Archive of Our Own

Nero knows that he’s screwed the second that he wakes up and finds himself grinding helplessly against Dante’s sheets.

Dante is a ridiculously heavy sleeper, so he somehow hasn’t noticed any of what’s going on. He grunts in his sleep, rolling over and blissfully ignoring the nearly suffocating presence of Nero’s scent, the way Nero’s stupid tail keeps trying to wrap itself anxiously around Dante’s wrist or arm, the tiny, unfortunate little whines that Nero keeps making.

He absolutely doesn’t want to wake Dante up.

Nero’s definitely having a problem, but it’s one that he’s determined to solve on his own, fully without dragging Dante out of bed at nearly four in the morning. After everything that Dante’s done for him, Nero supposes that he owes the man a good night’s rest.

He owes a lot of things to the man, actually.

Dante had picked Nero off of the streets a few months back, and had found him in probably one of the most pitiful states of his life, dripping with rainwater and thoroughly cold in his stolen, oversized hoodie. As far as half-cat breeds went, Nero wasn’t exactly a popular choice, which probably had something to do with the tiny bit of demon blood that had gotten mixed into him somewhere along the way of his creation, leaving him with a pretty horrific looking right arm and an incredibly short temper. He’s been thrown out of more homes than he can count—if an owner ever managed to get past his appearance, they were always inevitably turned away by Nero’s desire to have actual free will and refusal to exist as some sort of mindless pet.

Dante hadn’t seemed to mind any of these things, though, holding his stupid pizza-print red umbrella over Nero’s head and smiling down at him with what had to be the most annoyingly smug expression to man.

“Want some pizza?” Dante had offered, waving the box in his hand in indication, speaking to him as if he were a perfectly normal cat hybrid and not some sort of demonic defect.

When Nero had only continued to stare at him suspiciously, his right arm cradled to his chest uncertainly, Dante had given him another quick glance, his smile turning a little gentler.

“Oh, that? Yeah, don’t worry, kid. I’m a demon too,” Dante had said, before tipping his head back and erupting into a fiery display of his complete demonic form, which abruptly settled the matter.

It was more than obvious to Nero that Dante had absolutely no idea what he was doing in taking in a cat. They’d spent the first couple of weeks or so with Dante repeatedly bombarding him with questions about his well-being and his desires, what sorts of things he needed from Dante, if he liked olives or not on his pizza, all the important things. Nero had answered to the best of his ability, but there were simply a lot of things that Dante just hadn’t thought to ask, and Nero hadn’t exactly felt comfortable bringing it up.

As much as Nero hates to admit it, living with Dante has pretty much been the best months of his life, and he’s more than a little nervous to screw things up by revealing this particularly sensitive information to the man.

It isn’t a huge deal, anyway—it’s only the first heat he’s had in a good two years or so, and, crippling and helpless intensity from the previous withdrawal aside, Nero is perfectly fine.

He nearly pushes his face into the blankets with a sudden hiss, feeling his ears press themselves flat against his head, the sharp points of his teeth digging into the fabric as he tries to unsuccessfully stifle his noise. Another shudder, long and thoroughly painful, passes through him, and he can feel himself clenching up around nothing, his biology taking it upon itself to remind him of how empty he is inside.

The scent of Dante on the man’s blankets and mattress and pillows and his own body laying right next to Nero is almost too much to bear in his current condition, but he aches for more of it anyway. He tilts his head to the side, pressing his cheek against the soft material, biting his lip harshly enough to draw blood and shutting his eyes.

He’s so empty, and it hurts, he wasn’t made to be like this, to lay here alone and unfulfilled, denying himself of something that nature had intended for him all along.

With his breath coming in in sharp pants, Nero reaches behind himself with a shaky hand, unwillingly pressing his fingers against his hole, grimacing at the sensation of the wetness around his entrance, his slick dripping lazily down his thighs.

Normally, he’d be a lot more disgusted with himself, both for being such a fucking embarrassment and for making a mess everywhere, but he can’t particularly bring himself to care when he slips two fingers inside of himself, his body taking them in easily. The motion pushes some of the slick gathering inside of him slightly out, the all-too wet noise making him flinch.

He’s already so open, so ready to be bred, and he’s so helplessly impatient for it that he’s trying to get himself off right on Dante’s bed, in what has to be an absolute invasion of the man’s privacy. But he can’t help himself--his body so desperately wants to be close to Dante, it needs Dante’s warmth and the safety that the man affords him, and it’s been forcing him to nearly sleepwalk himself into Dante’s bed for every night this entire week.

Dante had been more than welcoming of his presence, even if he’d been a little surprised to see Nero curled up against his chest in the morning. Nero had quite blatantly expressed his desire for his own bed, and Dante had been completely willing to respect that, as much as he so obviously enjoyed hugging and cuddling with Nero in his free time.

Nero’s grateful that Dante hadn’t asked any questions about his presence in his bed, but he’s fairly certain that if Dante were to wake up and find Nero literally fingering himself right next to him, he probably wouldn’t be so freely accepting of the whole thing.

Dante’s been a fairly good owner to him this whole time, but in Nero’s experience, there’s really only a few ways that this can go. Either Dante will be disgusted enough with him to kick Nero out for good--which would really fucking suck, especially now that Nero’s grudgingly starting to get attached to the man--or, in the much more unlikely situation given Dante’s overall kind nature, Nero will find his all-too vulnerable state being rapidly taken advantage of.

