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dyrewrites · 10 months ago

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Pale Blood - When the fang met the wolf

Sunlight beat upon the glittering barrier, dripping through its thick magic to dance along the endless windows and gleaming white and gold of Upper Dolor’s lofty towers. The breeze between them sang with the rising of Som, adding its bubbly hymn to that of the grand wyrm who held Morne’s burning sun in its chest and filled the pinking skies with a blissful melody.

A melody unheard in the slums, where the colors of dawn were smothered to wan whites by the ever-present blanket of smog…but it was still daylight. It was still warm and bright; bittersweet to those who could not walk beneath it.

Delmas was not one of those.

He basked in that light. In the heat of it on his pallid skin and he smiled at the churning black clouds and the morning he knew bloomed beyond it. A morning he longed for, a morning he’d lost—squandered—with the loss of his father and forced placement under Bosch’s thumb. And the thumb of every relic all too eager to remind of what he could no longer touch.

Seein’ to me, he fumed, the muscles in his face clenching as Bosch’s promise of promotion soured his gut, been seein’ to me, he says. I put my throat on the line so he can lick their boots and that bastard says he’s seein’ to me, carin’ for me? What, like I can’t do nothin’ on my own? I paid my due. I did my time, and more on top, and he says I got no options.

Posturing as best he could, he knew he’d take the promotion. He had to, because Bosch was right; there were no options for him outside of the fangs. But right there, right then, standing on the sidewalk in the pale of dawn, Delmas longed for options. Ached for anything better than what he had—and the memories of what he used to have, the fame, the freedom.

All he got was anger, a rage he could not realize in the method it demanded and so he sucked his teeth, ran a hand through his hair and straightened his coat.

“I have options,” he lied as he focused that anger, shaping it into something else, something just as rough and hungry.

The cab zoomed off, fare pre-paid despite the change of destination, and the sudden blast of its take off added puffs of dirt and gravel to the smog-touched morning mists. There were lights in that mist, gyrating lights that lured Delmas up the gated walkway and passed the ancient and leering gargoyles.

Luster had been a church once. A grand and gothic monument to the sleek and slithering Som—may he burn everbright—but Som worship had gone the way of oil lamps and exorcists. Abandoned and forgotten until a harsh winter knocked out the power grid or a wayward spirit infested the cabinets. Industrious faefolk gutted the sanctum of the suns, selling off the pews and firesticks and blessed artifacts that filled it. Inside those hollow bones they nurtured a new religion, one that praised escape and excess...and pounding, moaning music that shook the foundation with every drop of its bass.

But that bass heralded a siren song, a mer’s song specifically, and Delmas had little desire to heed it.

Still, he would, following the salacious voice and biting lyrics through the towering truewood doors—rare and expensive and older than most of Luster’s clientele—as his thoughts complained, serves me right hoping for anything less than a shitty end to a shitty halfnight.

Sweat-moistened air greeted him inside, air that flashed and flickered with false fog and neon light. There he sighed as the familiar melody raking his nerves, and the memories it carried, did so from hidden speakers. Then a lithe, writhing figure, projected onto Luster’s risen stage—in the same brilliant cyan as the netstar’s eyes—caught that sigh and popped it.

Not an exact replica, void of his tanned skin and white-gold hair—singing cinnamon-sweet despite the salt of their memory—the holo’s snaking limbs and swaying hips were close enough to the real thing to stab, to taunt.

And its sight added to the tight ball of rage in Delmas’ gut. Sneering at the holo, his thoughts taunted back, Lucky me you're too big to play this dive in the flesh, before he angled for the bar and the less bothersome, yet no less familiar man behind it.

Though built of synthetically grown muscles and metallic bones, Lorne was still a man in all the ways that mattered to what smoldered in Delmas. And the synth worked to fan it, with nibbled lips and thick lashes that veiled softly glowing green on black eyes. But Delmas did not respond to what was offered, instead he flopped onto a barstool and glared at the holo.

Leaning across the bar, to flash those bright eyes closer, Lorne’s sultry voice held the mechanically smoothed tones only a synth could as he asked, “and why is my mountain gracing this fine establishment so long after bedtime...is your bed too cold, too empty?”

Luster’s most illustrious bartender, Lorne hadn’t always slung booze, a fact made terribly clear whenever the seductive flair—some might say aggressive flirtations bordering on sexual harassment—of the ‘pleasure piece’ he was built to be reared its pretty little head.

And while Delmas welcomed it most evenings he visited, it was not evening, and the holo writhing on the stage soured the sound of that syrup, “still not yours and the bed’s fine…but I could use a drink.”

Sucking a sharp breath through his teeth, Lorne tapped above the truewood bar’s inlaid menus, “Tell it to the screens then, big guy.”

Before doing so, however, Delmas had another request, a big request. One that coated his tongue in pleading sugars as he called after the synth, “Lorne, wait.”

Midway to another customer, Lorne did, and as he slunk back he flared the color and fluttered the wings of the faerie he left waiting. A faerie who proceeded to kick a shotglass into the mirror behind the bar—being so small, however, the glass barely cleared the counter. Lorne ignored the outburst, and slew of curses that followed it. He had other interests, such as caressing the sleeve of Delmas' coat before slipping a hand too pale, too soft, inside it.

Accepting those unreal fingers up his arm, Delmas bit his lip and closed his eyes as they teased the hair they found there—the way he knew was wanted.

“Change your mind?” Lorne swooned.

