#Drey is a Hmong docked tail dog

[dontdowhatisayandnobodygetshurt]

Not me saying I wasn’t going to post any of my writing and then immediately going back on my word, no sir!! I’m actually really REALLY proud of this tho, so... up it goes. His Dark Materials AU for my OCs!

[For those that don’t know, in the HDM world everybody has something called a dæmon, which is the physical manifestation of their soul in the form of an animal.]

Dusk bruised the sky, ugly purple-black with smoke and the oncoming night. No stars dared to tread above this city. Even the moon hid her face.

Below, the streets were populated only by shadows. It was easy to mistake them for one, hunched as they were on the stairs in a dark suit and with their face hidden behind an even darker sheet of hair. Only the ember at the tip of their cigarette separated them from the night.

Footsteps descended down the stairs behind them. Their owner had his hands tucked into his pockets, refusing to touch the brass rails mottled with grime. A staccato of claws clicked between each step.

“You’re late,” the living shadow said, the memory of a thousand other cigarettes burnt into their throat.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to come at all.”

A ribbon of smoke curled from their lips. “Don’t give me that shit,” they said, disgusted. “You always do. You always will. We both know it.”

“You’re in good spirits tonight,” he responded mildly. His name was Dante, and he regretfully knew the shadow too well to be offended. He hated them less than they deserved. His dæmon stood by his side in the form of a large black dog, the feeble anbaric light of the streetposts settling on her fur and gleaming in her calm eyes.

The shadow had no dæmon to be found.

They merely grunted and rose to their feet. They flicked their cigarette away; it carved a red arch through the air before it winked out on the pavement. They started walking.

Dante exchanged a glance that spoke volumes with his dæmon. But they followed, because he did know. They both did.

The shadow’s name was June, and Dante was their only friend (though, that may be too strong a word.) The reasons for this were immediately obvious, not limited to the miasma of cigarette smoke that seemed woven into their clothes, nor their frankly ugly tongue. Their voice was complicated, interesting, but their face was ordinary; long, with stark bones beneath dark golden-brown skin, an interesting nose and eyes the colour of charcoal. They were also abysmally short, the crown of their head barely reaching Dante’s shoulder. He didn’t mention that.

They barely had to flash their card at the bouncer before he swung the door open for them, his lizard dæmon curled nervously along his forearm. June strode through without a backwards glance. Dante gave him a nod.

It was dim inside the den. The air ought to have been stained red for the stench of copper, sweat and alcohol that clung to every breath; Dante thought he could feel the effects of a pint just from inhaling. The walls were panelled with dark wood, packed to bursting with people. Barely people – raucous grins, jostling, laughing, screaming like fiends in human skins. Even their dæmons seemed inebriated, staggering between their legs with tongues lolling against chins. Nevertheless, all parted for June and their silent, bulky shadow.

June didn’t spare them a single glance. They had bred this intimidation, this mystery, fed it with the tender care of a mother and watched its first steps with pride.

“Just keep your mouth shut,” they had told Dante. “You’re unknowable now. Their fear and uncertainty will make you great.”

That suited him just fine. He never was a man of many words.

Darodrey stayed pinned to his side like a moth to a board. The angle of her ears still read as calm, but she had begun to pant in the crushing heat of the den. He rested a soothing hand on her head. He could feel her anticipation crackling beside his own. They never felt quite so alive than when they were in these ratholes.

He drew back the shabby curtain that sectioned off the preparation quarter, allowed June to step in first. He pulled it to behind him, hands immediately dropping to unbutton his short coat. It fell to the floor, revealing an expanse of scarred olive skin and the lines of thick muscles. He opened the tin set to the side on the bench.

“Nova,” June told him, low. “Dumb as a barrel of shit, but he hits like one too.”

“His dæmon?” It was Drey who asked, as Dante slid a guard over his teeth. The shock of his dæmon speaking to them had been worn away by familiarity long ago.

“A mountain lion.”

Drey noted, “Also stupid.”

Dante pulled a white roll from the tin and began to unwind it around his knuckles. “Only Nova?”

“Mitchellson could be taken as well, if you’re fit after the first.”

“I’ll take him.” Dante flexed his fingers experimentally. “A bear, right?”

“Black,” June confirmed.

Maybe I’ve finally found a challenge, Drey murmured to him and him alone.

Dante secured the final bandage. “What do we get for both?”

“Enough.” June tilted their head, their hair falling against the blade they called a jaw. “As long as you don’t fuck this up.”

“I won’t.” He couldn’t.

They’re depending on us.

They, they, they. The two men currently warming his bed with their dreams, wound together in a lover’s knot. Maybe they did depend on him, but not in a way that led into an underground fighting den. That would break them to know.