Granted, as his owner, Dante is well within his rights to do whatever he wants to Nero. All of Nero’s past owners have been, and some have been a lot more willing to run with that than others. The law of nature had oh-so-benevolently granted Nero with a special type of god-awful vulnerability and weakness, and if someone was capable of having their fun with that, there really wasn’t anything stopping that.

There’s a sharp, painful tug in the pit of his stomach at the thought of Dante being like his previous owners, though.

A part of him--the current majority of him, actually--gently tries to placate him, to tell him that he’ll absolutely like what Dante might choose to do. After all, the man was kind and took care of him to the best of his single brain-celled abilities, and physically, he was big, more than enough to fill Nero up and knot him--

Nero jerks his fingers roughly against his own prostate, biting back a cry at the sensation that runs sharply through him, his senses amplified to their limit by the effects of his heat. A blissfully blank wave of pleasure cuts momentarily through his increasingly desperate frenzy, and he rests his fingers firmly against that spot inside of him, feeling the tiniest bit of relief as some of his clarity starts to come back to him.

His tail curls in on itself, hard enough to definitely cramp later, and he starts to grind his hips down on his own hand, panting out into the sheets below him. It’s a little too easy to forget himself like this, losing himself to his brainless search of pleasure, and unfortunately, with his eyes closed and his face pressed down into the mattress, he doesn’t see the way that Dante starts to stir awake until it’s too late.

“...Nero?”

Dante doesn’t sound quite as surprised as Nero would have expected him to, although his voice is unusually low and rough in his throat, and his scent has changed to something just a little different, laced with something that Nero can’t completely identify.

Nero freezes where he is, Dante’s newfound consciousness reminding him exactly of what a shameful situation this was, and he nearly curls in on himself as he tries to look up, reluctantly pulling his fingers out of himself with a painful whine. His own fingers weren’t at all enough to satisfy him, were nowhere near as good as the fat cock he was born to take, but at least they were something, and the renewed emptiness inside of him feels worse than ever.

“I...I’m sorry,” he manages to mumble out, curling his fingers harshly into the sheets beneath him to stop himself from going back to filling himself up again.

He tries his best to look up at Dante, but the second he lifts his head, his instincts, far stronger and purer now than at any other time, automatically force his gaze back down, forbidding him from making eye contact with a superior.

“Please--please don’t kick me out--not yet.”

He knows that he absolutely isn’t making any sense, especially not to Dante, who really isn’t as knowledgeable about the nature of Nero’s cat-hybrid biology as he maybe should be, given that his brother was an actual professor in this field of study. But he’s been caught red-handed, with his face in Dante’s sheets and his ass in the air, the thin shirt he’s wearing sticking heavily to his sweat-dampened skin, and his hole dripping with the wet fluids that his body forced itself to produce during this time.

There isn’t anything that he can say or do to make this situation look any better for himself, so all he can do is appeal to Dante’s mercy, to at least hope that Dante won’t throw him out on the streets to suffer through his heat alone.

Nero’s a born fighter, he can handle himself just fine at any other time, but when he’s like this, unintentionally and unwillingly radiating his fuck-me pheremones from every gland in his body and barely able to move from the pain of being empty, he’s honestly better off dead than out there.

“I--woah,” Dante mutters to himself, shifting uneasily on the bed.

Nero only hears the rustle of fabric, too busy keeping his eyes lowered as he contemplates his fate, and he nearly jumps when he feels Dante’s large, warm hand in his hair, the calluses of the man’s palm tingling against his scalp. Just this contact feels so unspeakably good, the weight warm and steady and stable, promising to complete everything that Nero is missing.

He thinks he surprises them both when he leans into the touch, a half-moan, half-purr growing in his throat as his tail lashes forward and rubs itself up against Dante’s wrist, and his body goes rather limp as he helplessly turns onto his side, exposing and offering up every part of himself for this man.

Dante clears his throat several times before he speaks, and with Nero’s head angled the way it is, he can see the way that Dante jerkily turns his head to the side, the strong muscles in his throat pulsing as he swallows hard.

“I’m not going to kick you out, kid,” Dante says, with such conviction that Nero has no choice but to believe him, his eyes falling shut in relief.

“This is, uh...I’m assuming this is a cat...thing. I won’t pretend to know what’s happening, but...you just tell me what to do, Nero. If you need me to leave, I will. We can talk about this later, whenever you’re feeling...better.”

“No--!”

Nero barely even recognizes his own voice with how pitchy and breathless it is, and he feels his stomach twist again with how wrong everything is. He shouldn’t be telling Dante what to do, he shouldn’t be allowed to tell Dante what to do--Dante is so obviously dominant to him, he shouldn’t be leaving the choice of anything up to a stupid whore like Nero.

But the worst, most gut-wrenching part is the thought of Dante leaving him alone--he needs Dante, he needs Dante to be here with him, and he needs Dante to be in him--

He tries his hardest to shake away his treacherous thoughts, a pitiful whine escaping him as he brings his hands up and buries his face in them, partly to hide his shame from Dante, and also because his own scent is vaguely comforting to him. It isn’t as good as Dante’s scent--nowhere near it, in fact--but Dante is the one thing he can’t allow himself to have, and the thought of it is starting to quickly drive him insane.

Nero’s seen the way that Dante lives and behaves, though--the other man isn’t much for relationships. He’d lived alone until Nero had joined him, and in the months that Nero’s been here for, Dante’s never once brought anyone home with him or attempted to actively seek out a partner to spend his life with, unlike other men his age that Nero’s met.

