A cop had caught him.

It was an interesting experience, to say the least. They’d been after him for awhile. Wanted his balls on a platter, the bright eyed, blond haired kid said. Just got out of the police academy, probably. Enthusiastic and optimistic, a wannabe smartass trying to be a hardass but not quite fitting into either category. He didn’t have enough experience to be anything but an innocent little boy trying to play the part of a police man.

And it was almost insulting the way he didn’t call for back up.

“Do you think you’re gonna be a hero? Some bigshot? Some fucking idol or diety or god, sweetheart? That’s cute. That’s precious.”

And then the pretty little boy aimed his gun at Glim, those pretty eyes flashing. Glim had mockingly put his hands up and widened his eyes.

“You gonna shoot, sweetheart? That’s ballsy of you. What would that classify as? Aggravated assault? A cop, pulling out his gun on an innocent bystander! That’d headline you, fast.”

He’d advanced on the kid. Slowly and methodically and reveling the way the boy’s hands slowly started to shake. He got closer and closer—and then the kid shot. Once. Twice. Three times. You’re out! Panicked reflex? Fuck. It was weird being shot again. Three holes decorating his chest like a constellation. Knocked him right off his feet for a minute.

But he got up again. He always got up again. You can’t kill the dead, sweetheart.

He killed the angel faced cop. Killed him slowly, agonizingly, for hours and hours. He used his death to heal himself (a tit for a tat, right, baby?), and then left his body sprawled out in the middle of the street, torso mangled, limbs twisted, lips pulled back in a frozen scream, eyes stretched out wide and no longer bright.

And a couple hours later he was strolling idly down the street, whistling some merry tune. People steered clear of him (ran in the opposite direction) until he finally gave in and bought a new shirt. Stole one. Same difference.

He reached Monroe’s Diner (what a quaint little shithole) and examined himself thoroughly in the glass. Sharp, distinguished. Cleaned off the blood (it contrasted too sharply with his pale skin). Dark sunglasses resting neatly on a thin nose. Dark jeans, faded with brown. A button up black shirt and a black peacoat. Inappropriate attire for such cold weather, but the chill hardly bothered him.

When he saw her he was not instantly impressed. Mortal beauty did not get him the way it used to—not after he’d been with at least a couple different gods and deities and other such ethereal beings—but something about her held his attention. He watched her through the glass for a long moment, hands in his pockets, before he walked in.

He stood there and waited to be seated.

Smiling.

She catches a lot of eyes, mostly because she's a bit confusing at first. Asian slanted eyes, but curly black hair, and a vaguely hispanic shape to her face, as well as golden sort of skin. Exotic, perhaps. Except the yellow uniform of the Monroe's waitress doesn't flatter her. It doesn't flatter anyone.

And she sees him come in, and since there aren't so many of them here today; it's not busy in weather like this, she comes to the door and smiles and says "Good afternoon, and how are you today?"

She doesn't even have to wait for his answer, because she knows what it will be. It's always 'fine,' or a variation thereon, and it doesn't actually matter what they say, because her next line is always the same.

It doesn't matter if you vary or not, as long as you talk to the customers and smile at them and get their food out on time. That's what gets you the tips, and half the time, you never see these people again. (Sometimes there are regulars, but she doesn't care about them any more than she does the rest of them.)

She beckons him to a booth and puts a menu on the table and pulls out her little notepad and asks, "What can I get for you?"

He cocked his head to the side. “Jack and coke.” An early drinker. A funny order for a family diner. Maybe they would surprise him. He grinned, and took off his sunglasses.

Those controversial black eyes peered flatly at her, void of any emotion—of anything—per usual. They had changed since last spoken of—his irises were not so much an actual part of his eyes anymore, but appeared as if they were almost etched into the whites of his eyes, painted black and so fucking dark that they absorbed light rather than reflected it.

“Allow me to answer your first question.” He smiled at her, sitting and resting his elbows on the table, leaning forward to stare harshly at her. “Hungry.”

And his tone made it glaringly obvious that he was not referring to food.

"Sorry, we don't serve that."

She does not make a face. Nor does she shrink back from those horrible eyes. She continues smiling, though instinct says run away and never speak to this guy again.

Also, she is not flattered.

"I can get you a plain coke, though."

He isn't the first weirdo she's ever seen by far, but he's definitely the scariest. This is probably because he's dead, but she doesn't know that.

Is it warm in here?

