![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
FIC: Four Dreams and a Nightmare (Devil May Cry + crossovers, Nightmare, R)
SUMMARY: Five things that never happened to Nightmare.
WARNINGS: Implied underage, implied incest, implied noncon.
I. Kissing Mr. Griffin
The boy was pale even against the white of the sheets, fragile-looking, unselfconsciously nude, and quite the most beautiful thing that Augustus Griffin could recall seeing in his thirty-four years of life. Relaxed and curled up in the big bed, he looked young, too young for comfort; it seemed hard to believe that he’d reached his majority only the week before. Augustus stretched out a languid arm and ran it along the lad’s torso, starting him from his light sleep. He blinked, twice, and stared up at him with large, dark eyes. His gaze, as always, was measured, steady, serene; alluringly (alarmingly) innocent. Augustus felt their impact like a physical blow. It had always been thus; even the first time he’d met the boy, newly arrived at the school from his own country, shy, homesick and possessed of very little English, there had been something about him that commanded attention, attention that Augustus gave quite helplessly.
He was smiling now, a sleepy, sated smile that spoke of absolute contentment. Augustus recalled with pleasure and a certain degree of self-satisfaction the evening’s congress; the heat of the boy’s mouth, the stolen sweetness of it, like the apples he had scrumped in his younger days; the starkness of that dark, rumpled hair against so much fair skin, the intoxication of his whimpers and moans, the warm caress of his breath. The urgency written on every line of his body when he cried out at last the surprised delight of a youth given in love for the first time. Oh, he was quite something, this lad. For all his ridiculous, unpronounceable foreign surname, his still imperfect grasp of English, the childlike quality that sometimes led him to ask the strangest questions, in moments like these, pale and still and smooth like the finest Grecian marble, he was, quite simply, perfection.
Mentally, Augustus shook himself.
“Miroslav?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You should go now.” He kept his voice gentle, so as not to make it sound like a rejection. “You’ll be missed in your dormitory if you don’t return soon.”
The boy nodded, and went about the business of collecting his clothes from where they were strewn about the room. At last, running an anxious hand through his hair in an attempt to flatten it, he presented a fairly respectable appearance. By the door, he paused for a minute.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Miroslav?”
“Sir, might you call me Demian? When we are alone here, I mean?”
Augustus smiled indulgently.
“Very well, Demian, I shall. But only when we’re here, understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Impulsively, the boy ran across the room, and stole one last kiss.
“Goodnight, Augustus,” he whispered, and left before any reply might be made.
II. Of All the Castles in All the World
Cursing fluently, the stranger threw his second knife at the creature that was attacking him. It disappeared into the rolling green mass with a violent hiss, but like the first it seemed to do no damage. He eyed his surroundings, but they offered few opportunities; the walls of the cathedral were steep and sheer, without so much as some broken masonry to be used as a missile. He swore again, eyeing his satchel where it lay at the foot of the altar, some five yards away. But between him and it was the creature, and even now it was advancing as though it meant to swallow him whole…
Dante decided enough was enough.
The stranger whipped around as Dante shot past him in a streak of red, making for the markings that would bind the beast into a solid form. He hacked at them furiously until they began to glow, while Nightmare screamed its rage and shot spines in his direction. Meanwhile the other man made a grab for his backpack, fumbled it open and produced a crossbow.
“Aim for the globe!” Dante yelled, pointing to where the creature’s ‘heart’ had begun to emerge from its shell. The stranger nodded grimly and took aim while Dante drew Ebony and Ivory. The crossbow fired faster than any he had seen, and in a matter of minutes Nightmare had sunk back through the floor, into whatever twisted dimension it had come from.
The stranger tilted back his broad-brimmed hat, looking at him curiously.
“Thanks,” he said, at last. “You know, reanimated puppets, ghosts and shadows, even a giant spider – they’re nothing in my line of work. But I never saw anything like that before. It would have had me if you hadn’t been here.”
Dante said nothing. The stranger shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.