Occasionally, Dante’s gone out late at night, coming back smelling distinctly of alcohol and sex, the faintest traces of a foreign person clinging to him, but the man is most definitely not one for commitment. Nero’s actually asked him about it once, in one of their quieter moments, of whether Dante ever wanted to find a non-cat being to accompany him through life, but the man had just chuckled softly and petted him between the ears.

“Pretty happy where I am now, kid. Got everything I need.”

So, in other words, Dante wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship with anyone at all, meaning that he couldn’t give Nero what his body was so sharply craving.

Nero’s heat doesn’t mean he just wants a quick fuck--he wants to mate, his biology wants him to mate, and Nero’s brain and heart maybe want that too. The whole process had started out as an obsolete sort of survival mechanism--Nero’s physical weakness is ingrained into his instincts, no matter how hard he tries to train himself up to be capable in a fight, and therefore his body demands that he seek out a suitable protector, someone bigger and stronger and so easily dominant, able to take care of him and fend for him in all situations.

Someone like Dante, maybe.

Except Dante clearly didn’t want a lifelong partner, and Nero couldn’t have anything but one.

He knows too well what it’s like to have someone fuck him through his heats--the mindless, numbing contentness that he immediately settles into at the thought of having found a true partner, only to have his sense of safety and security abruptly ripped away from him the second that the other rightfully, sensibly decided that they were done with Nero and his annoying neediness.

He’d rather suffer like this, alone and empty and leaking out half of his weight in bodily fluids, than go through his mating bond being broken again.

Unfortunately, while this is the sensible conclusion that his mind has come to in order to protect himself, his body is absolutely not interested in obeying this directive in the slightest, and the longer he lays here, pathetically presenting himself to Dante, the more certain he becomes that he needs Dante.

“Dante, please,” he mumbles out, his hips giving themselves a tiny shake against his will.

The motion automatically attracts Dante’s gaze to his lower half, and the older man’s jaw suddenly clenches, the expression on his face darkening as his pupils dilate, his blue irises swallowed by the black.

“You...you don’t want me to leave?” Dante asks hesitantly, taking in a very deep, slow breath.

Nero can’t bring himself to answer, but his body unwillingly shakes his head in agreement with the statement.

Dante drags a hand down his face, turning his eyes upwards to the ceiling.

“Nero, I...I don’t want to leave you like this, especially if you say you want me here. But...something about you--”

He gives a dry, slightly bitter chuckle then, dropping his hand and clenching his fists against the mattress, his muscles tense.

“If I stay here, I think I’m going to do something I’ll regret.”

Nero has no problem with that. Nero wants Dante to do whatever it is he’s thinking of, wants Dante to do whatever he wants with him, to take him, to use him, as long as it means fucking him like the stupid, empty hole that he is--

“Okay,” Nero forces himself to pant out, stifling the wave of crushing disappointment he feels inside of himself, his stomach twisting itself into terrible knots, and a high, soft whine pushing its way up his throat.

What is he doing, he’s a traitor to his own self, he’s pushing away someone who could make him happy beyond everything else, someone who could fill him up and knot him and complete him so perfectly--

“You--you can go.”

Nero shuts his eyes, turning his face back into the mattress and pressing himself into the sheets again, desperate to at least let himself have something of Dante.

But Dante had said he might regret this, so maybe he knows what’s going on after all, knows that fucking Nero now means having to be connected with him in such a terrible way, means having Nero cling to him and follow him around and demand things of him that he had no right to. It’s already enough that Dante is letting him stay here, in his home, while Nero has already made such of a mess of himself in front of him, and Nero will take what he can get.

Dante lets out a soft sigh, maybe of relief, before oddly twisting himself away from Nero until his back is facing him, choosing only then to remove the pillow from his lap and standing up. Nero doesn’t have much time to contemplate Dante’s weird movement rituals, though, because another wave of emptiness shudders through him, and before he knows it, he’s three fingers deep inside of himself again, feeling his slick, wet walls clench up around him.

He drops so sharply out of awareness that he barely even registers the fact that Dante is still standing there, turned to the side and staring at him with clear uncertainty and concern on his face, mixed in with something else that Nero’s mind is too foggy to process.

Nero tries his hardest to pull a single coherent thought together, pushing his fingers desperately against the bundle of nerves inside of him and jerking his hips downwards, the demonic claws of his right hand nearly tearing holes in the sheets.

“C...Call Vergil,” he pants out, his words punctuated by the helpless moan that escapes him between them.

If Dante was going to be getting kicked out of his own room, Nero would at least prefer for Dante to know why, to understand what was going on in the first place, and even if he’s never met Vergil in his life, he’s heard enough stories from Dante about his brother’s bizarre scientific interest in cats and their hybrids to take this chance. Dante could get some form of clarity, and then he’d understand why Nero was being the way he was, and Nero could maybe just ride out his heat in the solitude of this room for the next four or five days, and everything would be just fine.

There’s a long pause, one that stretches out long enough for Nero to wonder if Dante is even still here. He can still smell the man, but that means nothing, considering how Nero is face down in Dante’s mattress.

“You, uh, you want my brother here?” Dante questions incredulously, but his voice sounds somehow different to Nero’s ears, something darker lining the very undertones of it.