If it was, it certainly wasn’t not from him. Glim radiates cold. He made no reaction to the sudden heat, however, not quite yet. At the moment, he was much too relaxed to get excited about anything. A good kill did that for him. Soothed his nerves and kept the insanity at bay, for the moment, the second, the (bliss, fucking bliss) hour, if he was lucky. Instead he leaned back and sighed, not at all seriously. “Coke’s a bit bland.”

Those shadowy eyes didn’t blink very often.

“And your name, angel tits?”

Glim obviously wasn’t there for the food. Not that kind, at least. He wanted her, not for any particular reason known. Perhaps because she was there (and those thighs, fuck, those thighs—he’d like to take a bite out of those juicy limbs), perhaps because there was something about her that made him want to crawl out of his skin, to touch her, to grab her and fuck her.

But despite the theory that most women were attracted to bad boys, Glim was finding it harder and harder to actually keep one particularly interested. He was beautiful, yes, no doubt, tall-dark-and-handsome and definitely intriguing, but that didn’t erase the fact that he was indeed scary as fuck. Girls didn’t want the real bad boys. They wanted the ones who acted tough, played loud, talked big, strutted their stuff like some fucking cat in heat. Not the ones who sank in the shadows and watched them with piercing eyes, not the ones who had the feel of death probably oozing out of every pore. Not the true bad boys. Not the ones that couldn’t be fixed.

Glim was a lost cause.

"Can't help that."

Funny how she doesn't want to give him her name. I mean, it isn't as if he's some psycho or something... Weird guys come into this place all the time, especially on the later shifts, which she works occasionally. Very occasionally.

"It's on the name tag."

Ines. No last name, though. That's for conferences and conventions and sometimes going to church. Nobody puts their last name on the name tag they wear at work.

She's not usually this snarky, by the way. Usually flirting will earn a guy playful flirting back. Once she actually did date a guy she met this way, but it didn't last.

Glim does not invite that friendly kind of banter, though.

"Tsk tsk tsk." He shook his head with each patronizing click of the tongue, and put his hand on Ines' wrist. "There's no reason to be so impolite." His hand was not cold. It was like dry ice, searing and freezing instantly with the touch, though he toned it down because he didn't want her dead just quite yet. He wanted to have his fun.

"Ines." He did not just say the name. His tone was almost serpentine, voice wrapping around each letter and claiming it as his, smooth like leather. "Come sit with me, will you?" His voice offered no room for argument. "Let's have a chat. A talky-talk."

There was a mockery of laughter coating his sentences, and his eyes were gleaming with an inhumane light. His smile was carved into his face like a statue.

"I've had a bad day, beautiful. Bad life. Bad existence. Bad karma. I just want something to make it a little better."

Her skin is hot, almost as if she has a fever. Almost as if she's going to burst into flames.

She's never done that before, but she's never felt (or been) so directly threatened before... She shivers involuntarily and tugs at her wrist. Time to get away, get a manager, make this weirdo leave, and leave her alone.

"Sorry, but I can't sit down. I've got other tables to take care of."

Let go. Letgoletgoletgo.

The heat was a surprise, but that hardly scared him away. Instead, he soaked it in like the warmth from the sun, something he hadn't felt since he was alive. He closed his eyes and momentarily basked in it, smile becoming a bit softer (though anyone who could or would appreciate that moment wasn't there and probably did not even exist). His grip tightened, not enough to break any bones but probably enough to leave a bruise in the upcoming days.

"I wouldn't make a commotion, love." He opened his eyes slowly, thick lashes curving over those endless black depths. Her tugs resulted in nothing but a tighter grip, impossible to break.

"The other tables can wait." He looked her straight in the eye, smiles still etched there. There was a vapid look there, not slow nor lame, but merely blank, empty and void of anything at all. A proper assumption would be that he was on some sort of drug, one that sucked all the humanity from a being, except that Glim's face was perfectly blank. As if it wasn't that he couldn't feel any emotion, rather that he just didn't.

It was probably not the wisest move. It could easily have cost her her job, if she were caught, or if he complained--which would be silly. Why complain when he could just kill her? It was probably a very bad idea. Make that a Very Bad Idea.

But she slapped him anyway.

"Let go of me." In comparison to her skin and the temperature around the booth, her voice is icy cold. (In comparison to him, not so much.)

She's angry and frightened and hurting where he's holding her, but mostly angry, just at the moment. How dare he? How dare he come in here and presume to try to frighten her into compliance?

