So what was he doing? Some kinda movie promotion? Maybe a video game? Had he been lost from a flash mob? Everything about his appearance should have screamed LOOK AT ME. Instead, it seemed almost as though he was trying to blend in and not be noticed. Usually the shirtless muscular guys with the massive wings and blue-black hair were trying to stand out.
She walked past him, unable to spare another second. She had to get to work. Whatever this moment was, whatever magic might have been in it, was over. There was no room for the strange or outré when there were fries to get in the fryer.
There was a brief moment of something like depression, a little ache inside her, a yearning for something that never was…
A hand snatched at her through the crowd, pulling her out of the flow of people who barely seemed to notice, and absolutely did not care that a young lady had just been yanked at by a strange man.
“Hey! What the fuck you think you’re doing!?” She looked up at the guy with the wings, and felt her heart skip a beat. He’d found her. The thought didn’t make sense, but that didn’t stop her from having it.
“Human. I require your assistance.”
He was really weird. But he had a really hot voice. There were lots of good looking men in the world, but there weren’t nearly as many hot guys with hot voices to match, deep and gravelly and commanding all at the same time. It did not sound like the voice of a lost cosplayer, and yet it was almost certainly coming out of one.
“You need to let go of me before I get the pepper spray out of my bag.”
He released her arm. She should have hurried off immediately and gotten a cop to deal with the weirdo, but he gave her a look which made her take pity on him. He was like a big, red, massive, muscular, handsome, lost puppy.
“What’s wrong? You lost or something? Can’t find the set you’re supposed to be on? Is there a conference somewhere?”
“I have decided to take one of you for my own. You look pleasing.”
She stared, perplexed.
“Are you in character? I haven’t got time. I’m late for my shift and they dock pay, so…” she started to turn.
“Do NOT walk away from me!”
The ground seemed to shake with the bass of his voice, a timbre like none which had ever contacted her tender ears. She stopped moving and just stared at him, then around at the other people streaming by. They seemed unaffected by this strange man.
Katie turned back, confused. He did not speak with anger, but with such intense gravitas it was as if she could not find it in herself to disobey him. It felt right to do as he said. In stark contrast, every time her supervisor, Michael, talked to her, it was all she could do not to soft serve him right in his face.
He was looking at her with a kind of interest which she found unsettling and fascinating at the same time. She felt… wanted. In some strange and powerful way, he desired her. There was a carnal electricity between them, something Katie could almost taste.
She didn’t understand why he seemed so taken with her. The uniform she was wearing didn’t flatter her figure. The tight ponytail under the logo emblazoned cap wasn’t exactly pretty either. As for her face, she always tried her best to slap on enough makeup to look presentable, but the acne caused by the oil from the fryers was not appealing, nor was the smell of grease which clung to her pretty much all the time.
Was she flustered? She felt flustered. And hot. And suddenly she was having trouble standing still. The look in his eyes was enough to make her squirm all the way out of her black polyester-spandex pants.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to frighten you.”
“I’m not scared. You’re just weird.”
It was a defensive thing to call him weird. It kept him away from her. She already felt too close, too involved with this perfectly strange stranger.
“Don’t go,” he said, in direct contradiction to her very obvious attempt to leave while retaining some semblance of sociability. She was well within her rights to start screaming and spraying, but she found her fingers unfurling from the pepper spray in her purse.
“You are very beautiful.”
“Uh. Thanks,” she said awkwardly. She didn’t feel beautiful. She felt flustered. Guys hit on her all the time. The uniform made her look accessible. She usually blew them off without much trouble. But there was something about the way this male said she was beautiful which made it all seem different.
“I really have to go. I’m going to get fired if I’m late again. I’ve been late twice this week already, and…”
“Fired?” he interrupted her. “They set you on fire for missing work? This is a harsh world.”
“Uhh…” Did he really not know what she was talking about? He seemed genuinely perplexed. So she humored him. “They won’t set me on fire. They’ll deprive me of money so I lose my home, can’t feed myself, and starve in the gutter.”
“That is worse than being set on fire.”
“Yes. It is. So, anyway, bye.”
“Don’t go,” he repeated, catching her wrist in his massive hand. “I think I will choose you. I should probably have sampled some of the others, but I think you will do.”
“I will do?”
She had no idea what he was talking about. But she couldn’t look away from him. He had animal charisma of the kind which made the rest of the world blur out to a general hum.
“I think we should copulate.”
“Uhhh… What now?”
“Would you not enjoy copulation with me?”
She stared at him. He was very, very handsome. Even as a virgin, she had the feeling she absolutely would enjoy copulation with him. But she also had a gut feeling that he would be very bad for her. Her online therapist had suggested that she made bad dating choices, maybe due to early abandonment trauma.
It was hard to tease out whether he was very hot, and that’s why she was still talking to him, or if he was crazy and she was concerned for him, or if this was just the most interesting thing to happen in quite some time.
“Maybe we could go on a date first?”
“A date? You require an entire day of mating? Very good. I like an extended mating session.”
“That’s, uh, not what I meant.”
She looked at him more closely. Being near him made all the hair on the back of her neck stand up, not in a horror sort of way, but in a strange Van De Graaff generator sort of way. She was almost certain that if she put her hands on him, every single bit of hair on her body would start floating from the sheer electricity.
His costume was really good. Definitely movie quality. And now that she really looked at it, it had to be bespoke. Maybe even homemade.
“How long have you been doing cosplay?” She tried to change the subject. Not because she wasn’t interested, but because she was. Because she was trying to get a sense of whether or not this guy was a secret serial killer. Netflix specials had taught her that you had to be careful about that. Also, people with tiger zoos.
“Cosplay?”
“Dressing up like this. Looking like you do.” She gestured at his wings. “All of this. A lot of hours must have gone into it.”
“Oh yes, a very great many.” He looked around and nodded, as if he had come to a conclusion. “It is time we went, human. What do you call yourself?”