Dante’s clearly trying to suppress whatever emotion that is, and he’s doing it well enough that Nero’s pleasure-addled brain can’t catch on, but he gets the impression that something is wrong anyway. His ears instinctively press back against his head, his tail drooping to lay flat on the bed and curling slightly towards him, and Nero is suddenly filled with the unbearable, irrational urge to apologize for what he’s done, even when he doesn’t know what it is.

Dante maybe reads his body language, though, or has just become that good at understanding Nero, because he speaks again, cutting Nero off before he can start to babble out more nonsense.

“Didn’t mean it like that, sorry. If that’s what you want, of course I’ll get him.”

Nero shakes his head, trying to make his meaning more clear.

“I just--I just want him to tell you what...what this is.”

He would have explained it himself--he should have explained it, back when his mind was actually clear and his head wasn’t so fucked up by his need, but he’d been too embarrassed and ashamed and worried about how Dante might react, and now he’s paying the price for it.

Dante catches on, though, like he always does, and Nero feels his eyes close in relief when he hears Dante agree to his request.

“Alright. Guess it’s time to listen to his lectures after all. I...call me if you need anything, kid.”

Nero feels like he’s giving up something precious here, like his last chance is rapidly slipping away, but he thinks of Dante, thinks of how free and easy the man likes to live, and he steels his resolve against his own instincts, fighting down the urge to bring Dante back to the bed.

Dante takes his nonresponse for the assent that it is, and Nero hears the door open as Dante steps out, taking him and his warmth with it. Without the man’s distinctive presence filling the room, Nero feels the loss inside of him all-too sharply, a pitiful sort of whimper escaping him as he reaches out for one of the pillows on Dante’s bed.

With some effort, he manages to maneuver them and himself so that he’s lying on top of the pillows, able to freely grind himself up against one of them while burying his face in the other and wrapping his arms and tail around it. The friction between himself and Dante’s pillow only brings a marginal amount of pleasure, and his own fingers inside of him do little to stave off the ache, but he’s hypersensitive to the max, and now that he’s alone and free to do what he wants, he quickly gets himself to the edge, coming messily over the sheets.

His orgasm doesn’t bring any relief to him, though--he’s still impossibly aroused, still leaking out his slick everywhere, and he’ll stay this way until he gets filled by a knot or when his heat finally passes, and due to his own actions, he’ll have to go with the latter.

Fuck him.

And not literally, unfortunately.

At some point, Nero faints.

Even if most of his physical needs have been put aside in favor of his heat, he still does need to sleep, even if said sleep came in broken-up, increasingly feverish increments. He can feel himself quickly slipping out of true awareness, the minor clarity that he’d managed to cling to earlier in the day quickly slipping from his fingers, replaced by a not entirely pleasant cloud of confusion.

He drifts in and out of consciousness, only truly awakening when the painful need from his heat overrides his general exhaustion and forces him into trying to get off again, rubbing and humping himself weakly against whatever surface he’d woken up on.

This current heat is a lot worse than the other ones he’s been through--maybe it’s because he hasn’t had one in a while, or maybe because he actually had a chance at being happy and chose not to take it, or maybe because having Dante’s scent all around him fills with with an all-encompassing sort of ache, the emotional burden of his irrational loneliness pressing down on him along with everything else.

In short, he’s absolutely miserable, and he’s just about to give in and helplessly beg Dante to come in and do something about this when there’s a knock at the front door of the apartment.

Nero instinctively covers his mouth, turning his face into the carpeted floor underneath him in an attempt to keep himself quiet, not wanting to draw any more attention to him than was absolutely necessary.

Through his still foggy mind, he vaguely processes the sounds of Dante opening up the door and addressing the person outside--his brother, it seemed. There’s a lot of shuffling as Vergil gets himself situated, and then the two of them get into a conversation that Nero really couldn’t care less about, because the second that Vergil actually steps inside the apartment, his scent starts to mix in with Dante’s, oddly distinct from his, considering how they were twins.

Nero somehow finds himself pressed up against the wall, biting out his pitiful mewls into his arm as he grinds down on his fingers, shutting his eyes and trying to catch more of the scent. He doesn’t know Vergil at all, but the man smells so, so good, and Nero’s body knows that he’s a more than eligible candidate to come in and pin Nero down and properly breed him, and he needs that.

His mind protests heavily against this, a shudder of disgust rippling through him at the feeling of his own betrayal--he likes Dante, he cares about Dante, and it’s Dante who he wants to mate with for life, and yet, he knows for a fact that if Vergil were to enter this room right now, Nero wouldn’t at all be able to stop himself from begging the man to take him.

He’s unaware of the way that his own scent changes until it’s too late, his body purposefully changing it to something more completely inviting, communicating Nero’s absolute desire to be bred. He’d been trying his hardest to hold it back for Dante’s sake, but his self-control is rapidly slipping out of his grasp, along with his ability to think.

The conversation in the other room suddenly stops as they catch wind of the change, and Nero shuts his eyes, his breath stuttering in his chest as he curls in on himself. He hears something like a minor commotion outside, followed by another, slightly louder exchange that Nero can’t quite process, and ending with a muffled grunt of pain.

Nero briefly contemplates hauling himself to his feet and putting himself right in the room with them, freely out of his mind enough to happily do so, but he doubts his legs will support him. He tries anyway, having barely managed to push himself to his knees before the door is abruptly shoved open, and Dante—and Dante alone—enters the room, faint sparks of light-red electricity crackling around his form. Maybe it’s Nero’s delirium, but he thinks he can see the man’s demonic form rippling across his skin, the burnt-amber texture flickering across his human surface.