A roar went up from behind the curtain, more ferocious than any bear. Darodrey’s fur rose along her spine, lips pulling back in fierce delight. Dante rolled his shoulders, knocked his knuckles together till they ached.

“Get out there,” June said, and then their hand closed claw-like over his wrist. “Do not disappoint me, Diệu.”

With the adrenaline biting in his pulse, he didn’t even deign to answer that. Instead, he merely gave them a measured look and pushed through the curtain. Darodrey’s tail whipped out on his heels.

June watched after him for a moment. Their expression was unreadable, their fingers hovering over the red kerchief folded in their breast pocket. Then their jaw set, and they followed him out.

Dumb as a barrel of shit seemed to be the perfect way to describe Nova. His angelic name didn’t look like it belonged to the brutish man with a vividly new scar wound across his bald head. His eyes were, by all means, bright blue, but even they looked dull in his face.

To his credit, he wasn’t prancing or hopping like he was on hot coals, like some of the other peacocks Dante had fought. He simply leaned against the metal links behind him, taking in his competition from under furrowed brows.

Dante ran his eyes up him, down him as if in a mere cursory glance. His fingers were still purple with fresh bruises, darker on his left hand than his right. The muscles in his arms were massively developed. He was also very actively trying to convince Dante he held his weight on his right side. He was concentrating on it harder than he was concentrating on breathing.

Meanwhile, Drey was summarizing her opponent. She found her wanting – the same dull eyes, patchy pelt and a tediously swaying tail.

“Don’t be arrogant,” he told her.

“Vrox is right. You confuse arrogance with confidance too much.”

“It doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

“Utter modesty never got anyone anywhere, Dante.” She stretched out one hind leg and then the other, unbothered.  “We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think we were the best.”

Dante hesitated. Something troubled curled like lead in his stomach.

“Pay attention,” she warned.

Their opponent and his dæmon had leaned to their feet. The crowd was stirring around them, a great wave of excitement, raw in the way only betting could achieve. Dante knew three quarters of those bets were on him, and he knew that would chafe at his opponent’s pride. Sure enough, he saw something close to hate flicker in Nova’s deep-set eyes.

The referee pushed between the two men, a smile fake and white as a skull’s wide on his lips. He dove enthusiastically into his usual spiel, but Dante tuned him out. He could recite it in his sleep already. He watched the lion dæmon’s claws unfurl from their sheathes, ticking lightly against the floor. Her eyes were locked on Darodrey. On her throat.

Good luck with that, bitch, Drey growled.

The bell sounded early, ringing clear above the crowd’s uproar. A look of frightened consternation darted across the referee’s face, but he did the sensible thing and tossed aside his dignity to sprint out of the way of the two fighters. Not a second too late, either: Nova came at Dante like a boulder in an avalanche.

Nova jabbed with his right hand, but expectedly the blow was weak enough for Dante to smash it aside with his forearm and return one of his own. It snapped Nova’s head back, snapped something else as well. Blood splattered down his chin, his nose a pulpy mess. His dæmon hissed in pain.

There was definitely hate in those eyes now.

Dante flicked some of the blood of his hand as Nova came at him again. A grimace crossed his face as Drey fastened her teeth deep enough in his dæmon’s foreleg to scrape bone, but his next punch whistled toward Dante’s face. Dante had to duck to the side to avoid it. It clipped his ear instead of knocking out his teeth, and Dante didn’t bother straightening, just slammed his fist into his stomach.

The angle was wrong, but Nova folded anyway, and Dante jerked his knee up. It caught his chin was a satisfying clatter of teeth. Nova fell backward, and cried out – not for himself, though.

Darodrey had his dæmon’s neck between her jaws and was shaking her violently, back and forth, back and forth as if she were trying to rip clean through to her spine. The lion twisted under her, loose skin bunching, and ripped at her face with jagged claws. Darodrey fell back reluctantly with red dripping from her mouth, snarling like thunder.

Claws, teeth, fists, two fights tangled into one. The noise was atrocious. Curses smudged into growls, roars, the sound of flesh ripping, skin and bone colliding.

Nova kicked Dante’s knee, forced him to down or risk a break. An arm found its hold around his neck. The demented cheers of the crowd dulled as if Dante had submerged his head underwater. Blood pounded thickly in his ears.

No time for fear, no hesitation. He grabbed Nova’s wrist in an iron grip and began to inexorably pry it away from his throat. Nova grunted from the strain – from surprise – his weight wavering on Dante’s back. The moment he could draw in a breath, he gathered himself and threw. Nova slammed into the ground, every scrap of air rushing painfully out of his lungs. His dæmon yowled. Dante was only half surprised when he rolled to his feet and came at him again immediately.

