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The Arms Hotel, Saturday

It was hot.

Not that Nikolai wasn't used to the heat, no. He was from L.A., after all. He'd just spent a month in Greece. Nick and heat were good friends, really, and he was looking fairly relaxed as he stood at the desk, dealing with people checking in and out of rooms as the way went by. But what had him a little off his game today was the small pack of little green... somethings... that were congregated off on the other side of the lobby, laying themselves out on beach towels and sipping at lemonade underneath the air-conditioning vent. He was willing to tolerate them just so long as they weren't bothering the guests, but once a group of them dragged in a kiddie pool and started emptying sandbags onto the floor, he figured he was probably going to have to put his foot down.

Welcome to the Arms Hotel
Today's Specials
Linguine With Shrimp Scampi
Fresh Balsamic Asparagus Salad

And that was how Nikolai spent half of his shift with a bloodied ankle, playing cabana boy and serving iced tea and lemonade to a pack of gremlins in the lobby.

He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

[Open!]

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Mind the gremlins.

Would you like a lemonade?

Drac was on his way to speak to the kitchen staff about the definition of 'rare' for his future dinner orders, totally out of habit since he wasn't used to residing in someone else's hotel.

He saw the scene in the lobby and stopped to stare. "WHAT is going on here?!" he roared.

Oh, right. Not his hotel.

He coughed slightly, then looked towards the one who looked most likely in charge.

"Excuse me. May I ask what this is about?" Drac asked the larger, darker green gremlin.

The gremlin gave a chuckle, and chattered on for a few moments about idiot humans trying to shoo them away. You'd think they would know by now, wouldn't they?

You'd think.

In fact, it was still grinning a toothy grin as Nikolai stepped up to the gremlin and to Dracula both, clad in swim trunks and proudly brandishing a pitcher of lemonade.

"Can I get a top-up for either of you fine gentlemen?"

Nikolai was probably going to hold a grudge against gremlins for the rest of his life, after today.

Drac was smiling his best, 'please come back to my hotel' smile. "Yes, yes. But shooing is much nicer than some ways that humans have of treating us. But why the sand..."

Drac looked up at the man, confused, and then looked back to the gremlin with some interest. Gremlins he knew didn't hang out with humans, but that could be regional; they definitely didn't have human servants, though. "And who is this?"

The gremlin shrugged his shoulders, and said, in his best approximation of the English language, that this human was the one that had tried to get them to stop pouring sand on the floor, and so they'd given him a good chompy bitey on the ankle and until the venom wore off, he was--

Nikolai gave Drac his brightest smile.

"I'm just the help, sir." Well, that was true enough. Except, usually, the help tended to wear more than a pair of bright orange swim trunks and some dark, mirrored shades. "These guys here are some of our best customers, you know. They've got club membership and everything."

Oh, that's fine, Drac spoke Gremlin... or at least, some dialects.

"Club membership? Bites? You have a poisonous bite?"

This was something new!

Venom, actually! The gremlin, being the fine, upstanding citizen that he was, gave Dracula another toothy grin and offered to give him a first-hand demonstration, for educational purposes. Because he was helpful, that's why.

Nikolai, meanwhile, was humming as he topped off the gremlins' lemonade glasses, oblivious to the little trail of blood he was leaving on the floor from that noshed-on ankle of his.

"Thank you for the offer, but, no." Drac shook a hand at the gremlin, offering a fangy grin of his own. "I don't know what would happen. Vampire, you understand."

He gave a glance at the trail of blood, "Are you sure that he is only temporarily not himself? Do humans heal from monster venom?"

The gremlin gave his shoulders a shrug, looking up at the clock over by the desk. The human would probably recover in, oh...

... Oh. Any moment now, actually. Please excuse him, he had to go and do a thing somewhere.

Nikolai was topping up one last cup, chattering amiably about the weather today, when, finally, he blinked. And dropped the mostly-empty pitcher on the floor. And gave the gremlins a look.

"... You rotten little sons of-- Get out of here!"

The gremlins had already managed to more or less vacate the lobby by the time Nikolai had gone from cabana boy back to angry hotel employee, hobbling around on a still-bleeding ankle on a leg that already had a pretty fierce fairly new scar running down to his knee from under his shorts. He kicked some sand at them upon realizing he wasn't going to be able to catch them all before they were gone, and then sighed and gave the mess left behind a scowl.

"Fantastic."

Drac raised an eyebrow at the 'customer service' there. "I take it, then, that they are not valued guests of the hotel?"

"Valued guests don't usually dump sand on the floor and then bite the guy asking them to please stop, do they?" Nick turned to glance at Dracula, gave him a bit of a brief double-take, and then shrugged it off. So far his best friend on the island was a vampire, anyhow. A pale guy in a cloak was hardly going to trip him up. "We're trying to run a business, here. Can't really do that if the clerk on duty is drugged on... on little green creature spit."

Drac was not impressed by the human's attitude. "Perhaps if you were stronger in your management skills it would not have happened in the first place. Are gremlins not allowed in the hotel? The one I spoke with seemed to believe the bite was justified."

