🍕 DANTE SPARDA | every kiss is a confession
summary: dante’s armour is laughter, but his kisses tell the truth in every language his mouth refuses to speak
word count: 2,016
content: dante x gn!reader, stream of consciousness, fluff, hurt/comfort, established relationship, kissing, yearning, emotional intimacy, jealousy, mild possessiveness, mentions of blood and injury, dante being emotionally constipated but trying his best
a/n: i have nothing to say for myself actually. i need to kiss him so bad (cross-posted from ao3)
Dante kisses you in more ways than he knows how to name because naming anything has always been the dangerous part. A kiss can still be passed off as impulse, appetite, poor judgement, something that happened because you were close and the whiskey had loosened the bolt on whatever door he keeps barred inside himself. Saying I need you, or I missed you, or sometimes I look at you and understand why people build homes instead of escape routes would require him to stand still long enough for the old ghosts to find him.
So he kisses you instead.
He kisses you laughing when you steal the last slice of pizza, one hand hooked around your waist while the other tries to wrestle the box back from you, his mouth crooked against yours because neither of you can stop smiling. He complains into the kiss that theft is a serious crime, sweetheart, especially when a man is starving. He lets you keep it anyway, of course he does. He always lets you keep the last good thing, even when he pretends to fight you for it.
He kisses you lazily on the couch with some terrible film bleeding blue light across the walls, his boots on the table, your legs over his lap, his thumb drawing thoughtless circles against your knee until he leans over the middle of a ridiculous line and presses his mouth to yours as though he has only just remembered you are there; as though your presence has surprised him, despite the fact that his body has been arranged around yours all evening. These kisses are slow, almost sleepy, flavoured by cheap beer or strawberry syrup or the olives he swore he picked off the pizza. The sort of kiss that begins without urgency and deepens slowly until the film becomes noise and the room seems to fold itself around the two of you, until his hand slides into your hair and something in his breathing changes. You realise Dante has forgotten to perform; forgotten the grin and the swagger and the smart remark waiting behind his teeth. Then he notices the silence growing to honest between you and murmurs something idiotic about your taste in cinema before you kiss him again to spare you both.
He kisses you in doorways when he is leaving for a job, quick and bright and careless on purpose. Two fingers lift your chin, his mouth brushing yours with a grin that says he will be back before dinner even when you both know that the job is worse than Morrison admitted, even when Rebellion sits heavy across his back and Ebony and Ivory wait beneath his coat, even when there is a particular tension in his shoulders that appears only when he understands the odds and has decided not to tell you. Sometimes you catch his jacket before he can turn away and pull him back for another, slower kiss. One that does not permit jokes, one that tells him you know—you always know. For a moment, his forehead rests against yours, his breath warm upon your face, his eyes closed as though he cannot bear to look at the expression that you're wearing and then he says, soft enough to bruise you, hey, I always come back. You hate that always is a word built to tempt the universe, you hate the jaunty little salute he gives you as he leaves, hate the empty hours that follow, hate yourself most of all for listening to his footsteps fade and believing him.
He kisses you when he returns with blood dried black beneath his collar and rents in his shirt already knitting closed. He kisses you before you can decide whether to strike him or hold him, his hands coming up around your face with startling care while you are still saying his name like an accusation. His mouth lands on yours hard, almost clumsy, relief stripped of every joke, every defence, every easy layer of him. You feel in the force of it the confession he will not make, that there was a moment out there when the blade went through him, or the building came down, or the world opened its red mouth beneath his feet, and he thought of you. Not heroically, not as inspiration. He thought of your coffee cooling beside the sink, your shoes near his door, your voice complaining that he never replaces the toilet paper. The mundane little relics of life he has somehow been permitted to enter. The fear of never seeing them again frightened him more than Hell ever managed.
He kisses you after arguments with all the frustration neither of you can fit into words. When you tell him that healing does not make pain imaginary, that surviving is not the same thing as being safe, that throwing himself between you and every danger in creation does not mean he gets to leave you standing outside the locked rooms of his mind. He paces and snaps and makes some bitter joke about emotional growth being above his pay grade until you tell him to stop, just stop, Dante. The room changes because you have found the wound beneath the comedy and his face goes blank in the way it does when he has nowhere left to retreat. Sometimes he kisses you then, crossing the space between you like a man losing a war, one hand at the back of your neck and the other gripping your hip as if he needs proof you are solid and warm and real, that you are still here despite having seen the ugliest machinery inside him. The kiss tastes faintly of anger and shame and desperate gratitude, his teeth catching your lip, his breath breaking against your cheek. You know this is not an apology, but it is the closest he can come while his pride is still bleeding.
