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The Cursed Apple is never quiet like this. Businesses were closed down York Avenue, from the courthouse to the factory. No crowds along Broadway, not even a line of cars straight through the empty street where he followed it straight to the Third Avenue El. Most have evacuated, those who could afford to and those who couldn’t but won’t take the risk anyway. For others, it’d take a lot more than the threat of cosmic annihilation to run them out of their city. The Baroness, for one, will never be empty. He can take some credit for that.
He’d never willingly leave The Baroness when she’s given him so much, but City Mother has called upon him to defend, and although these days he’s more accustomed to taking his tea in the morning and taking off his shoes by nightfall, he sees nothing wrong in taking a short break to return to his roots. Whether he is serving patrons of The Baroness or patrons of the Outer Plane, his work was never finished.
So here he is, a humble doorman, biding his time by the shipyard and watching the sun shining through the distant green spires of his beloved hotel. There are still hours before the eclipse, before a new plane makes itself violently known and the world shakes like it once did fifty years ago.
He can wait hours. Time was of no consequence to him no matter how he was spending it. Patience has always been one of his meager virtues. Immortality gave him that and he’s better for it, especially in a profession that demands it almost to a fault. Immortality can’t always be so kind to others.
There’s a shuffle beside him. There’s been multiple shuffles throughout the hour that’s passed him by, an occasional rustle, a growl even. He looks at the source. The source is not looking at him and instead sniffing the air like he’s searching for something, hands twitching impatiently.
Familiar was not the word. Aware might be. He was aware of the man— and he means that in the loosest sense of the word— leaving heavily against the shipping crates behind him. In fact, the very first thing The Doorman had been aware of was just how poorly he dressed.
The Doorman took utmost pride in his appearance. He was the very first thing that patrons would see when the front doors were opened; everything about his uniform must project nothing short of excellence, from the top of his hat down to his well-polished shoes. All that The Baroness stood for shined through him and all that he stood for shined through The Baroness.
The thing— closer, but still not quite right— beside him most certainly did not stand for much. His ragged coat hung loosely even on his wide shoulders like an unfitted bedsheet, stained and smelling strongly of metal. There was dirt caked under his sharp nails and seemingly more smudged on his face, though a closer look would indicate it was merely an unkempt beard. He was definitely not the sort the hotel would keep, though perhaps exceptions could be made with enough soap, hot water, and effort. He can’t imagine the kind of exceptions City Mother made for the ritual.
The Doorman knew vaguely about him: a vampire, centuries old, reviled even by the most ruthless of vampire society, and concerned with little else than his own appetite and the carnage it wrought.
"Drifter," he'd said in that low drawl and The Doorman couldn't help but wonder how he'd earned that moniker. It evoked something soft and delicate, a dandelion wisp adrift, a lonely traveler between homes, not the twitchy, bedraggled vampire that was snuffling around like a dog.
Beings cursed with, blessed with, or who just happened to have eternal life tended to run into each other. They’d exchanged very little in the brief encounters they’d had, even less in this one. It was clear Drifter was only there for the sake of the ritual, not idle chitchat. Not that The Doorman is in any hurry to talk about the weather with him; something had been said in passing about his profession already and he’s in no hurry to be denigrated any further. Immortality has also given him a healthy dose of pride and little consideration for the opinions of most.
Most. City Mother is always in his ear. She tries to understand. She doesn’t.
Another cough interrupts his cud chewing. He fully turns this time to get a good look at Drifter. He’s clearly set off by something, still sniffing and grimacing at whatever he picks up. Odd. All The Doorman really smells is lavender and the impending collision of realities merging. The two smells are remarkably similar.
Clearly, the thing was just searching for attention. The Doorman could give it to him. Not like there’s anything else to do.
“You seem agitated.”
Drifter makes a sound in the back of his throat that he chooses to interpret as an affirmative. He presses on.
“Is it something I can help with?”
He gets a sniff in return, cold and dismissive. “Nothing you’d know about.”
“I daresay there are very few things that I wouldn’t know about,” he says not unkindly. “Please, go on.”
