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cressidagrey · 19 days ago

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Aquatic Adventures

Pairing: Oscar Piastri x Felicity Leong-Piastri (Original Character)

Summary: Oscar is gone for a Double Header. Felicity builds a sanctuary.

Notes: Big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble 😂 I should have been writing something useful, that brings the plot forwards, but instead you get Felicity and one of. her "projects". It was very fun to write though. I am living vicariously through a character that has pretty much unlimited funds and is more productive than I could ever dream to be.

It started with Bee’s tears.

The kind that didn’t come with wailing or tantrums. No, those were easy. Manageable. A juice box, a cuddle, a nap.

But this was different.

This was the quiet, trembling-lip kind. The kind that crept up after hours of pretending she was fine. The kind that meant something had sunk deep — words or looks or loneliness that a three-year-old didn’t quite know how to explain.

Felicity sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor, Bee curled into her chest like she was trying to fold herself into her mother’s ribs, breath hitching in little bursts. She smelled like sunscreen and finger paint and exhaustion.

“They didn’t want to play with me,” Bee whispered.

Felicity closed her eyes. “Baby…”

“They said my lunch was weird. And I wasn’t funny. And one boy said I was bossy. But I wasn’t even talking to him.”

Felicity kissed the top of her daughter’s head and didn’t say anything for a long time. Just rocked her, slow and rhythmic, like it would fix the cracks.

She felt that slow, cold fury spread through her chest. The quiet kind. The dangerous kind. The kind that made her want to set fire to the entire concept of “socialization” if it meant protecting her daughter

Oscar was on a double header. Back to Back races. Italy, then Monaco. He’d FaceTime in a few hours, would listen and be gentle and say all the right things.

He always did.

But right now, there was just Felicity. And Bee. And the ache in her ribs where her daughter’s grief lived.

By the time she got Bee to bed — two stories, one lullaby, and a full-body cuddle that ended with Bee curled into the duvet like a sea otter — Felicity was pacing barefoot through the kitchen.

The house was silent. The kind of silence you only got in the countryside, where the world pulled back and left you alone with your thoughts.

That had been part of the appeal.

When she and Oscar first bought the farmhouse, it had been for the space. The privacy. The outbuildings — old structures lined up like forgotten train cars behind the main house, tucked among the trees. Oscar had called them “rustic.” Felicity had called them potential.

One became hers — a workspace-slash-garage-slash-creative bunker where she could weld, sand, build, and paint without anyone breathing down her neck.

The second was the gym-slash-ballet studio-slash-sim room, because apparently their household only functioned on wildly specific, multi-use spaces. Felicity had added the barre herself. A space for her to stretch, to remember what it was like to move for herself.

A third had been left alone. It had once housed horses, long before the property had been theirs. Now it was just empty, echoing structure of exposed beams, weathered wood, and potential.

Felicity already knew what she was going to do.

The pool wasn’t a new idea — just one she’d shelved while life took priority. But now… now it felt like something necessary. Not indulgent, not aesthetic, not Pinterest-fluff luxury. No, it felt like armor. A gift. A promise.

Warm water. Floating. Movement without pressure. Gentle light. No sharp echoes. No mean boys. No group dynamics to navigate.

Just Bee. Just peace.

Felicity would build it herself if she had to.

She’d already started the mosaic months ago, half by accident. Ceramic tiles, soft sea-glass colors, arranged in what would become a leaping dolphin. It was supposed to be for a backsplash or an outdoor table. But now she knew exactly where it belonged.

She padded into the spare room that doubled as storage and gently rolled out the canvas — the dolphin, tail sweeping upward, water droplets in pale aquamarine and cobalt. She touched one of the tiles absently, her fingers steady.

Bee would love this.

She always loved dolphins. Said they were the smartest. The kindest.

That night, Felicity opened the plans she’d drawn up nearly a year ago. A fantasy project. Something she hadn’t told anyone about. Not even Oscar.

It wasn’t going to be a sleek, marble-lined infinity pool. Not some Instagram-glossy wellness sanctuary.

It was going to be Bee’s.

Quiet. Safe. Warm all year round. A sanctuary with soft lighting and temperature-controlled floors. A place where she could float and splash and forget the world existed. A pool built like a hug.

It hadn’t been real until now. But that night, with Bee’s breath soft and even in the room beside her, Felicity started making calls.

Permits. Contractors. Heating systems. A specialist in skylights.

She didn’t tell Oscar.

Not yet.

Because this wasn’t about practicality, or budget, or even architectural ambition.

It was about Bee.

It was about building something so full of love that it drowned out the noise of the world.

***

Felicity Piastri did not throw tantrums.

She’d been raised not to.

She had been born a Leong.

She had been raised to wield silence like a scalpel, money like a weapon, and intellect like a blueprint.

Felicity did not raise her voice. She did not beg. She planned.

She might have stepped away from the world she was born into — from the emerald heirlooms, the art collction, the social calendars managed by secretaries — but that world had trained her.

And when she needed it, she still spoke its language fluently.

The pool was going to be built in ten days.

Not estimated. Not quoted.

Done.

She had the property. She had the design. She had the permits already prepped — half because she liked being prepared, half because, deep down, she’d known something like this might happen.

She started with one contractor.

He told her twelve weeks minimum.

She said, “No,” and called his boss.

The boss said the same thing.

So she called someone else. Then someone else. And then she made a few international calls — to a construction firm her aunt’s interior designer once used back in the day for a rooftop terrace in Dubai.

By 8 a.m. the next morning, there were three project managers in her driveway, holding reusable coffee cups and measuring tapes.

She wielded her iPad like a weapon. Spreadsheets color-coded. Timeline stacked. Materials sourced from three different suppliers. Overnight shipping arranged. When one contractor so much as suggested that “it might be more realistic to give it a few weeks,” Felicity smiled sweetly and said:

“Would you like me to call someone else?”

Felicity didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t threaten. She negotiated.

She offered more money up front.

She offered bonuses for every milestone completed ahead of time. She cross-referenced three local contractors to cover shifts in 24-hour rotations. She arranged permits to be processed at double speed — because it turns out, local councils moved very quickly when the right legal phrasing and legacy donations were involved.

She even hired a private catering service to feed the crew.

By the second day, the old concrete had been ripped up. On day three, the beams were reinforced. On day four, the heating system was being installed and a special-order shipment of light blue tiles had landed from Italy.

Oscar texted once from Monaco asking how things were going at home.

She sent back a photo of Bee asleep in her lap and didn’t mention the fact that there were currently four men digging a trench for the overflow piping system just outside the window.

Her phone never left her side.

She paced the hallways in socks and one of Oscar’s hoodies, laptop under one arm, toddler on her hip, telling one man where to reposition the skylight and another which grout colors were acceptable and which were absolutely not.

She FaceTimed a mosaicist in Vienna to double-check adhesive drying times and personally called a logistics company in Dublin to charter a truck for the filtration system.

On day seven, she brought in fresh pastries for the entire crew and reminded the night shift foreman about the performance bonus.

On day eight, she caught one worker trying to substitute the dolphin mosaic placement.

She handed him a cappuccino and then gently, systematically, explained why that dolphin was going exactly where she wanted it — because her daughter had once drawn a picture where the dolphin was jumping just there.

The man never argued again.

By day ten, the pool was done.

And not just finished. Perfect.

Temperature-controlled. Skylit. Lined with handmade mosaic tiles. Soundproofed. A shelf for toys. A warm rinse-off shower with custom water pressure controls. A soft corner bench where Felicity could read while Bee splashed.

An oasis.

A fortress.

A love letter carved in glass, water, and tile.

***

It was quiet.

Not silent — there was a hum from the heating system, the soft ripple of water against the tile, the occasional creak of timber beams overhead — but the kind of quiet that felt sacred. Like the world had taken a step back to let them breathe.

Bee stood on the edge of the shallow shelf, wrapped in a tiny robe with a dolphin embroidered over the heart. Her hair was pulled into a lopsided ponytail, still sleep-soft, and she was clutching her purple goggles like they were a magic talisman.

She blinked up at her mother.

“This is ours?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Felicity crouched beside her, brushing a curl from her daughter’s cheek. “All ours.”

Bee took another step closer to the pool, bare toes curling against the warm tile. She was still in awe, still trying to process it, eyes wide as saucers as she took in the soft blue tiles, the underwater lights casting golden ripples across the ceiling, the dolphin mosaic swimming in joyful motion across the far wall.

“He’s jumping,” she said, pointing to the dolphin. “Like in my drawing.”

Felicity smiled. “Exactly like your drawing.”

Bee looked down at the water. Then up at Felicity. Then back again.

“Can I go in?”

Felicity didn’t answer. She just held out her arms.

Bee squealed — a real, unburdened sound — and wriggled out of her robe, revealing a bright swimsuit with little yellow fish all over it. She clambered onto the first step, then the second, and then launched herself into her mother’s waiting arms like she’d never had a bad day in her life.

The water welcomed them. Warm, clean, still.

Felicity caught her easily, arms strong, body steady as she sank into the shallow end with Bee held against her chest. Her daughter’s giggles echoed gently off the walls — not loud, not wild, just happy.

The good kind. The healing kind.

“You made this,” Bee whispered after a long moment, eyes full of wonder. “For me.”

Felicity kissed her wet hair. “For us.”

Bee kicked gently, floating with Felicity’s hands under her back. The skylight above filtered in soft afternoon light, catching in the beads of water on her cheeks.

“I don’t think it’ll ever feel bad in here,” Bee said after a while.

Felicity blinked back something sharp behind her eyes. “That’s the point, sweetheart.”

Bee didn’t say anything after that. Just floated.

And Felicity, for the first time in days, let herself breathe.

She held her daughter close. She watched the light dance over the water. She ran one hand through the still-warm surface and felt the ripple carry all the way to the walls — like a promise.

They stayed there until the light changed.

Until Bee’s hair was damp and curling and her eyelids fluttered and she murmured “mama, carry” in a drowsy voice that made Felicity’s chest ache with love.

***

Oscar Piastri was used to coming home to chaos.

Not bad chaos — just the kind that came with Felicity and Bee. Small socks everywhere. A kitchen that looked like it had hosted a baking competition. Doodles taped to the fridge. A Sim rig covered in stickers. A house that was clearly lived in — loved in.

It was his favorite thing in the world.

But this time, the house was… quiet.

He rolled his suitcase down the hall and dropped his backpack by the bench in the entryway. “Fliss?”

No answer. Just the soft hum of the air vents and the smell of lavender and something faintly like salt. His brows furrowed.

He checked the kitchen — no one. The living room — empty, except for a plush dolphin wearing sunglasses.

Then he noticed it: the sliding doors at the back of the house, the ones that led toward the old stables.

One of them was slightly ajar.

Oscar stepped outside, following the faint sound of splashing water. The air was warm, windless. The gravel underfoot shifted as he walked across the path between the outbuildings.

He hadn’t been in the third one in months.

Last he checked, it was still full of unused storage crates and the old treadmill Felicity swore she’d list for pickup.

But the door was open.

He stepped inside.

Stopped.

And blinked.

The stable was gone.

In its place was a pool.

A full, glowing, indoor mosaic-lined oasis with warm lighting, soft acoustics, and — holy shit — was that a skylight!? The air was warm and damp in that gentle, spa-like way, and the walls looked like something out of an architecture magazine.

In the water, half-floating and curled together like sea otters, were his wife and daughter.

Felicity looked up first. She was sitting in the shallow end, hair braided over one shoulder, wearing one of his old t-shirts knotted at the waist and a black bikini bottom. Bee was curled into her lap, her damp curls sticking to her forehead.

Oscar blinked again. “I’ve been gone for two weeks.”

Felicity smiled. “Hi, love.”

Bee perked up immediately. “Papa!” she chirped, scrambling up and doggy-paddling to the edge like a very determined duck.

He dropped to his knees as she launched herself into his arms, wet and squealing and happy.

“We have a pool,” he said, slightly stunned.

Bee beamed. “Mama built it!”

Oscar looked past her, over her shoulder, toward Felicity — who had stood up, water lapping at her calves, and was walking over with that serene, slightly guilty expression she always wore when she’d pulled something massive off and hadn’t warned him first.

“You built a pool,” he said again, a little dazed, like repeating it might make it make more sense.

Felicity reached the edge and leaned her arms on the side, the water rippling around her. Her braid dripped onto the tiles. Her expression was unreadable — half sheepish, half composed, like she knew exactly what she’d done and was only 50% sorry.

“I had the plans ready,” she said. “And the permits. And the contractor contacts. It was going to happen eventually.”

“But you did it in… what, ten days?” Oscar looked around again, like the room might vanish. “There’s a skylight, Fliss.”

Bee, still wrapped around him like a koala, nodded helpfully. “And there’s dolphins!”

“There are dolphins,” Oscar repeated, mouth dry.

He caught sight of the mosaic — the dolphin mid-jump across the far wall, surrounded by sea-glass tiles that shimmered like actual sunlight on water.

Oscar blinked again. “Jesus Christ.”

Felicity’s smile curved slightly. “That’s not his name, love.”

Oscar just stared at her. At her damp hair, her flushed cheeks, the tiny tired lines at the corners of her eyes that only ever showed up when she’d done something monumental and wasn’t sure if she’d get away with it.

He looked at Bee, who was now patting his cheeks with both hands and saying, “It’s warm and it smells like clouds,” which made absolutely no scientific sense and somehow still felt like an accurate description.

He swallowed.

“You built a sanctuary,” he said quietly. “While I was gone.”

Felicity didn’t say anything for a moment. Just rested her chin on her arms, her eyes soft.

“She was having a hard week,” she murmured. “And I couldn’t fix the world. But I could do this.”

Oscar pressed his lips to Bee’s hair, held her closer, and closed his eyes for a second.

Then he looked back at his wife.

And said — with all the love and awe and overwhelmed, dizzy affection in the world:

“I love you so much.”

Felicity blinked. Her mouth twitched. “Even though I didn't warn you?”

“Fliss,” he said, laughing, “you built a pool. In secret. With heating and acoustics and mood lighting. For our three-year-old.”

She tilted her head. “That’s not a no.”

“It’s a hell yes,” he said. Then looked around again and added, “I mean, I thought the bathroom reno during a triple header was bold, but this…”

Bee tugged his sleeve. “Daddy? Can you come swim?”

Oscar kissed her forehead. “Absolutely, sweetheart. Just give me one second.”

He set her down gently, watched her paddle happily back to the steps, then turned to Felicity and offered a hand. She took it, confused — and he pulled her up, wet and blinking and surprised, straight into his arms.

He kissed her like they were back at Haileybury. Like she’d just walked into the common room in his hoodie and undone him with one look.

“I can’t believe you,” he said against her lips.

She smiled. “You always say that when I surprise you.”

“This isn’t a surprise. This is a Bond villain level plot twist.”

Felicity shrugged. “You married me.”

He shook his head, completely smitten. “Best decision I ever made.”

Behind them, Bee was making dolphin sounds and trying to do somersaults.

Oscar grinned, forehead resting against Felicity’s. “Next time you secretly build a swimming facility in ten days, just… I don’t know. Text me first?”

She laughed softly. “Deal.”

“Also—” He kissed her again, warm and slow. “I love you. Have I mentioned that?”

Felicity’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Not recently.”

“Right,” Oscar said. “I love you.”

Then he toed off his socks, pulled off his shirt, and cannonballed into the pool like a six-year-old.

Bee screamed with delight.

Felicity covered her face with both hands — but she was laughing.

And Oscar, floating on his back in the water she built with her bare hands and brain and fury-love, thought:

This is what home feels like.

Her. Bee. And everything they build together.

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after-avenging-hours · 6 days ago

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Two for the Price of One: Dante x Reader

Sequel to Pollinators Beware

Pairing: Dante x fem!reader x Sin Devil Trigger

Summary: After the Sparda twins get trapped in Hell, it's all hands on deck to try to keep Devil May Cry functioning. It takes six months of research and careful planning, but you come up with a plan that will bring them both back, and are fortunate enough to have access to all the ingredients you need to pull it off. When Dante returns back to you, he's pleasantly surprised to see that you've already perfectly integrated yourself into Devil May Cry during his absence. While the two of you reacquaint yourselves with each other, things get a little out of hand.