His face didn't even move. In fact, it was as if her fingers had just slid across rock, most likely hurting her more than it would ever hurt him. He hardly even blinked. Perhaps he got his reaction a lot. His actions certainly merited a slap, if not worse. Instead, he carried on as if she had done nothing at all, which in essence she hadn't because it mattered not how many times she tried to hit him. Of course, one could argue that it was the prospect of it, that she would dare have enough balls to slap someone like him. It would be easy just to kill her and be over with it, just with his hand on her wrist like so. The effort it would take for him to extend that icy power of his into her body, freezing her veins and her bones and her marrow and her tissue and her muscles every little atom in her fucking body would be minimal, and in the long run he would benefit.

But instead he turned her hand over, the one within his grip, so that her palm was facing up, and traced his finger across each line that creased her skin. The smile was carved into alabaster again, unmoving and too perfect to be natural.

"I."

His breath came out as if he were a warm body in the middle of a cold night, creating a small puff of fog around his lips.

"Don't."

And those eyes, if possible, became flatter, as if they were just two disks settled in his sclera.

"Want to."

Well. That hurt her hand, and didn't work, but at least she didn't die? Not that she knows she could have died, but that's beside the point.

She shivers, and it is definitely warmer than it ought to be in here, so much so that people a few tables away are asking their servers if they could turn the heat down or something. It's odd, though; she doesn't seem to feel the heat.

Or if she does, she assumes it's just the contrast of his chill with the normal temperature of the diner.

"I'll scream."

I bet he's heard that before.

"Go ahead."

He leaned forward, confidentially, and his smile became a bit of a Cheshire like grin. "But you'll probably wind up regretting it."

Not probable, more than likely.

"Could you not humor me? Just sit across from me for a couple of hours, and we can, I don't know, shoot the shit a bit? I'm lonely."

He put on his best wounded puppy look, attemping to look pitiful but failing to do so. It was like a mime trying to look talkative. He yanked her forward, towards him, hard enough to cause a loss of balance, if he had been lucky and caught her unawares.

He was unsure as to why he wasn't killing her. Perhaps it was because she was letting off this glorious heat that warmed him in ways he hadn't been warmed before. The blood that coarsed through his veins did not hurt as bad when he touched her—the heat was bearable due to how she seemed to warm every particle of his body.

"I'm not 'shooting the shit' with you, I'm not sitting down with you. If you're so lonely, go find someone who's interested or will pretend to be."

I believe she is telling him to find a prostitute. I don't believe she has any idea what Glim is likely to do to that prostitute. Or her, actually, since, though she's frightened, she doesn't seem to have figured out that he's deadly, not just creepy.

When he jerks on her wrist, he is indeed lucky enough to catch her off guard and she stumbles forward, catching herself on the table before she falls into his lap. She mouths something that looks impolite and tries to stand up without appearing to have lost any of her dignity, or her distance.

"If you're trying to get me to sit with you, you are not going about it well."

I would pay money to see Glim try to be charming. Seriously.

Quick as a snake, the hand that was holding her wrist wrapped around her waist, holding her close to him. "Perhaps you can teach me the proper way then, hm?" They were catching a lot of attention, of course, and he didn't like that. Introverted to the grave—if he was going to do something, he didn't want to make a scene about it.

But it was late, and it wasn't busy enough to cause too much concern. He could easily kill off everyone in there without breaking a sweat.

Not that he could sweat, anyway.

"But I like it when they fight back," he fairly purred in her ear, voice husky and dangerous and sexy all at once. "I like feeling them squirm against me." He ran his fingers down his spine and pressed his lips against her neck.

"You are so fucked up," she says, lacking anything else to say, but wanting to say something, lest he take her silence as agreement. Not that that would do any good, considering that he 'liked it when they fought back.'

She's trying to pull away, still, trying to fight against his inhuman strength and cold, and it is not working.

Maybe the fire that just leapt up between them will help? (Doubtful.)

And that does occasion a scream, a startled, frightened scream with no pain in it, cut off almost before it can be heard.

Her scream pleased him and alerted him at the same time. It was always a pleasure to know he terrified someone (terror was usually associated with death—hearing her scream was like hearing the surprised gasps the dying gave when he snuck into their hospital rooms and unplugged their IV drips), but there was now some hero who was getting up from his chair with what looked like every intention of doing something to stop his fun. It was a nuisance, to say the least.

"If you know what's good for you and all the people here," he murmured gently against her skin, "you'll assure everyone that I am a friend." It was usually never enough to threaten the victim, but adding a healthy dose of guilt at the idea of putting other lives in their hands always tended to push them over the edge. To do his bidding. The idea gave him a thrill.

The fire momentarily causes him to withdraw slightly, but not enough to let her go completely. "Nice trick. Are you even aware that you did this?" He looks at it, entranced, before blowing a gentle stream of freezing air at the fire and putting it out like a candle.

