Chapter Text
There’s just something about them that pisses Nero off.
Them. Both. The pair, the duo, the twins. Maybe, in part, it was the long absence, left with barely a thread of hope to hold in his palm, to wrap around his scraped knuckles. Maybe, it part, it was also the blasé manner with which the sons of Sparda made their triumphant return, fucking up Nero’s life again whilst meshing into the flow of working and living in the shop.
Because, of course, Nero had made smart choices in his anger and grief, and had moved himself into Devil May Cry. She lacked a responsible caretaker, and Lady and Trish were hardly better than Dante himself when it came to the mess. Nero cleaned it up, gave the bartop a surface treatment it likely hadn’t seen since it was installed, reupholstered the rank-ass couch, and carefully wiped the portrait on the desk free of dust each day when he rose from sleep. It was a carcass of Dante’s entire existence, and in it, Nero learned more of the man in red than he’d ever heard from anyone else.
Dante kept receipts, for one. Two heavy drawers in his desk were filled with them, and a dense, musty pile of hand-written notes was stapled and clipped together. After reading how the dates went back over two decades, Nero realised was a ledger for Lady.
The old man really kept a tab on his dues, and it had no business to shock Nero like it did. He had called Kyrie that night after fumbling through dialing the codes for off-the-coast landlines on the rotary.
“He seems thoughtful,” she had told Nero, in that way of hers that also said, I know why this is bothering you, but I need you to figure it out on your own.
Nero, in turn, had kept her on the phone the whole night through to sort out each and every receipt, note, or bank statement, determined to find and settle business debts as his first task as the new caretaker of the shop. Mystery payments, monthly and older than Nero, were wired to an account he couldn’t figure heads or tails of, and he made the choice for it to be a riddle for later. Dante had funds in the only bank account that Nero could dig up. Enough to start paying off the important shit– power, water.
His energy followed a natural progression throughout the entire office, from the business to the personal. Despite his devilish fortitude, he gassed himself out of the bathroom with cleaning fumes, but the next time Lady had visited, she’d outright cheered when she’d seen.
And that was a whole ‘nother thing.
Lady.
She visited more than Trish, but didn’t linger as long. She never knocked, always let herself in, and was pretty ace at hiding her disappointment when it was Nero who called in greeting and not his uncle. Her confidence in Dante’s eventual return seemed real enough, and she had known him longer than Nero, so what wasn’t he meant to trust in that? The first time Nero had phoned her over himself and handed her a wad of cash, she’d laughed in his face.
“You think I want this from you? I don’t care if it’s from Dante’s own safe for Dante’s damn debt– he can get back to paying me when he’s home.”
Well.
Dante’s home, now, and Saviour above, Nero doesn’t know if he’ll kiss him or kill him first.
☆
He kisses him. (Eventually.)
☆
It starts, as many things do, with Dante.
It will end with Nero.
A month passes with all three men under the same roof, and it itches Nero in all the wrong ways. It pisses him off to see Dante at his desk, and it pisses him off when he passes him in the hall. It pisses Nero off when there are dishes in the sink, or when Dante opens his own fucking mail at his own fucking desk.
What makes Nero suspect this might be an excessive amount of being pissed off is when he wakes up on the couch and Dante is sitting on the floor nearby, working an oiled rag over the blade of his Devil Sword like it even needs the upkeep.
Wordlessly, Nero snarls, and the way it rolls up from his throat and vibrates in his sinuses amplifies the inhuman sound. Dante’s eyebrows have shot up to his hairline when he lifts his head to look at Nero, and he vanishes the sword and excuses himself without a word.
Aggression was a constant companion for the young hunter, and it was a fact of his nature from childhood that he tried to bring to heel. Hunting was his outlet, and killing demons made the gasoline in his blood catch a fire brighter than his roaring blade. More and more frequently, though, the sparks were catching when they shouldn’t be. Sharing a living space with the twins was a fucking trial. Vergil was unsocialised at best, and vicious at his worst, mercurial and temperamental in a way that seemed self-conscious at times. The man hadn’t the first clue on how to approach Nero, let alone talk to him, but he didn’t make Nero rage the way his twin did.