Word Count: 15,967

Warnings: 18+, NSFW, Explicit Sexual Content, Dante's Sin Devil Trigger, Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex, Anal Sex, DP

Author's Note: Brace yourselves for this one. I'm unhinged.

So, the two idiotic Sparda twins managed to get their asses trapped in Hell.

When Nero told you what they had done, you were absolutely livid. You understood why they did it; someone needed to close the portal from the other side. But even knowing that didn’t change how furious you were. It was just like Dante to run headfirst into danger without a clear escape plan in place. When he has that stubborn streak turned up, it’s always “shoot first, ask questions never”.

You have to hand it to them, though, as they did manage to get the portal closed. But now they were stuck there with no way back. You wanted to scream and kick and stab something, but Nero already looked so torn up by their decision that you had no choice but to bottle up those emotions and focus on the next task ahead of you.

Even though the portal to Hell had closed, there were still demons roaming around Red Grave City, now trapped on your side and looking to hunt. There was still work to do. You dove straight into in, maybe a little too ruthlessly and recklessly, but it was the distraction you needed to keep yourself together. You couldn’t allow yourself to fall apart if there were demons with razor-sharp fangs gunning for your throat.

For the next several weeks, you operated like a demon killing machine. Taking statements from witnesses who called Dante’s shop, working with Trish and Lady to track them down, ending them in the bloodiest, most painful ways you knew how. You barely ate, you barely slept, you killed one demon and then moved on to the next.

You were spiraling, and the others were beginning to take notice. They might not have known what exactly happened between you and Dante in that empty bar, but they weren’t stupid. And they were all observant as hell, like sharks sniffing blood in the water. They knew that there had been a shift in the dynamic between the two of you. That the line all of them knew was there had officially been crossed. Nero had tried to bring it up once, but the glare you sent his way shut him up real quick.

It‘s another late night of demon hunting. You and Lady don’t get back to the shop until nearly 3 in the morning. You pull your sword off your back, hooking it on the wall next to the empty space where Rebellion used to hang. You unholster your guns next and set them down on his desk, making a mental note to remind yourself to clean them in the morning.

You roll your shoulders and stretch out your neck while making your way over to his leather couch in the corner. There’s a pillow and a throw blanket that you’d brought over from your own place. You didn’t like being far from the shop, in case someone new called, so you’d taken to sleeping here.

“You know, he wouldn’t mind if you slept in his bed,” Lady calls out before you have a chance to reach out for the blanket.

You glance at her from over your shoulder. She’s leaning against the pool table, arms crossed over her chest, while she observes you with her multi-colored eyes. You don’t say anything back. You’re too exhausted, both physically and mentally.

“I’m just saying, you might catch more than a measly one or two hours if you actually slept somewhere comfortable for a change.” Having reached the limit for the amount of advice she’s willing to give, she pushes off from the table and heads for the door. “Call me if you get another job that pays well,” she waves a hand briefly your way, and then she’s out the front door.

You stare after her for a long moment before your eyes flicker toward the stairs that you know lead up to Dante’s bedroom. You’ve been avoiding them like the plague this entire time. Just a single glance in their direction and without fail, a tiny flicker of hope would light inside you. As if, in that one moment while you were looking, he might pop right out of that room. As if he’d never been gone in the first place.

You rip your eyes away and feel that hollow place in your chest expand just a little more. Stepping away from the couch, you move to flick the lock on the front door and then turn off all the lights. However, instead of returning to the uncomfortable nest you’ve made for yourself in the corner, you find your feet taking you to the foot of those stairs.

In the dark, they feel more foreboding than hopeful. Somehow, that makes it more tolerable. With a carefully measured breath, you reach for the banister and take the first step up. Before you know it, you’re turning the handle for the door at the top of the stairs. The room on the other side is cold, dark, and empty. Which is to be expected. What you’re not prepared for is the smell. Dante’s signature scent wraps around you like a warm blanket, drawing you further into the space. Where one might expect a room that’s been empty for weeks to have a stale, unpleasant stench, his smells like he was in here just this morning.

You fumble for the light switch on the wall and then blink several times to adjust your eyes once the space is illuminated. The room is in a state of disarray. Sheets rumpled and twisted on the unmade bed. Drawers half open or with bits of clothes hanging off the front. A pair of boxer briefs on the floor next to his laundry hamper. A towel thrown haphazardly over a chair.

It’s so Dante that you can’t help the scoffed laugh. Of course, the legendary demon hunter didn’t have the time to spare the few seconds it would take to make his bed or close a drawer properly.

You step further into the room and it feels like walking into his open embrace. Even if he’s not here physically, his presence still fills the room. You sit on the edge of the bed, fingers splayed over the cold, empty sheets. You can almost picture him, hair rumpled, lazy smile, beckoning you to join him.

A single tear slides down your cheek before you even realize that the emotions you’ve been suppressing this entire time have suddenly bubbled to the surface and like a shaken, carbonated drink, they start to billow over the top. A broken sob leaves you next. All the pain, frustration, anger, and fear pour out of you like the sludge water out of a tap that hasn’t been used in decades.

You grab one of his pillows and clutch it to your chest, your tears soaking into it. You release heavy, wailing cries, and you curse him, and you beg for him to still be okay. You do all the things you previously wouldn’t, and couldn’t, allow yourself to do. You scream into the pillow and then punch it, and throw it across the room. You let yourself feel every raw, jagged, shredding emotion and then, when your tears have finally run dry and your throat aches, you realize that you also feel ten times lighter. The weight that you felt pulling you under has finally released you, and you’re able to breach the surface instead of drowning.

You wipe the last few tears from your swollen cheeks. After shuffling out of your clothes, you pull a random shirt from one of his open drawers and slide it over your frame. You know that you should probably change out the sheets on his bed, but you want to give yourself one night in them. One night curled up in his scent and in his warmth. You turn off the light and slip in between the rumpled sheets. For the first time in a long while, you feel at peace.

You wake up twelve hours later, eyes still swollen from the night before, but otherwise, well-rested. You have more energy than you’ve felt in weeks and the entire world around you seems clearer, somehow. You may have slept most of the day away, but that doesn’t stop you from being productive. You wash and replace Dante’s sheets, making the bed in a way you’re sure it hasn’t been made in possibly forever. You pick up his dirty clothes and towel, running them to the nearby laundromat, as well. You fold his shirts and pants, then put them back into the drawers in a manner that will allow them to actually close.

It's while you’re doing these seemingly mundane tasks that you’re able to come up with an idea and start formulating a plan on how to get Dante and Vergil back.

Two days later, Nero waltzes into the shop, only to find you perched behind Dante’s desk, stacks of books littered around you, while you scribble furiously into a notebook.

“The hell is all this?” he asks, swiping a book off the desk and flipping through the pages. It’s written in a language he can’t read, but the pictures have him raising a frosted eyebrow.

“Research,” you respond, not even looking up.

He scoffs incredulously. “You wanna’ summon a demon?”

You finish transcribing the last line from the book in your hand before lifting your head to meet his gaze. “No, I want to summon two.”

Six months. That’s how long it’s been since you’ve last seen Dante. That’s how long you needed to conduct your research, collect materials, and prepare for this attempted summoning. Weeks of tracking down ancient tomes and grimoires. Anything you could think of that might possibly have even the smallest amount of information, you bought, borrowed, or straight up stole if neither of the first options were available.

Demonic summoning as a basic principle isn’t all that complicated. You wait for a night when the veil between worlds is weak, usually during a new moon. Then, with a few lines of chalk, a couple of candles, incantations, and some form of sacrifice, you can open a portal to hell. The trickier part of this particular summoning would be the fact that you needed to target two very specific individuals on the other side.

Lucky for you, Dante had unknowingly left you with the exact ingredient you needed to get over this hurdle. Lucky for him, you were used to extracting demonic essences, as they were often useful ingredients for potions and tinctures. His own essence may not have ended up with you in a conventional sense, but you certainly weren’t going to waste the opportunity to collect a sample. The vial of glowing, golden ooze was now your homing beacon. A direct link between yourself and Dante.

After realizing that you already had the most difficult ingredient to obtain, the rest of the pieces seemed to fall into place. You triple checked your research, ran over the diagrams with a fine-toothed comb, and read the incantations so many times, you could practically recite them in your sleep.

By the next new moon, you were ready to go.

Nero, Lady, and Trish watch as you mark out the last few sigils in chalk on the wooden floor of Devil May Cry. The furniture and pool table have been pushed up against the walls to make room for the enormous summoning circle. The front doors are locked, the Closed sign flipped into place, with the neon sign outside turned off. It’s almost midnight, which means it’s nearly time to start.

“Now, I thought you needed some sort of witchy powers in order to summon demons without an artifact,” Nero speaks up from where he’s leaning against the wall.

“Only for high level summonings,” you respond, pushing yourself to standing. You release a heavy breath, dusting the chalk off your fingers before wiping a bead of sweat from your brow with the back of your hand. Your eyes sweep around the circle, checking for any mistakes. The others wait for your nod of approval before stepping up to take their places.

“Isn’t this a high level summoning?” he questions once more.

“Yes.” Your bluntness deters further questions, and the 13 candles you have placed around the edge of the circle suddenly all flare to life.

The four of you stand in each of the cardinal directions. You stand at the northern point of the circle, Nero across from you to the south. Lady and Trish take east and west, respectively. You glance briefly at your notebook before speaking the first incantation. It’s in an ancient language, not translatable to current ways of speaking, because it combines several different dead languages along with the demonic tongue.

After the first cantrip, the lines of chalk at your feet begin to glow a vibrant purple, and the first stage of the summoning has begun.

The hand not holding your notebook reaches between your breasts for the vial you’ve tucked into your bra for safekeeping.

“What exactly is that?” Nero asks, eyeing the vial.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.” You uncork the vial with your teeth and then flip it upside down, allowing the viscous fluid to drain out into the circle. As soon as it hits, the glowing chalk lines flash red.

Trish has no such qualms against answering Nero’s question. “Well, the whole reason we need you here is because your father’s blood runs through your veins. It serves as a link to connect you both across each plane of existence. Something that exists both here and there. That vial contains the only biological link we have to Dante. It’s a very specific type of body fluid that came out of him, but ended up inside of her.”

Nero processes her words for a second before his face twists in disgust. “Oh, that’s nasty!”

You release a heavy sigh and lay the sarcasm on thick, “Thanks Trish, for that oh-so-helpful and completely necessary explanation.”

She gives you a smug grin, “Happy to oblige, dearest.”

“Nero, you’re up,” you focus your gaze on him, your glare hinting that he needs to get over it and focus.

He rolls his shoulders back like he’s trying to shrug off whatever mental picture he has in his head. He activates his devil trigger, just in one hand, and uses a demonic claw to cut into his opposite forearm. He twists his arm over, allowing a few drops of blood to spill out of the fresh wound. As soon as the droplets hit, the circle shifts to blue. This only lasts for a few seconds before the glow turns purple once more.

With your homing beacons set, you proceed to the next stage. You read a few more lines of incantations. “Lady,” you call out when you’ve reached her turn.

She pulls out a throwing knife and pricks the tip of a finger. You recite more incantations while she adds her blood to the circle. Within her veins lies the blood of her ancestor, the priestess who worked with Sparda to seal away the demon realm two thousand years ago. Having her here increases the chance of success that this summoning will work.

“Trish.”

She lifts her wrist to her mouth and bites into it like a vampire. A bead of dark red leaks out of the side of her mouth as she holds her wrist over the circle. The blood of a full demon that’s rejected Hell. This adds stability to the circle.

You read out the last of the incantations and allow the notebook to slip from your hand. You reach for the dagger strapped to your thigh and use it the slice a fresh wound across your palm, adding the final ingredient. The sacrifice from the summoner. As soon as your blood hits the circle, the flames from each of the candles erupt.

Down in hell, Dante and Vergil trudge along a winding path. They’re both currently in the brief purgatory between one battle with a hoard of demons and the next. Dante has taken the lead, insisting that they need to keep moving if there’s any hope of finding a way out of here, despite Vergil’s insistence that such hope will never come to fruition.

Dante is unusually silent, with a grim look on his face. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been here. Time works differently in hell. Every fleeting moment lasts both fractions of seconds and an eternity. But still, he keeps walking. Keeps fighting. Because giving up is not an option. He has too many regrets. Things left unsaid. Promises to keep.

He marches forward, up until the point where he seems to hit an invisible wall. “What the hell?” The irony of his question isn’t lost on him.

“What are you doing, Dante?” Vergil’s deprecating tone speaks dryly from behind him.

Dante reaches his hand out. “There’s some kind of force field, or something.” He knocks against it, and though there’s no sound, there is a faint purple glow rippling against the otherwise empty air.

Before he’s able to figure out what’s going on, a series of spiraling lines begin to form at his feet, and soon the two of them are completely surrounded in the glowing purple circle.

“Well, this should be interesting,” Dante mutters in apprehension.

The two of them immediately move to the center of the circle, standing back-to-back. Vergil unsheathes Yamato while Dante summons his own demonic blade into his hand. They prepare themselves for whatever Hell might have in store for them next when there’s a brilliant flash of light that causes them both to shield their sensitive eyes.

As soon as the light fades, Dante blinks his eyes open. He meets your gaze immediately, and there’s a flicker of shock before that grin you know so well tilts the corner of his mouth. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

“Dante…”

He looks down toward the ground where the glow from the circle is beginning to fade, leaving the chalk marks behind. The candles have all been snuffed out, spiraling wisps of smoke still curling in the air. “I thought you said you’d never try to summon a demon.”

He knows about your gruesome past. About the coven you ran away from. About the summoning that went horribly wrong when you were a mere child. You cross your arms over your chest and glare, “Yeah, well who’s fucking fault is that, Asshole?”

His smirk falls into a grimace. “Right…” He releases his hold on the sword and it disappears back into whatever dimension it lingers when he’s not using it. “I am really sorry, you know.”

“Don’t.” You shake your head. “Don’t even fucking go there.” Your carefully crafted wall of iron and anger is quickly starting to crack. You’ve spent months preparing for this exact moment, and you’re beginning to realize that the one thing you neglected to prepare for was your emotions. Dante is quick to catch the wobble in your lips and the shine glistening against the bottom of your eyes.

“Babe…” he takes a step closer, and you flinch. Just that one minuscule movement spears him straight through his heart. “You have every right to be pissed at me.”

“Oh, I am,” you assure him.

He shuffles closer, careful and slow, like he’s approaching a skittish cat that he doesn’t want scurrying off into the dark. He reaches the edge of the circle and holds a hand out. It hits that same invisible wall. A ward of protection to prevent the demons housed within from harming their summoner. Too bad it doesn’t ward against emotional harm.

He leans against that wall and knows full well that it’s both physically and metaphorically keeping him from you. Even though you’re mere feet away from him, there might as well be an open chasm filling the space. “I will gladly take whatever punishment you deem fit. I will grovel on my knees, if that’s what you want. Just please, don’t look at me like that.”

You cross your arms protectively over your chest, as if doing so will shield the fragile, bleeding heart in your chest. You shift restlessly from one foot to the other. “Like what?”

There’s a hollowness to his voice that you’ve never heard from him before when he responds, “Like you regret falling in love with me.”

All the air rushes out of your lungs with a whoosh while you stare at him like a deer caught in the headlights. You can’t believe he just said that in front of everyone else. You tear your gaze from his and glance around the room. They’re all pretending to not be listening, but it’s pretty fucking obvious that they heard him just fine. Trish is examining her nails, like they’re the most fascinating thing in the world. Lady is adjusting the strap of her belt, and Nero’s scratching the back of his neck while his eyes dart around like he’s looking for an escape hatch. Vergil has his back to you, but you can tell by the tension in his shoulders that he’s probably wishing he was still back in Hell.

You squeeze your eyes shut and pinch the bridge of your nose before releasing a long sigh. “You know, I can be mad at you and in love with you at the same time, Dante. That’s kind of how it fucking works.”

