The suite's too large for one person by half, the two bags set neatly beside the bed only going to prove that further. Somewhere through that open archway is the hot tub: more visible for the moment is Loki, opening the door and moving out of the way quietly.
     He's in shirtsleeves and bare feet, his jacket hung up neatly in the closet, the shoes lined up beside his bags. There's a bottle on a side table of a size not available from the minibar, and an empty glass beside it. "Hey," he says, sounding as tired as he looks.

     He enters cautiously, listing slightly to the side, going to the bed and dropping onto its edge. "Hey," Pres says quietly. He exhales. "So, did you know he was a lord? And how'd it go with your dad?"
     He's jacketless, wearing just jeans and a t-shirt and carrying a thick black walking stick rather than a cane, now. His hair is somewhat mussed, and he's visibly been drinking. For some reason, his eyes are a bit reddened, and he's a little flushed. "You okay?"

     Loki shuts the door, and just leans there a moment. "I think it may have come up," he says vaguely. Questions in order, check. "Does it really matter if he is? Most titles don't mean a whole lot these days. They don't matter at all in this country, unless people want to make a fuss over them."
     He leaves the door to refill his glass. "My dad is--he's just." He shrugs, and looks back at Pres. "You want something to drink? I decided to cut out the mini-bottle middleman and just get a bottle for myself."

     "Drinks are good, sure." Pres rises again, limping into the bathroom and beginning to fiddle with the hot tub with a surprising briskness. "Pour us up a couple and grab the room service menu. Neither of us got anything really to eat tonight."

     Glass clinks against glass, and in short order Loki is following Pres there, two filled glasses and a menu in hand as requested. "Probably not." He sets the glasses down at the edge of the tub, and heads back into the bedroom. When he returns, it's with two white pills, downed in short order with a swig from the glass. "How about you? Holding up okay?"

     "I've had too many revelations in too short a timeframe," Pres answers bluntly. He sits on the ledge of the hot tub as he takes the menu first, flipping through it. "Before I pick - who's paying for the room? You, your dad, Lord Davies, or somebody else?"

     "Me," Loki says. "Go back further and what's in my bank account is as much from the band as from my parents, though that's likely to change soon. It's a wash." He shrugs, and slouches back against a wall, eyes half closed as he waits for the caffeine to start kicking its way through the alcohol.

     "Okay, we'll charge it to my room, then. Mumsie's picking up the tab for it, after all." Pres takes out his phone and flips open the menu. "So what do you want to eat? On me, after all. I'm having the shrimp cocktail, the crabcakes, the filet mignon, the lobster tail, the grilled asparagus, the spiced rice, the chocolate fudge cake with strawberries, and two bottles of champagne."
     He holds the menu out to you, his eyes gleaming with a challenge of sorts. "I'll place the order. Tell me what you want, Loki."

     Loki's eyes crack open further, and he takes the menu. He glances down the options perfunctorily. "I can't come to Boston and ignore the seafood, can I? Why not just make it two of each of those?" He pushes off the wall to hand the menu back. "I might as well live it up while I can."

     Pres grins, and picks up the phone, punching in the number. "Yeah, hi." He gives the suite number, then the order, adding nonchalantly, "Oh, and can you also send up one of those bath sets? Yeah, the one that's good for the hot tub as well as the regular tub. No, bill it to room 709. Okay, thanks. We'll expect it."
     He flips the phone shut again, giving Loki a definite smirk. He jerks his head towards the hot tub. "Go ahead and get in and relax a bit, just drink some water first. I'll go wait for them to get here with the food, we can talk through the doorway until it gets here." The phone's dropped into his pocket and he straightens with the help of his cane. "You need to relax."

     Since when am I the one who needs-- oh, right. Since I got to go another round of discussions about my future with my dad. Loki does not so much as voice a token objection before he grabs a spare cup to get himself some water. "Thanks," he says, and leaves the details unspecified. It's a little easier right now than going into details.