“I never saw anything like those before, either,” he said, gesturing to Dante’s guns. “Might I take a look?”
Shrugging, Dante handed over Ebony, and watched as the man examined it closely.
“Quite remarkable,” he said at last. “I have a friend who would be fascinated to see one of these.”
Before he could say more, a party of marionettes broke through the door, brandishing bloody knives. Dante drew Alastor, but the stranger was quicker; he pulled something that looked like a little glass orb out of his pocket, and hurled it at the advancing demons. It exploded. Shrieking their rage and pain, the mob literally blew apart.
The stranger turned back towards Dante.
“Holy water,” he said. “Impact makes it spray further. The friend I mentioned? He designed that.”
Dante stared.
“Oh, by the way. I almost forgot. The name’s Gabriel Van Helsing.” The stranger stuck out a gloved hand.
Dante looked at him another minute. Then, he smiled broadly. Taking the proffered hand, he shook it heartily.
“You know,” he said, as they made their way back into the castle together, “this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
III. The Trumpet
The note sounded high, clear and pure. Sustained unwavering for far longer than human lungs could support it, every living thing on the planet awoke to its call, straining after some echo they could not quite hear.
To Demian’s otherworldly senses, it had seemed, not a note at all, but rather a violent rent through all his perceptions; silence that blotted out all sound, darkness that blocked all light, numbness that held back every touch. He felt himself wrenched out of his home, and when the call finished, he was standing in some grey, misty place without any beginning or end. He was in his human form, pallid and ghostly, but it didn’t seem to quite hold together properly; traces of his other self remained in the slightly viscous quality of his skin, and the trail of slime his bare feet left in their wake.
Griffon was here too, he was relieved to see, looking taller and more austere than ever in a slim, black suit. His friend seemed to have something on his mind, however; he greeted him with a small, friendly smile, but spoke no word. Soon, Phantom was stomping over to join them, dressed entirely in red.
“’Bout damn time, that’s what I say,” he growled. “Been waiting far too long to do this. Wait til they get a load of us down there.”
But Demian was no longer paying attention to him, because Vergil had arrived, and he seemed to wear the colour of night around him like a cloak, and his beautiful face was cold, and pale, and still.
Demian was suddenly aware that something was happening, something very, very important.
“What was that noise?” he asked.
“That was the Last Trump,” answered Griffon; the sound was weak, and thin, and full of pain.
“Where are we?”
“At the end of everything.” The voice was Phantom’s, but grown in strength; it sounded like the roar of a thousand armies.
“And… ” Demian wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. “What happens now?”
Vergil spread his great, black wings to the boiling sky.
“WE RIDE.”
IV. Overmastering Fear
Nightmare’s scream echoed in Dante’s ears as he plunged downwards, fighting his instictive panic as the thick, green matter of the demon’s body closed over his head.
He looked around, expecting attack at any moment; but none came. The place, like the whole of the Underworld, gave him the horrible, sick sensation of being trapped inside a living being. The walls pulsed and rumbled. Suddenly, he spotted movement, away to his left. He whipped round to face whatever apparition this monster had to throw at him, but equally suddenly, waving tentacles shot out from the wall behind him. He struggled, but as he thrashed more came towards him, and he was pulled inexorably backwards to lie pinned upright against the shuddering mass. He closed his eyes, trying to focus his energy and draw on his demonic powers, but his mind was racing and he couldn’t concentrate. Something brushing against his cheek broke his trance; startled, his eyes snapped open, and he looked up into his own face.
Vergil smiled at him, a thumb rubbing lazy circles on his cheek.
“My dear brother,” he crooned. “How nice it is to see you again.”
“You can’t – I killed you!”
“Oh yes,” Vergil nodded in agreement. “But I can still live – up here.” And he tapped a meditative finger against Dante’s temple.
“This isn’t real. None of it is real.”
“Of course not. But can you escape it?”
Vergil laid an oddly gentle hand on the wall behind them, caressing it lovingly with his fingertips.
