Lingering by the end of the pool table, he'd set his glass down on the border. Tifa looked comfy, almost as if she weren't in the epicenter of at least twenty-percent of that poor city's demon attacks. She'd been dangerous in a number of ways, hadn't she? Friendly looks like that had to be practiced and with all the banter she endured and returned in a day, he had to think she was a master. Whoever taught Tifa to smile must have been a marketing genius.
"Now, you're sounding scary," For the most part, he was smiling easily enough, knowing he hadn't any choice. She was kicking her feet, humming and being bright-eyed and shining up his cell. Almost briefly, his eyes drifted beside her to a darker part of the window, still as a painting. His own reflection. He didn't even look tired.
"Busy as you are, there's no way you had any time to hatch a plan. Almost makes me wonder if you ought to start callin' on more tabs," Dante replied almost cheerily without missing a beat. He understood the irony in that sort of advice for the number of times he'd drifted to sleep on her bar. Self-aggrandizing jokes came easier with drinks. "But hey, anyway. I'm curious."
His thoughts drifted, too easily lost when he was in the middle of his act.
Swinging a sword, over and over and testing the limits of his body, that boy could never tire. Since he was little, it felt like he had a bottomless well of energy and strength, things that couldn't ever be satisfied by sitting still. No matter what he did then, it wasn't enough to have fun by itself. He had to prove he was bigger and faster and better with a sword. As fate was kind, he was given a brother who could see everything like he did. That boy believed that the only other person in the world who knew him for who he was must have been the only one he wanted to measure up to. They could prove who was stronger and gloat and have fun. Like devils. It was their nature.
Fate was cruel for making him look his dead brother and his killer in the eyes every time he looked in a mirror. For that moment in the window, he'd held his own gaze with a blank contempt and condemnation, finding every reason to hate what he'd seen. Even so, it was only an instant. In only a moment's concentration, he'd managed to set it aside. Better to reflect on the sunshine poking through the mirror instead.
"So," Dante's lips created into a grin once again with practiced ease, "What made you go with demon hunting? There's gotta be other things that crossed your mind, right?"
Her small frame melts back into the seat behind her, large red eyes trailing him as his strong form stalks around the pool table to linger by the edge. A glass perched on its end, he bites back, all teasing words and a wolfish grin. It's a practiced smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, the kind that makes her want to push and get under his skin to find out who he is beneath all that performance and bravado. Sometimes, it's difficult to tell whether Dante is authentically himself or a carefully curated persona intended to keep people at arm's length. It's difficult to tell if he's the cheerful, easy-going lone wolf he wants people to think he is or if it's all an illusion to protect the fortress he's built around himself from a lifetime of hurt and torment. Sometimes, just sometimes, there's the barest hint of a faraway look, and the mask slips for a fragment of a second, making her wonder if he might be as broken as she is.
When the teasing smile leaves his lips and the light fades from his eyes, gaze trailing to the far side of the room, she thinks she might be right. It has gone just as quickly as it came, so fast that if she blinked, she would miss it, replaced once more by another performative, guarded smile. There is nothing in her voice or expression to show she has ever seen anything; instead, she just blinks at him. "Scary? But I'm sweet, said so yourself," she quips playfully, matter-of-factly, the teasing lilt of her voice taking on a sing-song quality intended to pull a scoff from him, punctuated by a coy look and a savouring swig of her beer. "I'm a woman, if there's one thing we're great at, it's multitasking." Manoeuvring the bottle to her lap, eyes burning with mirth, her head tilts a little to the left as she surveys him. "I can hunt demons, pour drinks, and have evil plans hatched before lunch, but if this is you offering to settle up your tab, I wouldn't say no." Her eyes are warm, her tone playful as she crosses one leg over the other.
His next question makes her pause, lips pursed thoughtfully, both sets of fingers coiling around the bottle in her hold as she ponders her response. It was simple, really; she can hold her own, and she's good with her fists. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of demon-hunting opportunities in these parts, it only seemed natural to put her skill set to good use. This isn't Tifa's first rodeo with monsters; she's fought them her whole life, and she's pretty damn good at it. Instead of telling Dante about how she watched her hometown burn to the ground and how she's fought her whole life to make those responsible atone, instead of sharing her experiences with Avalanche and the desire to be strong enough to protect in the aftermath of tremendous loss, she smiles. The same guarded, performative smile that had graced Dante's lips just moments before, the kind that refuses to give too much away when she's falling apart at the seams. "Oh, you know. Needed a hobby, and knitting was taken," she shrugs flippantly, the tension evaporating from her body in the seconds that follow until the smile becomes lighter. Until it’s genuine, warm, and soft, until she looks more like herself.
