting: “Hello”, he says.
The Midnight Hotel doesn’t have a consciousness but there’s always been so much magic coursing through her walls that she feels more alive than not.
The space around Saracen’s hand starts to glow light-blue and for just a moment, Saracen can’t pull his hand away. And then he can and there’s a matching sigil glowing on the wood and his palm but quickly fading away. A gentle warmth remains and Saracen finds himself rubbing his hand as if that might make the sigil visible once more.
He finally steps inside, hoping there might be some explanation waiting for him there.
Saracen heads for the office behind the reception desk first, ignores the chaos of broken furniture all around him, ignores how it makes his insides clench up and his throat tighten.
The office is filled with books on the language of magic and folders over folders of information on the hotel’s defenses and guests. He looks over the backs of the folders quickly, looking for anything that might contain a will or something of the sort.
He doesn’t find anything and starts studying them more carefully. There’s nothing.
Saracen lets himself drop into the office chair and stares at the ceiling. Anton wasn’t the type to let any eventuality be unplanned for and they’d all lived through enough war that thinking a premature death unlikely was not in their nature.
He sifts through the desk drawers next, goes through the first and second without any luck and is about to give up on the third when he realizes that one of the envelopes stuck in the pile of empty ones is thicker than the rest.
His name is printed in perfectly straight letters on its front. Saracen opens the envelope and pulls the letter out with shaking hands.
Dear Saracen,
The Midnight Hotel is yours in the event of my death. I don’t expect you to take over for me but I would prefer her dismantled properly and not used for nefarious purposes. The control over her magic will fall to you the first time you enter after my death. I’ve documented my work as precisely as I could. You will find everything you need in my office.
The letter goes on and on with barely any personal notes. It’s precise and to the point and Saracen reads it over and over until the tears in his eyes make every word on the page blur together.
Anton left the Midnight Hotel to him. His most valuable possession, the thing that mattered most to him, he left to Saracen. There isn’t an acknowledgement of their friendship more powerful than that.
Suddenly, Saracen wishes he hadn’t come here alone. The hotel feels so empty, is far too quiet and broken. Saracen wants Dex to be here with him, wants to share grief and happiness. But his visit at Dex’s sickbed this afternoon ended in a screaming match - or as much of a screaming match as Dex could manage with his injured throat - and when Saracen left, neither of them had so much as said goodbye.
Saracen starts with the lobby, with the shattered chairs and broken lamps. It takes hours and hours of work until the floor is clear of debris. The dried blood is still there. Saracen’s back hurts and he’s still feeling the occasional twinge from his injuries.
He continues anyway, works until it’s late at night and the lobby doesn’t look like anyone’s died there. Not much of the furniture remains intact and there’s still burn marks on the walls but Saracen is not going to be able to get everything done in one day.
He sleeps in one of the normal rooms, doesn’t have the heart to enter Anton’s room, stands in front of that particular door for several minutes before he decides that he’ll wait until tomorrow for the punch in the gut it will be.
There’s so much to do and the list doesn’t seem to get any shorter. With every little thing Saracen gets done, he finds five new tasks that are still ahead of him. He washes all of the bedding and cleans the rooms they came from, all twenty-three of them. Even without its previous occupants, room 24 isn’t really open to guests.
That’s his morning gone and then his afternoon is spent painting the walls of the lobby (Anton always did like to be prepared and so there are supplies for almost everything Saracen will need to do in a storeroom.) until his weariness goes down to his bones and his stomach growls like there’s a bear living inside of it.
The reserves that Saracen found in the kitchen are dwindling quickly. He’ll have to go to a supermarket tomorrow if he still wants to have food in the evening.
Saracen falls into bed just after dinner, utterly exhausted.
Five days later Saracen is mostly done with repairing and has started on trying to figure out how the hotel’s magic works.
He’s been at it for hours now, started in the morning and now the sun has already sunk below the horizon. When he began, he sat at the table in Anton’s office. But Saracen barely knows anything about sigils and having to cross reference between all of the folders and books was a bother on the small desk, so Saracen cleared some space in the lobby and is now sitting on the floor surrounded by open books and folders and pages important enough that he took them out and laid them on the ground separately.
That’s where Dexter finds him.
Saracen didn’t hear his car pull up, only looked up when Dex was opening the door. He’s standing there now, his eyebrows pulled together, his lips a tight line.
Saracen’s stomach grumbles. He may have forgotten a couple of meals: “Hey!”
“You look like shit, Saracen.”
“Thanks”, Saracen says, sarcasm dripping from his voice, although he’s pretty sure that Dex is right.
For several minutes neither of them says anything.
“I was going to look for Anton’s will”, Dex says finally.
Saracen shakes his head: “Didn’t find one. I only found a letter and well… this.”
He puts his hands on the floorboards and focuses on the hotel’s magic. Protection sigils light up, then fade away when Saracen loses his grip.
The corners of Dex’s mouth pull up sadly. “He left you the hotel”, he says softly.