“Sure, I bet you know a lot.” Cold, dismissive. He tilts his head just enough for The Doorman to see the red glow of his eyes beneath the rim of his cap. “Don’t mean you’d understand.”
His eyebrows furrow. “That’s a tad presumptuous.”
“Not presumptuous if I’m right.”
He tightens his smile. He’s already invested, he may as well see it through. Sunk-cost fallacy claims another victim.
“Come now,” he says gently. The Lady Geist once said he’d catch more bees with honey, one of her very few pearls of wisdom he’d bothered to listen to. “It must be something I’d know of. We are immortals, we’re bound to have common ground.”
Drifter’s derisive laugh sounds like something trying to claw its way out of his throat. Something probably did at some point. There are two conclusions to be made here: one, Drifter could never be something as lovely as a bee, and two, Drifter is likely allergic to the concept of gentleness altogether.
“Means nothing. Not dying’s the only thing we have in common.”
It’s true but The Doorman lived far too long for truth to have any bearing on him. Truth is whatever he wants it to be.
“I’d still like to help.”
That’s also true, though he isn’t entirely sure why. Building rapport with his team would ensure a higher rate of success with the ritual, is what he would say if Drifter pressed him. Hard. Drifter thankfully doesn’t seem to care either way. He shifts his weight, his arms folded over his chest, mulling it over in that unkempt little head of his.
“Been a hot minute since I’ve eaten,” he says finally, lifting his chin. “That it? That what you wanted to hear?”
No, it really wasn’t. That isn’t anything exciting, that’s a simple problem with an even simpler solution. From what he understands, Drifter has the means to take whatever he needs and not just when it’s strictly necessary. There were still people in the city, accessibility was hardly an issue. Perhaps he’s worried about the time frame.
“The ritual isn’t for another couple hours. You could take the time to… indulge, if you’d like. I won’t mind.”
“Oh, you won’t mind,” Drifter repeats, eyebrows raising. “I would hate for you to have minded.”
He’s dealt with the most intransigent and unwavering force in this plane of reality known as the general public for many years. He may be dedicated to excellent service but even he had limits and he certainly wasn’t going to go find and present a suitable candidate to be devoured like some grim butcher.
“I offered a solution,” he says, his smile tightening further. The beast— he liked that one even better, actually— clearly had no reasonable nature to appeal to. He hates to admit it but he’s floundering. “That you refuse to follow it is of no fault nor consequence of mine.”
Now the beast moves, pushes himself out of his heavy sprawl against his crate and stands at his full height which only comes up to around The Doorman’s clavicle. Including the hat.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The Doorman, hands folded pleasantly behind his back, only smiles. He’s a professional. He can stay professional.
“Bet you don’t even know what hunger’s like,” Drifter continues on even though The Doorman didn't ask, but guests treat him as a complimentary therapist all the time anyway so he can manage.
“Nothin’ more than an inconvenience, that’s what you think, right? Sure, I can take care of it right now if I wanted to. But killing for fun and killing to eat ain’t the same thing.”
He stalks closer, hands curled at his sides, tension coiled like a snake through his arms and up to his shoulders, ready to strike at any moment.
“That emptiness isn't just the absence of something, no, that emptiness has weight. It pushes out everything that made you you, everything you thought you’d never let go of. Your principles, hell, your dignity, all that means nothing when you’re hungry. It grows until emptiness is all you have and the moment you fill it up with something new, all you can think about is the next time you’ll get to fill it again.”
He drops his head, red eyes retreating beneath his cap.
“But you won’t understand that. You're a god. You’ll never know what it is to need.”
He won’t. Drifter’s right, he has no idea what that’s like. Even in his younger days, when he razed the world for his amusement and watched the humans recoup and rebuild just to do it all over again, it wasn’t hunger that drove him. There was no prickling need at the back of his skull that compelled him onward, begging for more and more until it threatened to consume him instead.
He did it simply because he could. Because he liked it.
“You’re right, I don’t,” he murmurs thoughtfully. The words seem to placate the beast just enough to lessen the tightness of his shoulders, but only just.
