Up in smoke
Who: Ian and OPEN TO ALL
Where: The Drake
When: just before dawn
Sleep had alluded him, and he'd tossed and turned for the first few hours only to be awaken again by an acrid smell. What on earth could smell like it was burning before the sun even came up?
The thought brought him to consciousness, jerking upright without concern to the amount of pain that sort of movement would cause. Burning, he smelled burning. In a moment he was on his feet, reaching for his pants and shirt, hastily pulling them on as he ran out of his bedroom, opening the door to the rest of his apartment to be met with a blast of heat.
The blaze was across his living room, couch and curtains on fire and thick smoke already hanging in the air. Coughing so hard thought his insides would split, Ian ran towards the door of the apartment, stepping out into the hall where the air was far too warm for the building's heater. With a sinking feeling it dawned on him that the fire wasn't just in his apartment, but on the hall, in other rooms.
Still coughing from the smoke coming out of his apartment Ian tried to crouch low and head for the stairs, not bothering to knock on the rest of the door on the hall. His survival was more important, someone else could play hero. He certainly didn't give a shit about those people.
The smoke hit one of the few alarms in the hallway right about his head and set it off with clattering ring, almost earsplitting. He'd forgotten about the alarms. That had been his idea, having them made, and installed hadn't been cheap, since they were still rare, but Ian was worried about his own safety as well as protecting his nest egg. It wasn't like the Drake couldn't afford to have the best. Obviously though, they weren't doing their job as well as they could as it didn't even go off until after he realized there was a fire. Covering his ears as he ran, Ian made it to the stairs, hurrying down them and stumbling into the lobby. The alarms in the lobby were going off as well, and terrified guests were starting to pour out of the building, dressed in an array of clothing. Some had bothered to stop and change, some were like Ian with shirts undone and pants barely buttoned, other hadn't even bothered with more than a robe.
The night manager was shouting at him, but Ian could barely hear from the alarm. After staring at the man for a few moments he realized what the manager was saying. The firefighters had been called, people should get outside. That was advice Ian was more than willing to take, grabbing the manager's arm and leading the way out and into the street.
Turning back, Ian's hopes dropped as he watched flames lick along the outside of his hotel. Sirens from the oncoming firetrucks could be heard in the distance and around him people shouted, some were even crying, but all of it fell away as Ian looked at the building. Even without being able to see the reds and oranges of the fire, he could feel the heat, and see the light it shed on the normally pitch dark street. So much, so very much had been put into the building, so much of himself and now something so insignificant threatened to take it out.
The pain from his injuries and the running around hit and Ian found himself sinking to a sitting position on the curb. He coughed again, lungs on fire and finally looked away from the building, focusing on the ground beneath him while he took short, shallow breaths. Now what was he supposed to do?
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Kess had been on her way to the Drake for the morning shift when she saw the glow in the sky in that direction. That woke her up the way that her alarm clock really hadn't managed. The smoke in the air even more so as she unconsciously began to hurry mre, breaking into a run as she rounded the corner and saw the Drake on fire. She swore, loudly, watching the flames as they licked the side of the building in places, saw the fountain of water as the firefighters tackled the blaze. She pulled up short as the heat hit her and took a step back, looking around. It was then that she spotted Ian and headed over his way. "What happened? Are you okay?" she asked, sitting down beside him, intermittently staring between him and the hotel. She'd known it was too good to last. Everything in her life got screwed up eventually.
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Ian hadn't moved since he first sat down, watching the firefighters try and put out the blaze while his guests stood huddled in the streets. His shirt was still undone, showing the wrap of bandages around his middle and the cross hanging around his neck. His face was darkened with soot from the smoke, which paired with the bruising and bandaging gave him a terribly haunted look.
When Kess dropped next to him, he glanced over at her, reacting far slower than usual. "I have no idea. It was burning when I woke up." More specifically his apartment was burning. Which meant he needed to find somewhere else to stay. "I'm fine, this is mostly old damage." He knew his bruises had caused quite a flurry of whispers when he came back to work. When asked directly he'd said he was mugged, but he hadn't done anything to dispel the other rumors that had come up.