“What—“ Nero starts to say, before Dante looks down at him, his gaze filled with a clear desire, and Nero instinctively ducks his head, tilting it at an angle that so freely exposes his neck to the man.

With a wordless growl, Dante suddenly reaches down, his one his large hands curving around the back of Nero’s neck, the other hooking itself underneath Nero’s arm, and then Nero finds himself being roughly manhandled upwards as Dante practically drags and throws him onto the bed. Nero feels the breath escape him at the light impact against his back, his head still reeling from how absolutely good it felt for Dante to grab him.

Dante climbs nearly on top of him a second later, and Nero easily and obediently parts his legs for the man, feeling his slick starting to drip out of his entrance with renewed interest at Dante’s proximity. The last rational shred of thought that he still has tries to remind him that Dante had said he hadn’t wanted something like this, that he might regret it, and the only reason why Dante was behaving like this now was because of Nero’s scent.

The idea doesn’t do much to help him—if anything, it makes him more desperate as he whimpers underneath Dante, his hips jerking helplessly upwards as he grinds himself against Dante’s thigh.

Dante’s hand reaches out and pins his lower half harshly against the mattress, keeping Nero still with a reassuring sort of force before he drops his head into the crook of Nero’s neck and inhales deeply, a low, satisfied growl rumbling in his chest.

“This what you want?” Dante asks, his voice deeper and tougher than normal, his words nearly stumbling over themselves in his impatience.

Nero feels Dante’s large, thick fingers brush up against his hole, his body already starting to clench down before he’s even been filled, and Dante chuckles lowly against his ear at the helpless whine he makes, rubbing up teasingly against the sensitive skin there.

“Yes,” Nero gasps out, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his head back into the pillows underneath him.

He thinks about adding in an extra “please” for good measure, but Dante abruptly pushes two of his fingers into him, and Nero barely recognizes the sound he makes as his own, nearly wailing in relief at how good and complete he finally feels. His own fingers can’t even compare to Dante’s—both in size and just in the fact that he now had someone else here with him, that he wasn’t alone in this.

Dante lightly curls his fingers inside of him, barely brushing up against Nero’s prostate before Nero is already coming messily across his own stomach, the tearing of cloth underneath him indicating that the bedsheets have finally reached their limit. His tail lashes out, wrapping itself around the wide expanse of Dante’s body, a pang of frustration shooting through him when he meets Dante’s still clothed-form instead of his bare skin, wanting to be as close up to the man as possible.

His vision behind his closed eyelids turns momentarily white, his hips jerking of their own accord as he desperately tries to ride out his orgasm. There’s a hand in his hair, petting soothing motions in between his ears, and it takes him a while to realize the soft, hiccuping noises are coming from him, that the wetness on his face are from the tears that prick embarrassingly at the corners of his eyes.

He doesn’t know if his incredible oversensitivity is because he hasn’t been through a heat in a while, or if it’s just because it’s Dante on top of him, doing these things, but whatever it is, he’s thoroughly exhausted and still desperate.

Dante hasn’t moved yet, has barely done anything, but his breath is already slightly shallow, his teeth nipping lightly at the sensitive skin of Nero’s neck. He slowly draws his fingers out, ignoring the way that Nero’s body desperately chases after his hand, trying its hardest to keep him inside.

“Nero, fuck, that was…”

His voice trails off into another low growl, and Nero yelps when the hand in his hair tightens, pulling his neck harshly to the side as Dante properly bites him, his sharp teeth drawing blood to the surface of his skin. His tongue lashes out a moment later, lapping up the coppery beads.

Nero isn’t sure what that means or what Dante has done, but everything immediately feels a hundred times worse, Dante’s already overwhelming scent becoming almost unbearable, the heat prickling at Nero’s skin feeling sharp and far too stimulated, and absolutely nothing is more horrifying than the fact that Dante’s cock isn’t inside of him right this instant.

The bite mark throbs against his skin, searing into him with an unprecedented level of heat, and his hand automatically reaches up to press against it. He doesn’t get very far, though, because Dante gives him a warning sort of growl, snatching Nero’s wrist out of the air and shoving it down against the bed. The sound goes straight to Nero’s core, and he instinctively falls completely limp underneath Dante, a whimper of apology threatening to break free as he glances up at Dante through his lashes.

Dante continues to lap at the bite, the feeling of his rough tongue dragging against Nero’s skin making Nero squirm helplessly underneath him, gasping for breath as his body tries to both get away and get more of the contact.

“Dante, I need—what did you—“

He tries to string together an actual sentence, frantically reaching out for any semblance of purchase to anchor himself to, trying to figure out exactly what is going on, but he isn’t so sure that he produces words as much as he does a long, drawn-out whine.

Dante doesn’t seem to be in much of an answering mood anyway, finally lifting his head up, one of his hands firmly grasping the crook of Nero’s neck as he looks down at him. His eyes are almost black, and Nero swears he can see a flicker of red in them.

Nero ducks his head a little lower, his breath stuttering in his throat in a near sob. He needs Dante, and Dante is right here and is taking entirely too long to do anything—

Dante grabs his hip with almost bruising force, quickly flipping Nero onto his stomach. Nero’s fingers curl into the sheets above his head as he faintly hears the tearing of cloth, and then Dante lifts his lower half slightly upwards and Nero feels the press of something much larger and firmer against his leaking hole.

