Tiger-Walking Who: Tayne and Loren Where: The halls of the hotel, second floor When: 2AM
Tayne was pretty sure he was dreaming. Why else would he be pacing the halls, on all fours, sniffing at every door, making satisfied rumblings now and then at a particular scent? Why else would his brain feel so fuzzy and surreal? Why else would the darkness look like day? Why else would he have a tail?
Of course, he wasn't thinking that he was dreaming. It was just a kind of low-level understanding that made everything make sense so he could go about his four-footed business, patrolling his new territory and making sure all was well.
Loren trudged his way up the stairs from the ground floor, taking the stairs instead of the elevator only because he didn't quite trust it. There had been a time when he'd have preferred it, but now... who knew when the power would go out, and he'd be stranded in between floors, panicked and slowly starving to death? Perhaps it was a slightly irrational fear, but it was sometime after two in the morning and he had yet to get any real sleep since the day before. He yawned, holding a glass of orange juice and entirely too grateful to have it, knowing there would be a day very soon when this sort of convenience no longer existed. It made his stomach tense in his gut, the idea of having to revert to some sort of caveman like ways far from appealing to him. He liked his humanity, thank you very much -- even as terrible as it could be sometimes.
It was somewhere on reaching the second story that Loren found himself staring down the hall at some kind of thing, wild hair over his shocked eyes, mouth hanging open. The orange juice nearly spilled as his mind raced. Monster! was the first thing to shoot through his thoughts, though the orange and black fur quickly changed the fear, twisted it. This was no monster... it was worse. Tigers were real. They could really kill you. Monsters were... still hard to recognize as being real.
He stumbled backward, dropped the orange juice and began to panic.
The approaching footsteps in the stairwell, the opening of the door, caught Tayne's attention immediately. Something was out of place, and he had to know what it was. The shock of light hair, the scent of citrus and sweat and young man, and then of fear. Tayne blinked and stayed where he was, tail swishing against his legs behind him. He didn't hunt humans-- only things that used to be humans, but weren't anymore. While he didn't know why that was, he did know it was.
His second impulse, beyond not pouncing was to introduce himself. Just why that was, he wasn't sure, but it seemed the thing to do. He padded over, tail lifting in a more friendly sort of gesture and even wagging a little, and made a grunting noise in the back of his throat.
At the sudden approach of a bloody motherfucking tiger, Loren stumbled backward against the staircase, hands scrambling for purchase as though it would save him. He didn't have a weapon on him and aside from crying and screaming, there was very little he could do to save himself. "Ohgod!" he yelped, his already sore throat aggravated as a wave of pressure ripped out of him and cracked the wall just ahead of him. He clamped a hand over his mouth afterward, eyes wide and staring at the tiger down the hall. He could taste the coppery blood in the back of his throat, knew he'd aggravated his injuries again, but it didn't matter in the presence of a man-eating beast headed toward him. Shaking his head, Loren tried to coordinate his body enough to stumble backward up the stairs.
Tayne stopped at the scream, flattening his ears and crouching a little in a feline wince. That was loud and painful and seemed to have done something very strange to the air around the boy. Or... not boy. Now that he was a few paces closer, the smell was strange. He didn't pay it a lot of attention, though, more concerned with his poor ears and the boy's obvious terror than slightly strange smells.
Making a quizzical noise, confused as to why a boy would be afraid of him-- he was a fairly easy-going and even protective sort, after all, and no one had ever been afraid of him before-- Tayne went for being as nonthreatening as he could. He dropped entirely to a crouch and crept forward on his belly, putting on the best puppy-dog face he could.
Oh, that was fantastic. As though meeting a tiger in a hallway was bad enough, now the beast was crouched down, coming at him like a predator seeking its prey. Loren reached up and grasped at the railing, pulling himself up to hug it as though somehow it would save him. "N-n-nice kitty," he managed, his accent blurred and nearly lost in his anxiety-ridden stutters. "Guh-g-go away, alright?" He made a quiet noise, as though he were shooing away a kitten.