He chuckled slightly, amused at the idea that they had a private joke, only he was probably the only one who thought so (but that only made him chuckle a little bit more).

Joke is probably not the word that Ines would have used...

However, considering that Glim is absolutely terrifying. He probably would slaughter everyone in here and be perfectly pleased to do it. She isn't quite sure why she's so certain.

Maybe it's the eyes, maybe it's the chill, maybe it's just that he's dead. Not that she knows he's dead, but that's beside the point.

She glances at the would-be hero and manages a "Will you just mind your own business?"

Hopefully that will be good enough, as she doesn't think she could bring herself to say that this monster is a friend.

(OOC: Bleh. Sorry for the crappy post.)

IC:

"Bravo, sweetheart." He pulled back slightly, so he could look her in the eyes. Up and up, it felt strange to look up at someone, when he was so used to looking down on them. And yet, somehow (and even though she was standing and he was sitting), he still managed to seem as if he was haughtily peering down at her. It was his personality, perhaps—it just screamed that there was only one individual whom he would never, ever look down upon.

Not that anyone could look down on Azrael.

He took her hand again and lifted it to his lips, pressing a freezing kiss to her skin, one that could chill the very bone (but not kill her, oh no, not yet).

Quickly he stood up, still holding her wrist. "Come with me."

It wasn't a request.

Ines is not crying. That is, she isn't breaking down into sobs and screams and complete incoherency. There is, however, a definite glitter in her eyes, of a sort that Glim is probably quite familiar with by this time.

"You bastard."

The force behind that is not as strong as it has been. It's hard to fight against an unbeatable foe, you know. It's even harder to remain brave when the foe is so very, very... inhuman.

There's a reason for that, of course.

She pulls on her wrist still, but it hasn't worked, and it hasn't worked, and she's beginning to think that there's nothing she can do, that he'll do what he wants to her, no matter what she tries.

She's right, isn't she.

"Bastard. Haven't heard that one a million times. Really, you'd think people would get more creative down the line, but no—you're all the same. You all act the same, too. You pretend like you're brave, fighting back for a split second, and then you resign yourself to your fate and think yourself a great martyr. You're all alike—nothing but big, sniveling cowards."

His words were awful, but he was smiling.

"Not that that's a big thing. The ones with a misguided sense of power are the most annoying. Funnest to destroy, if I may, though."

A tug, and he was heading towards the door in a steady pace, eyes daring anyone to move. Not many did, and the ones who had merely shifted their gaze away in embarassment.

"But luckily, most people would just prefer to avoid confrontation. It makes my...life," (here he paused, and amusement heavily lined his words), "much easier."

He pulled her quickly forward, letting go of her wrist and instead catching her around the waist with a tight, unbreakable grip. That skin of his was so cold it was like a block of ice was pressed against her shirt. He pushed the door open and led them out.

"I wonder if you'll end up like the rest, also. I wonder if you'll beg in the end."

The door swung shut behind them.

At this point, Ines comes to a conclusion. She is still terrified, but damned if she's going to act like a sniveling coward. She straightens her back and sets her jaw.

"You're just a big bully. Haven't you got anything better to do than pick on people who can't fight back?"

That's a bit of a silly question, isn't it.

It's cold out here. Compared to Glim, though, the winter outside is warm. That Ines is radiating heat enough to burn probably helps with that comparison. She's not going to catch cold from the weather, at least.

He ignored her comment, but not her intention. It seemed she had quit martyring herself and was attempting to be some big, macho somebody. He chuckled slightly.

"What a sudden change of personality. Did my little speech inspire you? That's quaint. Seems like you've gotten your confidence back. I should write a book about inspiring people. Making them see the light."

That idea made him snort. So much for going to heaven or hell. Instead he was stuck in limbo—not alive, not exactly dead, and dependent on killing and sex and gods in order to survive.

"You're nice and warm." His attention is piqued, and he turned those endless eyes to her face, seeming to look right through her as if she wasn't even there. "Did you know that? Hotter than normal. I'd reckon to say you'd have a fever of 110 if that was possible."

Not trying to be macho, exactly. Just trying to make it through the night in one piece. Or maybe breathing, she's not actually all that particular at this point. Surviving would be nice; she's given up on surviving intact.

Which is why she can throw angry words in his face, because she's figured out that whatever he does, he's going to do anyway, whatever she says. And better to go out fighting, right...?

She doesn't know.

She really doesn't.

This scares her almost as much as Glim does. (Which is saying something.)

She doesn't have an answer for him. She has no answer at all, for any of it.

... something's probably going to catch fire, soon. That something will either be Glim or Ines herself.