The man doesn’t hesitate before snapping his hips forwards, burying himself completely inside of Nero.

Nero muffles his scream into the sheets beneath him, his toes curling and his back arching at the sensation, tension running through every part of his body. He’s never felt so good in his life, he was meant to have Dante inside of him like this, with the man so easily reaching into the deepest parts of him and filling him up. Dante feels as huge as Nero had thought he’d be, and Nero feels his thoroughly blissed-out tears against his cheeks as he struggles to breathe through the impossible wave of sensation.

His hips jerk back against Dante without his permission, the feeling of Dante’s cock dragging against his insides turning him nearly boneless with pleasure. Dante grunts out from above him, his hand pressing hard into an area near Nero’s head as he struggles to stabilize himself.

Then the man leans down, the hard and firm muscles of his chest brushing up against the bare skin of Nero’s back, and Nero mewls at it, so impossibly happy and fulfilled at being so close to Dante, without any layers between them.

His ears twitch at the sensation, his tail running up Dante’s sides and curling firmly around the man’s back, and he thinks that Dante chuckles at it—the man’s voice is strangely distorted in his throat, deeper and a little warped from what Nero is used to.

“You feel so good for me,” Dante murmurs into one of his ears, his large hand rubbing gently up and down Nero’s sides, and Nero actually purrs in delight at the praise, the embarrassing noise leaving him without permission.

“Can’t believe I waited this long, fuck—“

He feels himself tighten up around Dante, his insides holding Dante in, keeping the man’s cock safe and warm and exactly where it belonged, and it feels so good for Nero to know his place underneath Dante, that he’s doing exactly what he was born for, he was made for Dante to take his pleasure, and that’s exactly what Dante is doing.

Nero mumbles out something incoherent in response—probably meant to be Dante’s name, but had gotten lost somewhere and come out as an “I love you” instead—his jumbled thoughts sliding together in a foggy, blissful cloud.

Whatever he says, Dante doesn’t waste any more time in attempting to decipher it, instead drawing himself backwards and thrusting himself roughly into Nero, his cock slamming into Nero’s prostate at a punishing pace.

Nero wails at it, shuddering at the feeling of being so full, of getting forced open every time Dante pushes himself back in. He’s so much much smaller than Dante, his body can barely fit Dante’s cock in it, the skin of his stomach stretched taut over the bump where Dante’s dick nearly meets his insides, but it’s so good, the stretch is so good and so right, and he’ll take it like the mindless, fucked-out hole he is.

He can barely process anything around the moans and whimpers he keeps letting out, faintly registering the wet sounds of Dante moving inside of him. He feels like he should care more about this stuff, about how each of Dante’s thrusts pushes some of the slick still inside of him out, the way it’s getting all over the sheets and his thighs, evidence of his complete and utter lack of restraint.

He’s dimly aware of Dante’s hands against his waist, and it’s incredible how easily the man is able to hold him—he could snap Nero’s bones in half with just a little more force, but he doesn’t, his grip is so carefully restrained despite everything, and Nero feels so ridiculously safe and protected in his current situation, somewhere underneath the flood of everything else.

He wants Dante’s knot, he’s more sure of this than he’s ever been of anything in his life, and it’s not just instincts talking, either. Or maybe it is, and the pleasure that he’s experiencing is just influencing him into making the worst mistake of his life, but even if it is, and he’s in for more of the worst pain he’s ever felt, he doesn’t think it minds.

A small price to pay in exchange for getting to hold onto at least one, blissful second have knowing what it’s like to be bonded with Dante in the best and most intimate way.

He doesn’t know how to communicate any of this Dante, though, and he whines when he starts to feel Dante’s thrusts grow more uncontrolled and erratic inside of him, the motions causing him to drag roughly against Nero’s prostate. Nero thinks he comes again, but he honestly can’t tell--everything feels so good that it’s impossible to distinguish one moment from another, and sheets beneath him are already so thoroughly soaked in his fluids that he can’t tell the difference anyway.

“Dante, I--I want--” he pants out the other’s name, almost surprised at how scratchy and wrecked his voice sounds, the effort of saying his name rubbing against his already raw throat.

Dante bends over him, his grip on Nero’s hips tightening with almost bruising force before he slams in with a final grunt. Nero feels Dante’s body shudder against him, and then something deliciously thick and unyielding swells up at the base of Dante’s dick, stretching Nero’s hole open along with it. He claws against the sheets, trembling against the feeling, his body jerking away from the near-overwhelming sensation like he’s trying to get away, but Dante lets out a low, twisted sort of growl, applying more pressure to his lower half and forcing him to stay still.

He feels his eyes roll slightly back in his head as he’s forced impossibly wider by the knot, and Dante shifts somehow deeper in him, his cock twitching heavily inside of Nero, and Nero feels a warm wetness start to fill up inside of him. Nero instinctively tightens around his cock in a desperate bid to keep all of Dante’s cum inside of him, but it’s a mostly pointless effort, considering how Dante’s knot is big and thick enough to block off Nero’s entrance completely, preventing any of him from leaking out.

Nero whimpers pitifully underneath him, hearing Dante pant roughly against his ear, his hips shifting as he shallowly fucks into Nero as best as he can with the knot preventing him from fully pulling out. There’s so much of it, he can feel it coating his insides and seeping into him, and the already tight skin of his stomach starts to slightly swell from the pressure inside of him.