When you reopen your eyes and look back at him, the smile on his face is utterly devastating. It’s relieved, and tender, and exultant, and lights up the blue in his eyes like nothing you’ve ever seen before. “You gonna let me out of here, so I can show you how much I love you back?”

Despite the anger, despite the grief, despite the fear, his words make your heart skip a beat. You breathe one last shaking breath before swiping your hand through the air and allowing the barrier to fall.

Dante steps over the chalk immediately, moving fast before you have the chance to change your mind. By your next breath, he’s got his arms wrapped around you. One holds the back of your head while the other curves around your waist to crush your body into his chest. Your own hands slip under his trench coat to clutch at the fabric at the back of his shirt.

He tucks your head under his chin, his hold on you tightening just a little more. “God, I fucking missed you,” he whispers against your hair.

You bury your face even deeper into his chest. His signature scent has long since faded, replaced by sulfur, gun metal, and ash. But his heartbeat is strong, and he’s solid and warm against your cheek. You allow yourself to listen to that beat until it’s engraved on your soul, before you lift your head once more to meet his gaze. “You’re in so much fucking trouble. Do you have any idea how many strawberry sundaes you owe me?” One traitorous tear leaks from your eye and glides down your cheek.

He catches the tear with a swipe of his thumb and looks at you so tenderly it hurts. “How does a lifetime supply sound?”

Your breath stutters in your chest, and it’s a struggle to force your giddy heart back under control. He’s making it so utterly difficult to stay mad at him. “I guess it’s a start,” you respond begrudgingly.

He huffs out a laugh of amusement. “If anyone doesn’t want to see me making out with my future wife, I suggest you look away. Show’s over, folks.” He cups your face and slants his mouth over yours before you even have a chance to register what he’s just said.

“I’m out.” Nero immediately turns on his heel. “I’ve been traumatized more than enough today.” He’s relieved the summoning worked out, but he doesn’t need a front row seat to how you might have extracted that golden fluid from his uncle.

Lady snickers as she follows behind. “Don’t forget to come up for air, you two.”

“How repulsive,” Vergil’s words drip with disdain. Dante releases the side of your face just long enough to brandish a middle finger toward his brother as he walks past.

Trish smirks with amusement, hips swaying as she heads for the door, “Welcome back, Dante.”

The door shuts with a decisive click, and Dante continues to kiss you like he’s trying to steal the very breath from your lungs. He’s reverent and audacious, reclaiming his rightful place against your skin. His tongue slips into your open mouth, reacquainting himself with your taste. You moan as his dexterous tongue tangles with your own. Wet lips part from yours and glide over your cheek, then down your neck.

“You smell so fucking good.” The sensitive skin of your neck prickles against the rough brush of his stubble as he nuzzles into you. He’s not sure if it’s your soap, lotion, or something else, but you smell absolutely divine. Although after months with nothing but the stench of Hell filling his nostrils, even the shop smells amazing. As soon as that thought crosses his mind, he pauses. His mouth leaves your neck as he lifts his head and sniffs the air. The scent of stale pizza and aerosol cleaner is notably absent. In their place, “Is that… essential oils?”

You smile a little guiltily, “I cleaned up while you were gone and brought my diffuser. If it’s too much, I can unplug it. I know how sensitive your-”

“No, it’s okay,” he assures you. “Smells good. I like it.”

Your face brightens at his praise, and he realizes just how far gone he is, because even if he didn’t like it, he’d say just about anything to get you to look at him like this again.

“Well, that’s good, because I kind of also moved into your room,” you confess.

He gives you a tilted grin. “Did you go through my panty drawer?” he accuses teasingly.

You roll your eyes. “I had to go through all of your drawers. Don’t you realize that you can fit more in them if you actually fold the clothes before putting them in there? How did you even find anything?”

He shrugs his shoulders like it didn’t matter. “I just grab what’s on top. If it’s not easy to access, then clearly, I don’t need it.”

You release a long sigh, but don’t know what else you’d have expected. “Well, after everything was properly put away, there was more than enough room for me to add my stuff. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Would have had to make room for my future wife, anyway,” he beams down at you.

“About that…” you narrow your eyes. “Remind me again when I accepted a marriage proposal from you?”

He gives you a cheeky look. “Hey, you agreed to a lifetime of free sundaes. It doesn’t get any clearer than that.”

You laugh lightly, “What happened to the guy that said if I wanted romance, I’d need to buy him dinner first?”

His smile turns a little solemn, “He literally went to Hell, and it made him realize how much he regretted not telling you that he’s in love with you.”

Your breath catches in your throat. Hearing him express his feelings more openly is going to take some getting used to. It’s not that you don’t think he’s being honest, but the way it makes your heart race is a little dizzying. You reach a hand up to cradle the side of his face and run your fingers over his stubbled cheek. His eyes close as he nuzzles into your palm. “I love you, too, Dante.” Your voice is low, as if talking too loudly might shatter this moment you’re sharing with him.

Some of the tension leaves his shoulders, like hearing you say those words has physically lifted the weight off of them. When his eyes blink open, his gaze is softened by tender affection and longing. “Thank you for getting me out of there,” his voice is filled with sincerity. “I’m sure it wasn’t easy. In more ways than one.”

You’re a little hesitant to respond. No one knows more about your tumultuous past with witchcraft better than him. “Well, on the bright side, I did get to break into my old coven’s private library and steal some of their tomes. That was fun.”

He flashes you an amused grin. “Oh great. So, how long before we have a coven of witches blasting through our front doors?”

“I put them back when I was done,” you respond defensively.

He purses his lips and nods slowly. “So… you broke into the library twice… That’s even better.”

You grin deviously. “Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

His widening grin matches yours. “The girl’s gotta do me.” His arms tighten around you for a moment, but then he loosens them once more. “Except, not right now, because I desperately need a shower and a nap first.”

You laugh and start to tug him toward the bathroom. “Come on. I’ll help you wash some of those hard-to-reach places.”

He grins lazily. “How about a hard, easy-to-reach place?”

“Shower and nap first, Dante.”

“Damn.”

A trail of clothes follows your wake as you both make your way to the bathroom and stumble into the shower. He presses little butterfly kisses to your neck and shoulders while you work shampoo through his silver locks. His hands glide over the curves of your body, touching you so gently, it’s like he’s holding a piece of delicate art. You can feel his body’s response to the rake of your nails across his scalp with the shiver that runs down his spine and the twitch of his cock against your hip, but he doesn’t act on it. He memorizes your dips and curves with the pads of his fingers, but doesn’t take it any further than that.

When you’ve finished rinsing the dirt and grime out of his hair, you reach for a bar of cedar and sage scented soap. “Turn around, Dante.” He does as you’ve requested, turning and leaning a hand against the tiled wall as you begin to move the soap across his back. You hold the bar with one hand and use the other to spread the suds and massage some of the tension out of his sore muscles. He releases a long sigh of content.

You follow his spine downward, but before you can get any further, he turns to look at you from over his shoulder. “You go any lower, and I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

You raise a brow and smirk in challenge.

He scoffs out a laugh and plucks the bar of soap out of your hand. “I’m pretty sure exhaustion and slippery shower sex don’t mix well, babe. I’ll take it from here.” He shoos you out of the shower stall and finishes washing himself.

You huddle into a fluffy towel to dry yourself off and hold out a second one for Dante to wrap around his waist when he’s done in the shower. He then grabs a smaller hand towel and immediately starts rubbing it against his wet hair. Watching him do that makes you cringe internally. If you treated your own hair that way, you’d have a crazy amount of frizz and breakage. Either he doesn’t care, or it’s some other lesser-known perk from the half demon blood running through his veins. Probably both.

You look away and focus on running through your nightly routine. You both work around each other, sharing the one sink as you prepare for bed. It’s incredibly domestic, and yet, years of fighting side by side and working seamlessly off of each other have made this moment feel natural.

It’s pushing two o’clock in the morning by the time you both finish up in the bathroom and make your way to bed. Dante releases a low whistle when he flicks on the light and sees his room for the first time. You haven’t changed it much, but there are little touches alluding to your presence, everywhere. First of all, the room is actually clean and well-organized. The drawers to his dresser are all properly shut, and the bed is fully made. There’s a new end table on the far side of the bed with a reading lamp, a phone charging station, and an unlit candle.

You move to that side and hang your wet towel on a hook on the wall before diving between the sheets of the bed. You huddle under the covers, releasing a small shiver as the cold sheets touch your bare skin. Dante chuckles quietly at your antics, then turns off the light and walks through the dark to meet you at the bed. He hangs his own towel and peels back the comforter and top sheet.

He feels the material between his fingers and pauses. “Are these new sheets?” he questions. They certainly feel softer than he remembers.

As soon as he’s under the covers, you immediately cuddle in close, seeking his warmth. “They’re bamboo sheets. Supposed to be good for hot sleepers.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Dante’s tendency to run hot meant that most nights, he’d sleep without any sort of blanket at all. He wraps his arm around your shoulder and pulls you even closer. There’s a part of him that wonders if this is real. Did he really make it out, or is this just another trick that hell has in store for him?

As if sensing his distress, you stretch your arm over his torso and place a gentle kiss to his chest. “Welcome home, Dante.”

Your words act as an anchor to keep him grounded and present. He focuses on you, on the press of your skin against his, the flutter of your breath over his chest, the lulling beat of your heart. He presses a tender kiss to your forehead. “It’s good to be back.”

You wake up in the morning, on your back with a heavy weight on your chest. Your eyes blink blearily up at the ceiling before looking down. Dante is face down on top of you, with his head buried between your breasts. His cheek covers one breast while his hand clutches the other one. You bite your lip to stop from laughing outright, but you can’t stop the way your chest bounces with repressed laughter.

It's enough to wake him up. He groans in protest, stubbly cheek nuzzling against you. “Five more minutes, Babe.”

“Comfortable, are we?”

“Whadyu mean…?” He’s still half asleep as his eyes blink open. It takes a second for him to realize the situation, the smirk slowly lifting the curve of his mouth. “Well, the view is certainly an improvement.” His hand clenches teasingly over your breast.

“Dante!” You laugh and smack his back.

He chuckles, voice still husky from sleep. “A guy could get used to this.” He shifts up onto his hands and knees, kissing you between your breasts before working his way down your stomach. “Think I might be in the mood for some breakfast in bed.”

You moan languidly, spreading your legs as he settles between them. His tongue licks teasingly at your belly button while he makes his way south. A hint at what’s to come. He guides one of your legs over his shoulder, where your heel immediately presses against the center of his back, urging him not-so-subtly.

“Now, this is what I’d call a good morning,” Dante comments, finally hovering over the apex of your thighs. The evidence of your arousal is already glistening against your folds. “Damn, babe. So wet already? Or were you having dirty dreams about me while you were sleeping?”

You shift restlessly beneath him. “Maybe it’s because you were fondling my breasts all night.”

“That reminds me, I think I had a dream that you-”

“Dante, less talking, more sucking,” you cut him off urgently. Your pussy clenches, feeling his breath against your skin. So close, and yet not close enough.

He chuckles in amusement. “I’ll tell you about it later,” he promises before his mouth is right where you want him.

He licks a long, wet stripe from your entrance to your clit and swirls around the tight bundle of nerves. You whimper at the sensation, a muscle in your thigh jumping as he flicks his tongue over your clit again. He hums in satisfaction, your slick coating his taste buds. His hands brace the tops of your thighs, thumbs pointed inward. He then uses his thumbs to spread your folds open before his tongue slips inside you.

“Oh!” you moan helplessly, hips rutting against his face.

He worships your body like a sinner seeking a lifetime of repentance. Basking in the rays of your holy rapture turns this half devil into a penitent man. He would pray every day, on his knees, at the temple of your body, just for a sliver of salvation. He focuses solely on your pleasure while ignoring his own. It’s the least he can do to atone for the way he left you all those months ago.

His tongue swirls several times around your open pussy, saliva mixing with slick and making his cheeks wet. He retreats, but doesn’t leave you empty for long. Two thick fingers push into your slick heat at the same time he sucks your clit into the hot cavern of his mouth.

“Oh, fuck!” you moan, eyes rolling back and mouth agape.

His fingers curl into your g-spot while he slurps at your clit like he’s trying to pull it through a fucking straw. It drives you absolutely wild. Your back arches off the bed.

“Oh God! Holy fuck!” You can feel your release building up, like a Jenga tower that’s seconds away from toppling over. “Dante!” right before it has a chance to slam into you, Dante’s mouth releases your clit and his fingers slip out of your dripping cunt. “W-what?” Your denied pleasure has muddled your brain, and you’re not even sure what just happened.

You look around, half expecting to see that lesser demons have randomly spawned in the bedroom, as that’s the only logical explanation for why he might have stopped so abruptly.

“You can’t cum.” You stop looking around the empty room and meet his stormy gaze.

“What? Why?!”

“Because I’m not done with you, yet.” His smirk shouldn’t look so good with your slick smeared across half of his face, but it’s so utterly devilish that it suits him perfectly.

He licks another stripe up your folds, but stops just short of your needy clit. A groan of frustration escapes you, causing him to chuckle in response. He licks back down to your entrance, then follows the trail of slick leaking down your skin even further south. Your breath catches in your throat when his tongue slides over your puckered hole.

“Oh my God…” Your hand reaches up to grip the edge of the pillow under your head, as if doing so will somehow keep you anchored on Earth.

Dante’s tongue circles around the tight ring of muscle, steadily building up pressure until he makes an attempt to breech you. He fucks your ass with his tongue like he’s done it every day of his life. There’s no hesitation, only precise and perfect execution. The wet sounds of him lapping at your walls are obscene and so explicit, they should be illegal. His hands push your thighs open even wider, allowing him to feast on even more of you.

“Dante, your fucking mouth!” You sure as hell weren’t expecting to get tongue-fucked in the ass this morning, but Dante knows how to keep a girl guessing.

After he’s sure he’s made you wet enough, he replaces his tongue with one slicked up digit from when he fingered your pussy earlier. It slips in easy enough, so he tests out adding his second finger. He’s a little surprised at how quickly your body takes in both digits. “You ever let anyone fuck you here?” he asks out of curiosity, watching his knuckles slip in and out of your puckered rosebud. You’re taking them like a champ.

You’re also a complete mess by this point. Utterly ruined, breaths uneven, thighs shaking. “N-no!” you barely manage to get out.

“Huh…” He shrugs it off and promptly dives back into eating you out.

With two fingers up your ass, tongue shoved deep into your pussy, and his other hand thumbing at your clit, you are completely at his mercy. You buck, and thrash, and scream as pleasure so intense, it burns, runs through your whole body. “Fuck, Dante! Fuckk!”

He lets you reach your orgasm this time. You’re catapulted into the stars, blinding pleasure lighting up every one of your neurons. Your ass clenches around his fingers while your pussy soaks his tongue. He doesn’t let up, even as you start to reach your oversensitivity limit. He makes your pleasure last, drawing it out as long as possible.

The muscles in your legs go from violent shaking to limp noodles as any strength in them fades away. Your lifted leg falls off his shoulder and lies limp against the bed, while you desperately try to breathe air back into your lungs. “Who knew you had a better use for that mouth this whole time?” you shoot Dante with an incredibly satisfied grin.

He grins back, “I aim to please.” He carefully pulls his fingers out and places one final wet kiss against your hip before pushing himself up and off the bed.

Your head tilts, confusion knitting your brow. “Wait, what about you?” You want to try to sit up, but your muscles are still liquified.

He gives you a soft smile, “Don’t worry about me, babe.” He winks over his shoulder and disappears through the door that leads to the en-suite bathroom. You hear the door click shut, followed by the faucet turning on at the sink.

By the time Dante has finished cleaning up, you’ve mustered enough strength to at least lie on your side, facing him as he comes back into the room. He stops and leans against the door jam for a moment, taking in your naked body and the rumpled sheets. “Is it bad to say that I like seeing you in our bed?”

You grin back, chin propped on a fist. “Why would that be bad?”

He shrugs a shoulder, “Dunno. Anti-feminist, maybe?”

You laugh, “Well, considering you said our bed and not your bed, I think the feminists would let it slide.”

