He’s feeling childish. The urge to crudely imitate his petulant response I need to wash this, I need to wash this! He looks at the bed, while I’m still using it?? He would be having words with management about this that was for sure. With nothing else to do, one hand still occupied by the blankets at his waist; the other turns to his hair in yet another struggle to smooth down the wild strands.
I tried to kill you…didn’t I?
He sighs, it’s terribly heavy. He supposed a normal John might take more offense, more panic to this but it was just so routine–and really, what normal John could say that?–that it didn’t really register anymore. Maybe he was too preoccupied with the fact that he was buck naked. On that note, he shuffles carefully towards the pile of his clothes; trying awful hard not to feel too much of a burn at his suit being treated as such. “Did a bangup job of it too, always flattering; really tugs at my heartstrings,” he bends at the waist to collect his discarded clothes, tossing them atop the unmade bed a little out of spite but also for necessity’s sake “When someone is so insulted, so inconvenienced by my being that they hire a professional assassin,” he drops the blankets with a sigh that could almost be considered wistful “Really makes me feel good.”
He’s writing it off. The ordeal had been, frankly, fucking terrifying at the time; and he hadn’t escaped fully unscathed. He’s got the scars that his carefully woven web of illusions couldn’t disguise forever, the lingering hurt in his bones that comes more and more with age and as the weather starts to go sour. “I’d think you were here to finish the job but,” he starts to tug his layers on, one by one–there’s a lot of them, it was a very expensive and very nice suit “I was asleep, you could have slit my throat.”
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
He hooks his suspenders into his belt, they hang loose around his middle while he starts to shrug into his button up with a grimace–old hurts, old wounds was right. “Gotta say John,” he grins a wicked little thing “Don’t think the change of career suits ya’ well.”
Which also begged the question of…what the fuck?
Why was a very skilled contract killer doing here? And as the help at that? He continues to regard him with interest as he finishes buttoning up the shirt and tucks it into his slacks. “Well, you’ve almost killed me and you’ve seen me in the nude, I think I can honestly say I’ve not been this close with another soul in quite some time so I do gotta ask,” he slides his suspenders over his shoulders with a snap “What in tarnation brings a bloke like you, here?”
He lifts up his waistcoat and begins the ordeal of buttoning it up “I suppose the place has it’s charms. Especially for retirement. But, a young buck like you?” a laugh as he finishes and starts on his tie, the movements well practiced; a well oiled machine “Bit too young to be throwing in the hat so early, boyo.”
Yohan stares at the man, a subtle frown on his face as his processing speed can’t keep up with what is being said. He doesn’t understand how that is flattering or ‘tugs at heartstrings’... hearts do have strings, he supposes, or at least tendon-like... thingies. He doesn’t know what they are called. He just knows how hearts as an organ work, in a similar manner of how he knows where are vital points in a human body. But this is nothing new. He doesn’t understand great many things in life.
“...I don’t follow.” He blurts out. “Are you saying you’re not angry?” Zora is a town full of preys he used to hunt. There aren’t many who recognize him personally, since he didn’t exactly leave many survivors. But he was warned that some would have grudge against him when he entered the town. He can’t say that he relates to their grudge or resentment, whatever it’s called, but he understands, at least conceptually. Survival instinct is one of the core emotions and drives of a living, breathing thing. It is natural and acceptable that they are angry and enraged toward whatever threatens their lives. It’s a defense mechanism.
“I am here to finish the job. Housekeeping.” He points at the cart. His eyes follow this unknowable man, as if staring would dissolve this confusion. ‘You could have slit my throat.’ He blinks. He looks back at the bed. “That would’ve ruined the bed.” It does occur to him a few seconds later that the man meant his old job-- if he could call it a job. “Ah, I see what you mean. I would have used pillows, in that case.” Leaves less of a mess. “But I don’t do that anymore.”
Yohan wonders why the man keeps calling him ‘John’, but he supposes the name doesn’t matter. Instead, he just nods along. He doesn’t really have an opinion on his new job at the inn. According to Charles, he is learning, at the very least.
And he learned a new thing today: almost killing a person and seeing them naked bring you close to them.
“Housekeeping,” he repeats with such honest simplicity, it sounds like he didn’t have to think two seconds about the question. He didn’t. Which reminds him-- he goes back to his odd approximation to cleaning. “What’s a retirement?” he asks as he picks up the pillows from the floor. He swats them as if he is trying to dust them, before putting them on the bed. He turns to the man, looking him dead in the eyes and goes “I’m not young. I’ve been dead for a while.”
