Hobbes logged in and took stock of his surroundings. He had been avoiding it for a while, but his colleagues had told him that it wasn’t what he was thinking. His footsteps carried him across the game grid to a building he had not entered before. He stood in front of the host diner as if contemplating for a long while before finally slipping inside. He looked around and picked a seat, sliding in to quietly observe for a while.
It looked just like a diner should look. Little booths and round tables with chairs. The only real differences were that the lights were a little dimmer, the general color scheme was a little darker, and the uniforms of the waiters were not… uniform. In fact there wasn’t two people dressed the same in the room. One woman was dressed up in a little maid uniform, another was dressed in something sparkling and pink. The man to his left was wearing a tuxedo with a little mask.
None of them approached however. After a long moment it was another man who approached Hobbes, a tall man with hair that looked like it had been spun of gold and skin like polished alabaster. Blue eyes twinkled and the man smiled as he drew close. Rather than standing to take his order the man drew in and sat down rather close to him.
“Good evening.” The man smiled and tilted his head at Hobbes. “I am Samael, how can I serve you today?”
Hobbes had been staring at the general goings on in the diner, and when Samael sat down, it took a few moments to register. He slowly turned his head to the golden haired man, regarding him as if seeing him for the first time. He stammered a bit, while reaching for one of the menus. “Um. I. I don’t know.” His head dropped down to look at the menu, staring intently for a moment before his eyes flicked up to look at Samael again before going back down to the menu. It was clear enough that he didn’t know what he was doing here, or what was expected.
“It is fine.” Samael let out a little chuckle meant to ease the mood and touched the menu with one finger so that it dipped down. The motion brought attention back to him. The blonde was dressed resplendently in golds and blacks that made his eyes look bluer and his hair more like soft metal. “Let me help you decide?”
Hobbes great bulk still looked like it didn’t fit in the smallish booth, but his demeanor relaxed a bit and he put the menu down. “What exactly IS this place?” He tilted his head to the side as he asked the question, and his ears twitched slightly.
“You have never been to a host club?” He made a motion with his hand that waved away his own question. “It is a place for people to get away. Have someone to talk to. Get something to eat or drink and relax.” Samael’s hand gestured toward the rest of the restaurant where men and women relaxed and chatted with people. One woman was leaning on another woman dressed up like a bird while businessman drank with two other men in similar attire.
“It is a little bit of everything depending on what you need.” He flashed white teeth in another smile.
Hobbes let out a small chuckle. Coming from his bulk, it sounded deep. “Talk with someone NOT related to my work then. No wonder Steven recommended I try it out.” He picked up the menu again, and this time began actually perusing through it’s contents. Without looking up from his menu, he quietly added. “Nothing… rated, right?”
One golden eyebrow arched upwards. “Are you looking for something… rated?” The question held no judgement, only open curiosity.
Hobbes shook his head as he flipped the page on the menu. “No. My friend had called this companionship, and not understanding what he meant, I stayed away for a while.” He set the menu down on the table so that Samael could see it and pointed one clawed finger at something titled Japanese tea. “How about that?”
Samael smiled softly and nodded so that his curls bounced and twinkled in the dim lighting. “Excellent choice. And would you like company? Any sort can be acquired at your request - someone funny, serious…” His smile grew a little. “Myself of course though my time is a little more expensive than some.”
The hulking tiger tilted his head again to the side at the last statement, and looked again down at the menu. “So the price is for the waiter?”
Amusement twinkled in Samael’s eyes but he didn’t laugh instead he leaned closer and pointed at the menu. “The prices here are for the food and drinks.” He slid his finger down to where it was marked ‘special services’ with a range of prices. The pale extremity stopped at one of the prices. It was… a little extravagant. “This one is for an hour of my company.”
Only a slight twitching of his whiskers gave rise to any sort of emotion as the beast studied the new portion of the menu. After taking it in he began nodding. “I think I will be dining alone this evening then, thank you though.”
Samael smiled again and slid away. “Of course. Let me know if you change your mind, and if you like I can always direct you to someone who’s time is a little less expensive.” He rose to his feet with a certain amount of grace, like a dancer. “I will put your order in for you.”
“One last thing before you do.” Hobbes looked up and over at the maid, the man in the tuxedo and mask, and around the room, identifying all the wait staff that had stood still when he had sat down. “Your friends obviously had all identified me as a waste of their time, why did you sit down?”
Something in the blonde’s pale eyes lightened and he leaned over the table just a little, lowering his voice. “Because no one is a waste of my time… least of all you.” He gave a little wink at the end to show that he was being a little playful and stood back up. “Anything else?”