Oh, Drac. You were getting such a 'bitch, please' look from behind those shades.

"I sat back and watched them laying out beach towels on the floor for a few hours before speaking up at all," he informed him, crossing his arms over his bare chest. "I don't care who or what walks through that door, sir. But the moment it starts dumping bags of sand down in the lobby, I'm going to speak up. That goes for gremlins, humans, aliens, or sparkly magical fairies. A person's a person, but I draw my line at that person making a mess on the floor on my watch. Especially when, so far as I'm aware, not a single one of those little buggers is actually a paying customer."

Nikolai took a deep breath, made a point to screw his eyes shut tightly, and then pulled his shades off to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

"Trespassing and making a mess. No, sir, the bite was most definitely not justified."

"And laying out beach towels on the lobby floor is acceptable behavior?" Drac was only slightly mollified by getting the full story. He was still in doubt about the young human's managerial skills, letting things get so far.

"But it sounds like the bite was not justified, no. Are the gremlins residents of the town, then?"

Nikolai's shoulder hitched slightly, even as he slid his shades back on and attempted to take stock of the mess he was going to have to hobble around to clean before his shift was through. He should have tried to knock the little green assholes out with his eyes, he realized, belatedly. Then he'd have spared himself the bite, and he'd have some extra energy to clean up with later.

Or, at least, that's how he figured it worked. Probably.

"Hell if I know where they came from," he sighed. "I figured, it's too hot out there for most living things, and I wasn't going to chase them back out into the heat. They weren't bothering anyone, at least not so far as I could tell, by just hanging out under the A.C. for a while."

But then there had been a kiddie pool - Nikolai considered it for a moment, and then decided against trying to clean out the bite in that particular water - and the gremlins had just gotten out of hand.

A human who considered the needs of a monster? Well, that was refreshing! Nick was back in the positive column in Drac's book!

"Gremlins are rather particular about what they want. I have a regular family that insists on swimming in the piranha pool, no matter how many of their party get eaten." Drac caught the look at the sand. "No doubt they had every intention of making this mess at the outset. Your housekeeping staff will be upset. Sand is very hard to get out of carpet."

"You know from experience, do you?" Nikolai raised an eyebrow at Drac curiously, and then sighed and looked back down at the mess. He was probably going to hunt down a shovel or something for the worst of it. "So you're in the hospitality industry or something? I'm still catching on. Just a few weeks on the job so far. I'm starting to figure I could probably use some pointers, especially around here."

Drac pulled a card and a brochure from his cape and held it out to the man, as smug as it was possible for any vampire to be.

"Count Dracula," He introduced himself. "Owner and proprietor of the Hotel Transylvania, the world's number one monster resort. Human-free since 1898."

"No kidding?" Nick's expression went from curious to incredulous and back to curious again all in an instant. "That long? Well, then you definitely know what you're talking about, here. I bet someone with as much experience as you could tell stories."

Nikolai... really didn't care much about hotels or how to run them. But he was definitely intrigued by this man's claim to be Count Dracula himself, and he was used to working with self-absorbed starlets. He pulled off 'interested' well.

"It's not very long when you consider how long we have had to hide from Humans," he replied, fighting a twitch that the sand was still in the lobby. He was also fighting the urge to scream for housekeeping to get in there and deal with it.

Okay, so he wasn't going to fight for very long: "If you don't mind, though..." He waved a hand towards the mini-beach, creating a small cyclone of purple mist that sucked up the sand and then just spun in place as if waiting for more orders. Which it was.

"Do you have a place you would like this deposited? A tidy lobby ensures a tidy profit, as I'm sure you know."

"Um. Of course." Nick was going to just stare at the sand for a moment, before pointing at the kiddie pool. There was enough room in it for the sand and the water both, he was pretty certain. "Thank you? Please? I can haul the whole mess out once I get some pants back on."

What.

"That's quite the trick," he added, looking only slightly baffled.

"It will be quite heavy?" He reluctantly did as requested, dumping the sand into the pool.

"And it's not a trick." He smiled as he opened a palm and let a small poof of purple mist float above it. "Simply one of my abilities. One of the benefits of being a vampire rather than, say, a mummy."

"Huh. I don't think the other vampire I know can do that. But then, I guess I've never asked her," Nikolai replied, still looking a little at a loss. "This place is one hell of a learning experience."

He looked back at the pool and made a face.

"And I can handle heavy. It shouldn't be too bad once I drain the water out of it. I don't want it all over the floor, anyhow."

And he worked out! If he needed any help beyond that, maybe he'd hunt down those damn gremlins and give them a thorough looking-at. That'd show 'em.

Drac raised an eyebrow. "You've met my daughter? How strange. She's usually so excitable and can't wait to share her new experiences with me."

"Pretty sure she wasn't your daughter," Nick replied with a shrug of his shoulders. "Just call it a hunch. Unless your girl's name is Allie, and she works at one of the bars in town?"

Which could be totally possible, but Dracula didn't look much like a 'Sekemoto,' either.