He chokes out a faint mewl, untwisting his human hand from the sheets with some effort and forcing it underneath him, pressing his fingers against his distended stomach, prodding lightly against the bulge that he feels. Some of it is Dante’s cock inside of him, as evidenced by the way that Dante grunts and shifts inside of him when he touches certain areas, but mostly the flesh of the bump is soft and yielding, the area only swollen with Dante’s cum.

Nero is absurdly pleased by this thought, his tail swishing weakly in pleasure behind him. His mind is starting to slowly clear now that Dante’s knot is inside of him and his body’s needs have been fulfilled, but he doesn’t come completely back to himself just yet, mostly too dazed and fucked-out, and he’s happy to simply lay here underneath Dante, getting filled up.

“Sorry, kid,” Dante mutters, pressing himself further into Nero, his lips brushing lightly against Nero’s bare shoulder, and Nero barely realizes that it’s the first coherent sentence that he’s heard from the man in a while.

“I know it’s probably a lot.”

Nero doesn’t know how to respond, how to tell Dante that a lot is not enough, that he needs more of this, possibly for every day of his life, because nothing feels better than knowing how much of Dante he can hold inside of him.

Dante exhales slowly, his muscles tensing against Nero.

“Let’s, uh…”

He curves an arm underneath Nero and very carefully positions them so that Nero is laying on his side, his back still flush against Dante’s chest, one of the man’s arms draped lightly over him. Dante is still inside of him, his knot preventing him from actually pulling out of Nero, but Nero absolutely doesn’t mind, even with the curtain of exhaustion rapidly falling over him.

Their new position seems to catch Dante’s attention, though, and one of his large hands slowly comes down to cover Nero’s stomach. He hears the way that Dante’s breath catches slightly in his throat, his dick twitching with a muted interest inside of Nero, dragging slightly against his oversensitive insides.

“Fuck,” Dante curses underneath his breath, his tone something like mingled amazement and arousal.

“You okay, Nero?”

Nero hears Dante say his name, knows that he probably should respond before Dante starts to get worried about him, but he feels unusually slow and sleepy, his body purring with a long-overdue sense of peace and content. His tail pokes it way out from between their bodies, lightly curling around Dante and stroking at the man’s arm, and Dante chuckles a little breathlessly against him, clearly relieved.
“Yeah, okay. I guess that’s good enough. We can talk later.”

Nero isn’t so sure what there is to talk about, honestly, but he’s so warm and safe and sleepy where he is that the amount of unknown in his future doesn’t faze him. He has Dante, and he’s filled with Dante’s knot, and he really can’t think of anything else he needs to complete him.

Dante moves behind him, and then a gentle hand drops into his damp hair, rubbing him lightly between his ears. The arm around Nero pulls him impossibly closer to Dante’s body, keeping him easily protected as Dante presses light kisses to his shoulder and neck.

“Go to sleep, kid.”

Nero doesn’t need his instincts to tell him to obey this time, and, more happy than he’s been in a long while, Nero passes out.

“So I guess I should explain this shit to you,” Nero mumbles around a mouthful of cereal, keeping his ears flat against his head in embarrassment, ducking his head as he unsubtly moves the cereal box in between them as a feeble form of cover.

“Go for it,” says Dante, who still smells like soap and fabric from his laundry mishap, when he’d accidentally blown up the machine while trying to clean things up in the time that Nero had been unconscious.

Nero takes several more bites of his cereal before he actually speaks, both to buy himself some time and because he’s absolutely starving in the aftermath of his heat. He’s had a few hours to think things over since waking up, and he’s decided that the best approach to take is the fastest one, to rip the bandage off before Dante could actually experience any pain.

“Well, we’re, uh…we’re mated. For life.”

Dante looks quite surprised at this revelation, his gaze dropping down from Nero’s face to his neck.

“Wait, you--you know about that?” Dante asks incredulously, to which Nero grows suddenly incredibly confused.

“What? Of course I know about it! That’s how it works for my kind!”

Dante’s expression of bemusement somehow deepens as he stares harder at Nero, looking down at the table where Nero’s demonic right hand still rests, then at the general direction of his tail, which is swishing rapidly in the air due to Nero’s current anxiety about the situation.

“Your...your kind being…”

“The--the cat thing! What else could I possibly be talking about?”

The answer dawns on him as soon as the words leave his mouth, and he follows Dante’s gaze to his own arm, flipping it over and curling his red-blue demonic claws loosely in his palm.

“Wait, you thought...this was a demon thing?” Nero tries unsurely, and Dante nods somewhat stiffly, looking as if he very much regrets having opened up the avenue to this line of conversation.

Dante clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand, and Nero realizes that the man is actually nervous. He’s rarely ever seen Dante rattled or insecure in himself--the man had a humongous ego, and all the skills and talents needed to back it up.

“Yeah. I mean, uh...okay, here’s the thing. When I bit your neck, I was sort of...claiming you. Like my instincts told me to. And because I did that while...sleeping with you, I pretty much made us bonded forever, in demon terms.”

Oh.

The irony of the situation is absolutely not lost on Nero, who barely manages to collect himself enough to realize that Dante is starting to shut himself away, something like shame bleeding into his expression.

“Okay, well, good,” Nero interrupts whatever train of ridiculous thought Dante must be having at this moment.

“Because you choosing to fuck me through my heat and...knotting me--made us bonded forever, in cat terms.”

“...Oh,” says Dante, quite eloquently, mirroring Nero’s thoughts on the subject quite well.

“Then this, uh...where does this leave us?”