Then she's leaning forward until her elbows hit her thighs, to blink across the room at him. "Why? Worried the competition's getting too good?" she breathes, the teasing cadence of her voice accompanied by a raised brow.
There was the scent of spring air mixed with the acrid bite of oil and gas. He could smell rain from miles away, turning from the window once he found there was nothing outside that was going to interest him. He'd always hoped to smell blood and sulfur on the air to at least hint that there was something mean lurking, hunting and making avail for his sake to better his evening. It soured things further, assuring him that there would be no bombastic end to his evening and not a single spirited battle that hoped to test him.
He'd begun to wonder, turning to glance the way of the coat he'd set aside, a silent sigh lightening his shoulders when he went to pass Tifa and reach into one of the pockets. He'd found his keys, half turning to lean over her and drop them with a clatter on top of his desk. Even when she was sharp and merciless, she still seemed sweet to him. There couldn't have been anything good about what dragged her into his neck of the woods but she was fighting it admirably well. One by one, he unclipped the bindings that held his vest on, hanging it over his coat as if he'd settled on calling it quits for the night. Once it was off, he was left with a skin-tight undershirt with a handful of crescent gouges that exposed skin in places that would have been particularly career-ending to be run through with foot-long claws. A tiny slip more humble than before, he offered Tifa a dry, witty insight for her eager advertisement, "Masking the bitters with something sweet's a bartender's specialty. Maybe I ought to run that tab out longer the next time around?"
Finally, he'd tugged up the cover of one box, lifting up a slice to take a bite with a low hum of satisfaction. Salty, sweet and too good to be healthy, he'd sighed and listened--seating himself on the corner of his desk with his back to her. Each one of the open cuts in his shirt had a matching partner in the back. The off-rhythmic thumping of heavy rain fell on the roof over their heads suddenly, accompanied by a damning peal of thunder.
"It just makes me wonder," Since he was a child, he'd been playing that game. Picking locks and hot-wiring cars while boys and girls his age were adding up letters with their numbers and riding bikes in their neighborhoods, he found himself thinking of so many 'what-ifs' that he'd never experience for himself. How much had Tifa managed to experience? Prying wasn't his business but curiosity won over every time. "You're not in it for the love of it like I am and you've got the skills to run this neighborhood all on your own. Wouldn't even need to get your hands dirty."
As if he needed to emphasize it, he'd popped his thumb in his mouth to do away with a little fleck of sauce, "Just color me curious."
She watches with rapt attention as he finally turns from the window, the tension evaporating from his shoulders with a resigned sigh that makes the corners of her lips twitch. It's very much the sight of a man coming to terms with the fact that he won't be fighting any demons tonight. It's just him, her, a few pizza boxes, and some stiff drinks until the rain subsides enough for her to attempt the trip home.
In a few quick strides, his towering frame looms over the back of her chair. The sound of rustling fabric and the intense heat emanating from his body indicate that he's lingering there. Then she tilts her head, a curious look cast over her right shoulder just in time to see him tug the bindings from his chest. Her gaze immediately falters to his shirt, where it lingers as he moves around to perch himself on the edge of his desk.
Her perfectly arched brows knitted together, her grip tightening around the glass bottle nestled between her fingers as her gaze remained fixed on the torn fabric. The dim lighting of the room illuminated the edges of the jagged, symmetrical gashes in his vest on either side of his body. The remnants of large, sharp claws, from something that had got a little too close for comfort. She imagined torn flesh once lay beneath his ruined shirt, quickly rectified by his unnatural healing abilities. She had known many men who treated their survival as an afterthought, but Dante was something else entirely. Dante didn't just flirt with death; he mocked it, grinning in its face with a hollow recklessness that worried her.
She wants to chastise him, but she lifts her beer bottle to her lips instead, taking a greedy gulp to swallow down any words she doesn't have the right to say. Her gaze dropping from his bare flesh to her bare thighs instead. It's the sound of his voice that pulls it upwards once more, crimson irises lingering on the back of his silver head. He’s curious, subtly asking for more. It is curious, after all, that this red eyed woman from the far side of the planet shows up one day, much too handy with her fists and much too eager to help. Her lips part, opening and closing a few times before she makes any audible sound.
Images of Nibelheim burning, her father, Aerith, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, and the iron sky falling on top of the Sector 7 slums flicker in her mind until her stomach knots.