“Not at the moment Samael, you have been very helpful. Thank you.” Hobbes put aside the menu, back where it had been resting on the table when he sat down and leaned back slightly in the booth, trying not to hunch as he sat.
Wordlessly Samael nodded and seemed to fade away back into the restaurant. In truth though, he was impossible not to watch even from a distance. He was like a little winking star walking about the cafe. It didn’t take long for the tea to arrive, brought out by someone other than Samael who was clearly just meant to be a server rather than one of the actual waitstaff. In fact it was the lack of that golden twinkling that made it hard not to look for Samael just a little.
When it was found again Samael was standing near the doorway. Some man in mostly black was smiling at the blonde, his voice loud as he leaned forward and took Samael across the shoulders. “Aye Sammy boy. How’s it going.”
Samael smiled at the man, clearly trying to dispel the unease that this man’s presence was causing in the other customers nearby. “Damon, welcome back. Come on in and I will help you find something…”
The man rudely cut Samael off, pulling him past Hobbes and toward the back of the store. As the blond went past it was clear that the man had a handful of Samael’s hair in his hand, and was using it as a lever to pull Samael along.
Hobbes was not an oblivious man, possibly sometimes uneducated, but he tended to notice things. He saw the dark man take a fistfull of Samael’s hair to start dragging him along, and as the pair reached his table, he decided that right now was the time to get up to go use the restroom. Wait. Avatars don’t need to do that. Oh well, he stood up anyway, impeding Damon from going any further with his considerable bulk. He turned as Damon bumped into him and stared blankly at the man. His eyes glanced for only a moment at Samael. “Is this all part of the service?”
Samael blinked up at Hobbes while Damon looked up, and then up, and then up again at the much larger form of Hobbes. “My boy’s got nothing to say to you. Do you Sammy?” Samael’s blue eyes flickered between the two men and then lowered wordlessly.
The general level of unease did not go under the radar, and the look of sheer horror and terror on the maid’s face when Hobbes had stood up in front of Damon, let him know that she was afraid that he might do something untoward. Hobbes just looked down, stooping to bring his maw closer to Damon’s face. “I have to hand it to you Samael. I didn’t think you could find an obnoxious enough person to serve me the tea like I asked for, but you really pulled through on this one.”
Samael’s eyes widened and he looked up at Hobbes. Nothing changed about his features, but a sudden sense of palpable fear radiated outwards from him strong enough to be felt. Beside him Damon was turning red and then suddenly the color faded as his dark eyes turned darker. “Do I look like a whore to you boy?”
Hobbes let his second pair of arms drop out of where it hand been tucked, and straightened up just a little bit. He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles, then did the same with his second set of arms. “You don’t want me to answer that question.” He smiled broadly at the man, but then suddenly the smile was gone. “You’re disturbing my quiet evening. I’d wager you know where the exit is.”
“Go back to your quiet then boy. I’m paying this slut real good so you just go back to whatever you were doing.” He tightened his grip on Samael’s hair and the blonde made a small sound of pain that seemed to please Damon. Without another word the dark-haired man pushed Samael to the side, clearly meaning to simply go around Hobbes.
“As soon as you leave.” Hobbes reached out with one of his primary arms, grabbing Damon’s wrist and dug his fingertips into the tendons and nerves hidden on the bottom.
Without a sound of pain to signify that he had felt the pain that surely must have gone up his arm Damon glanced down and then up fearlessly into Hobbes’s eyes. Suddenly, into the silence that threatened to grow Samael touched Hobbes’s hand where it grasped Damon’s. “It is okay.”
He started to say something more, but Damon jerked him back hard enough to force a small pained noise from Samael. “Let go of me before I break all those arms of yours.” There was something dangerous in Damon’s cold black eyes.
Hobbes ignored Damon’s threat at Samael’s words. He looked at the gentleman and released Damon’s arm, then looked back into the cold black eyes, his own blue ones reflecting a similar coldness. “Son, you have no idea what kind of a can of worms you’re digging in. But you get off easy now because the gentlemen requests it.”
Damon laughed and Samael winced as if the man had done something that hurt him but in such a way that it didn’t show. Save if one was looking to see the way that Damon’s wrist twisted just a little. “Whatever you want to tell yourself boy.” He shoved Samael another step to the side, then paused and looked up at Hobbes again. “What was your name again?”
“Hobbes. Look it up.” His secondary arms got folded back in, tucked beneath his primary ones so they almost remained discrete. However, he didn’t move, leaving the bulk of his body there as an annoyance for Damon.
There was something like an apology in Samael’s eyes as Damon led him around the much larger form of Hobbes. The black-haired man who handled Samael like an unruly dog flashed his teeth at Hobbes. “I will.”
They were his parting words.