A sloppy mistake. To stay on the ground would mean the end of him, but to swing so quickly, so desperately, with his weight falling now onto his left side–

Dante left an opening. Waited.

And there was the left hand, twice as fast as the right, angled to catch him on the chin and knock him senseless.

Dante caught the punch by the wrist. He saw the panic flash in Nova’s eyes and waited just one moment more to let it set in, let him feel it. Then he twisted his arm under his own and drove downward with brutal efficiency. The bone shattered, and Nova screamed.

It was a ragged noise, an animal noise, the same that his dæmon gave as she writhed on the floor. Drey took advantage of the distraction by sinking her teeth in her shoulder and flinging her against the metal barrier.

Dante let the momentum carry Nova forward. The other man crashed to the floor, clutching at his arm. Dante noted distantly that he could see a shard of bone poking through the ripped skin at his elbow. Distant, far-away, nothing. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t a man. He was the roaring in his ears, the blur behind his eyes, the molten heat coursing through his veins. He was the mechanical action of kneeling over him, caging him in his knees, and smashing a punch into Nova’s cheekbone, feeling it give. Then his jaw, the imprint of the teeth within against his knuckles. Blackening an eye, splitting a lip to ruin. One punch ran into many. Raining until Nova resembled something out of a nightmare.

“Enough, enough or you’ll forfeit, I swear you’ll forfeit–”

He paused. There was a frantic, quiet voice in his ear. The referee had been trying to hold his arm back, but he hadn’t felt any resistance as he destroyed Nova’s face. Nova, whose body was a wreck. Nova, who he held between his knees.

In his mind, Jesse smiled up at him. His hands smoothed down his stomach, his thighs. Curious and trusting.

Nova groaned, blood bubbling from his lips.

Abruptly, Dante was sure he was going to be sick.

He staggered to his feet and lurched through the open cage door, shoving through the crowd. He would leave smudges of dark, dark crimson on their clothes wherever he touched them, he knew, but they couldn’t seem to get enough of it: hands showered down on him, patting, smacking, gripping, pushing and tugging. He could hear Darodrey snarling, only white noise that buzzed in his ears.

He burst through the back door into the reeking alleyway beyond. He stumbled against the wall, nails drawing bloody streaks down the uneven bricks. He stood there, and he shuddered.

But he wasn’t sick. He was nothing at all.

Darodrey whined and pressed her nose into his palm, licked at his trembling fingers, trying to clean off the blood. He could still feel the gore caught between her teeth. The torn flesh of a soul – such a terrible thing.

Diệu, Diệu, Diệu, she whispered.

The nothing coalesced slowly, becoming simply the bricks rough against his forehead. Out here in the cool and the smoke, the clouds had made good on their promise: a thin veil of rain misted the streets, gathered and trickled down between Dante’s shoulder blades. It should have steamed where it touched his skin, but it didn’t, because nothing here was pure. It tasted like soot in the back of his throat.

The door crashed open behind him. The violence echoed in his ears.

“They need you back,” June said, sharp as broken glass.

Dante didn’t reply.

“I said get back in there, Dante.”

Darodrey said, “No.”

“What.” The accent of the city made their voice flat and vicious. They turned their gaze to the dæmon.

The one without a soul, she thought.

“He hates this,” Darodrey said. She looked back at Dante, her eyes fathoms deep, gleaming starlike. “We hate this.”

“Liar!” June snapped. Drey laid back her ears. “You can be sweet with your boys as much as you like, you can pretend to be a husband and a friend, but this is you. This is what you were made to do, and you enjoy it.” A snarl twisted their voice.

Dante stood still for a terribly long time. An eternity, hanging in the faint drizzle, printed in stinging flesh. Jesse would call it a postcard moment. He knew it would never leave him, even when it was nothing more than a memory.

June let their words sink in in silence, their nails biting red crescents into their own palms.

Then Dante pushed off from the wall and it was a horribly efficient, broken motion. He straightened, wiped the beading rain from his face with one bloodstained hand. He didn’t look at June, nor Darodrey, but as he turned back to the den she moved with him, closer than his shadow. The roar and the heat thundered through the door to welcome them both.

June was left standing in the alley alone.

“This will ruin them,” Thyne said. It shifted where it hid tucked behind their breast pocket, wings fluttering in the place of their heartbeat.

They said nothing.

#Drey is a Hmong docked tail dog #and Thyne is a shrike #my writing #Dante #June #my OCs #I'm so fucking proud of this asdfghjkl #......... sigh. #long post #look at me actually trying to edit something for once lmao