“What’s mine is yours, babe,” he smirks and moves to the dresser. He opens the top drawer, pulls out a pair of boxer briefs, and pauses. On the right half of the drawer, his underwear has been neatly folded and stacked horizontally to make it easy to pull out one pair without having to dig through the pile. The options vary from black, dark grey, more black, and navy. On the left side, there’s a rainbow assortment of options in cotton, lace, or fabrics he can’t even name, with varying styles from full, sensible coverage to barely-there scraps of fabric. He pulls out a hot-pink, frilly piece of lace and looks back at you with a raised brow. “You telling me you’ve been running around with me, fighting demons while wearing shit like this, and I never knew about it?”

“God no,” you scoff in amusement. “Comfortable, breathable cotton is for demon slaying. Sexy, but itchy lace is for getting ravished at the end of the night.”

He hooks his thumb against one end and stretches the elastic out with his other hand. He takes aim and releases the tension, causing the thong to fly through the air in your direction. You catch it with one hand easily enough. “If you put those on for me now, you might get ravished again a lot sooner.” He grins cheekily, stepping into his own underwear and pulling them up to his hips with a snap of the waistband.

He opens the next drawer and sees the same dichotomy as the first one. His shirts, neatly folded, but all in muted tones, are off to the right, with your colorful and spontaneous counterparts on the left. With his curiosity building, he decides to peek through all the drawers. The symbolism of it gets to him a bit emotionally. How seamlessly you’ve been able to fit yourself into his space, as if you’ve been here all along.

“Oh God… don’t open the bottom drawer,” you urge when you see what he’s doing. But as soon as the words are out, you immediately regret them, because that’s where his focus shoots straight to.

“Why?” his curiosity has now peaked as his hands reach out. That drawer had previously been empty. He didn’t like having to bend down so far to get to it, so he never bothered putting anything in there. You groan in embarrassment and cover your face with both hands, like you can’t bear to watch.

He’s not sure what he was expecting, but the pile of dildos and sex toys was certainly not it. He releases a low whistle, taking in the vast inventory. There are toys that vibrate, toys that suck, toys that pulse, twist, and thrust. Dildos in various colors and sizes. Lubricants and cleaning sprays. There’s even an anal training kit. That catches his attention.

“Have you been using this?” he asks, waiting for you to peak out between your fingers to show you the box with anal plugs that progressively get thicker and longer. It would explain how well you took his fingers earlier.

You quickly look away, the blood in your veins turning molten. “Yeah…” you admit, still embarrassed. “It’s something I always wanted to try, but you’re not exactly small, Dante, so I felt that I needed to be prepared.”

His lips part, but he doesn’t really know what to say with his mind still reeling. “I’m so fucking hot for you right now,” is what eventually works past his throat.

“Dante!” you laugh, still mortified.

“We are definitely having a Tupperware party where you show me how all of these things work. Hang on- What’s this?” When he turns to put the training kit back, he notices a smaller, unlabeled wooden box underneath. He pulls it out, flicks the metal latch, and cracks open the top of the box, folding it back on its hinges. There’s a glass vial tucked into the cushioned interior of the box with glowing pink liquid inside. He holds the vial up to the light and notices the iridescent sheen.

“Don’t open that.”

The seriousness of your voice catches his attention. It’s not the embarrassed plea you had let out earlier. There’s an edge of danger and concern to your tone.

“What is it?” he questions.

You shuffle off the bed and kneel next to him, taking the vial out of his hand and placing it back in the box. “It’s not done yet. And you weren’t supposed to find it.”

“You gonna tell me what it is?”

You breathe a long breath, avoiding his gaze by placing the box back in the bottom of the drawer and pushing it shut. “It’s a perfume I synthesized from distilled succubus pheromones,” you finally admit.

He chokes on his own saliva. “Do I even want to know how you got your hands on succubus pheromones?” he asks between sputtering coughs.

“I killed one, obviously,” you state like he should have known. You stand back up and open the shirt drawer. You pull out one of his black Henleys and slip it on.

Dante pushes himself up to standing as well, realizing that, yes, he should have known. He’s well aware of your penchant for collecting demon parts to use in your potions. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. “So, what exactly is that perfume meant to do?” he’s almost hesitant to ask.

You bite your bottom lip and are unable to meet his gaze, so you look at his chin instead. “It’s supposed to excite your devil trigger more easily.”

His breath hisses through clenched teeth. “Oh, fuck me…” His eyes squeeze shut as vivid memories of his trigger fucking you feral against the wall plays back on an endless loop. “Babe, that was supposed to be a one-time thing. I don’t think you realize how close I was to snapping you in two.”

“No, I know. I just…” your eyes flicker all the way up to meet his once more. “Look, I haven’t exactly been normal since the pollen incident,” you confess.

His brows pinch together. “What do you mean?”

“Sometimes-” Your voice cracks, and you have to take a steadying breath before starting again. “Sometimes, I go through phases of like extreme horniness? And when that happens, it feels like nothing I do is enough to satiate the cravings. Hence, the drawer full of toys.” You poke at the bottom drawer with your foot. “But even then, there are times when it feels like the only thing my body wants is you in your trigger. And maybe it was just the loneliness and how much I missed you. Maybe now that you’re back, things will start to feel different. But as of right now? Dante… I still really want to fuck your demon cock.”

He listens to you intently, at first concerned when you mentioned that you didn’t feel normal, and then conflicted as you explained even more. “That is both incredibly terrifying and insanely hot at the same time.”

His words make you smile, smoothing over the feelings of insecurity.

He holds your face in both hands and places a scruffy kiss to your forehead. “Let’s just take it one day at a time. It’s literally day one of us being back together. If you start feeling weird or have cravings, let me know and we’ll work it out together, okay?”

“Okay,” you agree, already feeling relief flowing through you. “I really missed you, Dante.”

His nose brushes against yours tenderly. His lips part to respond, but he’s cut off by the shrill ring of the telephone out front. He sighs forlornly and pulls his hands away from you. “Damn phone sure knows how to ruin the mood.”

You smile, amused, and push gently at his chest. “Go. I’ll be out in a sec.” While Dante steps out of the bedroom, you slip into that lacy, pink thong and quickly make the bed.

Back downstairs, Dante picks up the receiver and holds it up to his ear. “Devil May Cry,” he answers, and it feels so unbelievably good to say those words.

The happiness and relief of being home again is short-lived when he hears the girlish squeal on the other line. “Oh my gosh! Dante, you’re back!”

He yanks the receiver away from his ear and sighs right as the incessant chatter starts up. When you step out of the room and walk downstairs, you find him holding the receiver at arm’s length while he pinches the bridge of his nose. The voice on the phone is loud enough that you immediately know who it is. Putting him out of his misery, you take the receiver out of his hand and hold it up to your ear. He mouths the words “thank you” as you do.

“Hey, Patty. What’s up?”

The young orphan that Dante had once saved from demons several years ago is now a rambunctious 18-year-old. She’s incredibly sweet, but very opinionated and has no qualms against blasting those opinions at Dante, like a quick draw revolver.

“Oh, hey!” She greets you. “Was that Dante I heard earlier?”

He immediately starts shaking his head and makes a cutting motion toward his neck.

You smirk in response, “Yeah, he just got back last night.”

He throws his hands in the air and mouths “what the fuck” at you.

You fight to hold in your laugh.

“Oh good! I have some questions I want to ask him.”

He glares, hands on his hips, daring you to throw him under the bus again. Your smile only widens. “Now, probably isn’t the best time, Sweetpea. I think he’s a little jet lagged.” As if recalibrating oneself after spending six months in hell could be considered “jet lagged” but it got the point across. “You might want to try again in a few days.”

“Wah! But I have a date with a cute boy from my school tomorrow!” she whines.

You raise an eyebrow at that. “And you want to ask Dante for boy advice?”

He looks torn between the horror of being subjected to Patty’s endless questions and being insulted by your tone.

“Well… I originally called to talk to you about it, but when I heard his voice, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to get his opinion. But no, you’re right. He’s been pining after the same woman for like decades. He’s utterly hopeless.”

Dante pressed his palms to his eyes, and you’re starting to get a stitch in your side from holding back your laughter.

You clear your throat in an attempt to regain a semblance of control. “Oh really?” you question, like you don’t know exactly what she’s talking about.

“Oops… I think that was supposed to be a secret.”

“Tell you what, how about we meet at the nail salon down the street from the shop in 30 minutes? Then we can talk about boys and spill Dante’s secrets while we get our nails done.”

“Okay!” she agrees readily.

You laugh at her puppy dog energy. “See you soon, Patty.”

You’ve barely put down the receiver before Dante is up in your space. “I’m not even home 24 hours, and you’re already leaving me to hang out with Patty?”

You smile mischievously up at him, wrapping your arms loosely over his shoulders. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“Hell no.”

You laugh, having fully expected that response. “Relax. I’ll be gone two, maybe three, hours max. I’m sure you can find a way to entertain yourself in that time. Call in a pizza, or something. I’ll be back before you know it.”

His dejected sigh is all you hear when you slip out of his hold and head back to the bedroom to get properly dressed. You change into a comfortable shirt and jean shorts, then slip into a pair of open-toed sandals. When you step back out into the shop, Dante’s sitting with his feet propped up on his desk, flipping through a magazine. He refuses to look your way, but has every other sense focused on you.

You smile at his sulking. He’s adorable and so obvious, despite pretending to play it cool. You glance at the candles and chalk left out on the floor as you walk toward the front door. “I’ll clean this up when I get back.”

He hums like he barely heard you and turns the page of his magazine.

Your fingertips brush the door handle, but then you look back at him. “Your cell phone is still in the top left drawer of the desk.” He stopped carrying one with him after breaking three different phones on consecutive demon hunts. Once after he fell into a demon sludge pit, and twice just from being crushed in his pocket while getting thrashed around during battles. You still insisted that he should have one, but he mostly only used it to send you memes when you were away from the shop. “Text me if you need anything. I’ll be back in a bit.”

You walk out the door and have barely taken a few steps when you feel the tell-tale buzz in your back pocket. You pull your phone out and check the screen.

The Red Menace 😈: 👉👌

You roll your eyes to the sky and beg for mercy.

You: Real mature

The Red Menace 😈: 😘

You laugh to yourself and slip the phone back into your pocket.

Almost two hours later, sporting fresh manicures and pedicures, you and Patty are sitting inside a café next to the nail salon, sipping on lattes and finishing up your conversation. That’s when you feel the buzz in your back pocket again. Two quick vibrations indicating a new text, a pause, then another two quick buzzes. You pull the phone out and check the screen.

The Red Menace 😈: You need to come home. The Red Menace 😈: Now.

Your brow raises at the messages. Full punctuation and everything is unlike him.

“Sorry, Patty. Looks like I’m being summoned.”

She purses her lips into a pout. “You really shouldn’t let him order you around like that.”

You scoff out an amused laugh. “Oh, I don’t. But he’s needier than he looks.”

“You know that you could do way better than Dante.” She props her chin up on her hand while looking at you like you’re out of your mind.

During your girl talk, you’d let it slip that the two of you were now in a romantic relationship. She’d yelled out a great big “Finally!” and then proceeded to tell you how watching the two of you circle around each other for years was giving her premature wrinkles. You’d laughed at her perfectly, wrinkle-free face.

You shoot her a wink and push your chair away from the table. “Text me after your date, so I know you got home okay.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbles the way teenagers do when they feel like you’re being too pushy.

“And if he makes any untoward advances on you, elbow him in the throat.”

“God, you sound like Dante.” She makes a disgusted face. “You two really are perfect for each other.”

You smile and stand while grabbing your empty paper cup. “Enjoy your date, Patty.”

“Thank you for all your advice,” she tells you sincerely, blushing while looking down at her own cup.

“Any time.”

You toss the cup into the trash by the front door and begin the walk back to Devil May Cry. Your key unlocks the front door, and you’re surprised to see the front room is empty. He’s not lounging behind the desk, where you left him, and he’s not by the pool table or fiddling with the jukebox.

“Dante?” you call out.

You jump when the bathroom door suddenly bursts open and slams into the wall with a resounding bang. He stands in the doorway, gripping the frame so hard, the wood is starting to crack. He’s soaked from head to toe, like he’s just stepped out of the shower, but he’s still got his boxers on. The wet material does absolutely nothing to hide the thick, bulging erection tucked underneath. “Babe, I think I made a mistake.”

“What the hell?” you question and take another step into the room before you freeze. Your hair stands on end when you feel an electrical current in the air, like the moment right before lightning strikes. It crackles against your skin and feels like sparks on your tongue. It’s a familiar feeling. One you’ve experienced many times, and once quite intimately. It’s the shift in the air right before Dante changes into his devil trigger. It doesn’t take long to connect the dots. “Oh, Dante. Tell me you didn’t…”

His hands clench even harder on the door frame, and his abs flex with heaving breaths. “It was just a little sniff,” he confesses.

“Oh my god,” you run your hands over your face in disbelief. “You huffed the perfume?!”

“I was curious!” he responds defensively. “And you weren’t here to stop me!”

Your hands leave your face only to be thrown up into the air. “You’re a grown ass adult, Dante!”

“Yeah, one that makes stupid fucking decisions! You know this already.”

To be fair, you did, in fact, know this.

You sigh loudly and pray to a God that probably isn’t listening. You pull your phone out of your pocket and set it down, along with your keys, on the edge of the billiards table. You then kick off your flimsy sandals and march with freshly painted toes straight toward Dante.

“What are you doing?” he asks, leaning back when you step into his personal space.

“I need to examine you for side effects. I told you the perfume wasn’t done. It’s still too potent right now.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to realize…” He flinches when you touch his chest, but otherwise stands his ground. His heart races beneath your palm, breaths coming in short bursts. An ice-cold water droplet drips off his hair and splashes against the back of your hand. He must have been taking a cold shower to try to stave off the effects of the perfume. It doesn’t seem to have done much good; his skin feels feverish. Normally, he runs hot, but not this hot.

“Tell me what you’re feeling.” You keep your voice calm and steady.

He shifts from one foot to the other and looks down at you like he wants to devour you. “I’m feeling like I want to fuck you on every surface of this room.”

It’s becoming more difficult to remain collected. “And how is that any different from how you normally feel?”

His eyes flash red. “Because now I want to do it in my devil trigger.”

“Easy there, tiger.” Your words are a little too breathy to be soothing.

He takes one step forward, causing you to take one back. “Isn’t this what you wanted? I see your pupils dilating. That little catch to your breath. You wanna be fucked hard by my demon cock.”

He continues his advancement, matching your steady retreat. In the middle of the room, your foot catches on a fallen candle and slips out when the candle rolls. You yelp as you begin to fall back, but Dante is there in the next second, cushioning your fall. You look up at him with wide eyes. He’s got you perfectly pinned beneath his bulky frame.

A slow, lascivious smirk tilts his perfect mouth. “I think it’s rather fitting that I’m about to fuck you senseless inside the very summoning circle you used to pull me out of hell. You might be closer to your witchy roots than you previously thought.”

It’s a common myth that ancient witches used to summon demons for reproductive ceremonies as a way to bolster the magic within the coven. One such failed ceremony is the very reason why you left.

“That’s not funny,” you glare and try to knee him in the side.

Instead, he pins your leg against his hip and rocks forward, grinding his erection against the front of your shorts. “You’re right. It’s not funny.” His pupils are no longer round as he looks at you the way a predator eyes its prey. “Perhaps, ironic, would be a better term.”

“You talk a big game for someone that came in less than a minute the first time we fucked.”

He chuckles darkly, “And you’re awfully feisty for someone with panties so wet, I can smell it through the denim.” He closes his eyes and breathes in deep, tongue flicking at the air like he can taste it. Like he’s a fucking reptile.

“Fuck, Dante.” You shiver under him. You’re so turned on that you can no longer pretend to hide it. Can no longer pretend that this isn’t exactly what you wanted from him. “Please, fuck me. Missed you so much. Need to feel you in me. Filling me. Stretched so good around your cock.”

“I fucking love it when you talk like that,” he breathes before covering your mouth with his own. His kiss is hungry and sloppy, biting your bottom lip, tongue invasive and wet. He moans like you’re the best thing he’s ever tasted.