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Kess nodded, her face clearly showing worry and sympathy. "yeah, I heard you were mugged? Jeez - you really don't get any luck right at the moment, do you?" she asked, dropping the usual boss-employee formality she usually adopted, give the shock of the whole situation. "What happened?" she asked him, looking back at the blaze again. That seemed a better question to 'do I still have a job' - she had no idea how bad the damage might actually be.
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The sympathy and concern were unexpected. They made sense if Ian thought about it, but he hadn't been playing that game with Kess. The only thing he'd done was put her in debt to him in a way, giving her a job when she needed one, under the pretense that he needed her to work there. She'd done good work, which was all he needed at the time from her. Somehow though, he'd managed to play a much better game than he'd planned. "No, not rally," he said, shifting and flinching a little. He was certain he probably went backwards in the healing process with this one. "What happened with the fire or my mugging?" he asked, unclear as to which she was asking.
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"The fire," Kess said, wondering if she should actually have asked about the mugging. She'd heard the hotel gossip about it, but not much else, and she'd figured that it was really none of her business. The fire, on the other hand - well, hell - that was right there in front of them. And it affected all of them. The kind of guests that stayed at the Drake wouldn't be happy with their rooms smelling of smoke, even if the fire wasn't as bad as it looked like at first glance. And if it was... Yeah, she wanted to know about the fire.
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Right, of course, the fire. "Not sure. It's on the wrong side of the hotel for the restaurant," Ian pointed out gesturing vaguely towards the burning building. "They won't know anything until they put it out though." No one had told him that yet, nor had he made an effort to present himself as in charge. He'd do that later when the building was done burning. Ian looked at Kess and shrugged. "I woke up because my apartment was on fire. That's all I know."
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Kess whistled slightly, shaking her head. "I wonder how bad it is," she said, half to herself. She looked towards Ian again. "Will they come and talk to you? the firefighters - they know you're in charge, right?" she said, figuring that had been covered. "Is there anyone you need to call, to deal with, y'know, the press and all." Because, in her opinion, reporters would be turning up, if they weren't here already. possibly camera crews as well - this was big enough to make the theatre newsreel.
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"So far it's only half of the building," Ian said, which was true. The flame hadn't engulfed the entire building yet which meant most of it would probably still be in place when it was finally put out. As for the rest of her questions, Ian hadn't actually dealt with them yet. He was in massive amounts of pain, he'd had his morality paraded in front of him too often in the past week and it had taken him longer to get his wits about him than usual. He typically had a cool head in a crisis, but rarely were the crises not something he orchestrated or was almost a victim of. "They know," he promised Kess even if he hadn't announced himself to those trying to put out the fire. The night manager was fluttering about looking nervous which meant eventually he'd point his finger towards Ian. As for the press... "The press will be fine. I'm not worried about that." Lucas would take care of it, that was why the let him have his stupid hobby in the first place. Ian thought they tolerated too much when it came to Lucas, but he had to admit the man had a way with words.
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Half the building - Kess wondered how he could be so calm about that. At least, he seemed calm to her. But, the hotel had always seemed to huge to her, an entire half seemed unthinkable. "Did everyone get out alright?" she asked him, thinking of the possibility that people could be trapped in there. And here was her, having been thinking just about whether or not she'd still have a job.
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No. Ian certainly hadn't bothered to save them. "I think I saw some firefighters go in so hopefully." Let them be the fucking heroes. Ian had gotten his hands dirty enough in the past week. That wasn't who he was anyway.
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"I really, really hope so - but they say that it's arson. these fires lately. It's bad enough to do that and ruin people's livelihoods, but if people are starting to get hurt as well. But - why else would you attack a hotel? unless you wanted to hurt people? It's not like down at the docks at night, where like as not, there's going to be nobody around. A hotel at night's when there's most people there, most damage and harm to be done." Kess' opinion of whoever did this was incredibly dark, that much was clear from her tone.
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Ian again couldn't give a shit about the people who may or may not die in his building and given the pain and the frustration he was feeling, he really wasn't in a place to comment on that and keep his personal feelings out of it. He reached for his side absently, wondering if this was something for him, if someone had been trying to kill him in particular. "I thought the other buildings that burned were empty?" he asked. He'd read that in the papers, but he wasn't sure if he remembered it clearly. A copy cat attempt to mask an attack?
