Chapter Text
The bartender is staring at him. Nice face, a bit shorter than Neil, but an aura of confidence that lends him the illusion of height. Combined with long black clothes worn in seeming defiance of the club’s ambient heat produced by hundreds of dancing bodies, he looks untouchable.
Not that Neil has the desire, reason, or time to touch. He has a different purpose tonight.
Said purpose is sitting at the other end of the bar, tucked away with the wall on one side. Excellent tactical move, giving him a full view of the club, but Neil is fairly sure he only chose it because it’s the one seat that doesn’t have people leaning over him to order a drink before heading back to the dance floor. They haven’t made eye contact, but Neil knows that he saw him too. Taking stock of Neil: dark hair, copper eyes, sleeve tattoos indistinguishable in the kaleidoscope lighting. The dance is familiar to both of them, though neither one can lay claim to its creation. They just adopted what humanity made for their own needs.
It’s another twenty minutes and four shots Neil pretends to drink before they finally make eye contact. Another five before the other man slowly leaves his chair and Neil follows. As he does, the bartender catches his eye again. He’s making direct eye contact, subtly shaking his head. Neil thinks he sees him mouthing don’t. Interesting. Does he know what’s about to happen?
Neil and the other man weave through the crowd in their own little dance, moving to a different song than the one blaring from the speakers, shaking their bones. The man pushes to the restroom, but Neil pulls back. There’s no crowd around the door to hide their movements; the night is still young, and according to the security tapes Neil stole from the club’s office on Tuesday, it’d be another two hours before people’s bladders started complaining en masse. Neil makes his own pull--a series of subtle glances and, once, an almost-touch--towards the front doors, but the man resists the invitation.
In the end he takes Neil through a service corridor and stopping in front of a thin black door. It has a lock, but he takes a keychain out of his pocket and opens it without thought. Does he work here? That would make sense.
Neil follows him in and closes the door behind him, but there’s not much space to move; it’s a supply closet, the shelving making the space barely big enough for the both of them. But that’s fine. The man smiles. “Hi.”
“Hello,” Neil says, not meeting his gaze. Every time he does this, they’re always put off by his eyes, and he isn’t sure why. Maybe they see something they don’t like. Maybe they don’t see anything. Windows to the soul and all that. Luckily they mostly mistake it for shyness. The man leans in towards Neil, puts a hand on his belt buckle. Smiles again, but it’s hotter this time. Sharper. He’s excited, like a tiger in the second before it closes its jaws around a deer’s neck.
Neil brings his hands to the man’s shoulders, the single light bulb throws harsh light on his tattoos, and the man’s eyes go wide. Neil’s skin is a menagerie of ink. Foxes and ravens and lovebirds and others all vying for space. Their scene is of armies before the clash; feathers puffed out, teeth bared, claws and talons outstretched, every animal primed and waiting to tear into flesh.
Neil grips the back of the other man’s neck, every cell in his body awakens, and the animals
come
fourth
and
feast
.
Neil’s vision starts to blur, and the last thing he sees is the demon shedding his disguise. Trades his smile for a snarl. Teeth elongating, pupils dilating until only the black is left. Sharp pricks at his arms tell him that the demon has claws of his own. It’s been awhile since he met one with claws. The demon growls something, probably an insult, but Neil is too far gone to hear.
Neil wakes up to someone banging at the door. He quickly checks his watch (it’s been over an hour since the bar) gives himself a quick once over in the tiny mirror above the tiny sink (sleeves a bit torn, hair a mess, skin flushed, which is all par for the course) and then opens the door.
It’s the bartender from earlier. His eyes are searching, and in the fluorescent light there’s a spark, a little bit of fire in the shining sand. “Where’s Jean,” he says.
“Who?”
The bartender gives him a very blatant once-over and says again. “Seriously?”
“Oh!” Neil says. “Ah, he just sorta. Left. A few minutes ago.”
The bartender looks past Neil, into the supply closet. Towards where the man’s--Jean’s--clothes are still on the floor. Underwear included. “So he left...without his clothes?”
Neil just throws his hands in the air in a What can I tell ya gesture, but the bartender’s eyes lock onto Neil’s tattoos. “Those look different. Than before.”
And they do. The foxes and mongooses on his left arm are all racing up his bicep, the ravens and lovebirds flying over them, all in a race to get to his right forearm, where the animals are all trying to claw away at a puma with bright eyes. Usually the newcomer would be torn to shreds and disappear within a few hours, but something about the gleam of the puma’s eyes tells Neil he won’t go away easy. Most likely it will change form, probably into a mongoose or raven. Though it’s possible that Neil hit a jackpot, and the puma will make it’s way to where the lion still sleeps under his left shoulder blade. “Must be the lighting.”
The bartender doesn’t look away from the ink. He’s suspicious, Neil can tell. “Yeah. Must be.”
Neil pushes past him, muttering some excuse for leaving. He can feel the bartender’s eyes following him down the hallway and through the door back to the now much denser dance floor.
The hotel is hardly the nicest Neil’s ever been in, but it isn’t the most run down either. A perfect picture of mediocrity. They made Neil show an ID, which was annoying, but it had been a shit month and it’s not like he’d be staying for more than a few days anyway. He deserves a clean bed and some good TV. Plus, the series finale of Foxhole is tonight and he is not watching it in some internet cafe in Buttfuck, Louisiana next to a bunch of teenage gamers who got kicked out of their houses.
He steps out of the shower and towels himself off before wiping the steam off the mirror. The hair dye is fresh, so it’s holding on for now. His eyes are the same blue as they are every day, and he idly wonders, not for the first time, if they’ll always stay that way, or if the ink will claim his eyes like it did his skin and hair.
There’s something nagging at the back of his head, like he’s forgetting something, so he takes the opportunity to check on the menagerie too. Jean the puma is, surprisingly enough, still a puma, currently clawing his way up Neil’s tricep. The first rule of the menagerie is power, and the second conformity; that Jean here manages to eschew both makes him a luckier find than Neil anticipated. With any luck, tonight could probably sustain Neil for at least three months.
The rest of the menagerie seems to have settled down, to rest or settle whatever grudges they managed to form in the past few hours. The scarring around Neil’s heart is faint now, almost enough to look natural in certain lighting. Thank god. Either they’re getting clever or Neil is losing his touch; it’s been taking him longer and longer to find demons to eat, and the more time he has to waste on eating, the less time he has to figure out how to stop .