"There are a lot of terrible things back home," she starts, voice small, taking a few moments to collect herself before continuing with a little more clarity, "not all monsters have claws and sharp teeth." It's perhaps the first brutally honest thing she's said to him in all the months she's known him. It alarms her, being this open and honest with another person, let alone one she barely knows anything about. It terrifies her to admit things that might be held against her, that might be perceived as weakness, but she continues all the same. "I've been fighting monsters my whole life, and I'm pretty good at it," she breathes, fingers loosening on the bottle grasped between her gloved fingers. "I've watched too many innocent people die to sit around and do nothing."
Her mind is reeling when the last syllable leaves her lips, worried she's said too much, that she's made things wildly uncomfortable between them. She's almost glad he's facing in the other direction, so that she can't see the reaction on his face. "You do this because you love it?" Quickly tumbles from her lips, attempting to deflect the conversation away from herself. Do you do this because you love it, or is it because you've also lost too much and it dulls the ache inside you for a brief few moments, she wonders. Is it because you also feel the need to protect those who can’t protect themselves? "I doubt anyone wakes up one day and decides they're going to be a demon hunter," she says, punctuated by a disbelieving laugh.
What made Tifa admirable hadn't been her counts or her kills. There was something genuinely terrifying about someone half his size going into the same career and claiming a seat in his shop with the poise and courtesy of a girl at Sunday school. He could even see some of it in the dull obsidian reflection in his mirror. There was a certain stillness that made her seem even more modest than she'd tried to present herself but coating every word that she'd offered had been another layer he found dimly familiar. It often felt like she'd memorized the names of pets and kids, having bright-eyed enthusiasm for a chance to say something she'd been thinking of all day. It made it transparent when she was worried and who it was about.
It stung a little, putting her at distance, but it would hurt all the same with everyone else who tried to reach out and tug at the threads woven into his disguise. He finished his drink with a tip back and thought about what agony she must have felt to survive Sector 7 and to know there were people left behind, trapped, dead or buried so deep that no one could confirm which was which. Dante leaned onto one hand, his shoulder tilting down and dipping so he could meet her eyes straight. The scraps of a smile he'd kept on hand, just in case, were washed away in thought. Each part of herself she'd offered had become more real to him with each word and, without a shred of a doubt in mind, he understood precisely how much he wanted her to leave. Good people weren't supposed to find their perch in his shop.
He touched his glass to the neck of her bottle, dreadfully sly in his silence offer of a toast. He'd wanted her to follow his eyes as he'd offered her genuine praise but, as the words failed to inch their way out, he found what had caught them and kept them from escaping. It wasn't her fault that she'd been curious. Tifa's eyes, wide with the hope that she could make sense of a mystery and understand him, caught him and wrestled at his heart. His instincts, manufactured to protect everyone but himself, urged him to put an end to it. That she'd be kind despite the pain and effort of it made her more human than anyone else and it left lances through his heart. He hung over her, his eyes flashing grey beneath the halo of his hair held just over her, "Y'know, we can't all be heroes like you."
He smiled, sickeningly arrogant--or at least that's the way he wanted to seem. Dante was coarse, well aware of what it felt like to be beside him and to exchange words as if the greatest burden he'd undertaken was to think and speak with the veiled presence of a monster lingering beside, "To answer your question?"
"It's because I'm bored," As far as he'd been concerned, it was the least humanizing answer he could produce. A profession that brought misery and death to everyone who'd been involved and he'd just wanted to kill the time? There was no coming back from cruelty put to such a crude shape.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2025-04-17 03:29 am (UTC)"Now, you're sounding scary," For the most part, he was smiling easily enough, knowing he hadn't any choice. She was kicking her feet, humming and being bright-eyed and shining up his cell. Almost briefly, his eyes drifted beside her to a darker part of the window, still as a painting. His own reflection. He didn't even look tired.
"Busy as you are, there's no way you had any time to hatch a plan. Almost makes me wonder if you ought to start callin' on more tabs," Dante replied almost cheerily without missing a beat. He understood the irony in that sort of advice for the number of times he'd drifted to sleep on her bar. Self-aggrandizing jokes came easier with drinks. "But hey, anyway. I'm curious."
His thoughts drifted, too easily lost when he was in the middle of his act.
Swinging a sword, over and over and testing the limits of his body, that boy could never tire. Since he was little, it felt like he had a bottomless well of energy and strength, things that couldn't ever be satisfied by sitting still. No matter what he did then, it wasn't enough to have fun by itself. He had to prove he was bigger and faster and better with a sword. As fate was kind, he was given a brother who could see everything like he did. That boy believed that the only other person in the world who knew him for who he was must have been the only one he wanted to measure up to. They could prove who was stronger and gloat and have fun. Like devils. It was their nature.
