Chapter Text
Dante’s favorite color was red.
Red like his trademark coat that everyone in the city knew. Red like the pizza sauce and tomato slices on his favorite pies. Red like the strawberries and strawberry syrup on his favorite dessert. Red like crystalizing demon blood after he had dispatched a large enough group that the stuff had massed in ruby red crystalline clumps on the ground. Red like the sky was during a sunset and a sunrise. Red like the lipsticks on some very attractive people, sometimes daring eyeshadow and blush. Red like the deep rose red of his mom’s lipstick as she leaned down to kiss his forehead goodnight and red like his father’s eyes as he leaned down to do the same.
However…
A flash of silver, chrome, platinum and snowy white blonde.
He whistled as he looked up and saw the shiny form of the mysterious man that had been popping up across the city, seemingly taking out demons if he chanced upon them. Snatched waist, broad shoulders, dancer’s thighs, high heels and glinting metallic talons, these are a few of my favorite things Dante thought whimsically to himself as he saw the figure flick the gore from their blood red blade. The high tech visor covering the upper half of their face snapped back within the machine work of their neck, revealing their eye that even at this distance was so lightly colored that it was either icy blue or damned near white.
“Hey gorgeous!” He called from the ground, looking up at the stunner that was standing on top of a building.
Said stunner glanced down at him, using the crook of their elbow to clean any remaining blood before smoothly returning the deadly weapon to the sheath at their hip. Dante’s eyes were good, but it was hard to see what expression they were making especially with the exposed metal that made up their lower jaw. He hoped that it was not too negative, given that he had been making subtle attempts at flirting with this mysterious beauty the past several times that he had managed to spot them and had hoped to make progress in actually getting to speak with and get to know them better.
Did not even know their name, but the mystery just made them all the sexier in Dante’s book.
The visor snapped back and off they went with a high flying jump, propelled by long metallic legs and thighs had Dante swooning. Oh well, he would try again next time since it seemed like they were around to stay doing whatever business that they were doing. Gone in a flash of chrome, platinum, silver and snowy white hair.
Not a bad color, but his favorite color was still red.
Dante’s little mystery crush was not something that he was going to pursue. He had no name, no idea where they went when Dante was not finding them out killing demons meant for him, no idea what even was the deal with all the metal and if that meant a robot with some convincingly fake skin and hair on the top of their head or a very mechanized cyborg. Also no idea how to answer any of his burning questions about them. So he did nothing about it, because there was a tantalizing mystery and there was putting the footwork into solving it and the mystery was just not tantalizing enough for him to do that. So he would wonder a little in the slower hours and leave it as it was. Who knew, maybe the mysterious beauty would eventually further tempt him into learning about them, but for now he was fine with looking from afar.
He still made attempts to flirt when he did see them. Just something about the ethereal dancer shape of their figure, the narrow waist and stupidly sexy long legs as they flipped and practically flew through the air as they lept from perch to perch, their sword glinting in the smooth arches and neat slices that would have made Virgil jealous because they were far more elegant, artistic, arcobratic. Also Virgil did not have heels that he could wedge his sword into and repeatedly stab with his crush’s out of this world legs. His crush also did the mysterious thing way better, especially when they were standing at the corner of a very tall building and wearing the black trench coat that hid most of them, but showed just enough metal to make you wonder.
But it was just a crush and Dante could live with things as they were.
“Yo, Nero!” Dante called as he rapped his knuckles against Nero’s door.
From somewhere in the house, Dante heard Nero call out that the door was unlocked and he was free to come in. Stepping in lightly, Dante kicked his shoes off at the door. At Kyrie's request, he might have loved teasing the shit out of his hotheaded nephew, but Kyrie was a sweetheart who liked to feed him so he was nice to her. It was also why he took off his coat and hung it by the navy blue jacket at the door before going further into the house, looking for said hotheaded nephew.
“Hey! Punkass! Where are you--” Dante stepped into the garage and found Nero there… with his mysterious crush nonetheless! Interesting times and interesting places to meet the chrome beauty, but Dante never looked down on a bit of luck.
“Hey,” Nero greeted, waving a hand briefly as he looked around various tools and demonic scraps that Nico worked with. “What’s up?”
“Did you take all the pay for that Mansion street job?” Dante asked.
“... oh shit,” Nero grimaced, “I thought the envelope was too thick. Uh, shit, give me a second?”