He was looking at this all wrong. He stayed with The Baroness for so long because it gave him more than mindless entertainment. It gave him perspective, purpose even, to know something other than himself and the beings just like him who never sought anything more than to just be. To serve lesser beings was to know them, their wants and needs, dreams and fears, and Ixia gave him even more to learn from.
Observation was its own reward. Perhaps that’s what this is: another opportunity to learn. He is always ready to serve, after all.
"I never really was in the wish-granting business of my kin,” he says finally, straightening his jacket, “but I think today I shall make an exception.”
Drifter stares at him. Unperturbed, The Doorman clears his throat.
"Seeing as you’re indisposed, I shall offer my temporary assistance. I’ll allow you to feast on me should you manage to catch me.”
Drifter stares at him like he’s grown a second head and he briefly has to check to make sure he hasn’t. He’d done that quite a lot when he was still adjusting to his new body.
“You’ll let me eat you.”
It's not a question but still the confusion is still there. Maybe he’s not being understood.
“Yes, I will let you eat me,” he says a bit slower. Time hasn’t been kind to the vampire’s unfortunate exterior, the interior must’ve been equally affected. “Any part of me that you manage to sever from me is yours to keep and do with as you like. And, well, I suppose what you’d like to do is eat.”
He gets a hard stare for his efforts.
“I can’t hurt you.”
“In a normal capacity. I’ll allow this form to be damaged to make it easier for you-”
Drifter doesn't wait for him to finish before he’s lunging at him, all sharp teeth and sharper claws, and that just won’t do. A flick of his hand, a little reach into a pocket he keeps in The Baroness, and a luggage cart is careening into the beast, sending him straight into the side of a crate hard enough to splinter the wood.
"How terribly rude of you," he huffs, patting down his lapels. Drifter growls and steadies himself, swearing low under his breath and The Doorman has to restrain himself from admonishing him for his language. “You ought to be more patient if you want me to fulfill my end of the bargain.”
“Bargain,” Drifter repeats. He didn’t seem capable of asking questions.
Despite everything, there is a little smirk playing at the beast’s mouth. He dusts himself off, moves like he’ll strike again. The Doorman raises his keyring in warning. Drifter responds with a little step forward, then another. His grin is almost playful. The Doorman doesn't like not being taken seriously.
“Of course.” The Doorman smacks his hand when it gets too close. “I’m in the business of servitude, not charity.”
Drifter stares at him again with something other than mindless hunger in his piercing eyes. The Doorman might call it curiosity. He takes another step, testing the waters. "You said any part I get, I keep."
"I didn't say I'd make it easy."
The loathsome creature laughs and oh, yes, that’s the word he was looking for. Creature.
"Damn good thing I like to play with my food then."
He conceded to using as little as his power as he can in order to level the field, and sure, he said this wasn’t a charity but he wants to give the pitiful thing even the slightest fighting chance to make this fun.
Maybe he didn’t need to make it quite so even. The vampire is deceptively fast, even while working against the broadness of his size. Everything is put into each movement, starting down in his feet and travelling through the length of his body, nearly cracking the stone beneath him with the force of his leaps. His hands strike out quick as a bullet, set off by the firing pin of his shoulders like a well-oiled pistol, every part working in perfect tandem to destroy the target in its sights.
Drifter, he gets it now. A being in perpetual motion.
The El is doing some heavy lifting for him. The high ground gives him some advantage and he can alternate, jump up to slide down the tracks, down to duck between shipping crates, anything that isn’t just throwing a bell at the beast’s head and blowing a hole in the middle of the Bowery.
He leaps onto the tracks and Drifter’s there to meet him at the top. He lunges and The Doorman manages to duck beneath the red streak of claws aiming right for his head. Unfortunately, he misjudges the speed and watches the tip of Drifter’s claw just barely catch his hand mid-dash and, oh bother, that is definitely his pinky coming off. Sliced right off at the base, it falls limply and Drifter seizes it before it hits the floor.