Your hands scramble for the hem of your shirt, pulling it up your torso and ripping your mouth from his just long enough to pull it over your head. He moves to latch his mouth back onto yours, but is distracted by the sight of your bouncing tits.

“Did you go out without a bra on?” He doesn’t need to wait for your response with the answer clear in front of him. His tongue darts out and licks along his lower lip. “You wicked little thing.”

“That’s not all,” your smile is just as wicked as he’s accused, when you reach to unbutton and yank at the zipper of your shorts. The flash of hot pink lace is instantly noticeable.

“Fuck, babe. You’re killing me,” he groans like he’s being tortured. He sits up and tugs your shorts off your legs, tossing them somewhere behind him. His boxers are gone next, landing with a wet thwack a few feet away. He settles back between the valley of your thighs, his cock painfully hard and leaking at the tip. His fingers ghost over the pink fabric and press firmly against the wet patch at your center. You whimper and spread your legs even more. “So, fucking sexy.”

He hooks a finger under the fabric and pulls it to the side, revealing your glossy, wet cunt. He lines up the fat, dripping head of his cock, and sinks into you. “Dante…” you moan, back arching as he sinks in another inch.

He smirks when his hips brush up against yours. “Perfect fit.”

Your hips jolt, and your walls clench around him, desperate for some friction to make the stretch feel even better. “Move,” you urge.

“So bossy,” he teases, and you would have slapped that smirk right off his mouth if he hadn’t pulled out and slammed ruthlessly back in.

“Oh…” you sigh when he does it again.

“Look at you. Just a few quickly thrusts from my cock and suddenly the lioness is as docile as a little kitten.”

You rake red-painted nails down his back, eliciting a hiss of pain from his clenched teeth. “Even kittens have claws, Dante.”

He shakes off the sting and thrusts even faster. “Don’t I know it.”

His fucks you like he’s possessed. Which, in a way, he kind of is. He’s feral and fierce, pinning you down and fucking you raw. Your thighs squeeze his hips; ankles crossed above the curve of his ass. He feels so good, stretching you just right, hitting that sweet spot only he can reach.

Dante balances on one arm and reaches down to finger your clit. “This pretty pussy’s so fucking wet for me,” he praises.

You jerk under his touch; lips parted in a whine.

“Did you think of me when you fucked yourself on our bed while I was gone? Keep this perfect pussy nice and loose for when I came home? How many nights did you spend making plans to bring me back and then preparing your body for my arrival? Did you call out my name? Screaming your pleasure with a vibrator filling your sweet cunt and a plug stuffed up your perfect ass?”

“Fucking hell, Dante!” You grip his shoulder blades like he’s a lifeline and you’re adrift at sea.

“Did you squirt all over the new bed sheets while preparing yourself for me?”

You shake your head, both in response to his question and from the delirium of pleasure.

“No?”

“No!” you choke out, pleasure overriding your ability to speak. “I’ve only ever-” you pant for breath. “Squirted the one… Ah!” You’re so fucking close, you can practically taste it. “Time!”

“Oh really?” his chuckle is positively devilish. “Well, we’ll have to change that.”

He slaps your clit with his wet fingers and sends you to oblivion. You cry out, back arching off the wooden floor and hips jerking persistently against his continued thrusts. He fucks you through your orgasm, his thrusts slowing to an unhurried pace as you ride out wave after wave of unfiltered pleasure. He waits until your body has stopped shaking, before he pulls his, still fully hard, cock out of you. He strokes himself slowly and observes his handiwork. Your puffy pink hole gapes at the loss of him, soaked in its own pleasure.

It takes far longer than you want to admit for you to catch your breath. “Didn’t… squirt.”

“Oh, babe,” he smiles mockingly, and yanks the pink lace so hard, the elastic snaps. “That was just your warmup.” He tosses the broken scrap of fabric over his shoulder.

He then pushes up to standing and leaves your field of view. You hear him walk to the corner of the room, pull something off the couch, and then walk back. He crouches behind you and helps you sit up just enough to slip a cushion under your head and shoulders. Before you can even ask, he stands back up and straddles your legs, looking down at you with his signature smirk. Red and black smoke wafts off his naked flesh like steam.

“Besides… I’m pretty sure this pussy only squirts for demon cock.”

There’s a burst of heat and energy, and then the absolutely massive being standing above you is neither Dante, nor the devil trigger you’re intimately familiar with. It’s something bigger and far more dangerous.

The air fizzles and distorts around him like it does at the tip of an open flame. Physical steam leaves his mouth with every breath. Molten, glowing cavities stare down at you beneath two spiraling horns that curve upward, while a separate set of horns curl from the back of his head around the sides of his face.

He looks like his body was forged from the very fires of hell. His features are sharper, all harsh angles and points. Heavily spiked, armored plating covers his forearms, shins, and shoulders. Four massive wings stretch out from his back, blocking your entire view, a wicked-looking talon curving at the upper joint of each wing.

Nero had told you about Dante’s new Sin Devil Trigger, but hearing about it second hand and experiencing the real thing? There was nothing that could have prepared you for this. Your hands flex against the wooden floor as you resist the urge to scramble backward away from him. Every instinct within you, both devil hunter and human, screams at you to run.

He drops to one knee and leans his face down closer to yours. All you see is the giant mouth full of wickedly sharp fangs approaching you much faster than you’re entirely comfortable with. “Dante… Is that still you in there?”

A puff of steam fills the space between you as he exhales before opening his gigantic maw. There’s a brief second where you think that this is the moment he’s going to eat you, when instead a thick, lava-red tongue slithers out of the opening. It flicks out of his mouth and then keeps coming, inch after impossible inch. It coils like a snake around one of your breasts, the very tip flicking at your nipple.

You heave a shaky breath, half in relief and half in ‘I don’t fucking know what I should be feeling right now’. “Going straight for the boobs, eh? Yeah, it’s still you.”

There’s a deep, distorted chortling sound coming from somewhere well within his colossal frame, and you realize he’s laughing. His tongue unwinds from your breast and slides up the side of your neck and cheek.

You close your eye on that side and grimace a little. “Alright, down boy.”

His obscenely long tongue coils back into his mouth, and then he drops fully down onto his hands and knees, completely encasing your body between him and the floor.

You shudder for a multitude of reasons. He’s too big, too hot, too everything. The last time you were this close to his devil trigger, there were still pieces of his humanity present. His former trigger still had semi-human features, eyes that you could look into, a sharp nose, and lips. He could still talk, even if his voice sounded like crackling embers. The presence above you is now far more beast than man.

You reach a hand up and run the tips of your fingers over the pulsing red center of his chest. It’s hot to the touch, as you expected, but doesn’t burn. The jagged armored plating around his glowing center feels more akin to dragon scales than the aged leather you’re used to. He’s covered nearly head to toe in spikes, and just when you’re beginning to wonder how exactly this is going to work, you notice that there’s a valley of smooth scales right where the top of his thighs meets his hips. It’s a perfect seat for your legs. If only you could get them all the way up there… Even crouched down, his hips are still quite a distance from yours.

“I’m gonna need some assistance here, big guy.” With a bit of ab work and flexibility you’ve gained from years of chasing after demons, you’re able to lift your hips and stretch one leg up, hooking it against his hip.

One of his massive hands quickly moves to support your floating ass, being mindful of his claws. He drops his hips a little more, and you’re able to get your second leg up and secured within the valley between rows of spikes.

“There we go,” you huff, shifting your hips a little to make sure you’re centered and comfortable. This is certainly an awkward position, but at least with his hand on your ass and lower back, he’s carrying most of your lifted weight. You smile a little teasingly, “Well, at least we already know what to do next.” One of your hands leaves his chest and travels down toward his groin, but before you’re even halfway there, you notice the armored plating there is already split apart and something is emerging.

“…Or I guess, you’ve got this?” You watch the glowing head of his cock come into view, but that’s not all that comes out. Your breath catches in your throat. “Oh, my god… there’s two of them.”

Your view of the world goes a little fuzzy and you wonder for a second if you’re hallucinating, but no… Dante’s Sin Devil Trigger does, in fact, have two distinctly different penises.

The top one is remarkably similar to the one you’ve already seen before, with a tip the color of burning embers, and a thick, ribbed, leathery length. The second one, however, is all new. It looks softer, more flesh-like, but still a dark, pulsing red like his tongue. It’s thinner at the tip, then flares out gradually along its length, and it seems to secrete its own natural lubricant. It takes a second of staring before it hits you. This strange, second penis is intended for anal sex.

“Okay…” You breathe a shaky breath. “Not what I was expecting, but what kind of girl doesn’t love a good two-for-one deal?”

You hear a deep, guttural sound vibrating out of him that reminds you of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. It’s impatient. And hungry.

“Yes, I hear you, but we’re going to have to be a bit… strategic about this,” you reach down and wrap a fist around his second cock. You give it a few strokes and confirm what you had already observed visually. It’s smooth to the touch, yet still firm, and your fist glides easily over its slick surface. Its girth steadily becomes thicker the further down you go, until about three-quarters of the way down, where it starts to gradually become thinner again. “Let’s start with this one, shall we?” you question and move your fist to get the head of his cock lined up.

He releases a low growl of approval right before you feel the pressure of his cock against your puckered entrance. You breathe a steadying breath and force your muscles to relax. He sinks into you immediately. The secreted slick makes the first few inches go in easy, and you shiver when you realize it has the same tingling capability as his precum. “Oh…” you gasp at both the tingly sensation and feeling of fullness already settling in you.

There may even be a slight muscle relaxant mixed into the secretion, because even as your ass stretches against the thickest part of his cock, there’s barely any resistance and you don’t feel any pain. He gives you a few shallow thrusts, working himself in you a little deeper every time. Your tight ring of muscle stretches more than the training kit was able to prepare you for, but its so fucking good. As soon as the thickest part of his cock has breached your entrance, the rest of him glides in like butter. Your body practically sucks him all the way to the hilt.

“Fuck, Dante,” you moan. “Filling my ass so good!” You clench around the base of his cock, keeping the bulbous middle section locked inside you as you rock against him.

A low, rumbling sound reverberates from his chest. The hand he’s using to keep his torso propped up flexes against the hardwood floor, leaving little curls of wood shavings where he’s gouged it with his claws. He grinds his hips against you, the underside of his first cock gliding over your pubic mound while his second cock gives your ass a few experimental thrusts. Your fingers grasp for purchase against the spiked armor covering his shoulders. The feeling of him moving in you makes your back arch as you gasp for breath.

You’re not even able to get used to the sensation before feeling the fat head of his other cock notch against your slick folds. Your gaze whips down so fast, you nearly strain your neck. His first cock has retracted half way back into his body to make it easier to line up with your entrance. You’re still soaking wet from your first orgasm and the feeling of him filling your ass has only made you wetter. His cock pushes forward and your body gives way like it’s rolling out the red carpet. You moan wantonly, watching the obscene sight of his cock emerging from his own body only to travel the short distance into yours. Your walls stretch and squelch, making room in a body that’s not quite meant to take this much.

A keening whine works out of your throat when he bottoms out, fully seated within you. The weight of his two cocks filling your pussy and ass makes your thighs shake. So heavy, so full, so hot. Your head falls back against the cushion Dante brought over for you, and you very suddenly realize why he grabbed it. This next part is not going to be gentle. You’re about to be fucked by a hulking beast of a fire demon. One that could probably very easily pound you through the floorboards. This cushion might be the only thing stopping you from waking up tomorrow with a gigantic bruise covering the whole of your back.

The unexpected sting of emotion tightens your throat. It’s just like him to quietly do something so sweet without any expectations or request for accolades. This is the guy who will refuse a job with a huge payout if it’s for the wrong reasons, but will jump at the chance to help someone who truly needs it, even if he knows he won’t get anything in return. The man who puts the safety and comfort of his friends and family before his own. The man who values humanity so highly, he’d jump straight into hell without hesitation to save it.

Your vision blurs momentarily, and then you feel the wet trail of a tear sliding down the side of your face. His massive body stills immediately, concerned that he may have hurt you and not noticed. That long, slithering tongue makes a reappearance, following the wet trail.

You release a wet laugh and reach up to cradle his face between your palms. “It’s okay, Dante. I’m okay,” you assure him. “I just really fucking love you.”

The sound that comes out of him is hard to describe, but the meaning is clear. It’s needy and raw and desperate. The hand holding your ass up in the air flexes against your skin right as his hips rock against you. The drag of his two cocks against your walls has you hissing through your teeth. You’re stuffed so deliciously full.

“That’s right,” you praise. “Just like that.” He thrusts again, and it feels even better. “Oh, yes…”

The constant, steady control he seemed to be lacking last time is now fully within his grasp. You’re not sure if he just got more in tune with this devil trigger after how long he spent in hell, or if he’d been more affected by the pollen than he’d let on last time. He fucks you hard, but slow, as your body adjusts to just how full of him you are. Feeling him moving in both your ass and your cunt is giving you sensitivity overload. Having something moving inside your ass is insanely different from just being stuffed with an anal plug. Your ass expands and contracts around the changing thickness of his length, but also refuses to fully release around the thickest part of him.

His ribbed cock feels so good inside your dripping cunt that the wet squelch every time his pushes in seems to grow louder. Your ass cheeks bounce with every thrust and soon a steady thwack begins to fill the air. The stench of raw sex, burning incense, and the crackle of lightning rivals the valiant efforts of your essential oil diffuser.

Dante thrusts into you even faster. Your body is so tight that it’s a miracle he’s even able to stuff one cock into you, let alone both at the same time. The way you clench and squeeze around his cocks drives him absolutely wild. He feels everything. Every shudder, every hitch of your breath. He even feels his two different cocks between the soft, spongey layers of your inner walls. You take him like you were made for this. Like you were made for him.

His movements start to become a little more erratic. Less controlled and more animalistic. Deep, heavy grunts begin to accompany his steaming exhales. Your attempts to meet his thrusts and be an active participant in this exchange are in vain. He’s too strong, all brute force, and you don’t have the leverage at this angle to push back. So, you’re just along for the ride. And what a fucking ride it is…

Your stomach bulges every time he bottoms out; that’s how stuffed you are. Your cunt is drooling from the brutal fucking she’s getting, and with how much slick is coming off his second cock, you’re pretty sure your ass is too. It’s unrefined carnality and visceral desire mixed together in a volatile cocktail of base instinct and a love so deep, it’s etched into your very soul.

Your back arches and your tits bounce, each thundering slam of his hips pushing you closer and closer to the edge. You keep one hand firmly planted against the glowing center of his chest, while the other is thrown over your head and grips the top edge of the cushion like it’s your final link to this mortal plane.

“Dante! Fuck! I’m gonna… I-” You can’t even say it. The pleasure in your body is so intense, it’s beyond anything you’ve ever felt before. He’s fucked you brainless. Your jaw goes slack, and you moan so loud that people can probably hear it from the street.

As he predicted, your pussy happily lets the floodgates open and squirts all over Dante’s cock as you cum. Your ass squeezes around his base while your cunt flutters and your body writhes. He doubles his efforts, fucking you through your release while desperately chasing his own. He can feel it building, and the way you’re squeezing him just brings it even closer.

A few more sloppy thrusts and he’s there. Oblivion never tasted so sweet. Both of his cocks explode, filling your womb and your ass with hot, thick ropes of golden, glowing cum. His head lifts as he releases a bellowing howl that rattles the windows, hips rutting into you like an animal in heat. You’re taking him so well, squeezing him so tight, milking the cum from his cocks like it’s ambrosia. He doesn’t know what being a God could feel like, but he imagines it’s pretty damn similar to this.

Your hips jerk involuntarily as your ass stretches over the thickest part of him, once more. He’s careful and slow while retracting his second cock, but you feel the crackle in the air that warns of his impending shift. Sure enough, as soon as his cock has been extracted from your gaping hole, there’s a wash of red energy and you suddenly have a very sweaty and panting Dante above you. He slides his knees forward, tucking them under your raised thighs and he gently lowers your ass back to the floor, between his legs. His head drops down, forehead landing between your breasts, uneven breaths scattering across your stomach like wispy little kisses.

“You okay?” he asks between pants.