     Pres limps into the other room, talking through the doorway without watching. "Dad wants to talk to me. I think ... things are changing. I don't know how yet, but I'm trying to be optimistic about it."

     On his side of the doorway, Loki begins unbuttoning his shirt. "I'm told things are supposed to change, when all the kids go off to college. Maybe it's actually happening that way. At some point, your parents have to acknowledge you three are all adults and your own people now."

     "Mumsie's not going to do that." His voice is flat as he states it, and he watches the door to the suite for a moment before wandering into the bedroom and poking about a bit. Not through Loki's stuff so much as what the hotel's included with the rest of the suite's furnishings - what goodies do they give, anyway.
     "Anyway, I'm going to fly to London from DC," he calls. "Gives you about an extra week to find a place of your own. If you haven't by then, I'll help you find one. I'm getting tired of not doing shit, anyway."

     "I should have a place by then." Loki slides off his shirt, and folds it neatly to set on a chair. "I'll send you links for the places I'm planning on looking at, so you can weigh in before you get there."

     "Sounds like a plan." There's a tap on the door, and Pres limps out of the bedroom to answer it. "Coming, hold your horses..."
     "Ah, great. Thanks. Wheel it in, will you?" He steps out of the way so the valet can wheel in a gleaming silver trolley laden heavily with food and champagne sitting each bottle in its own bucket of ice. There's the sound of cash being taken out and no doubt pressed into a waiting hand. "Nothing else, we'll call if there's more. You can go, thanks. Have a good night."
     (No doubt a very good night will be had - as a twenty percent cash tip on that at hotel prices is still something usurious. It's probably about two hundred or so dollars in cash, after all...)
     The door's closed, and there's the sound of the locks being clicked, the bar closed so that no maids can wander in to change the sheets. The bath basket's lifted, looped over a wrist, and two champagne glasses added to one of the champagne buckets, which is lifted in that hand; Pres uses the other arm for his cane, limping back over to you and the hot tub and beginning to set things down after a brief detour into the bedroom. "We are good to go," he announces, setting the champagne on the widest part of the hot tub's ledge.
     He shakes out a pair of white terrycloth robes, hanging them where they can be reached without too much trouble; the towels are put near them, along with bath sandals. There's a gap in the bottom of the basket where soaps would normally go - presumably in deference to the hot tub's differing system. Once everything's in order, Pres nods, looking satisfied; he loops his cane on the towel rack and begins to peel off his t-shirt. "You don't have to be up early tomorrow, right?"

     "No," Loki says, in a voice that conveys a further and anyone who says otherwise can go hang beyond that. His earlier weariness is starting to disappear, and he hasn't even de-trousered yet to get into the water. Some of that's caffeine. Not all. He pushes away from the wall to start undoing his fly. "And I'm likely to get a second wind in about half an hour when my body gives up completely on figuring out what time zone I'm in and decides to wing it based on the evidence at hand."

     "Ha." Pres smirks at Loki and tosses his t-shirt at Loki, sitting on the ledge to push off his shoes and begin rolling his jeans down over his hips. "Well, I'm going to do my best to give you some a priori evidence, judge."

     Loki catches the shirt one-handed, and the T-shirt's folded neatly to go on top of his buttoned shirt on the chair without much thought going into the process. It's just what one's supposed to do with clothes... That's a slight delay in getting his own pants down and off. "Does the court get to handle the evidence?"

     The jeans come off next, and are dropped on top of his shoes, underpants going last. Then he swings his legs a bit clumsily over the ledge to drop into the water carefully. "Oh, yeah," Pres smirks again, that gleam in his eyes again for a moment. "Hands-on study. Come on in. It's hot, but not too hot."

     Loki finishes his stacking of folded clothing, and slides down into the tub himself with a faint hiss through his teeth at the first touch of hot water. "I should be studying something," he says, with a thin smile, and shrugs off his own comment for being too close to other topics for comfort. "Good idea, this one."