The last bit was aimed at Dante’s favorite mysterious silver beauty, who only nodded before leaning against the wall with the clear message ‘I’ll wait’. Nero grunted out ‘five seconds’ before working his way out of the junk in the garage and then headed back into the house, leaving Dante and the mystery cyborg of the hour.
“Dante Sparda,” Dante greeted, flashing charismatic teeth.
The mystery metal person looked at him with a slow and casual turn of their head, before arching a perfectly shaped eyebrow at him, though not in a way that seemed mean or like a ‘and you think I care’ sort of way. This person seemed genuinely curious why Dante was talking to them at all.
“Raiden,” The platinum looker said, in an exceptionally raspy and metallic grating voice.
“So, if I can be nosy, what’s my sweet little baby nephew helping you with? If you don’t mind me saying, you don’t seem like you’re in the demon hunting business,” Dante said conversationally, because this just might be one of the few times that he was this close to Raiden before they went back to Dante flirting at a distance.
“What makes you say that I’m not hunting demons?” Raiden asked, sounding and looking genuinely curious.
“The demon hunting business is either sub-humans or women with really, really big weapons,” Dante joked lightly.
“I guess you could call me ‘sub-human’,” Raiden shrugged.
“No… wait, no that was a--” Dante quickly backpedaled. He had not meant to imply that Raiden was ‘sub-human’ because of all the metal.
But Raiden snorted, clearly unbothered.
“Relax. And I’m not hunting demons, though I take them out when I stumble onto them,” Raiden further chuckled, clearly amused by Dante’s flustered state. “I’m looking for some people and some machinery that shouldn’t be here. That’s all. This mechanic ‘Nico’, seemed to have stumbled onto some of the tech and I’d like to take it and destroy it.”
“Ahh… ah, Nico always does find some weird ass stuff to tinker with,” Dante hummed in thought.
Nero came back in, bearing the manilla envelope with his cut of the pay from that one job they had been on together. Dante gratefully pocketed it as Nero bore the other thing that he had come into the garage with, which looked like a weird arm with a lot of various mechanical bits poking out of one end. Raiden took the arm, looking it over before nodding gently, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a bank envelope to exchange it for. Raiden turned to leave with the arm and a promise from Nero that if Nico found anything else like it, he would contact Raiden to hand it over.
“Catch you on the flipside, gorgeous,” Dante grinned shamelessly.
Raiden paused, snorted with the fleshy upper part of his lips turning up into what had to be a smile.
“GROSS!” Nero yelled, shoving at Dante’s shoulders and leaving Raiden to make an exit while softly chuckling. “I DO NOT want to hear my uncle flirting in front of me.”
“I don't know anything about Raiden, this is the first time I’ve been this close,” Dante whined, letting gravity take him on a push and forcing Nero to support his weight or else they would crash into one another. “Tell your favorite uncle something about ‘em?”
“Like what?” Nero grunted, fighting against Dante’s bulkier weight.
“I don’t know, pronouns? In town long? Single?” Dante rattled off, only to get a forceful shove from Nero’s demonic arms as he finally gave up and just Devil Triggered to counter Dante’s superior strength. Dante just sidestepped casually, grinning when Nero stumbled a few steps only to quickly recover as he jerked around and snarled before snapping back, glowering at Dante.
“He and him I think, I don’t know but he’s mentioned an apartment so chances are at least a while. And again. GROSS,” Nero rattled right back at him.
“You’re such an uptight prude. Your Catholic flavored cult upbringing is showing,” Dante joked, laughing when Nero shoved him again.
Dante’s favorite color was still red, but he was starting to like Raiden’s color palette.
Dante was pleasantly surprised when Raiden started popping up more in his hunts, usually unwittingly jumping in a gorey fray that Dante was already entangled in or starting one hell of a demon killing party just as Dante was showing up. Their meetings also stopped being at such a distance that Dante could not even make out Raiden’s expressions, Raiden seemingly comfortable with actually joining the actual fight with him and allowing Dante to see all that lethal grace up close and personal. See snowing white skin and hair and platinum and chrome and gray and silver splattered with demon gore. Also bantering, the two amicably trading cheesy one-liners and quips with one another as they polished demon after demon off with more and more stylish flair.
The flirting became… mutual.