It’s a struggle to form a response with your own heaving lungs. “Fuck, yes…” Your hand that had been on his chest moves up and around the back of his neck, sinking into damp tendrils of white hair at the base of his scalp. He shudders at the feeling of your nails scratching lightly at his scalp when he’s already overstimulated. “So,” you begin, still panting for breath. “Have we learned our lesson?”

He laughs, just as breathless. “Yeah, huff all the magical glowing potions.”

“Dante!” Your chastisement is hindered by your echoing laugh. Your hand playfully squeezes the back of his head.

“Whew,” his breath blows across your skin, nice and cool against heated flesh. “10 out of 10, would try again. That was fucking wild.”

“Seconded.” You agree wholeheartedly.

He suddenly lifts his head like he’s just remembered something and winces. “Oh, damn…”

Your hand moves from his hair to the side of his neck, thumb gently gliding over the stubble on his jaw. “What is it?”

He meets your gaze with a slight grimace. “I told myself that when I got back, I’d be more responsible and use condoms next time. That definitely didn’t happen…”

“Ah,” you smile a little sheepishly. “Don’t worry, I beefed up my birth control.”

He raises a brow and tilts his head inquisitively, “Do I wanna know?”

Your hand drops to his shoulder. “Turns out, incubus blood has amazing contraceptive properties.”

He scoffs and stares at you incredulously. “First, a succubus and now an incubus? What did you get up to while I was away?”

You shrug defensively, “They were on the same mission. Another buy-one-get-one deal!”

He shakes his head slowly, but his eyes are amused. “You’re so fucking weird.”

Your own eyes narrow. “Says the guy with two demonic penises.”

He smirks, rather proud of himself. “You love my two demonic penises.”

You flick your hand up and point at him with a finger gun. “Facts.” There’s no point denying it.

He laughs softly. “Alright, so what other demons did you harvest parts from?”

You very quickly look away. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”

His eyes narrow in suspicion, but he knows you too well, and it doesn’t take long for him to connect the dots. He glances down to where his cock is still buried inside you before flicking back up to your face. “Tell me you didn’t…”

You grin, feigning innocence, and focus on plucking a loose string at the edge of the cushion, rather than meeting his accusatory stare. “Do you want me to lie?”

His hands squeeze around your hips, trying to regain your attention. “Fucking hell, babe. You know, I draw the line at jerking off into a test tube for you.”

You finally look back at him, a smile so evil painted on your lips, one would think that you were the half demon in this relationship. “Dante, I am the test tube.”

He gapes down at you, slightly horrified, and more than a little turned on. He shakes his head and schools his features. “Not anymore. I’m cutting you off, you little pervert.”

“Oh, come on!” you laugh outright, unbothered by the minor insult. “Your dumbass would still be stuck in hell if I didn’t keep a sample from last time.”

His brow pinches. “You can’t be serious. You used my demonic sperm to pull me out of hell?!”

Once again, you’re left shrugging in defense. “Not like you left anything else behind for me to use.”

His eyes lift to the ceiling like he’s praying for patience before he releases a long sigh. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but fine.” His gaze lowers once more to yours. “You can keep one vial tucked away for emergencies only. No experiments.”

You bite your grinning lip and pretend to think about it. “Promise to leave me the last slice a pizza?”

He tsks at your brazenness. “You drive a hard bargain.”

Your legs squeeze around his hips, pussy clenching deliciously around his half-hard cock. “Do we have a deal?”

His hands tighten around your hips, eyes narrowing in warning. “No, we’re still negotiating. How long we talking? You can’t have free sundaes for life and the last slice of pizza.”

You hum thoughtfully, tapping a finger to your lips. “Six months. Same amount of time you spent in Hell. Consider it payback for jumping into that portal without telling me first.”

“Damn, was I really gone that long?” He’d honestly had no idea how much time had passed.

“Seven if you count that month you disappeared after the first battle with Urizen.” You point out. “Something that might not have happened if you had let me fight with you.” There’s a fire in your eyes, proving to him that you’re still bitter over his decision to keep you out of the fight.

He runs his hands over the tops of your thighs in a gesture that soothes both you and him. “You can be mad at me all you like, but I’m glad you weren’t there. After what he did to Lady and Trish, I would have lost my mind if he got his hands on you, too.”

Your heart pounds in your chest at the feral rage that flashes behind his eyes at just the thought of what could have happened. “He’s not coming back, right? Vergil has him locked away? He’s back to normal?”

“Yeah,” Dante nods once and then shrugs. “Well, as normal as that ornery fucker can get.”

Your laugh is like music to his ears. It makes the constantly roaring flames inside him dull to a soft and gentle warmth. He smiles and leans back down, once again caging your body between his chest and the floor.

“Now, back to our negotiations. Six months?” He waits for your nod of confirmation. “You got yourself a deal.”

Your hands reach up to cradle either side of his face, eyes flickering between his left and right. “Sealed with a kiss?”

The corner of his sinful mouth tilts up. “Fuck yeah.” He leans down, lips ghosting over yours with the barest touch before slanting over them and kissing you deeper.

You moan against him and move your hands back into his hair, but then there’s a loud banging knock against the glass of the front door.

“Hey! Are you guys decent?” You recognize Lady’s voice.

Dante pulls his mouth from yours, the two of you sharing a brief look before you both turn to the Lady shaped silhouette on the other side of the frosted glass.

“No!” you shout back, and at the same time Dante shouts “Yes!”

You punch him in the shoulder, causing him to laugh, not even bothering to pretend it hurt.

Lady wisely takes you at your word and ignores Dante’s. “Get dressed. We’ve got a new job.”

Dante groans and releases a forlorn sigh. “No rest for the wicked.” He carefully extracts himself from between your legs and notices just how wrecked and swollen you are down there. “You gonna be able to walk?” he asks, feeling a strange combination of well-meaning concern and pure male pride for having completely and utterly ruined your pussy and ass.

You wince at the loss of him inside you, the ache in your core making itself more prominent now that you have nothing to clench around. “I’ll need to take a vitality potion, but then I’ll be good.”

He nods and scoops your body into his arms, “Let’s get you cleaned up.” He then carries you into the downstairs bathroom and sets you down on the closed toilet seat. “One vitality potion coming right up,” he tells you after turning on the water in the shower so it has time to heat up.

“Oh! Can you grab my collection kit too? It’s on the shelf under the completed potions.”

His face pulls into a grimace. “I really don’t want to watch you swabbing my cum out of you and shoving it into a potion bottle.” He disappears out the open doorway and moves to the cabinet behind his desk, where you store your potions.

You roll your eyes and call after him. “You literally had a cock shoved up my ass and this is what makes you squeamish?”

“Hey, that was hot.” He calls back. When he reenters the bathroom, he has a glowing green potion in one hand and a zipped-up toiletry-looking bag in the other. “This is just wrong.” He dutifully hands you both items.

You take them from him and quickly down the vitality potion like you’re drinking a shot. You nod toward the shower that’s now steaming up. “Hop in, I’ll join you in a sec.”

He gives you a lazy, two-fingered salute and steps under the spray. You watch the droplets of water glide down the dips and contours of his incredible body, momentarily hypnotized by the sight. Your head tilts to the side, and your tongue pokes out to wet your bottom lip. But then you blink and snap out of it, remembering the bag in your lap.

You clinically and efficiently fill a single vial using the tools in your kit. There’s enough in you that you could certainly fill many more, but you keep to the deal you made with him earlier. One vial. No experiments.

You zip the bag closed and place it on the counter by the sink. The vitality potion has returned the strength to your legs, and you’re able to stand with minimal shakiness. You step up behind him and wrap your arms around his torso, placing a kiss to the center of his back. “You’re the best future husband a girl could ask for.”

He grins at you over his shoulder. “You’re pretty incredible yourself, babe.”

You close your eyes and press your forehead to his back, giving yourself a second to truly appreciate that this man now belongs to you just as much as you belong to him. After loving him so long from a distance, you’re looking forward to finally getting to love him up close. He’s your home, your heart, your everything. And for a girl who’s obsessed with two-for-one deals, this half-human, half-demon man wrapped in your arms is a deal that’s just too good to pass up.

#dante x reader #dante smut #dmc dante smut #devil may cry #dmc5 #dmc5 dante x reader #dante sin devil trigger #devil may cry smut #sin devil trigger x reader #dante x female reader

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hometoursandotherstuff · 4 months ago

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Usually, homes on Cape May are very expensive, but this cute little cottage is about the price of an average home in NJ. 1955 Cape Cod style in Ocean Gate, NJ has 4bds, 2ba, $435k. It's name is "Purple Cottage," although I thought it looked blue.

Enter a small foyer with a coat closet.

Then, a narrow, but cozy, living room.

Large open doorway to a good-sized kitchen with a cute checkered floor.

Love this piece and since it's featured, I'm assuming it's going to stay.

I do love old kitchens with miscellaneous free-standing storage rather than fixed cabinets. Look at the interesting piece with the tree branches.

Nice separate dining room with sliders to the deck.

A short hallway leads to a primary bedroom, full bath and home office.

It's a shower room with a nice sink, but it's kind of jammed in there.

And, the office is more of a small back porch.

Because Cape Cods are known for being small starter homes, the primary bedroom isn't huge, but it's nice.

Stairs to 2nd fl. bedrooms and bath.

Typically, the 2nd floor of a Cape Cod looks like an attic, usually with dormers. This is a secondary bedroom.

Small shower room.

This large room is multi-functional and one corner is an art studio, although it's considered a 3rd bedroom.

Back here there's an unfinished room that's great for storage.

There's a 2 car garage in the back, plus a large deck and a yard. It looks like they use half the garage as something else.

Delightful murals decorate the garage.

Potting table in the driveway.

Long driveway. It's a cute little house.

The small front porch has room to fit a few chairs, too.

Plus, there's also a front deck with a pergola, on the front of the house.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13-W-Cape-May-Ave-Ocean-Gate-NJ-08740/39679591_zpid/

#cape cod homes #houses #house tours #home tour #homes under $450k

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yushi-ni · 1 month ago

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is riku a tits or an ass guy 😪😪

- contains mature information (18+)

definitely prefers boobs over ass. like let’s be real here, this man enjoys and appreciates the absolute heavenly wonders of your behind too but your chest??? MULTI FUNCTIONALITY IS THE KEY. the way you look in tight fitted shirts? he’s drooling, trust me. cute shirts, long sleeved crop tops; he loves it all. small tops? yes please. an oversized shirt without a bra underneath????? sign. him. up. the way your shirt falls off your shoulder exposing your bare shoulders (without a bra strap ofc) yes he’s already visualising the view without the shirt.

in any casual way; he loves to lay his head on your chest and just completely relax against your body. (i need a riku bf pls) sitting in between his legs on the couch, back to his chest, his hands roam over your body and rest on top of your boobs. his hands are quite big so it just fits so well and he just likes the feeling of your boobs in his hands.

make out sessions with you straddling his lap? perfect view. mature twister with him on top of you? hands are on your tits, lips are on your tits, tongue is on your tits. you get the point right?

you will definitely catch him staring at your chest from across the table, he might not even realise it at some point. his eyes just automatically drop down. i’m just convinced he’s part of the boobies lovers club hahaha

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maudie-duan · 2 months ago

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Fuck Monday Blues When You Can Have a Monday Blurb! Based on @avas-queen-black song request<- For our new Monday Blurb Series!!! Yay!!

Word Count: 1.9k

Warning: Fem!reader, A quick little angsty sweet moment caught between two lovers.

Life doesn't always promise sanctuary, but in each other, you found refuge.

When you were young, you thought love would equate to a single definition, but that was foolish, and it didn't take you long to realize that love contained a multitude, complex for every human it happened upon—a single word that seemed to defy a complete explanation—It was always you hoping that your search would lead to the bounty that is love, but that wasn't how it worked, because love is multi-faceted, like the light reflected through a glass prism—a revelation that came slow, learned in the rituals you created, in the gestures big and small.

And in the slow moments between heartbeats and flesh, it found you when you least expected it—in the simple gestures that came over time, like waking to a mug of tea he left on the nightstand waiting for you to start your morning, or in the way you found solace in folding his t-shirts just so, knowing he'd probably never notice, but you kept doing it anyway. Each new thing was a discovery, and when he started leaving sweet little notes in your pockets, you followed suit. Every note, like a tiny paper boat carrying words across the ocean of your separate days, would become the things you cherish most.

Somewhere along the way he had become your sunday morning calm, the two of you treasuring those rare mornings when you were able to steal time from the world—the two of you sharing the couch, reading in silence, legs tangled together, occasionally reading passages aloud when words seemed too beautiful to keep to yourselves.

These sweet nothings that had become the fabric of life, your life, his life.

These tiny, almost seemingly trivial moments, became your everyday—unexpectedly forging the footing beneath you, the foundation that had held steady when everything else threatened to crumble, especially on those days when the world wanted to get the best of you.

And tonight was one of those nights.

After a long, grueling day, you just wanted to leave the world at your doorstep. The weight of it looming over you as the door clicked shut behind you and you were met with silence—the kind of silence that wraps around you after a day that's stolen all your kind words, every functioning thought you wanted to save for later, leaving nothing but bone-deep exhaustion trying to settled into your marrow with a grief you hoped you could shake.

And when you drop your keys. They clatter against the entry table in that hollow way that seems to echo through an empty apartment like the exhale of a weighted breath, bringing a finality to the empty space—except it isn't empty.

You find him in the kitchen, his back to you, those strong shoulders relaxed beneath a worn t-shirt as he stirs something on the stove, and like a dream the late evening sun filters through the window above the kitchen sink, casting him in a honeyed light, and for a moment, you just watch him, taking every inch of him in, this man—your pillar, your strength–Harry entirely in his element, unaware of your presence, simply existing in his own rhythm, and you stand there for a moment unsure if you wanted to disturb the tranquil hum of his world as the melody of a soft guitar filled the kitchen, an old playlist playing in the background setting the tone of his peaceful mood.

"You know you didn't have to cook, babe, I told you I would be late," you speak up, your voice softer than intended, but the words feel like a chance to finally empty your pockets, all the tiny stones you had to pick up along the way, all the chaos of the day, weighing you down.

When he hears your voice, he turns, and that smile, god, that smile, how it still made your stomach flip, and you observe the way the corner of his mouth pulls up first, followed by those dimples that somehow seem to deepen every time they're directed at you.

"Didn't hear you come in," he says, wiping his hands on a dish towel tucked into his waistband. "And I know I don't have to, but want to, love."

With those simple words, you move closer, drawn to him like a sunflower under the warmth of the sun, no matter the setting, no matter the space and it’s all you need, the buzz of his energy drawing you in, his presence enough to cast a bridge, your safe haven.

"Rough day?" he questions, gently reaching out to caress your cheek, and his thumb lingers as his green eyes survey your face.

"Just long," you answer, leaning into his touch, “Nothing that I want to bog you down with…”

Harry's eyes are trained on your face, now, an uncertainty pulling between his brows. He knows you're holding back, but he doesn’t push, and right before you let go, he presses a kiss to your forehead. "I've had a late start myself...dinner is probably another twenty minutes. May I get you a glass of wine, Darling? I just opened it." And without answering, you peer over at the glasses that are already set out on the counter, the gesture tugging at the knot forming in your throat.

"That would be lovely, thank you—" you force, clearing away the burn, and his eyes sweep over your face before moving to pour you both a glass of wine.

As he pours the wine, you moved in beside him, pressing your lips to his shoulder, the kiss lingering as you breathed in his scent, and this familiar smell has you on the verge of breaking, because these have been the moments in your life that you had wished for, because you had wished for Harry, for someone exactly like him.

The man that stood before you was your person, the one person you've never had to be anything other than yourself with, and all day you had been waiting for this very moment, for the very second that you knew you could let the weight of your day go, but as you gazed into his eyes while he handed you your glass, you saw the exhaustion etched into his features, and you remembered the text you got when he needed to vent earlier that day, and now there was a piece of you that wanted to be strong, wanted to be his pillar.

But then he said, "I've been thinking about you all day," his voice low, and there's a small smile playing at his lips, "Kept checking the time, excited for you to get home."