Patrons don't bleed. Patrons also don't willingly place themselves among mortals in positions of uncompromising servitude, so not everything about him is supposed to make sense. Liberty is the name of his game and he's taken quite a lot of them in the avid restructuring of his point of existence. His body, for one, was a very concentrated effort on his part and he's done his best with what he has. His best just happens to look quite blue.
Blue is what drips down from his hand, what fills the rest of him where a human would have bone and tissue. It isn’t blood, not quite. It’s simply blue.
He lifts his hand to examine the wound. He’s hesitant to call it a wound when it’s only a construct of his that is affected, but said construct is damaged either way. It’s different. It’s exciting.
Some of it falls to the ground in fat drops, shimmering like an oil spill. Most of it runs down his palm and stains his white gloves. He’s much less excited about that. Drifter doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. Blood is blood, after all.
"Thought you said you wouldn't make it easy." He holds the digit delicately between his claws, gives it a little wiggle in taunt. He’s not endearing enough for it to look charming.
"Suppose I did, yes. Well done, then," he scoffs, and the horrid creature must delight in his sourness because his smile parts to let his tongue slither out and give the severed end of the finger a lick.
Therein lies the rub. The Doorman really did try with this body because being a metal golem is hardly conducive to any meaningful observation unless he suddenly decides to take an interest in mortal fear and awe responses. There's only so much he can do to emulate a human form with matter that isn't from a human plane; the Outer Plane does not like its peas mixed with Earth’s porridge and he deserves a lot of credit for essentially unbaking a cake. He’s turned a whole into parts, but in turn, those parts still connect to the greater whole.
All of that to say, when the horrid creature slips the sickening length of his tongue over his pinky, he feels it. He feels the cool drag of slick flesh over the exposed end and the stump of his knuckle twitches in surprise.
“Huh. That's different,” Drifter hums, tilting it to the sunlight, examining the bright blue end. He took the words right out of The Doorman’s mouth. The Doorman would've said as much had Drifter not suddenly popped the digit into his mouth and swallowed it, glove and all.
And he definitely feels that.
His hand seizes as the sensation of Drifter’s cold, wet throat constricting around his finger overtakes his entire body until he shudders hard. It’s startling, a bit unpleasant, but most importantly, it feels different.
“Feels the same,” Drifter says idly, licking his thumb. “Tastes the same, too.”
New is hard to come by for a god. New and him were strangers as far as he was aware. He’d made his peace with that long ago. Drifter has just burnt that peace to ash right in The Doorman’s face with the finger slowly digesting in his stomach.
He wants to feel it again.
The corner of Drifter’s mouth twists up, claws flexing in anticipation, eyeing him like he could see right through the frayed edges of the Outer Plane where the Doorman’s mind lay in tatters amidst the entropy.
“Now let’s see about the rest of you.”
“It’s like you’re not even trying,” the beast laughs when he catches The Doorman off-guard again, smiling through his wicked teeth because he knows it’s true, knows that The Doorman willingly let his left arm get caught and sliced to discs below the elbow.
He won’t know exactly why. The Doorman wouldn’t tell him even if he pressed. He’d say nothing of the errant glee pounding in his chest like a human heart at the chase, nor of the delight that ripples through him when he’s greeted by that feeling of the slick channel of Drifter’s throat enveloping the pieces that were once his arm.
City Mother’s disgust is palpable. It only fuels his fire and he isn’t the only one who’s running hot with excitement.
For an undead creature, there is a vivaciousness in Drifter’s movements, in each raking slash of hands and resounding snap of his jaw. The vampire had wasted his time with the small prey of humans who were nothing in the face of his power. He must’ve spent so long aching for more than an easy fix, just mindlessly fulfilling his needs when what he really needed was a challenge. Now he finally had the chance to hunt bigger game. Killing for need versus killing for fun. The Doorman was beginning to understand.
He just didn’t mean to make it so easy.
He slips up. Gets complacent. Any other number of excuses he can try and scramble for to explain why he lets himself be shamelessly caught like this.