     "Ignore your dad. I'm ignoring mumsie." Pres lounges back, closing his eyes. "In fact, I'm making a habit of it. From now on, mumsie can go to hell, and if my family takes her side, so can they. I'm transferring to the University of Hawaii in the fall, granddad doesn't care where I go as long as I'm in school, if he's going to pay for Maddie he'll damn well pay for me. As for the operation, I'm going to have it one way or the other, even if I have to rob a bank."

     "Let's keep the bank-robbing idea as Plan C." Loki slides down in the water, tilting his head back to look at the ceiling. "I'll come visit you in Hawaii. No promises on California. It's a lot easier to ignore parents when they're not in the same room. State. Hemisphere."

     "Hawaii's far enough," Pres agrees lazily, letting his legs float up a bit in the bubbles. "What about you? Going to do okay for money? Not to probe sore spots."

     "My dad's cutting me off," Loki says, briskly to get through it before he has to think about it more. "He'll try some arm-twisting on my father in London, but if the two of them were capable of agreeing on anything they'd have showed some sign of it before. The band's doing well, so...it gets a little tighter, but I'll deal. There's always the option of promising to take some classes, if it comes down to an emergency."
     He sinks down to his chin in the water, legs stretching out across the tub. "Most days, London's far enough. One of the best things about that city. It sure isn't the weather that keeps me there."

     "I'll help," Pres announces. He sits up, glaring at Loki and through Loki, as if he can give Loki's dad the Evil Eye that way. "Don't worry too much about it. Mumsie can't cut me off entirely. Not while I'm on vacation, no matter how much she might like to keep me tied to her. I'll talk to dad, too."

     "I don't want to sponge off anyone," Loki says under his breath. He gives a twitchy shrug, the water rippling over his shoulders. "I'm not too worried. I have--options, just not all of them are as great. If you're covering half of the rent for the summer, and marking it up to build up that account for the operation, we'll both get by fine."
     He closes his eyes a moment, taking a deep breath. "My dad will get over it. He's just throwing a fit because he's realized the drumming thing isn't a phase I'll grow out of. Let's talk about something else."

     "You won't be sponging off me. You're putting me up for the summer and that's going to mean nursemaiding me when my leg drops me on my ass in the middle of the bathroom," Pres points out bluntly. "You've only had to put up with it in bits and pieces, Loki, and after a month of it or so you're probably going to wish I'd pack up and go back to America already. I'll pay my way, but you'll be earning anything I give you. As for your dad, he and mumsie should run off together. They'd keep each other busy enough that they wouldn't have time for the rest of us. Too bad your dad doesn't like women."
     He relents, then, leaning over to put a hand on Loki's thigh under the surface of the water. "Tell me about something else, then. The band. Anything."

     Loki cracks a thin smile, opening his eyes. "If only the two of them would. Don't worry too much about me needing to put up with you for a few months, okay? I'm glad you're coming."
     He hooks a heel onto the ledge beside Pres. "Anything. Um. There's this one shop that I should take you to. It's a used books store with an owner who hates to actually sell things. Near as I can tell, she hates all of humanity, but especially people who want to actually take books out of her store. It's one of those definitive London experiences. You haven't really seen the city until you've been through at least one shop with an elderly clerk who glares at you the entire time you're in there."

     "Sounds like fun." Pres grins idly, squeezing Loki's thigh and then letting go. "C'mon, you need to relax. We'll find a way to make things work out, okay? We'll hit all the shitty tourist places and maybe we'll rent a car and drive around like crazy."

     "Sure. There are plenty of shitty tourist places I haven't been to yet," Loki says, voice drifting towards amiability. He nudges Pres in the hip with his foot. "I'll even fail to schedule things a few days, so I can be horrified by actual spontaneity."

     "Ha. Spontaneity." Pres snorts, then sits up. "Let's go eat before the food gets cold. Well. For the hot foods. Plus, four bottles of champagne. We have a lot of drinking to do."

     Loki drags himself back upright. "It's a rough job, but someone has to do it," he says, and slides around to reach for a plate. "And I can too be spontaneous. It's known to have happened. Theoretically."

Posted by rowan at April 26, 2009 10:48 PM