Inside there, somewhere, was V. And knowing how much of V was truly the heart of Vergil’s hopes kept Nero optimistic that there would be a relationship for him to find with his father yet.
After he was done being angry about having a father at all, first.
For all that he’d known Dante longer, Vergil was the predictable of the two. He kept a routine, and it was as much for his own mental wellbeing as just proving his habits spoke of better manners and grooming. Nero wasn’t sure when the man slept, but he was consistent in his haunts around the house, though decidedly unobtrusive.
A notable fact – Vergil hadn’t yet joined the hunts. When pressed, Dante was defensive, evasive in his flippant Dante-ish way. The truth was in the way his father carried himself, and in the dark of night, laying on the couch in the home Nero felt unsure about sharing, it occurred to him.
Dante was intentionally keeping Vergil out of action, and the responding attitude Vergil had about it was icy displeasure. Whispers of subjugation and control circled like a storm in Nero’s skull, and his breath whistled when he inhaled too quickly.
In a terrifying rush of shame and excitement, Nero found that aroused him. Vergil was a powerful entity, and Dante was keeping him under his thumb. Nero had defeated Vergil, and Vergil, Dante. Where did that put their dynamic? The entire point of intervening all those months ago was to keep the brothers from killing themselves and each other, but Nero had won.
Among devils, what did that mean?
The following morning, Nero whisks himself out of the office, feeling the trail of his father’s quaint, quiet gaze from the landing upstairs. Consulting Nico seems like the best course of action, and when he drives his little coup off the ferry, she probably senses him with her inhuman ability to hone in on his moodiness. Where Kyrie is a balm, Nico can be 40-grit sandpaper. She’s leaning against the half-open garage door, dumping ash out of a little glass pipe when Nero kills the engine. He can smell the acrid stink of weed before opening the door, but he doesn’t resist Nico’s incoming hug, taking her in with one arm and shoving her headband off her fluffy head with his free hand.
“Dick,” she accuses affectionately, and Nero blows a bubble of Juicy Fruit in her face in a cheerful response. He still squats down to pick up her headband, gesturing with his chin to the garage.
“Those Order notes, they still here?” He takes her offered hand, holding it as he ducks beside her into the garage.
Nico turns on him with open curiosity, dropping his hand with a whistle. “Well, yeah. It ain’t like I’m planning to give ‘em back. What’re you lookin’ for?” She raps prominent knuckles on one of many, many secure filing cabinets shoved between wire racks of mechanic paraphernalia. Nero rolls his shoulders. Their friendship has long crossed the ‘that’s kind of invasive’ line, so he prepares himself for her needling.
“It felt like the best resource for… y’know. Demon things.”
Without even looking over her shoulder, Nero knows she’s rolling her eyes. Nico twirls a hand in the air while flicking through the first drawer of files. Elaborate, idiot. Nero blows out a harsh noise.
“Maturity things. Devil puberty, shit like that. There’s got to be something, right?” He comes over to peer over her head, short as Nico is, and she shoves her sticky pipe into his hand instead.
“Take this, go say hi to Kyrie and the kids. I’ll see what I can sniff out,” Nico says, tapping her nose.
Nero goes.
He doesn’t mean to be a neglectful figure in their lives, but there is something transient in his being that urges him beyond the isle. Still, he appreciates that his weird little family takes him back into their arms with minimal fuss when he winds his wandering way home.
Kyrie beams so bright that Nero stops dead in the hallway, dumbly holding Nico’s piece. Eventually, he unsticks his feet, boots thumping heavy and muted on the linoleum. When he puts the pipe on the top of the fridge, Kyrie laughs openly and puts aside her book, rising with effortless grace from her reading spot in the family room. As is their custom, they embrace in quiet, breathing one another in. Sister, friend, lover. It never mattered what Kyrie was as long as she was his, and she was safe.