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"Right - exactly. And the hotel definitely isn't," Kess pointed out, not disagreeing with him. That's what made it all the worse for her, what made her worry. And the more she thought about it, the more she worried for so much more than just her job. But just because she worried about more than that, that didn't mean she stopped worrying about it entirely. "Will the hotel have to close? Whilst you renovate?" she asked, glancing across and noting the way he reached for his side. "You okay?"
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Fuck. For a moment Ian scanned the crowd for a familiar shock of blond hair. Someone might very well be trying to kill him, not just maim him as a message. "Maybe it wasn't the same person," he ventured when he couldn't spot Samantha. At the very least he could see what Kess thought before he informed his cousin that he was paranoid. He glanced back over at her when she asked about the hotel. "I guess it depends on how bad it is? I hope we don't have to shut down." He still had his arm around his side, holding the area that hurt gently. "Yea, I'm just torn up still. Running around wasn't good." With his free arm he opened his shirt a little more, revealing the bandages wrapped around his middle.
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Kess leaned round a little more and took in the injuries. She whistled slightly, then stood, offering her hand. "Okay - you need someone to take a look at that. Can you stand? We'll go find someone, or if not, you wait right here and I'll bring them to you," she said, in a tone that brooked no argument, the kind of tone that only a mother could use.
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Pain, frustration and now a healthy dose of paranoia building or not, Kess' tone wasn't lost on Ian. She'd never struck him as one of those people who mothered others, but with it there in her voice he found himself wondering if there were things about his desk clerk that might prove to be interesting. Women talked about their children, all the time, which meant if this woman had children she was purposely not talking about them.
He took her hand, letting her help him to a standing position without argument. He didn't need a doctor or help, but his persona would be broken enough to let the tough guy routine fall away. Staying in character, even in a crisis was imperative, even if it was annoying. "Someone check me out the other day," he protested weakly on purpose.
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"...And since then, you've had to run out of a burning building and your injuries are clearly giving you trouble - let's go find someone, or if they've not got anyone here to deal with emergencies, I'll call a cab and take you over to the hospital. Clearly someone else is dealing with the crisis - I'm sure they won't miss you and we need you up and about for later, more than likely," she said, already walking him in what she hoped was a useful direction.
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The absolute last place Ian wanted to be was the hospital. He'd gotten lucky before, convincing Hagel to let him go home, but now he might wind up stuck there for longer than just the evening. Still, he let Kess guide him, taking a moment to lean on her a little. He didn't need to, but he knew it would make her feel needed. "You don't have to do this Kess," he protested again, still with that weaker tone to his voice, as if he knew he didn't have an argument.
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"What's that got to do with anything?" she asked him, rhetorically. "Not everyone does things just because they 'have' to. Especially not when there's burning buildings and hurt people around," she added, seeing an ambulance done up in the livery of the local hospital not too far away and heading them towards that, taking his weight as best she could without complaint, since he appeared to need that.
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He almost told her that no one did anything unless they felt like they 'had' to, but he held his tongue. She was being nice, he didn't need to offend her just because he was in a bad mood. "Well thank you anyway," he said as they approached the ambulance.
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"That's okay," Kess said as they reached the ambulance and one of the medics came over. "Did you want me to stay with you - or is there anyone I should call? Or should I just go and, I don't know, wait for the flames to go out and maybe go back to work?" she asked, going for some levity at the end there.
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"Flames or not, they're still going to want towels in two-fifty-six," Ian made an attempt at deadpanning back to her and forced himself to smile a little as the medic practically fainted himself at the sight of Ian's bruises. "Go," Ian said to Kess, untangling himself from her and waving her off. "I'm fine. Go home and rest I'll call you as soon as I know something."
.
"And that bottle of champagne. Understood," Kess replied with a smile. "Okay, well make sure that they take good care of you - and let me know if you need anything," she said, before turning and walking away, leaving him in safe hands. One less thing to worry about. But, unfortunately, there was so much more still left.