The thought of him thinking of you, while drowning in the chaos of your day, makes your chest tighten with a longing you could only feel for him, the kind of longing that aches in your bones even when they're near, and as your fingers find the hem of his shirt, playing with the soft fabric all you can say is:

"Yeah?" Because you're not sure anything else will come out. Then you pull yourself up on the counter, as Harry walks back over to stir the pot on the stove.

You swallow another mouthful of wine, letting the warmth spread through your chest, watching him, and when you finally gather enough strength, you simply say, "I missed you too," and it feels like a confession, like a prayer you had cursed at the sky all day. Your eyes are trained on his face as you watch him smile down into the pot in front of him. "Can I help with anything?" you follow up, though you already know his answer.

"Almost done. Just rest, I’ve got it. Tell me about your day, Love," he asks, the smile never leaving his face, giving you the perfect side profile view as a strand of hair falls into his face, and he runs a hand through his hair, turning to you, your legs swinging gently, and when you begin to talk, Harry focuses in, listening like he always does—like your words are lyrics to every song playing out in his head–and as you unload, the burden of your day starts to lift, and you wonder why you even held back in the first place.

When Harry moves in front of you, resting his hands on the tops of your thighs, his green eyes never leave yours, you continue, "My boss just didn’t understand—" But then you stop mid-sentence when you notice Harry smiling at you, that soft, wholesome smile he saves for moments like this.

"What?" you ask, but for some reason, you're questioning yourself, wondering if you're being too much.

"Nothing," he says, shaking his head slightly. "I just like watching you talk."

And even though you roll your eyes, you feel the knot burning at the back of your throat again. "You're being weird," you tell him, pushing at his shoulder, and your eyes dart to your lap.

"Always silly—but isn't that what you love about me," he pokes, his hands smoothing up your thighs and he leans down trying to catch your eye, but you can't bring yourself to look at him, because suddenly it all feels like too much, like a kindness you don't deserve, every emotion filling your body conflicted, wanting, but exhausted, needy and desperate all at the same time, yet shamed that you could even question this moment—question him, his authenticity even though you know it’s real.

"Hey..." he pushes, still trying to meet your eye, and you shake your head, smoothing your lips together, sealing all your words behind your lips.

“Listen…look at me, love.” He starts, hooking a bent finger under your chin as the tears begin to fall, “In our world, within these walls. You don’t have to be the pillar of strength I know you give for the world…okay? It’s just you and me. You know–and maybe I don’t say it enough, but one of the things I admire most about you are all the soft edges you try to hide. Do you know how many times you blow me away with all the astonishing thoughts that seem to drift through your mind so effortlessly? All the ones that I’m so lucky to hear.”

You sniffle in a deep breath, silent tears streaming, and when he says, “Darling, those days…the days that you share your world, your thoughts…I feel like the luckiest person in the world. Do you know why?”

Every word aching in your chest seems to fail you in that moment, and you shake your head, unsure of what he’s going to say, “ I feel like the luckiest person in the world because I get to have this version of you. The times when your guard is down, and you wrap yourself up in my arms, are the times I know I’ll get some of your most delicate thoughts, that you’ll give me a glimpse of your world, and it’s like magic…something I can’t even explain, and that makes me so happy.”

And his words break what little strength you’ve been holding onto, his words a gentle kindness you had been searching for in the world all day, “It's just hard sometimes…” you whisper, forcing the simple words out as you sling your arms around his neck, your legs circling around his body drawing him closer.

"I know it's hard...But I don't ever want you to think this isn't a safe space for you. This is your space, your world, your home, fuck the world and whatever it's trying to take from you. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out together. Okay?" and his grip on you tightens, and when your body goes slack in his arms, his embrace only deepens.

These were the sweet nothings—his warm body pressed to yours, your warm breath filling his neck, now the sweetest gift you could have ever been given, his words now the clarity to every unspoken word that lived within in the doubt that threatened to consume you, in the moments of chaos, in all the push and shove of the outside world–these words–his words only solidified what you already knew, what you already held onto every time he stood before you, everytime you closed your eyes and woke to find him there next to you, your safe harbor, your whole world wrapped up into one person, because he was home.

A/N: Monday Blurbs is a new series I want to take on. If you have a favorite song that you want to turn into a quick little blurb let me know! Any song, Any Genre, Any Theme.

Send your requests here<-

Taglist: @sassamanda77 @panini @unfuckwitablenarry

@triski73 @haleyannaw @dipmeinhoneyh @lizsogolden

@spinninc @iloveharrystyles04 @mema10 @harryyloverrr

@avas-queen-black @starshollowgazette

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stellar-haikyuu · 3 months ago

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haikyuu characters as messages i've sent/received in group chats (pt. 5)

Hinata: i am in enemy territory again oh my god

Kageyama: so, uh a kid just randomly cried in front of me? for no reason?

Tsukishima: [miyagi private school] drama is a whole other world of problems

Yamaguchi: the panic will set in at around 1am ngl

Oikawa: that is literally how ppl will remember me from high school I HATE IT HERE

Lev: omg i was almost recruited for a multi-level marketing scheme Kenma: i’m surprised you even realized Kuroo: nope i got him outta there. he was literally about to say yes

Daishou: ok FINE i'll stop making fun of people. god will think i deserve to trip on the stairs again.

Futakuchi: impression management who? idk her

Aone: he actually sat next to me during class IM CRYING INSIDE

Koganegawa: LAST SET! LET’S GO! YEAHHHHH!!!

Terushima: i think my scalp is fucked

Tendou: idk about u guys, but i believe in karma!

Goshiki: nobody needs to know about the delulu stuff in my head

Atsumu & Osamu (talking to Aran for the first time): interview with foreigner? DONE

Suna: wtf some rando just followed me on insta? INSTANT BLOCK BITCH

Kita: my executive? functioning.

Aran: don’t you ever want to go apeshit?

Hoshiumi: why do the adults always dump me at the kids table Hirugami: bc you belong there duh Hoshiumi: I DONT WANNA HEAR SKIBIDI AND GYAT ANYMORE

← part 4 || masterlist || part 6 →

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a-d-nox · 11 months ago

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astro hypothesis: what's your ideal bedroom like?

once upon a time (a year ago) i spoke of using your house rulers to deep dive into the story of the houses. i did a hypothesis about money and another about careers - but what about your home? for that take a look at your 4h and the persona chart of its ruler (ex: my 4h is in gemini, i will be looking at my mercury persona chart NOT my ic persona (thats more family and childhood dynamics in my opinion)).

today i want to focus on somewhere critical to all of us - our bedroom. you can look at the 12h and/or the moon in this chart to get a better idea of what your ideal bedroom looks like or should be like to feel most rested and comfortable.

why?

the 12h rules over solitude (where you might go to escape everyone else in your household), the subconscious (where we supposedly go in deep sleep), etc.

the moon rules over comfort (what we find comfort in), the subconscious (which connects again to deep sleep and dreaming), cycles and rhythms (hi sleep cycle and circadian rhythm), etc.

paid reading options: astrology menu & cartomancy menu

enjoy my work? help me continue creating by tipping on ko-fi or paypal. your support keeps the magic alive!

so here are some observations of what i believe to be important to a room based on these factors in your 4h ruler's persona chart.

a capricorn (10°, 22°) moon / 12h saturn / capricorn 12h / moon aspecting saturn person likely wants a minimal room. they don't what a lot of clutter - if their room is cluttered they might be experiencing a lot of waking/life stress/anxiety that is effecting their sleep. they like neutral and natural colors in a room - beiges, "agreeable grey", dark green, and dark blues in particular allows them to feel calm and as though they are able to relax. arctic white paint or cool white light may trigger them into feeling like they are in work mode instead of relax mode. they seek quality furniture that is timeless - they don't want to constantly have to replace the pieces they have in their room because they don't last or no longer fit the style. they don't want to have to think at the end of the day that something broke or they hate a piece because it doesn't fit the trend anymore and they now have to replace it. they don't want another thing they have to do, they just want to crash. organization is key - everything in their room should have a spot. they want everything that belongs in there to have a place (books are organized by author/series, clothing is color/season organized, glasses have a spot on a side table, jewelry has an organizer that rarely changes, etc). there is often a very refined and elegant feeling to their room. the sheets have a classic design (they are white or white and grey), the mirror is elegant yet classic, the bed is simple yet fits and fills the space well, etc. and most importantly room darkening curtains and lots of blankets (no capricorn/saturn person wants to be awakened by the sun or because they are too cold at night)!!!

a gemini (3°, 15°, 27°) moon / 12h mercury / gemini 12h / moon aspecting mercury person might have a rather eclectic style in their room. it might feel like they are testing out a look or like they have a lot of different vibes that don't necessarily fit one another. color finds its way into this room no matter what and it is often multiple colors at once that draw a person's attention. its very strange because this space is never just a sleep space for them often its multi-functional in some way shape or form like they have the ability to have a sitting space for others... could be a chair or a window seat or a desk... speaking of desks - books, vinyl, cds, gadgets, etc are a big part of the gemini/mercury vibes in a space. often their media have a spotlight moment in a room. lastly this space has an air of awareness in it - its not totally sleepy vibes, you know for sure when you see this space its not just for sleep. this is a place of study, reading, music listening, etc. it might just feel like not much sleep occurs in the space at all!

leo (5°, 17°, 29°) moon / 12h sun / leo 12h / moon aspecting sun rooms are warm and inviting. there are likely gold elements or warm paint colors used in the room. luxury is a must - the bed is likely memory foam or plush - the pillows are probably hotel/high quality. the comforter is down feathers and/or a fluffy/fuzzy blanket is present. it is very likely that stuffed animals are present too or at least one that is too adorable not to be there. there is some sort of central piece in this room - a giant mirror, a big art piece over the bed, a grand wall of books, etc. something in the room is guaranteed to always get a compliment from people who peak in during a house tour. it is also rather common especially in younger years for these people to keep their awards/trophies on display in their room as it fills them with a great sense of pride. windows are very important to this person's bedroom too as they tend to enjoy natural light when they can get it.

aries (1°, 13°, 25°) moon / 12h mars / aries 12h / moon aspecting mars people love a bold look in their room. its the energy of platform beds, industrial metal frames, etc. if they can use an "aggressive" color (red, orange, yellow, etc) in a bedroom they will... however they like a modern and sleek look despite their bold color schemes. they also like a minimal room - the bedroom is for their bed - point, blank, period. it's about having the essentials nothing more nothing less. they won't being using decorative pillows they have to remove every night or a decorative blanket that just hangs over their footboard. heavens forbid a decorative ladder with a decorative blanket that's not for use but for the eye. if they can't use it, they don't need or want it in the space it will just make them annoyed and cause them to feel like everything is in the way of them getting to the relax/wind-down portion of their day. now strangely enough, they often workout in their bedroom, so it wouldn't be shocking to find a pull up bar in the doorway or a peloton bike in the corner of the room. and 10/10 they will be getting up using an alarm - but it is rather unlikely they will need multiple alarms to make them get out of their bed in the morning.

likely more to come on home hypotheses, as i look to make renovations to my own home despite/because of being creatively burnt out. thank the heavens for astrology doing the leg work.

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scary-grace · 4 months ago

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PARIAH (part 3) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Shigaraki Tomura was buried three days ago, struck down at last by the affliction that’s haunted him all his life. Now, with muffled screams emanating from the graveyard and the same affliction striking down villagers left and right, the priest has ordered Shigaraki raised from the grave and put to death properly this time. It falls to Spinner, wracked with guilt over his best friend’s fate, to seek help from a monstrosity equal to the one that haunts Shigaraki — the witch who dwells in the darkest part of the forest. In other words, you.

Nosferatu AU, multi-POV, 10k+ words. Vampires, wolves, and witches, oh my! All the typical warnings one might expect for a fic about vampires. If you like Gran Torino this is not the fic for you.

part i part ii

part iii

You recoil from him with all the strength you possess, panic surging through you. You’re able to master it for only a split second – long enough to search out his vital signs, to confirm that his unconsciousness is a temporary state rather than a harbinger of his death – before your fear drives you back across the room away from him, so far that your back is pressed against the opposite wall. Even then, you can barely breathe. The taste of human blood still clings to your tongue.

It’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted before, potent and intoxicating, the way alcohol must feel to humans whose metabolisms can’t grasp that it’s poison. But the taste of the human’s blood isn’t why you’ve fled from him, or at least it doesn’t feel like the reason. When you bowed your head to his neck and struggled to draw away, you weren’t battling a desire to sink your teeth into the marks the Old One left behind. It wasn’t his blood that you wanted.

Or was it? The hunger is insidious, you were always told. It hides itself in whatever form it must in order to lure you into satiating it. When some new sensation, some new emotion takes hold, you must always assume it’s vampiric, not human. You need no other reason to stay as far from this human as possible.

But you can’t do that. You can’t leave him sprawled out on the table; he needs to rest, and eat and drink when he wakes up, and that means you need to have something to feed him. You have to find a place to put him that’s more comfortable, and you can only think of your own bed, often unused and certainly going unused tonight, regardless of where you put the human. The human – Shigaraki. You don’t know his given name, but you can still taste his blood.

That knowledge above all else is what spurs you to action. You seize the bowl of water you were soaking the bandages in and raise it to your lips.

If the Old One drank this, even in its diluted form, it would burn him alive from the inside out. You hold it in your mouth, eyes watering from the pain, until you can take it no longer. When you stumble to the front door, open it, and spit out into the dirt, most of your taste buds fall away with it, salt from the inland sea functioning the same as acid would. You won’t be able to taste anything for a while. But you can’t taste Shigaraki’s blood, and that’s the important thing. You’ll never be pure again, but you are clean, and clear enough of mind to assess the situation properly.

The longer you think about it, the worse it gets. If all you had done was clash with the priest over an innocent man’s life, that would be permissible, acceptable, necessary. But the man in question is the Old One’s chosen host, and you didn’t just rescue him from the priest – you brought him to your home and deliberately stripped the Old One’s essence from his body. Even if you were nothing but a witch dwelling at the edge of the world, it would have been desperately unwise to do.

But you aren’t a witch dwelling at the edge of the woods. You’re one of three surviving members of the order Academia, dedicated to the defeat of vampires and the preservation of humanity, and you’re supposed to be in hiding. The other two are Professors, and it’s their job to kill vampires. Your job is to stay hidden, to preserve Academia’s vast stores of knowledge within both the archive and your memory, and if necessary, to rebuild the order from the ground up if all the Professors are killed. At this moment, however, the Professors are safer than they’ve ever been. All the Old One’s thought is bent on claiming his newest host, and you’ve stolen him. The Old One is after you.

You haven’t just endangered yourself. You’ve endangered the order, after being charged with protecting it when you barely understood what that meant, and worse still, you can’t see how you could have averted this outcome. Any course of action that included rescuing Shigaraki from the villagers inevitably ends here. The only course that wouldn’t have was to let him die.

When you think of the order members you’ve known over your time as the lighthouse keeper, it’s easy to imagine what they’d have done. To a fault, they’d have left Shigaraki’s fate to Father Torino. But the order is meant to protect humanity, and Shigaraki is still human. More human than you are. More human by half. If you deserve to live, so does he. You straighten up, breathe deep, and force yourself again to assess the situation. You may not be a hunter, but you are an archive. You know all you need to know in order to survive this night. The rest can be dealt with in the morning.

You’re certain of it, certain that no matter how far out of your depth you feel, you have the knowledge to prevail – but when you step back inside and see Shigaraki still sprawled on the table, multiple pieces of your resolve falter at once. The idea of going near him again frightens you. You know to be afraid of your hunger, no matter its origins. But you aren’t a child, and even when you were, you never stooped to drinking human blood. You delay as long as possible, rearranging your bed and fluffing the pillows, before turning back to the table.

Shigaraki’s been insensate, but absent the Old One’s influence clogging his veins, he must be a light sleeper. No sooner has your hand brushed his shoulder than he jerks awake, flinching away, one hand held out to forestall you. There’s some mix of disgust and resignation on his face. You think of how many times he must have been woken from sleep by the Old One, how little his refusal would have mattered, and take a careful step back.