Nero looks at him suspiciously, but he can’t read Dante’s expression, can’t tell whether the man is actually pleased or disappointed with this outcome. Despite all his experience in interacting with Dante, Dante is pretty good at making his expression unreadable when he wants to, and this is definitely one of those occasions.

“I mean, I can...you can break the bond, if you want,” Nero offers despite every part of him desperately protesting against such a thing, a phantom ache starting up in his gut just at the thought of it.

Dante looks duly alarmed, at the notion, giving a tiny, imperceptible jerk of his head.

“I can?”

Nero folds his arms across his chest, trying his hardest to disguise his own fear.

“Didn’t that weirdo brother of yours tell you anything?”

Dante gapes at him for several moments before looking away, something like actual embarrassment crossing his face, and Nero feels compelled to briefly glance outside the window, just to make sure the world was still turning.

“Verge was...well, he was explaining it to me, up until the point I sorta...punched him in the face.”

Nero vaguely recalls hearing the noises of something like a fight outside of the door, but he’d been in too much of a daze to process it at the time. His stunned silence evidently succeeds in demanding further explanation from Dante, because the man lets out a deep sigh before looking down at his hands, idly inspecting his nails with an air of obviously forced levity.

“I should probably send him a fruit basket or something. Fill it with cat plushies and the like. I was being, uh...pretty stupid at the time. It was just...you smelled like you needed me, all of the sudden. And when I went to get up to get to you, he tried to stop me, probably because he knew that I’d go and do...this.”

Nero bites his lip, instinctively shrinking underneath his words.

“Okay...and--and...you don’t like ‘this?’ That we’re bonded, I mean.”

Dante’s gaze flicks upwards for a long moment as he seems to debate with himself.

“I do like it,” he admits, something like guilt heavily lacing his voice.

“Everything about me being with you is a pretty good deal, for me. And I’m not about to lie to you and say I didn’t enjoy what we did earlier. But...I mean, Nero--you’re nineteen. I don’t think it’s fair of me to chain you to an old man like me, not when you’ve got pretty much your whole life ahead of you. Feels pretty dirty of me, honestly, all things considered.”

“...Oh,” says Nero, because apparently both Dante’s powers of speech and idiocy are rubbing off on him.

“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

Dante seems to take his blunt remark in stride, dropping his gaze to the table.

“Yeah, I know. It’s pretty bad. I’m sorry--I’ll try and ask Vergil if he knows any way to dissolve the bond--”

“No, not that!”

Nero swishes his tail through the air with violent force, running his hand through his hair in exasperation.

“I don’t think you get it, dumbass. My shitty body insists on doing this almost every month because it’s trying to set me up with a mate, and I’ve been waiting my whole life to find someone that isn’t a complete dumpster fire, okay? So finding someone like you--someone who is actually kind and warm and who I feel safe with is...is a good thing for me, and if you’re going to try and ruin it with your senile sudden insecurity bullshit, I’ll make things worse for you than that time they sugared your pizza dough instead of using salt.”

Nero flushes at the end of his rant, ducking his head and pressing his hand against the bite on his neck, a tiny, shy smile coming to his lips without his full permission.

“I like you, and you being old and stupid is part of you, so I like all of that too.”

Dante stares blankly at him for an entirely too long moment, until Nero is honestly worried that he’s managed to break something inside of the man. He hesitantly reaches out, about to wave his hand in front of Dante’s face when Dante suddenly catches it in his own, holding Nero’s much smaller hand in his own.

“Good to know,” Dante says, the usual smugness in his voice starting to quickly restore itself as he smirks at Nero, and Nero flushes, instantly regretting everything he’s said.

He squirms in Dante’s grip but doesn’t take his hand away from the man’s, too busy feeling irrationally happy at the contact.

“Okay, yeah, good, great--now let me go. My cereal’s getting soggy!” Nero insists, if only to cover up the embarrassment rapidly taking over him, his cheeks now a bright pink.

“I’ll get you a new bowl,” Dante answers easily, bringing up his other hand and covering up the other side, happily ignoring Nero’s squawk of flustered outrage.
“You can’t just waste the marshmallows like that, you asshole! Each one is fucking worth ten times you are!”

He keeps his expression as grumpy as possible, glaring up at Dante as best as he can with his hand still being held in both of Dante’s own, but his treacherous tail betrays him, swaying happily in the air and curling up at the very tip. Dante’s gaze is drawn to it with the motion, a look of pure amusement crossing his face.

“Doesn’t seem like all of you agrees with that,” he says, entirely too smugly.

“Well, you’ve badly misread the signs. Maybe you should call your brother and get another lesson, if he’s still up for talking to you, you barbarian.”

“Oh, you’re right. I should tell Verge about our newlywed status.”

“Our what?”

Dante laughs as he darts out of his chair, easily catching the cardboard cereal box that Nero throws at his head, tucking it underneath his arm as he turns away, presumably heading for his phone.

Nero watches him go, unable to stop the warmth in his chest from spreading to his face. With Dante’s back turned, he doesn’t have to hide anything from the man, his tail curling happily around his body as he goes back to chewing on his cereal, savoring each of the marshmallows individually.

They’re definitely good, are still Nero’s favorite food above all else, and he’ll defend their honor to his last breath, standing by them always.

The incredibly pure smile that he’d seen on Dante’s face, though, the one that’ll stay in his memories and in his life for a long, long time, is secretly worth more than all the boxes of rainbow marshmallow cereal in the world combined.