The restaurant had a shiny, new, polished plate right next to its intrance, proclaiming "Bodega La Ina" in big, arched letters. It sat on a subdued rock protuding into Bracket River, its big wooden terrace highlighted by dozens of red and white lampions, providing an ambience of welcomeness and familiarity. It shone like the proverbial beacon into the night. The suppressed murmur of indulging customers was carried over by breezes of wind, changing volume ever so often.
Gwynn labeled the whole thing as "decidedly creepy".
A people's person he was not. He didn't like crowded places, and he didn't like socializing. He'd never been 'a part of society' as far as he remembered, but life had got bloody lonely over the last few decades. Which, he reminded himself, was the reason for him being where he was. Standing in front of a mediterranean restaurant, spooked like a teenager.
Somewhere in there a man was waiting for him, a blind date he'd coordinated with the help of a dating agency. One of his regular customers had recommended that agency, an elderly lady that loved the written works of Stephen King, and despised single men for their indecisiveness. One evening she'd said "Mister Whelan, if you don't want to die lonely and cold, you need to find a lady to warm your bed."
Gwynn definitely didn't want to die 'lonely and cold', but he also didn't want to watch another 'lady' die from old age, while he stayed eternally young. As a Tuatha de Danann, a demigod of goddess Danu, he was one of the very, very few creatures unable to die from age or sickness. Of course it was possible for him to get killed, and if one day he decided to fade, he would wither and die like all the other demigods that already had left Assam, the living world. But the urge to fade had yet to come, leaving him stranded in a modernized world that wasn't his anymore.
Once again Gwynn corrected his outfit, revising the light suede jacket he had chosen for the first meeting. The black turtleneck shirt underneath it fit like a glove, matching the grey linnen pair of trousers. It had taken him about two hours to decide if he should wear something tight and form fitting, or a more casual outfit - he knew his ass was great enough to catch a glimpse or two. But in the end he had chosen the casual clothing, recalling his intention to find not a bedwarmer, but a companion that would pay more attention to his mind than to his body; this alone was a quest to be reckoned with, as his body often was described as "eerily perfect".
At 6 feet and 4 inches he was of reasonably moderate height, shoulders beautifully proportioned. His waist was slim, stomach flat and muscled, hands and fingers gracefully built. 'Musician's fingers' they were called, matching his delicately chiseled features and his long, black hair that reached over his shoulders. Strangers would have described Gwynn's looks as 'womanizer-ish', giving off an atmosphere of rascally congeniality, but word had made round quickly that he seemed oblivious to the glamour of Babylon City's female population.
At that moment his lovely storm-grey eyes held mild disquiet as he stared through the picture windows of the restaurant, trying to imagine which of the customers he soon would meet, silently cursing the date agent for her persistence on blind dating.
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