The fight drains out of him in a rush. He slumps back against the table, averting his eyes from yours. “I thought you were him.”

You shake your head. “I did not mean to unsettle you, just to move you somewhere more comfortable.”

“To move me. You intend to carry me?”

“That was the plan,” you admit. Your face inexplicably heats up, making you wish for your veil. “It’s not far. You can walk if you’d like.”

Shigaraki shakes his head. “Carry me if you wish.”

If he’d like, if you wish. You do wish. The degree to which you wish strikes you as somewhat unseemly, some obscure outgrowth of the hunger that stalks the edges of your consciousness. You gather Shigaraki into your arms, and unlike the last time you tried this, he cooperates fully, his arms winding about your neck and his body curled in against your chest. Shigaraki has every reason to fear vampires, but he trusted you to save him, even knowing that it would leave him vulnerable. He has every reason to flinch from a vampire’s touch, but he holds onto you.

You label every unfamiliar feeling as vampiric in origin, simply because it’s the safest thing to do, but the feeling that chases at the heels of your pity and sorrow for him would be unmistakable even if you didn’t. When you think of Shigaraki in the Old One’s clutches, the rage that sweeps through you comes from a single source, a thought you’ve never had about anything, let alone a human. Something visceral, unassailable by virtue or reason: He’s mine.

That is not a thought you should be having. You set Shigaraki down on your bed perhaps a little too brusquely, then try to make up for it by drawing the blankets carefully over him. Even that gesture is tainted by possessiveness, heavy with hunger. You draw back to a safe distance at speed.

Shigaraki watches you go. “If you meant to drink my blood, you would have done it already,” he says. “I’m not frightened of you.”

He should be. Right now you are. “I must take my leave of you. There is much to do to prepare for nightfall.”

That brings a flash of fear to Shigaraki’s pale face. “It doesn’t matter what you do,” he says. “You cannot keep him out.”

“This place was built to withstand him,” you say. You leave out that it was built to withstand him at the height of his powers, and that it was intended to be guarded by a dozen Professors every night. With the Old One’s decaying body and only you to stand watch, it’s a much more even fight. “I make the same preparations every night. And tonight we have an advantage.”

“What advantage?”

“As they sleep in daylight, vampires are truly dead to the world,” you say. “The Old One won’t know you’ve shaken off his control until he wakes up.”

It’s an advantage that will last only for the night, but that should give you time to plan something better. It occurs to you on your way out the door that Shigaraki will need to eat, and the bone broth you’ve been simmering since this morning will be ready by the time you return. You gather the supplies you take whenever you walk the perimeter and set off. Seventy-three minutes until nightfall. Courtesy of your vampiric nature, you always know how much daylight remains.

Your defenses are solid, as they should be. You check them every night, as you were taught to do by the last lighthouse keeper before he and the archive he protected were both destroyed. The vampire who did that wasn’t the Old One, and he was underestimated as a result — and after he destroyed the archive, he escaped. Mirai taught you much in life, but his death taught you an even more valuable lesson: When it comes to vampires, you must never assume you hold the upper hand. When it comes to vampires, you are always about to die.

So you guard against both, the unnamed vampire who destroyed the old archive and thrust you into this role before your time and the Old One your order has hunted through generations. The wolf-dogs trail at your heels as you scatter concentric rings of salt, as you string nets of silver lace between the trees, attaching a few silver bells to each one. If a vampire should somehow manage to encounter the nets without howling in agony, the ringing of the bells will warn you, too.

You plant an extra row of stakes around the perimeter of your fence, ensuring they’ll stick out at an angle. Sometimes it seems you spend all day making stakes, creating spool after spool of lace, but this is why. You could fortify your home ten times over and still have supplies to spare.

The wolf-dogs follow you through the gate, and you shut it behind them, draping it in heavy silver chains that you polish carefully each morning. You still have a few moments before nightfall, and it’s going to be a very cold night. You bring in more firewood than usual, confident that a human who’s been habitually drained of blood will feel the cold worse than you do, then step back inside, ushering the newest additions to the pack of wolf-dogs in after you.

You can’t rescue all the pups from Father Torino’s edict that they be drowned, but you save as many as you can, and the litter of five pups that was born out of season was the largest single rescue you’ve attempted to date. Their eyes were barely open when you recovered them, but now they’re approaching four months old, and they’re rambunctious to the extreme. You’d keep them outside if you could, but their coats are too downy yet to keep out the wind and rain, and you’d rather deal with them inside each night than let them freeze. Besides, they’re an excellent distraction from your other guest.

Or a distraction for him. While you’ve been wiping the last pup’s paws clean, the others have discovered Shigaraki, and before you can stop him, he’s patted the bed and invited all five up to join him. Naturally, they oblige, and you can do nothing but stare in exasperation.

Shigaraki catches you looking. “What? It was their idea.”

“I saw you. Don’t lie.” You can’t begrudge him, though; although the wolf-dog pups are crawling all over him, for the first time since you met him, he looks something approaching happy. “They’ll never leave you be. Not now that they know you’re a soft touch.”

Shigaraki laughs quietly at that. His voice is all but ruined from screaming, but he laughs, and you turn away in a hurry. If you get the pups their supper, they’ll abandon him, and the sight of him cuddling with them won’t produce any more awful feelings inside you. Shigaraki speaks again as you’re filling the pups’ trough. “As if you aren’t a soft touch of your own. For the rigidity of the priest’s convictions and the presence of so many wolves in the mountains, surprisingly few wolf-dogs are drowned in the village.”

“What are you implying?”

“That the village brats know to leave their half-breed pups unattended,” Shigaraki says. “It seems they have a great deal of faith in you.”

You had wondered why the rescues were so much easier of late. “That odd one most of all,” Shigaraki continues. “He must, to turn to you for help in the face of a vampire.”

You aren’t surprised at all that it was Midoriya Izuku who sought you out. After all, it’s in his blood. “Then again,” Shigaraki says, and you look up in time to see the pups abandon him and charge for their meal, “you are not unlike a vampire yourself.”

He doesn’t ask a question, but you hear one, and you choose to answer, where you would have obfuscated before. “Half-vampire would be the most accurate term. Conceived by human parents, born to a mother who was either bitten or turned.”

“I read of your kind. In Sensei’s library, before he locked it away.” Shigaraki’s eyes are intent on yours. “I would have guessed for myself if my mental faculties were not so thoroughly decayed.”

“You spent quite some time buried alive. Anyone’s faculties would be corroded,” you say. “What did the Old One’s books say about my kind?”

“They concurred with the priest. You are unclean,” Shigaraki says, and you snort. “Those who create a half-vampire are obligated to destroy it, or else their own existences are forfeit. Vampires keep precious few laws, but regarding that, they are inflexible.”

“Oh,” you say. “So that’s where the Elders went.”

“What?”

“The Old One used to be one of a cadre of master vampires, but some sixty years ago, all but the Old One vanished.” You called yourself the Old One’s fatal mistake, but it seems you’ve been fatal for others, not for him. “Do you think he would take a death sentence lying down?”

Shigaraki laughs hollowly. “He defeated his own kind, equals in power. You have no chance against him.”

“Then it’s good that I don’t intend to fight him,” you say. “Our task is simply to survive the night.”

Night will fall within seconds. You leave your conversation with Shigaraki behind and shut the windows, lining each windowsill with rough crystals of salt. With the loss of the sun, you feel your newfound impurity more acutely, and it did not need the assistance. Your instinct is to descend into the archive and hide until morning, but you must be here to look after your guest. Whose blood you’ve tasted. Whose name you still don’t know. At this point it would be awkward to ask.

You bring him a cup of water and some bone broth, then retreat with your own meal to the bench nearest the window. Shigaraki’s voice follows you. “Do you usually keep such distance from humans?”

It’s not because he’s human. It’s because he’s himself, and you’re drawn to him in a way you don’t understand. You don’t think you’d take his blood, no matter how close to him you got, but you have no idea what you would do instead. The thought crosses your mind that your human side might know the answer, but your human side is quiet. It always has been, because it was never your human side that the Academia wanted you for.

“I am comfortable with humans at any distance,” you say. “This is for your comfort more than mine.”

“I told you already. I’m not frightened of you,” Shigaraki says. “I know evil. It does not look like you.”

Not on the outside, no — but there’s something monstrous within you, something you bury deep. “Do you think evil comes from within, or from beyond?”

“Does it matter?” Shigaraki is drinking more than eating, but at least he’s consuming some of both. “The result is the same, either way.”

It’s quiet for a moment. “Within, I think. Sensei chose to become what he is. You didn’t.”

“I choose which side of my nature to obey,” you say. You think it’s important to tell Shigaraki, to warn him that you are not what you appear to be. “I never tasted human blood until yours.”

“I never asked a vampire to touch me before you,” Shigaraki says, and your face heats up. “Did you desire my blood?”

You shake your head, and to your surprise, Shigaraki presses the point. “Why not?”

“I don’t drink blood.”

“I asked if you desired it,” Shigaraki says. “There is a difference. Answer me.”

Some part of you bridles at being ordered around in your own home — the human part of you, you think. Your vampiric nature wishes to offer more information than necessary, and in your answer, you fail to tamp it down. “There are things I desire more.”

Shigaraki blinks. For your part, you avoid eye contact, staring down into your bowl of broth. It’s a poor meal. You should have made bread to go with it, but you were busy. Busy making mistake after mistake, endangering what scraps of the Academia still remain, opening yourself up to the baser instincts you’ve suppressed all your life. Your predecessors would be ashamed of you, your most recent predecessor most of all. Mirai would not have heeded Spinner’s call. He would have let Shigaraki die, and quite possibly saved the world in the bargain.

“I’m cold,” Shigaraki says into the silence. You set your empty bowl aside and return to build up the fire. The pups are mostly asleep, but at least one is still interested in Shigaraki, and when you take his own empty bowl away, you replace it with the pup he was holding before. “This is your bed. Where do you intend to sleep?”

“This night, I don’t,” you say. “I rarely sleep.”

“Why not?”

“Vampires rest during daylight, humans at night. There’s no time of day that feels natural to sleep.” When you were young, you slept days. Once the Academia found you, you slept not at all. “If you were concerned about putting me out, don’t be. You’re a guest, and you must rest if you want to be well for your friends’ visit tomorrow.”

Shigaraki studies you. The pup is already fast asleep and snoring in his arms. “What happens then?” he asks. You give him a strange look. “If I leave, Sensei will follow me, and all your work will be undone.”

“I will give you and your friends what you need to mount an effective defense,” you say. “I don’t plan to throw you out on your ear.”

You don’t want to throw him out. You want to keep him here. “Do you think we can find a more secure place to stay?” Shigaraki asks. “By tomorrow night?”

No. If you send Shigaraki away, he and his friends will die. “I must protect the archive,” you say. “If the Old One attacks at his full strength, all will be lost.”

“If he reclaims me, all will be lost.” An involuntary shudder travels through Shigaraki, and a corresponding chill drips down your spine. “It is in your interest to slay him, yes? When will you have a chance like this again?”

“You know little of slaying vampires,” you say sharply. “Say what you mean.”

Shigaraki holds your gaze for a moment, then looks away. “I feel safe here,” he says, and your innards twist so painfully that it takes a small miracle to avoid doubling over. “My friends and I will be safer with you.”

The human side of you answers him without hesitating. “Then stay.”

You go about your nightly work, struggling to maintain some veneer of reality over your increasingly tainted thoughts. Shigaraki is drawn to the safety you provide, not to you specifically. He would respond the same to any lighthouse keeper, if any of them were fool enough to take him in. You’re nothing special, except that you’re here. You could be anyone. There’s no reason for Shigaraki to feel the same magnetic pull towards you as you do to him.

He must be exhausted. You keep waiting for him to fall asleep, but every time you glance up from your work, you find him watching you, eyes half-lidded, expression relaxed. It makes you self-conscious. “What?”

“Sensei’s fatal mistake,” he says. “What did you mean?”

“It refers to an old text, written when vampires first arose to plague humanity,” you say. “The exact phrasing –”

It takes you a moment. “In their lust for death they sow the seeds of their own undoing.” That was it. You remember wishing for something more definitive. “Coupled with the avoidance of creating half-vampires, it was determined that half-vampires were the key to defeating the Old Ones.”

You remember Nana Shimura holding your face in her hands, smiling down at you brighter than the sun. You will be his downfall, she said. You will be our light. “It’s only a legend.”

“If it were only a legend, creating a half-vampire would not be punishable by death,” Shigaraki says. All the pups are napping with him now. They’re hard to look at together. You don’t like what seeing them makes you feel. “Who taught you this?”

“I had many teachers,” you say. “Professor Shimura was the first.”

Shigaraki’s eyes widen. “Shimura?”

Before you can say anything, before he can elaborate, a howl rises up from somewhere in the woods. It’s distant. You can tell by the way it echoes that the wolf is at the edge of the woods, but you know it won’t stay there. Wolves don’t set foot in these woods, warned back by the presence of the wolf-dogs and the scent of the direwolves. If one is this close, it’s being compelled to approach — and if it’s the Old One’s doing, it won’t be alone.

There’s a second howl, and a third. You hear a sharp intake of breath and glance away from the shuttered window towards Shigaraki, who’s gone pale. “Your defenses won’t work on them,” he says. “They’ll tell him how to find me.”

They will, if even one makes it within view of your home, and you won’t leave it to the wolf-dogs to face a threat you’re responsible for bringing down upon them. You decide on a course of action instantly, and scoop Shigaraki up from the bed, blankets, wolf-dogs and all. He puts up a desultory protest, but he’s shaking in your grip. You press the trick stone in the floor, impatience and frustration humming inside you, and you and Shigaraki are halfway down the hidden stairs before the doorway’s even opened completely.

It’s cold down here. So cold. You don’t want to leave Shigaraki here, but you brought the pups, too, and they’ll keep him warm. Your eyes adjust to the darkness quickly and easily, so easily that you almost forget that Shigaraki will need light to see. As you light the lanterns, the chamber below your cottage comes into view, and Shigaraki stares. “What is this place?”

“The archive,” you say. In the old archive, there were many comfortable places to rest and read, but in this one, hastily constructed in the aftermath of old archive’s destruction, has only uncomfortable stools and cold stone. “Once I leave and seal it, it won’t open until morning or my return. You’ll be safe here.”

“Where are you going?”

“To kill the wolves.”

Shigaraki’s eyes widen. “You can’t,” he says, as you wrap the blankets more securely around him. “You’re only —”

“Human?” You finish the sentence for him. “Only half. Stay here and rest. I’ll be back.”

“Wait,” Shigaraki says, and you pause in the act of pulling away. He seizes your hand anyway. His fingers are cold. “Come back. Say you will.”

“I’ll come back,” you promise. On an impulse you regret the moment you follow it, you raise his hand to your mouth and press your lips against his frozen fingers.

You might regret the impulse, but it soothes the need, the hunger, that’s been tormenting you since you closed Shigaraki’s wounds. Shigaraki startles, but doesn’t retrieve his hand. When you pull away at last, he’s reluctant to let go.

You seal the archive behind you, then seal the cottage doors the same way. Re-entering will be painful for you, with so much salt and garlic and rose in your path, but it matters not so long as it protects Shigaraki. What happens to you matters little, so long as you protect him. You take off your shoes to lighten your step, arm yourself with a silver knife and a quiver of stakes, and set off through the woods at a speed only the direwolves could match.

Your human side is incomprehensible to you, but your vampiric side is all too familiar, and as you run, you turn it loose for the first time in decades. You allow your senses of smell and hearing to sharpen, allow your eyes to adjust to the night, search out the spark of violence that always dwells within you and work to fan the flames. The possessiveness, too, works in your favor. These are your woods. The wolf-dogs following in your wake are yours to protect, and the human is yours, too. Whatever seeks to harm them will find you waiting, and even as your senses identify half a dozen wolves prowling through the woods, your resolve doesn’t weaken. Half a dozen. If the Old One wanted to see his host reclaimed and his mistake unmade, he should have sent an army.

The first wolf appears before you, hackles raised but facing the other way. You leave the knife sheathed, the stakes undisturbed in their quiver, and you attack with bared teeth and empty hands.

<- part ii

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