Fate was cruel for making him look his dead brother and his killer in the eyes every time he looked in a mirror. For that moment in the window, he'd held his own gaze with a blank contempt and condemnation, finding every reason to hate what he'd seen. Even so, it was only an instant. In only a moment's concentration, he'd managed to set it aside. Better to reflect on the sunshine poking through the mirror instead.
"So," Dante's lips created into a grin once again with practiced ease, "What made you go with demon hunting? There's gotta be other things that crossed your mind, right?"
no subject
Date: 2025-05-05 08:46 pm (UTC)When the teasing smile leaves his lips and the light fades from his eyes, gaze trailing to the far side of the room, she thinks she might be right. It has gone just as quickly as it came, so fast that if she blinked, she would miss it, replaced once more by another performative, guarded smile. There is nothing in her voice or expression to show she has ever seen anything; instead, she just blinks at him. "Scary? But I'm sweet, said so yourself," she quips playfully, matter-of-factly, the teasing lilt of her voice taking on a sing-song quality intended to pull a scoff from him, punctuated by a coy look and a savouring swig of her beer. "I'm a woman, if there's one thing we're great at, it's multitasking." Manoeuvring the bottle to her lap, eyes burning with mirth, her head tilts a little to the left as she surveys him. "I can hunt demons, pour drinks, and have evil plans hatched before lunch, but if this is you offering to settle up your tab, I wouldn't say no." Her eyes are warm, her tone playful as she crosses one leg over the other.
His next question makes her pause, lips pursed thoughtfully, both sets of fingers coiling around the bottle in her hold as she ponders her response. It was simple, really; she can hold her own, and she's good with her fists. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of demon-hunting opportunities in these parts, it only seemed natural to put her skill set to good use. This isn't Tifa's first rodeo with monsters; she's fought them her whole life, and she's pretty damn good at it. Instead of telling Dante about how she watched her hometown burn to the ground and how she's fought her whole life to make those responsible atone, instead of sharing her experiences with Avalanche and the desire to be strong enough to protect in the aftermath of tremendous loss, she smiles. The same guarded, performative smile that had graced Dante's lips just moments before, the kind that refuses to give too much away when she's falling apart at the seams. "Oh, you know. Needed a hobby, and knitting was taken," she shrugs flippantly, the tension evaporating from her body in the seconds that follow until the smile becomes lighter. Until it’s genuine, warm, and soft, until she looks more like herself.
Then she's leaning forward until her elbows hit her thighs, to blink across the room at him. "Why? Worried the competition's getting too good?" she breathes, the teasing cadence of her voice accompanied by a raised brow.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-06 11:00 pm (UTC)He'd begun to wonder, turning to glance the way of the coat he'd set aside, a silent sigh lightening his shoulders when he went to pass Tifa and reach into one of the pockets. He'd found his keys, half turning to lean over her and drop them with a clatter on top of his desk. Even when she was sharp and merciless, she still seemed sweet to him. There couldn't have been anything good about what dragged her into his neck of the woods but she was fighting it admirably well. One by one, he unclipped the bindings that held his vest on, hanging it over his coat as if he'd settled on calling it quits for the night. Once it was off, he was left with a skin-tight undershirt with a handful of crescent gouges that exposed skin in places that would have been particularly career-ending to be run through with foot-long claws. A tiny slip more humble than before, he offered Tifa a dry, witty insight for her eager advertisement, "Masking the bitters with something sweet's a bartender's specialty. Maybe I ought to run that tab out longer the next time around?"
Finally, he'd tugged up the cover of one box, lifting up a slice to take a bite with a low hum of satisfaction. Salty, sweet and too good to be healthy, he'd sighed and listened--seating himself on the corner of his desk with his back to her. Each one of the open cuts in his shirt had a matching partner in the back. The off-rhythmic thumping of heavy rain fell on the roof over their heads suddenly, accompanied by a damning peal of thunder.
"It just makes me wonder," Since he was a child, he'd been playing that game. Picking locks and hot-wiring cars while boys and girls his age were adding up letters with their numbers and riding bikes in their neighborhoods, he found himself thinking of so many 'what-ifs' that he'd never experience for himself. How much had Tifa managed to experience? Prying wasn't his business but curiosity won over every time. "You're not in it for the love of it like I am and you've got the skills to run this neighborhood all on your own. Wouldn't even need to get your hands dirty."
As if he needed to emphasize it, he'd popped his thumb in his mouth to do away with a little fleck of sauce, "Just color me curious."
i'm sorry this is so late!!