This was just getting more and more confusing, not to mention frustrating, and Tayne's currently-feline brain couldn't comprehend the subtleties of the situation enough to sympathize with the boy-not-boy's problem here. So instead, he snorted and stood up again, tired of being thought frightening, and instead trotted up to Loren, intent on letting him know he was not about to hurt him, one way or another. Since acting submissive hadn't done anything, maybe rubbing up against his sides would? That felt right, instinctively; it was something he should do to show he was friendly, wasn't it?
Loren went white - as though his skin could lose more color - as the tiger approached him, as though he'd been invited. What were you supposed to do when you met wild animals?! Loren's brain was a panicked mess as he tried to make up his mind, his voice dead in his throat as he froze. Tears blurred his vision and the closer the big cat got, the tighter he held on to the staircase. Loren squeezed his eyes closed and waited for the inevitable. He was going to be eaten.
At least the boy-not-boy didn't run away, which would probably have triggered a chase, no matter how in control of himself Tayne actually was. Tayne butted his big head up against his hip first in greeting, then he slid sideways to rub his side to the boy-not-boy's thigh, from shoulder to hip. It was a perfectly natural sort of greeting, to his mind, at that moment, and he thought it ought to get his point across just fine, even though nothing else had, yet.
To Loren, it was probably most like being rubbed against by a very large cat-- the kind who wanted pettings, or food, or some kind of attention. If he could think of that through his terror, anyhow.
Blinking his eyes back open, Loren felt the immense weight of the tiger against him as it... rubbed against his side? He was so confused, eyes falling down to watch the large cat as it seemingly asked for attention... He didn't know what to do with himself, though, not quite ready to let go of the railing just yet. Maybe this was an escaped zoo animal that had somehow survived, and it was tamed... maybe it had been raised by people and was just looking for its keeper? "Good kitty," he managed, his voice just barely above a whisper. He coughed, a small spattering of blood escaping from between his lips. He needed to learn how to manage his voice, and fast.
That was a little better. Tayne even purred a little, only as long as a tiger throat could manage which wasn't much, and circled around to inspect the boy-not-boy, sniffing up and down one leg and then up in the small of his back. There was enough vestiges of humanity in him not to do something rude, like sniffing his crotch, at least. Besides, more important than that, he smelled blood, but couldn't find a wound. It was a little disconcerting, and he coughed, baring his teeth and pulling in fresh air to cleanse the palette after the scent-investigation.
Then the lights went out. He let out a rather undignified rowl of surprise.
Loren's expression shifted as the tiger crept around him, sniffing up and down his leg and on his back. "What a'ya doing?" he demanded, his voice picking up a bit. "That's not yours," he told the cat, wiggling a bit before the tiger suddenly bared its teeth. "I didn't mean it!" Panic welled up in Loren's chest -- but then, just as he was about to lose his cool over the teeth, the lights went out in the hall and left them in near near total darkness. "Oh my god!" he gasped, glancing around with wide-open eyes.
And then his voice dropped away as he realized the tiger was still there. "Kitty...?" It was slightly hopeful, secretly praying that the giant cat didn't decide to eat him.
The giant cat definitely wasn't deciding to eat him. Instead, he sidled up directly against his leg, so neither of them would lose the other. Tayne sniffed around, narrowing his eyes, listening intently, and waiting for his eyes to adjust.
Because they were. Adjusting. Not completely, as there really wasn't a lot of light to work with, but better than it could have been, by a lot.
Some part of him wasn't surprised by the sudden lack of light-- like he had been expecting it. That didn't make much sense, because there was no way he could be expecting a lack of light for no reason at all, but he didn't dwell on it. Tigers didn't really dwell very well. The only important thing was getting the boy-not-boy someplace safe, because another part of him realized he couldn't see as well as Tayne could.
Giving another little grunt, he took a step, keeping his shoulder touching the boy-not-boy's leg, then stopped, flicking his tail. Maybe the boy-not-boy would get the idea to follow.