“You’re such a good boy, Demian,” he whispered. One of the tentacles holding him released Dante, and curled briefly around Vergil’s wrist before subsiding.
Dante was still trying to break his bonds, without success.
“This isn’t - how – it’s supposed - to work!” he panted.
Vergil trailed a hand along Dante’s throat.
“Oh, but my dear brother, why not? After all, what you do in here is face your fears. And what could possibly be more fearful than those feelings that leapt in you the first time you saw me? What could be more horrifying than that twist in your gut when you first beheld my face?”
His fingers threaded through Dante’s hair; their foreheads just touched. Their breaths mingled as he spoke.
“Dear, dear brother; what could possibly scare you more – than this?”
And as he brought their lips together, Dante could only gasp and let him do it.
V. Reunion
It has to be fate, thinks Vincent. That was the only possible explanation. She did have a sense of justice, after all. He’d suffered, and he’d fought, and he’d struggled, and he’d suffered some more, but somehow it had made him worthy of this.
Demian moves above him, lost in their rhythm, his face a study in ecstasy.
Somehow, in all the wild, chaotic world left behind in the aftermath of their victory, they’d found each other; and they’d both known, right then, that nothing else mattered anymore.
Demian’s tears drip down into his mouth, thick and salt and bitter, and he drinks them greedily.
Demain had run his fingers over the metal arm, kissed it, wished it back to human softness, loved it anyway.
The pitch of his moans is rising now as they climb to the peak together, knowing exactly where to touch and when to kiss.
Neither of them had looked a day older than the first time they met. Demian had loved how Vincent’s hair and grown long and thick, delighted in tangling his fingers in it. Vincent had loved how Demian hadn’t changed at all.
“No Lucrecia,” Demian pants into his ear.
“No ShinRa,” Vincent replies in kind, observing their private ritual. Their voices rise in a triumphant chorus.
“No chains – no bars – no fear – no Hojo -”
Demian looks down at him.
“Just you.”
And as they climax together, Vincent thinks that he can’t imagine a better fate.
WARNINGS: Implied underage, implied incest, implied noncon.
I. Kissing Mr. Griffin
The boy was pale even against the white of the sheets, fragile-looking, unselfconsciously nude, and quite the most beautiful thing that Augustus Griffin could recall seeing in his thirty-four years of life. Relaxed and curled up in the big bed, he looked young, too young for comfort; it seemed hard to believe that he’d reached his majority only the week before. Augustus stretched out a languid arm and ran it along the lad’s torso, starting him from his light sleep. He blinked, twice, and stared up at him with large, dark eyes. His gaze, as always, was measured, steady, serene; alluringly (alarmingly) innocent. Augustus felt their impact like a physical blow. It had always been thus; even the first time he’d met the boy, newly arrived at the school from his own country, shy, homesick and possessed of very little English, there had been something about him that commanded attention, attention that Augustus gave quite helplessly.
He was smiling now, a sleepy, sated smile that spoke of absolute contentment. Augustus recalled with pleasure and a certain degree of self-satisfaction the evening’s congress; the heat of the boy’s mouth, the stolen sweetness of it, like the apples he had scrumped in his younger days; the starkness of that dark, rumpled hair against so much fair skin, the intoxication of his whimpers and moans, the warm caress of his breath. The urgency written on every line of his body when he cried out at last the surprised delight of a youth given in love for the first time. Oh, he was quite something, this lad. For all his ridiculous, unpronounceable foreign surname, his still imperfect grasp of English, the childlike quality that sometimes led him to ask the strangest questions, in moments like these, pale and still and smooth like the finest Grecian marble, he was, quite simply, perfection.
Mentally, Augustus shook himself.
“Miroslav?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You should go now.” He kept his voice gentle, so as not to make it sound like a rejection. “You’ll be missed in your dormitory if you don’t return soon.”