That was perhaps the biggest surprise of it all. Hell, the first time that Dante had fired off ‘hey good-lookin’!’ and Raiden had fired back ‘I’m not a mirror, Dante’, Dante had taken a demon spear to the gut because he had been stunned and lost focus on the demons around him. Thankfully Raiden saved him from taking a demon sickle to the chest as well, coming in with his sword stuck in his heel and slicing the offending demon’s arm off before throwing him a quick look of concern and then backflipping around to land on his hands and make several wide slashing circling slashes with his sword still clutched between his foot and heel. When it happened again, Dante and chuckled nervously while stabbing a demon through. The third time it just felt comfortable. Dante blamed the most constant people in his life and that usually fought demons with him being family (or like Lady who was pretty much a mean sister and Trish that looked like his mom) that he could so happily and easily fall into back and forth flirting with this guy that he was liking more and more.
Raiden was crack sharp, had a dry sense of deadpan humor that usually left Dante cackling even in the middle of battle, was a thing of beauty in the battle that sometimes left Dante dumbstruck, and was completely unbothered by all of the demon stuff. Even his demon stuff. Especially that last bit, since even over ten years of knowing each other, Lady still flinched at his Devil Triggering.
“How come you don’t ever eat with me?” Dante asked one day, both of them still splattered in demon gore. Most of Dante’s pay from his most recent job was stuck in his pocket and a fresh and piping hot pie was seated between them as they hung out at some park to cool down after whooping demon ass.
“Artificial stomach and kidneys,” Raiden shrugged, looking into the distance, “Mechanical organs don’t work like normal flesh organs. I gotta have a specific diet.”
“... Bro that sucks,” Dante said.
“It’s mostly just vegan, vitamins and smoothies, which isn’t terrible if you can actually cook or find a decent brand,” Raiden shrugged again.
“I’d be willing to try vegan pizza for you,” Dante said with a dramatic tortured sigh, turning to give Raiden a wink.
“Oh you brave soul, willing to try vegan pizza,” Raiden laughed.
“Extremely brave! Because I’m a sucker for legs that go on forever and someone that’s willing to sit there and sass me back,” Dante mock huffed.
Raiden rolled his eye, still chuckling.
The next time that they hung out after a job, Dante had scoped out a vegan place that sold some decent pizza and bought one for the two of them to share. He made sure to playfully grouse about it the entire time to make Raiden laugh between bites, even if they polished it off together and Dante got a few pizzas from there after that.
Dante’s favorite color was red, like the red of the pizza sauce that Raiden delicately cleaned from his metal chin while he was laughing at something Dante said.
“That’s my jacket, mister.”
Raiden snorted, not in the least bit bothered as he kept looking at himself and how Dante’s infamous red coat looked on him. It hung at the shoulder’s just fine, but with Raiden’s itty-bitty (read, sexy) waist it hung loosely by his sides where it just rested naturally against Dante’s own. But the red looked good on him, seemingly complimenting Raiden’s color palette. Dante almost wished that the rather bedazzled one he had in his youth had not been destroyed by time and bullets, because all of those talismans and ornaments would have really suited Raiden’s modified body. Raiden looked good in red, but he also looked really good in metallics.
“So come get it,” Raiden shrugged.
Dante was exceptionally glad for his superhuman strength, as it allowed him to wrestle Raiden and the few hundred pounds that he weighed, and manage to wrangle his coat off of him. The coat he tossed aside onto his couch, Raiden though he kept in his grasp, because Raiden was borderline giggling as Dante kept easily manhandling him and Dante was never one to easily let a beauty go if they were in his arms.
“You look good in red, you should think about incorporating it,” Dante grinned.
“Really? I’ll have to think about it,” Raiden laughed, “Your coat is rather cool--”
“Heeeeey, if you’re gonna steal my coat, I at least want some compensation,” Dante mock pouted.
Raiden seemed to seriously consider that for a moment, before taking hold of Dante’s jaw. Dante gave Raiden a raised eyebrow as Raiden seemed to seriously contemplate his face for a moment… and then leaned forward to kiss his cheek, sweet and cute as could be. It threw Dante through a loop for a good thirty seconds, while Raiden just stood there and looked smug.
“Yeah that’ll uh… that’ll do it,” Dante mumbled as he felt his face pink and Raiden just smirked like the evil, sexy bastard that he was.
Dante’s favorite color was red. But he also really liked Raiden’s metallics.