She brings him to the kitchen by the hand, and Nero feels suffused with warmth all over having her touch against his calloused palm. Her fingers are in no way soft, but they’re lovely, because she is lovely. On this end of things, Nico and Kyrie both work hard to manage the mobile branch and the kids. Speaking of…
“Where are the boys?” Nero takes the ground beef that Kyrie hands him from the fridge, taking it to the sink to run the package under water to thaw. Unrolling a lump of dough from cling wrap, Kyrie begins cutting out abstractly-round shapes for dumplings.
“School!” She looks pleased. “We finally finished the structural repairs on the building, and there’s enough volunteers to have half-days. They’ll be home soon, so…” A gesture at a simmering pot on the stove. “Soup.”
The day passes too quickly for Nero’s tastes, honestly. He savours the late morning with Kyrie and the afternoon with the kids. They play the usual backyard game of throwing each of the boys higher and higher in the air while Kyrie, and eventually Nico, watch on with varied enthusiasm. Carlo is both the youngest and the most fearless, and when he demands Nero throw him high enough to get onto the roof of the house, they call it quits.
In the evening, Kyrie joins Nico and Nero in the living room where Nico has begun to set out a sprawl of documents on the floor. She sets three lowball glasses of amber liquor on the coffee table, which has been pushed to the wall to make space for Nico’s findings.
“So, Nero,” she begins, in that patient, prodding tone of hers. “What brought you back? I know it’s not just because you missed us.” Nero doesn’t exactly wilt under the assumption, but he does grimace.
Nico speaks up then, saving Nero a little face, but only barely. “Young buck here has some questions about himself. Puberty is a messy time for us all, but imagine a second puberty. Woof!”
Nero rounds on the gunsmith with a scowl, but it loses some of its potency when he leans forward to peer at the documents she’s tapping with a cigarette-stained finger. “So that’s really it?”
“Yup.” Handing off a file, Nico reaches back and procures a volume. It reeks of magic, making Nero lean away from it on instinct, even as his nostrils flare to take in the scent of it. It’s an old book, and he wouldn’t be surprised if the textured leather of the cover was human. As unsettled as it makes him, he also wants to reach for it. His right hand curls into a loose fist, and he waits for Nico to say her piece.
“Now,” Nico pushes her glasses back up her nose and sniffs. “You an’ your daddy and Dante are unique, we just gotta assume. So, it stands to reason, your demon’s been dormant for most of your life out of self-preservation. We don’t know much about Dante and Vergil’s awakenings, and you’d have to be the one to ask ‘em about it anyway, but I figure that with yours happening well into adulthood, it’s got some catching up to do. It’s territorial, and it’s been alone, and now you’ve got two other big guys living in the same space.”
Humming and nodding, Kyrie reaches for the tome when Nero doesn’t, flipping it open. “Indāgātiō Daemonicae,” she reads aloud, quietly scanning the index before flipping the tome open to a bookmark. “This is a research journal?”
Nico grunts the affirmative. “My Latin ain’t as fluent as your guyses, but I could parse through it enough with Google.”
“You Google Translated an entire book in Latin?” Nero laughs openly. “You’re actually insane.”
“Yeah, whatever. Anyway. Your brain is all confused about having the guys back, you probably imprinted on the shop and your devil thinks it’s his, and they’re all up in your space. It’s pissing you off, making you all cranky. Not to mention,” Nico takes a slurp from her drink that Kyrie brought out. “You beat Vergil, right? Before they left? And Dante forfeited. You’re all messed up inside about the dynamic. Like a fucked up, devil wolf pack.”
Patiently, Kyrie says, “Wolves don’t actually do that hierarchy stuff.”
Nico, somehow, carries on. “It really might just be a matter of actually talking about your feelings. I know you live your life constipated–”
“I do not–”
“But it’s bad for ya! All of ya! It’s time for an emotional enema, Nero.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Go use your big boy words, and call us when you figure it out.”