The boy nodded, and went about the business of collecting his clothes from where they were strewn about the room. At last, running an anxious hand through his hair in an attempt to flatten it, he presented a fairly respectable appearance. By the door, he paused for a minute.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Miroslav?”
“Sir, might you call me Demian? When we are alone here, I mean?”
Augustus smiled indulgently.
“Very well, Demian, I shall. But only when we’re here, understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Impulsively, the boy ran across the room, and stole one last kiss.
“Goodnight, Augustus,” he whispered, and left before any reply might be made.
II. Of All the Castles in All the World
Cursing fluently, the stranger threw his second knife at the creature that was attacking him. It disappeared into the rolling green mass with a violent hiss, but like the first it seemed to do no damage. He eyed his surroundings, but they offered few opportunities; the walls of the cathedral were steep and sheer, without so much as some broken masonry to be used as a missile. He swore again, eyeing his satchel where it lay at the foot of the altar, some five yards away. But between him and it was the creature, and even now it was advancing as though it meant to swallow him whole…
Dante decided enough was enough.
The stranger whipped around as Dante shot past him in a streak of red, making for the markings that would bind the beast into a solid form. He hacked at them furiously until they began to glow, while Nightmare screamed its rage and shot spines in his direction. Meanwhile the other man made a grab for his backpack, fumbled it open and produced a crossbow.
“Aim for the globe!” Dante yelled, pointing to where the creature’s ‘heart’ had begun to emerge from its shell. The stranger nodded grimly and took aim while Dante drew Ebony and Ivory. The crossbow fired faster than any he had seen, and in a matter of minutes Nightmare had sunk back through the floor, into whatever twisted dimension it had come from.
The stranger tilted back his broad-brimmed hat, looking at him curiously.
“Thanks,” he said, at last. “You know, reanimated puppets, ghosts and shadows, even a giant spider – they’re nothing in my line of work. But I never saw anything like that before. It would have had me if you hadn’t been here.”
Dante said nothing. The stranger shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.
“I never saw anything like those before, either,” he said, gesturing to Dante’s guns. “Might I take a look?”
Shrugging, Dante handed over Ebony, and watched as the man examined it closely.
“Quite remarkable,” he said at last. “I have a friend who would be fascinated to see one of these.”
Before he could say more, a party of marionettes broke through the door, brandishing bloody knives. Dante drew Alastor, but the stranger was quicker; he pulled something that looked like a little glass orb out of his pocket, and hurled it at the advancing demons. It exploded. Shrieking their rage and pain, the mob literally blew apart.
The stranger turned back towards Dante.
“Holy water,” he said. “Impact makes it spray further. The friend I mentioned? He designed that.”
Dante stared.
“Oh, by the way. I almost forgot. The name’s Gabriel Van Helsing.” The stranger stuck out a gloved hand.
Dante looked at him another minute. Then, he smiled broadly. Taking the proffered hand, he shook it heartily.
“You know,” he said, as they made their way back into the castle together, “this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
III. The Trumpet
The note sounded high, clear and pure. Sustained unwavering for far longer than human lungs could support it, every living thing on the planet awoke to its call, straining after some echo they could not quite hear.
To Demian’s otherworldly senses, it had seemed, not a note at all, but rather a violent rent through all his perceptions; silence that blotted out all sound, darkness that blocked all light, numbness that held back every touch. He felt himself wrenched out of his home, and when the call finished, he was standing in some grey, misty place without any beginning or end. He was in his human form, pallid and ghostly, but it didn’t seem to quite hold together properly; traces of his other self remained in the slightly viscous quality of his skin, and the trail of slime his bare feet left in their wake.
Griffon was here too, he was relieved to see, looking taller and more austere than ever in a slim, black suit. His friend seemed to have something on his mind, however; he greeted him with a small, friendly smile, but spoke no word. Soon, Phantom was stomping over to join them, dressed entirely in red.
“’Bout damn time, that’s what I say,” he growled. “Been waiting far too long to do this. Wait til they get a load of us down there.”