“Watch your six,” he hears behind him mid dash and he course-corrects, tries to pivot on his foot, but Drifter is faster.
"Oh," The Doorman says and then his leg is swept out from under him, cut mid-thigh and sending him falling hard into the pavement. Even more annoying, his pants are ruined. The beast will owe him a new uniform at this rate.
Drifter delicately picks up his leg, shaking it in disapproval.
“Charity,” he mocks, biting into the meat of his thigh straight through his freshly ironed slacks, and there’s another, newer feeling bubbling in his chest that overpowers the dismay of having his pants torn. It’s not a want, but he thinks it might be similar.
Drifter drops the leg and The Doorman’s irritation flares again at the dirt getting on his pants, but then the creature is looking right at him, his mouth hanging open, blue-stained saliva dripping down his teeth, and The Doorman understands a little bit more.
There’s no point in taunting. The creature settles over The Doorman’s body just as delicately, and The Doorman has to squint amidst the bright red light of his stare. The pointed end of one claw slides under the chin strap of his hat, lifting it higher and higher until it splits around the sharp edge of the nail. The cap falls to the ground, rolls away in the dirt, and The Doorman can’t even pretend to be annoyed about it.
There’s nothing else left for him to do, not without obliterating the scales entirely. He’s been caught, fair and square. The Doorman is nothing if not a god of his word.
"Go on then," he mutters. “Take what's yours.”
And Drifter obliges.
His fangs sink into the Doorman’s throat in a savage, open-mouthed bite right at the junction of his neck and shoulder, piercing through him like butter and blue erupts from the broken skin. The width of the bite nearly takes a chunk out of him and he thinks that’s exactly what Drifter will do, tear that mouthful right off his shoulder and swallow it down like he did everything else he's taken, everything he's earned. His jaw just needs to close.
It doesn't. He's almost disappointed when those fangs retract from the deep holes where they made a home in his neck. He’s half tempted to ask if Drifter’s somehow changed his mind, but Drifter surprises him again. He watches the creature’s long tongue slip out from his fanged maw again, the one that curled around the pieces of his flesh and gulped them down so readily, to slide over the butchered skin like he’s soothing the wound he left.
He’s gentle. It’s the only way The Doorman can describe it. It’s not a cruel break from his torment. It’s something softer. A respite.
The beast purrs into his throat, lapping at the thick fluid almost catlike. It's coming faster than he can lick it up, dripping down his jaw in trails of teal. Most of it runs down The Doorman’s chest and stains his uniform, but when Drifter pauses to seal his lips over the bite, he can’t bring himself to care anymore. The suction paired with the coolness of Drifter’s lips is nearly enough to make him shiver. Nearly.
The eclipse is fast approaching, the supernatural energy of the Outer Plane nearly reaching its apogee. There’s only minutes before the ritual yet Drifter sucks at his neck like he has all the time in the world.
“Now you got nothing to say,” he murmurs between mouthfuls, and he's right, it’s like The Doorman’s sense is spilling right out of him with the fluid staining the pavement. He doesn’t even remember making so much of it, all of that blue flowing from his body right into Drifter’s. He swallows hard, tastes it in the back of his throat.
“Is there something you’d like me to say?”
“Nah, I like you better when you're not talking.” He licks the wound again like he means to use the whole length of his tongue, nearly catching the Doorman’s cheek with it. “You could do something for me, though, you could struggle a little. That'd make it fun.”
“Fun wasn't part of the agreement.”
“No, but you're big on customer satisfaction.” He presses the tip of his tongue over one of the holes in the skin. “And I’d be very satisfied.”
There’s something about the request that pierces him. It sounds too much like Drifter is asking him to be something else and it doesn't sit well with him. Granted, it’s a silly thing to worry about when he’s spent so much effort trying to reform himself into a being so counter to what he is that the evidence of his otherness is all over Drifter’s face, but at least that otherness was by choice.
Most of his choices were a point of contention with other gods. City Mother failed to understand, the others wouldn’t even begin to try. He thought, foolishly, he’d finally be taken as he is.
“You want me to pretend to be human?” he asks. As if he wants to hear the answer.