“No,” Delmas breathed into the ear that stretched to receive it, and those soft fingers stiffened, strong and hard. Louder, though unsteady, he continued, “Just got a request.”

Lorne released him and slid away, pressing back on the bar before he veiled his mechanical eyes and pouted, “And that would be?”

The huff in Lorne’s voice, and the flexed muscles of his arms as he crossed them over his chest—both bare and dewy from the fog and heat—held Delmas tighter than he’d have liked. A hold the synth could sense, and teased, with a crooked smile and a wink. Another morning, another mood, he may have answered it with his own. But Delmas didn't want synthetic flesh, flesh that would take all that was forced onto it without a word against it; bending and pleading without breaking. His wretched halfnight demanded earned sweat and moaning heat. A hunt, a challenge, and so he fought the easy desire to answer those eyes in the manner they begged.

“The holo,” he told them, “if you wouldn't mind?”

Most synths displayed only the emotions they were built to, with enough nuance to keep them interesting without being mistaken for living. And with minds of Wyld-born metals and net-blended cables—and empathetic sensors that put the most powerful witches to shame—they didn’t experience surprise, not really. Not unless they were told to.

Lorne was not most synths.

He raised a brow, studying the man that refused him—despite the heart rate he read insisting a desire distinctly against it—then glanced at the holo he’d set for that morning’s music and gasped. Genuine surprise, as a memory lost and recovered in that half-second between breaths, shrank Lorne into himself and all the flirtatious sweetness of his voice drowned in bitter guilt, “Oh, Del, I'm so sorry. I didn't, if I knew you were—I'll change it.”

Delmas smiled, wider than he cared to but, when the moaning siren song flipped to an ambient beat—and the holo to an unknown vivacious figure—that smile shined sincere. Without another word, Lorne brought the drink he hadn't ordered, and a wink that marked it ‘on the house’.

The drink was Delmas' usual—a short glass of stiff caramel liquor swirling with drops of synthetic fae-blood—and he nursed it as he scanned the crowded dance floor for a reason to stay.

A reason he found in sinewy, burnt amber arms waving above it in sleeves of black mesh. Enhanced by the thinner, darker cloth of the shirt beneath them stretched a wide chest and an exposed stomach—tight, muscled and glistening—that sang for Delmas’ lips. Caught in a timed flash of strobing lights, the gathered dancers parted and that reason swayed and dipped in their circle with the grace and power of a wildcat. Thickly braided down his back, and near as dark as the clothes he wore, the man’s hair slapped in opposing rhythm to his dance, mesmerizing as he spun. A spin offering a hint of his face—moist, sharp and grinning—and the bright yellow eyes it held.

The spotlight snapped away, competing colors lighting another, but Delmas followed those eyes. Eyes that latched onto his as the man dropped to his knees, crawling a few steps along the dance floor, before rising too slow not to be deliberate—not to be for him.

“No thanks,” Delmas said, waving off the second glass Lorne brought him, “think I found what I came for.”

Lorne smiled, “And how confident are we that we’ll catch it?”

Without looking away from still watching eyes, Delmas tapped the bar. The creds chimed in the screen, then in Lorne’s netlink—singing of a room’s purchase.

“Good luck,” Lorne trilled before falling to giggles as he tended to a then screeching faerie.

Dancing bodies vibrated at Delmas’ approach, with too many hungry hands reaching for fresh skin, fresh heat. Each touch, each tug, he navigated with steady steps and a stern gaze until they found others to lure, or chase. All while the one he wanted, the one he watched, tracked his every dodge and weave, guiding him with dancing fingers and eager eyes.

A few steps from his prize, a silver ring gleamed at Delmas from the man's neck, attached to a tall collar. Too tempting a handle, he slipped a thick finger through it, forcing the man against him and smiled at the gasp—and lack of protest. There he dipped with the music's bass-beat and matched the sway of his hips. Those dancing fingers slipped into his coat and into the back pockets of his jeans and Delmas released the ring in favor of the grooves of the man's back.

The beat pounded around them, through them, as bodies writhed and moaned closer, hotter, pressing them ever tighter together. And when the bass dropped, Delmas dropped with it, slipping his hands through the slits in the man's leather pants to grip the bare thighs beneath. Another gasp, a bitten grin, and he ached to taste it. To taste those lips with his, seek the tongue behind them and chase the heat his eyes burned with.

But he was beaten to it as the man pulled closer, wrapping his arms tight around Delmas' neck and his legs tighter around his waist. Desperate the kiss, deep and hard and starving, he all but devoured him with it. Still they swayed to the rhythm of the crowd, the beat of the music. Another drop, another sway and Delmas slid his hands higher up the man's thighs and tightened his grip, rewarded by a grind of hips and a moan along his tongue.

Pulling from the deeper kiss, he set his lips to the man's ear—long and sharp as the face that gasped, that begged—and dripped intent into his words.

A simple trick of his blood, his line, and he didn't need it. He knew he didn't, but the fae-blood he drank allowed no such restraint and the command puffed as easy as any breath, “you're mine.”

Low and rumbling, the man swooned in answer and, with music yet pounding in their ears—through their clothes and along their skin—Delmas carried his beautiful distraction down a slender hall and up hidden stairs to the intimate rooms that waited above...where they might make their own.

#pale blood #snippet #monster boyfriends #is dirty dancing worth tagging?#i have edited this so many times #holy hell #someone tie me down i need to be stopped

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