Loren got the hint when the tiger kept its body pressed against him, his mind working in quick little circles over the same thing again and again. If the tiger had intended to eat him, it would have done it by now... and he was acting friendly, if tigers could be friendly. Maybe he was okay, or maybe the tiger was someone's pet... what if they'd let in a zoo-keeper while he'd been sleeping who had somehow managed to save one animal?
No, that didn't make sense. If no other animals had survived, then why would this one?
Then... maybe it was another survivor?
Small hands finding the fur of the tiger, Loren put a tiny bit of pressure against him, hoping that he wasn't going to get bitten for it. "What... do we do?" he asked, his voice tiny and afraid. He hated all of this. It wasn't fair. He couldn't see what he was doing, barely knew where they were at this point.
Tayne didn't mind the hands on him. It was a sign the boy-not-boy was taking him seriously that he wasn't going to hurt him. He took another step, as if in answer to the question, and swatted the back of the boy-not-boy's knees lightly with his tail, encouraging him forward. The first thing to do was to get out of the dark stairwell and into the hallway, which at least had a window at one end, and thus, hopefully, a little moonlight and starlight to help them see by. He just needed the boy-not-boy to come with him, because he wasn't leaving him alone in the stairwell to fall down the stairs and break his neck.
Loren felt the strange touch at the back of his legs and pieced together that it was the tiger's tail on his own. He took a few cautious steps forward, not sure where they were headed. "I dunno where I am, just so you know," he told the animal, as though any moment it might respond to him in English. "An' I really 'ope you don't 'ave rabies or anything. I don't think we're quite equipped to deal with all that, kitty." A few moments passed, and he continued with, "Dun really even know why m'bothering to talk to you. You're just a bloody tiger."
Leading the boy-not-boy away from the stairs and into the hall, one slow and careful step at a time, Tayne turned towards where he saw an indentation in the wall. With a faint shine on one part of it, from the window at the other end of the hall. A door. He turned towards it, nudging Loren with his nose so that he turned, too, and then reared up onto his high paws enough to paw at the latch.
It didn't turn. Why didn't it turn? Some part of his mind told him that doors opened when the latches turned, but the latch wasn't turning. He made a frustrated grumble, not quite a growl, in the back of his throat. Maybe he could just knock it in.
Loren followed alongside the tiger until he felt the animal moving, getting up on his back feet to paw at something. "What are you doing?" he asked quietly, hearing the sound of the door knob being hit a few times. "Move on, let me do it." When the tiger moved enough for him to find the door, Loren groped in the darkness before catching the knob, turned it and pushed the door inward. A bit of light coming from the windows of the room immediately helped him to see what was happening. Loren let out a grateful sigh and scooted into the room. "Thanks, tiger. Good job findin' someplace I can see. Smart for a wild animal." Too smart, probably. Loren was a lot of things, but stupid wasn't quite his level.
Though he understood that, in a general and vague sort of way, Tayne didn't think anything of it. Part of him was still pretty sure he was dreaming, and the rest of him was too much in the "now" to think too deeply about much of anything. He butted his head against the boy-not-boy's thigh with a brief, rumbling purr, then flicked his tail and turned to leave again. He'd gotten the boy-not-boy someplace safe, where he could see, and now he had more territory to patrol, and possibly more lost people in the dark to find. It seemed like the thing to do.
Loren moved to sit down on the bed near the window, for lack of anything better to do with himself, and glanced back as the tiger started to leave. What an odd encounter. He didn't know what to do about it, though. It wasn't as though he could just... stop the animal from leaving if it wanted to. "Bye...?" he said, the tone lilting in question. Loren worried his bottom lip and shifted, pulling his feet up onto the bed. Maybe he'd just sleep here the rest of the night, then... close the door after the tiger had gone and lock it tight.
He felt terribly alone, but for the moment insisted on keeping it to himself.
The tail waved behind Tayne, almost like Tayne was waving, himself. There was a part of him that thought it was pretty appropriate, waving good-bye with his tail. Then he headed for the stairwell. There were other floors to patrol, and the night was only so long.