“No,” Drifter says without missing a beat, effectively surprising him for the third time. “I didn't choose to hunt a human, I chose you.”
Oh. Well. That is the response he least expected yet the one he most wanted to hear. It’s startlingly close to something he’s been wanting to hear from the other gods, even Amber King, really anyone who would bother to look past the crippling mundanity of black and white and see him within the gray. Really see him.
He can’t say all that. If he opens his mouth at all he might blurt something rather stupid so he says nothing.
“Things would be different if you were human,” Drifter continues and that’s the understatement of the century. He probably wouldn't even be a doorman. He has no idea what he would be. It’s so far out of his purview, as far as Earth and Ixia were before the first eclipse, that he can’t say for certain what would be different. It’d take something greater than another maelstrom to bridge that gap.
"If I were human,” he echoes distantly.
"If you were human," the beast rumbles again, hot and heavy against his mangled throat, “You wouldn’t have ever known I was hunting you. Maybe you're out at night, missed the bus, too late to call a friend, just trying to get home safe.”
His body has been nothing but ice but his breath is hot against The Doorman’s jaw. It smells like lavender.
“Ain’t no streetlamps out in the country. Nothing but moonlight to guide your way and some nights not even that. So you walk in the darkness. Maybe you hear something behind you, but you turn and there’s nothing there.”
He could never say definitively what he would be if he wasn’t this. He’d sooner ask a fish to imagine life outside of water. There’s little he truly dislikes more than being uncertain about himself, but Drifter speaks so surely, so resolutely, that The Doorman can’t help but believe him. It would be utterly ridiculous that this creature would have anything to teach him about humanity if he wasn't nearly drowning in it like the blue gurgling in his throat.
“Over and over, you turn and nothing’s there. By the time you would’ve had any sense at all that you weren’t alone, it would've been far too late.”
If he tries, really tries, he can imagine it, the towering structures of the city shrinking into drooping cypress trees, the crisp breeze melting into hot air that sticks to his skin, the winding roads now wide stretches of water. No crowds, no cars, no chatter in green-roofed hotels. No one to help him now.
"And when I caught you, had you pinned just like this against the cold, hard ground, I wouldn't have taken my time like this. I wouldn't have let go. Would’ve kept myself, my teeth inside you. Right here-"
He drags the soft pad of his thumb against the bottom teeth indents in his throat, slowly rising and falling with the divots of his skin. Soft, once again. The Doorman can't help but wonder when the last time was that such a thing like Drifter was soft. He doesn’t know why he’d even bother, especially towards a thing like him.
For once in his insurmountable years of existence, his words fail him, and Drifter easily fills the silence.
"I would’ve felt you struggle under me, felt the vibrations of your screams against my teeth until your voice gave out. I would’ve felt you fight me, fight for your life, claw and struggle and beg to keep it until you can't anymore."
He presses his lips briefly at the wound again like an afterthought. Like a kiss. But that would be ridiculous. Wouldn’t it?
"I'd watch you grow pale as I sucked you dry, watch the light go out of your eyes, leave you knowing that your very last sight will be your blood on my teeth and there was nothing you could do to change it. You were dead the moment you stepped into the dark.”
For a moment, there is stillness. The warm puff of Drifter’s breath against his collar. The quiet drip of blue from his chin onto the ground. Then he snaps right back into his throat, tearing into him again and again, barely pausing to swallow before he’s dipping right back down to rip another piece out of his neck.
He’s helpless to it. He gave his word. The beast would take what he wanted, devour every last bit until his hunger was sated, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. It’s not the whole truth, but that’s irrelevant. Truth is whatever he wants it to be and right now he wants to be that human, the poor soul grasping through the darkness for safety, unknowing of the danger that stalked close. He wants everything the vampire promised him would be different if he wasn’t this, a god who dared to do more than just simply be, but live. He wanted to live and now he wants that life taken away. He wants to see his eyes reflected in the red haze of Drifter’s when the light leaves them.
No, it’s even deeper than want. Not quite a need.