Date: 2025-06-17 01:48 am (UTC)In a few quick strides, his towering frame looms over the back of her chair. The sound of rustling fabric and the intense heat emanating from his body indicate that he's lingering there. Then she tilts her head, a curious look cast over her right shoulder just in time to see him tug the bindings from his chest. Her gaze immediately falters to his shirt, where it lingers as he moves around to perch himself on the edge of his desk.
Her perfectly arched brows knitted together, her grip tightening around the glass bottle nestled between her fingers as her gaze remained fixed on the torn fabric. The dim lighting of the room illuminated the edges of the jagged, symmetrical gashes in his vest on either side of his body. The remnants of large, sharp claws, from something that had got a little too close for comfort. She imagined torn flesh once lay beneath his ruined shirt, quickly rectified by his unnatural healing abilities. She had known many men who treated their survival as an afterthought, but Dante was something else entirely. Dante didn't just flirt with death; he mocked it, grinning in its face with a hollow recklessness that worried her.
She wants to chastise him, but she lifts her beer bottle to her lips instead, taking a greedy gulp to swallow down any words she doesn't have the right to say. Her gaze dropping from his bare flesh to her bare thighs instead. It's the sound of his voice that pulls it upwards once more, crimson irises lingering on the back of his silver head. He’s curious, subtly asking for more. It is curious, after all, that this red eyed woman from the far side of the planet shows up one day, much too handy with her fists and much too eager to help. Her lips part, opening and closing a few times before she makes any audible sound.
Images of Nibelheim burning, her father, Aerith, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, and the iron sky falling on top of the Sector 7 slums flicker in her mind until her stomach knots.
"There are a lot of terrible things back home," she starts, voice small, taking a few moments to collect herself before continuing with a little more clarity, "not all monsters have claws and sharp teeth." It's perhaps the first brutally honest thing she's said to him in all the months she's known him. It alarms her, being this open and honest with another person, let alone one she barely knows anything about. It terrifies her to admit things that might be held against her, that might be perceived as weakness, but she continues all the same. "I've been fighting monsters my whole life, and I'm pretty good at it," she breathes, fingers loosening on the bottle grasped between her gloved fingers. "I've watched too many innocent people die to sit around and do nothing."
Her mind is reeling when the last syllable leaves her lips, worried she's said too much, that she's made things wildly uncomfortable between them. She's almost glad he's facing in the other direction, so that she can't see the reaction on his face. "You do this because you love it?" Quickly tumbles from her lips, attempting to deflect the conversation away from herself. Do you do this because you love it, or is it because you've also lost too much and it dulls the ache inside you for a brief few moments, she wonders. Is it because you also feel the need to protect those who can’t protect themselves? "I doubt anyone wakes up one day and decides they're going to be a demon hunter," she says, punctuated by a disbelieving laugh.
Don't sweat it, you're superb
Date: 2025-06-17 09:46 pm (UTC)It stung a little, putting her at distance, but it would hurt all the same with everyone else who tried to reach out and tug at the threads woven into his disguise. He finished his drink with a tip back and thought about what agony she must have felt to survive Sector 7 and to know there were people left behind, trapped, dead or buried so deep that no one could confirm which was which. Dante leaned onto one hand, his shoulder tilting down and dipping so he could meet her eyes straight. The scraps of a smile he'd kept on hand, just in case, were washed away in thought. Each part of herself she'd offered had become more real to him with each word and, without a shred of a doubt in mind, he understood precisely how much he wanted her to leave. Good people weren't supposed to find their perch in his shop.
He touched his glass to the neck of her bottle, dreadfully sly in his silence offer of a toast. He'd wanted her to follow his eyes as he'd offered her genuine praise but, as the words failed to inch their way out, he found what had caught them and kept them from escaping. It wasn't her fault that she'd been curious. Tifa's eyes, wide with the hope that she could make sense of a mystery and understand him, caught him and wrestled at his heart. His instincts, manufactured to protect everyone but himself, urged him to put an end to it. That she'd be kind despite the pain and effort of it made her more human than anyone else and it left lances through his heart. He hung over her, his eyes flashing grey beneath the halo of his hair held just over her, "Y'know, we can't all be heroes like you."
He smiled, sickeningly arrogant--or at least that's the way he wanted to seem. Dante was coarse, well aware of what it felt like to be beside him and to exchange words as if the greatest burden he'd undertaken was to think and speak with the veiled presence of a monster lingering beside, "To answer your question?"
"It's because I'm bored," As far as he'd been concerned, it was the least humanizing answer he could produce. A profession that brought misery and death to everyone who'd been involved and he'd just wanted to kill the time? There was no coming back from cruelty put to such a crude shape.