He kisses your forehead when you are ill, though he insists this is only a highly advanced diagnostic technique. He says the fever seems serious and he may have to prescribe two sundaes and a complete ban on responsibility. His mouth lingers against your skin long after the joke has finished, his palm spread over your temple, his expression unguarded because your eyes are closed and he thinks you cannot see him.
He kisses your knuckles when he is being insufferable, bowing over your hand with all the exaggerated grandeur of a disgraced prince in a filthy red coat, asking whether you might grant a humble devil hunter the great honour of buying him dinner. Sometimes the comedy falls away before he lifts his head and his lips rest over the pulse in your hand, and there is something ancient in his face then, something inherited from a father who crossed worlds for love and a mother who stood between monsters and her children, something that makes you wonder whether Dante fears tenderness because it feels too much like prophecy.
He kisses your scars with none of his usual noise, whether they came from demons or ordinary life, whether they are pale and old or still tender at the edges. He never calls them beautiful because he knows pain does not become holy simply because it healed. He never tells you they made you stronger, as though you should thank the thing that hurt you. He only presses his lips there, gentle enough to make your throat close, and holds you as if the body in his hands is not fragile but precious. Which is worse somehow, worse because Dante is so careless with his own flesh and so reverent with yours.
He kisses you when he is jealous, though he will deny jealousy until his dying breath. He appears at your shoulder with an arm sliding around your waist and a bright, lazy hey, babe for the benefit of whoever has been standing too close, then brushes his mouth against your temple as though affection has just occurred to him spontaneously except his grip tightens when you laugh and tell him he is ridiculous. Later, when you are alone, he kisses you against the nearest wall with a low sound in his throat, half amusement and half something rougher, something territorial he usually keeps leashed because you belong to no one, because that is why he loves you. Even in the heat of it, he waits for your hands to pull him closer before allowing hunger to overtake restraint.
He kisses you when he is afraid, and those are the rarest kisses of all. The ones that do not look like fear until you understand him, until you realise that Dante becomes quieter when terror is real. The jokes stop not because he has nothing to say, but because every possible word sounds too much like a plea. When you are hurt and the blood on his gloves belongs to you, when his healing cannot help and all his impossible strength has become useless beside the mortal rhythm stumbling beneath his fingers, he bends over you and kisses your mouth as though he can breathe life directly into you. C'mon, stay with me he whispers against your lips, his forehead pressed to yours. There is no flourish left in him then, no legendary Son of Sparda, no demon hunter who laughs when swords pierce his chest. Only a frightened man who has arrived too late before and cannot survive becoming that boy again.
He kisses you in sleep sometimes, or near enough to it, when consciousness has loosened his grip upon himself and his body turns towards yours without permission. His arm lies heavy across your waist, his mouth finding your shoulder, your nape, the curve behind your ear. Small, unconscious kisses that ask for nothing and reveal everything. Awake, Dante can turn affection into theatre. Sleeping, Dante knows only warmth, safety, yours, and curls around you with his body between you and the world as if protection is not a decision but a reflex written into his bones.
He kisses you hello after hours apart as though it has been weeks, catches you around the middle and lifts you just enough to make you curse at him, laughing into your mouth while you clutch his shoulders. He kisses you goodbye as though goodbye is a harmless word, as though it has not chased him through every chapter of his life. Sometimes his hand remains tangled with yours after the kiss ends and, for one suspended second, neither of you moves. The whole world waits outside the door with its teeth bared and you feel him consider staying, you feel the desire pass through him like weather, fierce and almost painful. Then duty wins again.
But the kiss that ruins you most is never the dramatic one, never the bloodied reunion or the desperate collision against a wall. It is the kiss he gives you when nothing is wrong, when there is no demon at the door and no argument between you and no wound demanding proof that you are both alive. When morning has found him rumpled in your bed and sunlight has caught the silver of his hair and he looks at you without needing to turn the moment into a joke. His fingers brush your cheek and his mouth settles over yours with aching patience, not taking, not teasing, not apologising, simply loving you. You feel how difficult this gentleness is for him, how courageously he has chosen it. Battle has always been easy, leaving has always been easier, but the simple act of remaining beside you when no catastrophe forces his hand is perhaps the bravest thing Dante has ever done. So you kiss him back slowly, carefully, answering a question he has spent his whole life pretending not to ask. When he finally pulls away, he keeps his eyes closed for another breath, smiling faintly, almost disbelievingly, like a man who has fought his way through Hell and found, to his astonishment, that someone left the light on for when he came home.
@t1track - tagged as requested my darling 🖤
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