He hungers.
Blue pools beneath him, soaking his hair, shining like the pale glow of The Doorman’s eyes on the vampire’s face every time he comes up for air from feasting on his body. He gasps out air where there was none; he doesn’t have lungs, he has no need to breathe, but he’s breathing now, his chest heaving with it in ragged pants like he wanted any one of them to be his last.
This was what dying felt like. It had to be. How else could he explain it? Nothing else had ever felt like this— could ever like this— all the roaring, pulsing life gathering inside him before it collapsed under its own weight like the thousands of stars he'd seen reaching the end of their lifetimes having exhausted everything that they had. He could see them now, bursting behind his eyelids as he was feasted on until he too would have nothing left of his body to give, nothing but the white-hot burn down to his core until it all just ceased.
He reaches up clumsily, grabs onto Drifter’s shoulders as that searing light surges through him. He wants to feel them bruise, to know he’s branded the shape of his fingers in bright teal right on the skin before his strength fails him, that in his last moment of life, he's left his mark on Drifter just as the beast has left his mark on him. And just as promised, the last thing he sees before it takes him, before his eyes squeeze shut to greet the impending supernova, is blue, his blue, dripping from Drifter’s teeth.
He can taste the distant sounds of the city around him, the clinking of silverware against porcelain in The Baroness, the roaring of cars miles away, idle chatter of those who stayed to face the coming storm. He smells the light of Ixia through the pulsing gate in the distance, persisting through the dark like the thin ring of the sunlight through the moon. He feels the wavelengths of cosmic energy through his fingers like the silk of a spider web before it snaps under the duress of realities colliding.
City Mother is silent. He blinks, sees double, blinks again. His right arm rises to touch his shoulder, pauses halfway when he notices his glove is clean. No more blue. There is only red staring back at him.
His body must've snapped right back after… whatever just seized him. Death. A little death, maybe, though there was nothing little about the fire that burned through him in those last moments. He's struck by how little sympathy he can afford to those he afflicted with that fickle mistress knowing now what it’s like. Was that really what humans were so afraid of? He'd never felt more alive.
Drifter shudders against him and he realizes he's still holding tight onto his shoulders. He delicately peels his fingers back, checks to see if he’s left any marks. He hasn’t. Sad.
“You're full of surprises, aren't you?” Drifter says. It’s soft. Again. Three times is a habit.
The Doorman doesn't answer, still checking over himself or his uniform more than anything. He finds nothing, not even a drop on his white gloves. If his body returned to normal…
“Are you still…?” he starts a bit awkwardly. His voice isn't all there yet.
“Hungry?” Drifter licks his lips like he can still taste the blue that stained them and the Doorman shivers like he can still feel the cool slide of that tongue on his throat. “Oh no, cher. I'm quite satisfied.”
He certainly looks satisfied. Almost pleased. It’s a far cry from the cruel derision that often twisted his face. He offers his hand and then gives The Doorman a wide berth to fuss over his clothes, straighten his hat, brush the dirt off his jacket. Honestly, he’s floundering again. He doesn’t know what to say. What should he say? Thank you? Has a human ever thanked their killer for the kind benefaction of death?
Drifter, once again, fills the space for him.
“Much obliged,” he says pleasantly, tipping his hat. His claws are clean, disappointingly so. “Let’s do it again sometime.”
That’s it. He’s turned The Doorman’s reality on its head and he flounces off like it’s another Tuesday for him. He disappears somewhere down Broadway where Amber King has already made his preparations. The Doorman watches him go, watches long after he’s gone, long until only the smallest slice of the sun remains.
He lifts his hand up to the light, stares at it hard as if to see through the thin fabric of his glove to the pale skin of his finger. Even if he did, he'd see nothing there, but if he closed his eyes and focused just enough, he could still feel the coolness of a tongue dragging between the second and third knuckle like it didn't mean to eat him but to savor him.
He blinks and straightens his gloves, smooths down his jacket. No point in dawdling. City Mother needed him and The Baroness would need him soon after. He would never keep them waiting. His work was never done, after all.