Work Text
This man, this overconfident stranger, just jumped from the bank to the chunk of ice he was floating on, stood next to him and said, “hello Holland.”It was the Hunter, no one else would be this mad. Holland clicked and rattled, and reared up and opened his jaws wide. He wasn’t going to bite the man’s head off, but he wanted to make it extremely clear that that was a decision he was making.“Yes, you have a lot of teeth, you must be so proud.” Ros Vortalis reached up and put his hand on Holland’s muzzle.Holland huffed air out of his nose until he moved it, and slid into the water, clicking irritably.“You know, if you would reacquire the capacity for human speech this would be so much easier,” said Vortalis.Maybe for him. But he was still standing on a chunk of ice floating by an empty, rocky stretch of White London shoreline. So for Holland, it was much easier to just circle around and upend him straight into the water.Vortalis seemed to be expecting it, he flipped over, not gracefully, but gracefully for a human and swam back to shore. Surprisingly few humans in London swam well.Holland watched him with just his eyes and nose out of the water.“We could make this city wonderful together,” Vortalis calls from the shore.Presumably he has more to say, but Holland doesn’t hear the rest, he turns and dives down, so deep the water pushes out all the air left in his lungs and he has to pull it back in when he finally resurfaces.