"No." That was a firm no. In fact, it was such a firm, no that it was more of a NO than no even was. No could have been engraved in solid stone and still not be as solid a no. "My daughter does not work in a bar. She will never work in a bar. Mavis will be two hundred and forty before she even knows what a bar is."

So, no. That wasn't his daughter.

Drac's face lightened as soon as that silly mistake was cleared up. "There's another vampire in town? Really? I must meet her. Allie, you say?"

Edited 2013-07-28 18:47 (UTC)

"Allie, I say. She works over at the Devil's Nest. Pretty sure her boss is a vampire too, though I haven't taken a moment to talk to the guy. She tells me there's another vampire that works at the clinic sometimes, calling herself a doctor, but it sounds like she doesn't have much faith in that one's medical credentials."

Since she'd warned Nick not to stop there if that particular vampire was on-shift. Naveed or Navine or something like that.

Drac made a mental note to visit this bar to meet them. Company would be pleasant on days with no classes.

"A vampire who is a doctor? I have known some who attempt to maintain a human façade, but that means they are not known to be vampires." He snuffed the purple mist and pulled his hand back into his cape. "This island is very strange. When I first arrived here, I assumed it to be a haven, like my hotel. Then I found my class included actual humans as well as Monster children hiding as humans. Now again I hear of it as an asylum."

"Hoping for a haven away from your haven?" Nikolai tilted his head a little at that. He wasn't going to pry, not really. He knew full well just how thoroughly humans could turn around and be horrible sacks of shit to one another, never mind to those that were different from them. He'd always thought of vampires as the predator, thanks to all manner of fiction. Now, after meeting Allie and freaking Dracula, he wasn't so sure. "For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure vampires aren't the only ones choosing to stick around here because of the relative peace of mind this place has to offer. Even if the place is crawling with, you know, human beings, it looks like most of them have something they're steering clear of back where they're from, too."

~~How's this for destroying your pre-conceived notions, Nik?~~

"Hoping for a place my daughter can still be safe," Drac admitted. He sagged slightly, showing a little of his centuries-old exhaustion. "She wants to see the world, to experience new things. She doesn't know how evil it really is, how dangerous for our kind. That's all I really want; for Mavis to be safe."

"The world's a pretty horrible place for anyone different," Nikolai noted, frowning thoughtfully. "Part of the reason I'm sticking around here for a bit. I mean, I don't have anything as important as a kid to take care of, granted, but I'm not quite up to being able to face humanity as a whole just yet. If nothing else, even if there are humans around here, they come in... manageable numbers."

Well. It wasn't Los Angeles.

"A distinct lack of Mobs, yes" Drac nodded in grim agreement.

"The few humans I have met here do not seem as inclined to burn me alive as I am used to. And the children in my class so far do seem to have similar issues and sympathies whether Human or Monster. It's one of the reasons I haven't simply taken Mavis and returned home."

"You talk like you're in hiding as well."

"Yeah, that part's complicated," Nikolai replied with a shrug of his shoulders. "It's nothing I did. Not consciously, at least. But until I can get a handle on something I picked up back in Greece, staying here is probably going to keep me out of more trouble."

He didn't seem terribly forthcoming with details, no, but that was as much about his own insecurities about his eyes as it was just a general resistance to the idea of having a heart-to-heart while standing around barefoot in a swimsuit.

Drac considered that for a moment. He didn't really remember much that about Greece that would trouble a human, but admittedly he hadn't been there in more than a century.

But, what did Drac know of human troubles, anyway?

He bowed his head slightly in the direction of the pool, ~~snickering~~ smiling. "And that seems to have worked for you?"

"I haven't been vivisected for science yet," Nikolai noted, glancing at the pool for a moment, and then shaking his head and smirking faintly. "I'm going to consider that a win. Even with the gremlins ruining my day now and again."

'For science'? What happened to just 'kill the beast'?

"That is always a 'win', yes." Drac grinned. "If you find them a nuisance again, or if you need any assistance, feel free to contact me. I'm in suite ~~handwavy~~."

He hesitated a moment. "Speaking of, would it be a problem if I spoke with your chef? He positively charred my meal today. I understand if you'd rather deal with it yourself."

'Kill the beast' was probably something Nikolai was going to have more experience with down the road. There were always going to be those people who didn't understand or trust those with superpowers, after all.

"You can, or I can have a word with him," Nick replied, smirking faintly. "Something tells me you're a man who prefers his steak more 'the warmer side of raw' than 'rare.'"

"It depends on my mood, but usually I do, yes," Drac laughed. "And if you don't mind, I will speak with him. I miss interacting with the staff."

Or, he was a control freak.

Hint: He was a control freak.

"Yeah, Gunther and I aren't exactly the best of friends," Nick replied with a little smirk and a shrug of his shoulders. "If you want to have words with him, be my guest. I think the guy needs to hear it from someone who knows what he's talking about, anyhow."

Toooo hooooot aaaughblaaaaaaaaaah.

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The Arms Hotel, Saturday

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