But Demian was no longer paying attention to him, because Vergil had arrived, and he seemed to wear the colour of night around him like a cloak, and his beautiful face was cold, and pale, and still.
Demian was suddenly aware that something was happening, something very, very important.
“What was that noise?” he asked.
“That was the Last Trump,” answered Griffon; the sound was weak, and thin, and full of pain.
“Where are we?”
“At the end of everything.” The voice was Phantom’s, but grown in strength; it sounded like the roar of a thousand armies.
“And… ” Demian wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. “What happens now?”
Vergil spread his great, black wings to the boiling sky.
“WE RIDE.”
IV. Overmastering Fear
Nightmare’s scream echoed in Dante’s ears as he plunged downwards, fighting his instictive panic as the thick, green matter of the demon’s body closed over his head.
He looked around, expecting attack at any moment; but none came. The place, like the whole of the Underworld, gave him the horrible, sick sensation of being trapped inside a living being. The walls pulsed and rumbled. Suddenly, he spotted movement, away to his left. He whipped round to face whatever apparition this monster had to throw at him, but equally suddenly, waving tentacles shot out from the wall behind him. He struggled, but as he thrashed more came towards him, and he was pulled inexorably backwards to lie pinned upright against the shuddering mass. He closed his eyes, trying to focus his energy and draw on his demonic powers, but his mind was racing and he couldn’t concentrate. Something brushing against his cheek broke his trance; startled, his eyes snapped open, and he looked up into his own face.
Vergil smiled at him, a thumb rubbing lazy circles on his cheek.
“My dear brother,” he crooned. “How nice it is to see you again.”
“You can’t – I killed you!”
“Oh yes,” Vergil nodded in agreement. “But I can still live – up here.” And he tapped a meditative finger against Dante’s temple.
“This isn’t real. None of it is real.”
“Of course not. But can you escape it?”
Vergil laid an oddly gentle hand on the wall behind them, caressing it lovingly with his fingertips.
“You’re such a good boy, Demian,” he whispered. One of the tentacles holding him released Dante, and curled briefly around Vergil’s wrist before subsiding.
Dante was still trying to break his bonds, without success.
“This isn’t - how – it’s supposed - to work!” he panted.
Vergil trailed a hand along Dante’s throat.
“Oh, but my dear brother, why not? After all, what you do in here is face your fears. And what could possibly be more fearful than those feelings that leapt in you the first time you saw me? What could be more horrifying than that twist in your gut when you first beheld my face?”
His fingers threaded through Dante’s hair; their foreheads just touched. Their breaths mingled as he spoke.
“Dear, dear brother; what could possibly scare you more – than this?”
And as he brought their lips together, Dante could only gasp and let him do it.
V. Reunion
It has to be fate, thinks Vincent. That was the only possible explanation. She did have a sense of justice, after all. He’d suffered, and he’d fought, and he’d struggled, and he’d suffered some more, but somehow it had made him worthy of this.
Demian moves above him, lost in their rhythm, his face a study in ecstasy.
Somehow, in all the wild, chaotic world left behind in the aftermath of their victory, they’d found each other; and they’d both known, right then, that nothing else mattered anymore.
Demian’s tears drip down into his mouth, thick and salt and bitter, and he drinks them greedily.
Demain had run his fingers over the metal arm, kissed it, wished it back to human softness, loved it anyway.
The pitch of his moans is rising now as they climb to the peak together, knowing exactly where to touch and when to kiss.
Neither of them had looked a day older than the first time they met. Demian had loved how Vincent’s hair and grown long and thick, delighted in tangling his fingers in it. Vincent had loved how Demian hadn’t changed at all.
“No Lucrecia,” Demian pants into his ear.
“No ShinRa,” Vincent replies in kind, observing their private ritual. Their voices rise in a triumphant chorus.
“No chains – no bars – no fear – no Hojo -”
Demian looks down at him.
“Just you.”
And as they climax together, Vincent thinks that he can’t imagine a better fate.