Dex looks at Saracen, at everything around him, then his eyes snap to Saracen’s in surprise: “You’re going to run it?”
Immediately, Saracen’s heart drops: “You think it’s a bad idea?”
“No, no! Not at all”, Dex says quickly. “Just surprised, that’s all. You haven’t really seemed like you were ready to settle down.”
“Is it really settling down if I live in a hotel that moves location every twelve hours?”
Dex laughs, still hoarse, voice rough. Still sounds like it’s painful. But a week ago Dex grimaced every time he spoke. Now the scars are still there but they’ve lost their red tinge that marked them as new.
“You look better”, Saracen tells him.
Dex’s smile drops, his shoulders shift forward defensively and his gaze now rests firmly away from Saracen on the floor.
“Why are you actually here?”
Dex looks back at Saracen: “Skulduggery said you mentioned wanting to come here and I didn’t want to leave things between us the way we did.”
“But you’re still mad at me?”
Dex nods and his shoulders shift forward almost defensively. Saracen is pretty sure that there’s never been a moment in his life where Dexter has hidden how he’s feeling.
“Could you tell me why?”, Saracen asks because Dexter has always wanted to know his discipline but he’s never seemed genuinely upset when Saracen didn’t tell him. Until now, at least.
Dex’s posture gets more tense, he shifts his weight as if he’s uncomfortable, his eyes drift off, looking into the nothing above Saracen’s shoulder instead of at his face. He opens his mouth without speaking like he’s looking for a way to voice his emotions but nothing he finds quite fits.
Saracen can’t watch this. He shakes his head: “It’s okay.” He takes a breath: “I’m a Lynceus.”
Feels weird to say it out loud. The only time he’s ever done that before was to Erskine, on his sickbed. Fucking traitor.
Dex just stares at him. Says nothing. Does nothing.
“Anything else you’re mad at me about?” Saracen asks. He plays nonchalant well, he knows he does. Underneath it, he’s panicking. He needs a reaction. Soon.
But Dex just shakes his head mutely.
“Could you please give me something here?”
Dex shakes his head and laughs nervously - through his nostrils, eyes a bit widened, tension clearly visible in his shoulders: “Sorry, I’m just a bit…” Another head shake, another laugh. And then Dexter’s expression gets earnest and he looks at Saracen: “Thank you.”
Saracen nods but doesn’t really know what to say in response. Dex smiles at him fondly and although Saracen doesn’t quite know what incited it, he can’t quite help but smile back.
“So, you’re trying to understand the hotel’s magic?”
“Yeah. Though I haven’t gotten very far as of now.”
Dex grins a grin that makes Saracen want to punch him preemptively: “I’m not surprised. We always kept you around for the looks, not the brains.”
It takes them another month of work to understand the Hotel’s workings, to go through the books in the office and replace the things that were broken. They turn the hotel back on a few minutes before midnight on January 5th 2014.
The shift feels different now. Saracen feels it coupled to his own magic. Feels his magic being pulled into the Hotel, being a bit less present at his fingertips and then he feels the boost as it rushes back into him, all of this happening in less than a second.
Saracen grins at Dexter and they rush to the window to see where they landed. Where they are in the schedule.
“Japan”, Dexter says.
“We should be right on schedule then.” Saracen double checks the folder once more although he’s already made sure to know it by heart. He’s right of course.
Dexter grins: “Then we’d better let your customers know.”
“I guess we should.”
Saracen feels a happiness that he hasn’t felt in a long time. This is what he’s meant to do now, he knows. Someone needs to do it and that someone is him.
Epilogue:
There’s two mages sitting in those large comfy chairs that Saracen got to replace the ones that were broken before he took over the hotel. They seem to be talking idly, their posture almost relaxed.
But Saracen knows where to look and what to look for and punches are going to fly soon.
He can’t step in before anything happens. Every guest is welcome, even those the owner doesn’t like. No violence and if there should be an attack, the owner will fight for whomever started it, no matter who the involved parties are. Those were Anton’s rules and Saracen has not and will not change a single one of them.
The punch flies and Saracen’s hand slaps down onto the reception desk before it has even landed. It never connects, the attacker frozen in place with runes glowing on the floor below him.
“I will not tolerate violence in my hotel”, Saracen says as he walks over. “You will be allowed to collect your things and then vacate the premises immediately.”
Saracen taps his foot on one of the sigils on the floor around the mage. He takes a step back. He doesn’t think the mage will attack him, it seemed more like a short fuse than anything more serious, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Saracen needs people to know that he can take care of troublemakers. He doesn’t have Anton’s reputation as a stone-cold badass with a seriously frightening discipline to keep people in line.
The mage nods and walks upstairs without protest even if his mouth is pressed into a thin line.
“Can I do anything for you?”, Saracen asks the other.
The man, previously still staring after his conversation partner, looks at Saracen. He grimaces regretfully: “I provoked him, he didn’t mean to…”
“I know”, Saracen tells him. “The rules still stand.”