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“… What the fuck is this?”
Nero wasn’t really one to turn down a free meal, but what Dante put down in front of him looked more like someone had scrambled, deep fried, then barbecued a piece of road kill. He looked between the offending plate and then up to Dante, who wore the forced smile of somebody who was dying from the inside of embarrassment but desperately did not want to appear so.
“Roast duck with spring greens and rustic potatoes served with a jus. Obviously,” Dante announced as he spread his hands in a ta-daa! motion, parroting something that he’d watched over Trish’s shoulder one time but never really quite understood (and probably called the chef an idiot for mismanaging their time over). “Ugh. Look, when I said I can’t cook, I meant it,” he sighed, then rubbed at the back of his neck with a sheepish grin.
Okay, that made Nero feel more than a little bad. He huffed through his nose and looked up into the old man’s face, but Dante flicked his eyes away as he folded beefy arms across his wide chest. Of all the amazing things this man could do, feeding himself was not one of them. Why was that so intensely pathetic and yet so fucking hilarious? No wonder the guy lived off of pizza and soda, if this was his best effort.
“Ah, well, if you’d really like to know… there’s this butcher downtown in the business district. I used to go get bones there for one of my clients since he has this dog, right? So I asked him to give me a good bit of the cow and he said he’d show me how to cut it if he could use one of my cool knives. Might be a change of career on the cards for me, never know,” Dante grinned and Nero couldn’t help but smile back up at him. His enthusiasm was infectious as always. “So yeah, cut it myself for ya. Got us something for afters, too. Guy thinks it’s one spoilt dog.”
Oh no, that made Nero feel even worse. He felt his face soften, the scowl and indignity fading away as he looked back down into the black mass on his plate.
“And I covered it in barbecue sauce! That’s the one you like, right?”
He remembered? Even though it had been so long since he’d mentioned it? Nero nodded and he could feel Dante’s face light up. A big bear’s paw of a hand came down and patted him on the shoulder as Dante turned away.
“Good, good. Anyway, try it or don’t, I’m just gonna try and clean up before Trish finds out. I can kick my own ass over these things, y’know?” Dante chuckled at Nero half-smiled at it all. As Dante took off for his shop’s crappy little kitchen, Nero took up his knife and fork and steeled himself.
To put it blatantly, cutlery was a fucking write-off. Dante had managed to cook the cut of steak into a slab of leather and hadn't even given Nero a proper knife for the job. So he just rolled up his sleeves, took off his gloves and rings and assorted wrist tat and picked the damn thing up. It was still warm, though the sauce had caramelised and burned into sticky tar so badly that Nero was quite sure he'd be stained for weeks.
Hoo boy. Here goes nothing.
Nero bit tentatively along the line he'd tried to score into the meat and was assaulted immediately by the taste of burnt-sweet and oppressive salt and the texture of old boot. He gnawed at it with all of his teeth and pulled at the tough fibres until they started to give. Chewing and pulling at the cremated steak left Nero feeling like an animal and yet, it… satisfied something in him. The more he chewed, the deeper into it he got, the more he could taste and the further he fell into a trance of consuming…
And he could feel it.
A warmth in his chest and in his stomach, dripping down his throat with the remnants of the meat’s juices. He paused to catch the breath that he found suddenly missing and let the flesh sit in his mouth, reduced to fibres and sinews that started to feel as if they were glowing, radiating. A grunt caught in the back of Nero’s throat and his brow furrowed as he prepared himself to swallow, which suddenly, somehow felt like some kind of a feat. The mouthful slid down his throat in a great mesh of meat strings and hit his stomach unlike many other things he’d ever had before— it was like Kyrie’s cooking, how that glowed in his stomach and satiated him, but turned up to eleven and beyond. This chunk of meat felt like the first tme he’d ever eaten properly in his life.
This blackened, burnt, gooey, horrendous offence to his palate was the most amazing thing to ever grace his mouth.
Nero couldn’t stop himself. He dove back into the steak and tried to chew off another mouthful, chomping at it like a feral dog until his teeth gashed it apart enough to come apart and he was left chewing, chewing, chewing, mouth running over with black as he moaned. He felt powerful. He felt energised. As vile as the taste was, it didn’t seem to matter an ounce to him as he savaged the desecrated meat with a demon’s energy and power.
Watching it was… nothing short of incredible. Observing from the doorway, Dante folded his arms and leant against the frame as Nero indulged himself in his feeding frenzy, snorting and groaning, slavering and pulling at the blackened flesh as if his life depended on it more than anything he’d ever known. To see him in such a primal state was unexpected and more than just a little bit arousing, but there was a time and a place for such thoughts and this was not one of them. Dante did, surprisingly, know when to turn it off; what was happening was far more important than any shallow want.
For the first time in his life, Nero truly, properly, fed.
Tears brimmed over in his eyes as he swallowed again and moaned while he caught his breath. With his head tilted back, Nero looked up into the dingy, bare bulb with something close to reverence, until he heard Dante’s steps approach him again… and he was overflowing with adoration. Nero beamed up at him with blackened teeth and dark trails running from his lips as he felt the love and care that went into utterly fucking ruining a good piece of meat. Nero held a round piece of bone and looked between it and Dante, who nodded down to it and watched as with the force of a monster, Nero’s jaws destroyed it in a single bite. He split it over and over, mangling it down until he could work the shards smaller, then try and clean his face.
“You, uh… got a bit here,” Dante grinned and pointed to the corner of his mouth… then spread his fingers, gesturing all over his face— Nero was a total mess, completely painted. He crunched on bone and did his best not to spit chunks of it everywhere as Dante creased up.
“Ha! Good stuff?”
Nero nodded with intense enthusiasm as he sucked at his fingers, craving more of the molasses-sticky sauce and blood blend. It was because Dante made it. Because he'd put his own power into it… it was all so overwhelming. His head spun with a strange kind of satisfaction, of love for him and the kindness of his gesture, the feeling of being loved and cared for, of being able to laugh, of not being in pain after eating. He swallowed the bone and cooked marrow and was left red-faced as he gasped for breath again.
“Y-yeah,” Nero managed, but he hung there as if trying to find more words. This wasn’t the time to be reticent. “Thanks. Really,” he finally came out with but the moment it left his lips, the words felt insincere. Dante didn’t seem to mind at all, though. He invaded Nero’s space as always and pulled the lad into his side in a one-armed hug while leaning down far enough to scoop him into his chest. Nero wrinkled his nose in something that was more pageantry at this point at being confronted with being shoved into Dante’s armpit but there was something comforting about him, about his scent and sweat and musk and in his heightened state of being, Nero could appreciate him on even more levels.
He looked up with the kindest eyes that Dante had ever seen from Nero and a pride filled Dante’s stupid, soppy chest that he leant down deeper to press his lips to Nero’s forehead… only for the little asshole to wipe his face on Dante’s shirt.
“Hey! Ya little snot!”
“That’s what you get for gettin’ sentimental!”
Dante just grappled him tighter and pressed his cheek into the crown of Nero’s head. The struggle barely started before it was over and Nero wrapped his arms around Dante’s waist, content for once— they smiled into each other, misdeeds forgiven in moments as Dante sighed, the sound so faraway and dreamy.
“I’m glad you feel okay. I’ll try to make it better next time, yeah?”
“You don’t need to. It was amazing.”
“Yeah, well… better on my clothes, at least,” Dante laughed softly as he reached his spare hand up under his now-soiled shirt and used it to wipe off Nero’s face as if he were a messy child.
Drunk on love and support, Nero let him. ❤︎