A

Now he watches unseeingly as the leftover pasta surprise rotates in the microwave - bless Kyrie for always making too much food. He sighs.

Maybe he overreacted. 

He stops the microwave just before it starts beeping. The plate is piping hot (why does the plate always get so much hotter than the food?) and not for the first time Nero kinda misses his demon arm as he has to give up on locating the potholders and settle for a dish towel to help retrieve his food.

He feels marginally better about everything after eating. The water stopped running in the bathroom about halfway through the food, so he can go there directly after putting things in the dishwasher- or he can find the potholders sticking out from under the couch, Carlo’s handiwork probably. He bends down with a sigh, and picks up the potholders… and a book… and a plushie… and- he stretches his arm into the dark for the last silhouette producing Kyle’s favorite action figure. 

Okay then. 

He puts everything but the potholders on the coffee table, where it will be in plain sight. The potholders go back on their hooks by the oven, unwisely reachable by thieving little hands. 

He trots into the bathroom and empties his pockets on the counter. A bit of spare change, a bolt that has him staring straight into thin air for a minute as he draws a complete blank on where he’s gotten that from and whether it could belong to something important - He will ask Nico in the morning. 

Then he pulls off all his clothes and stuffs them wholesale into the washing machine, turning it onto its highest setting, and adding a prewash for good measure. He’s really hoping it will remove the slime residue. Fucking demons. 

Finally he can get his long awaited shower. His hair stops sticking together in clumps only after the second round of shampoo, but at least it does stop sticking, and it’s not a having to cut it off situation. 

He feels human for the first time in days. 

And there’s Dante’s genuinely happy greeting shoving it’s way into his thoughts, him designating Nero as his favorite nephew - urgh, he rubs his face. Yes, he feels guilty for yelling at them. Now that he’s acknowledged it can he please stop thinking about it? 

No such luck. He sighs and turns off the water. Starts drying off. 

Idiots. 

Why hadn’t they just told him they’d returned? Would have saved them all this bother.

He huffs and pulls on some fresh underwear. They’d started keeping some in here, because Nico had thrown a fit about him walking from the bathroom to the bedroom in just a towel, calling it trauma waiting to happen due lack of structural integrity, and think of the children! The fact that they were all boys and had at some point objected to clothing all together and streaked through the house like scream-laughing blitzes, was apparently not a valid argument. Sometimes, most times, it was easier to just do as Nico wanted than to argue. Not that Nero hadn’t continued to argue, but it was one of the events that lead to the realization. 

Nero still doesn’t really understand Nico on a lot of subjects, or why she gotta drive him up the wall like she does, but she’s a good friend beneath it all. 

Nero doesn’t turn on the lights as he heads for the bedroom. He’s always seen well in the dark, never really understood what the issue was - of course he sees better in the light and he only sees color when it’s light, but he sees well enough in the dark. 

It got him in trouble a few times in the orphanage, when he’d gotten up after light’s out to go to the bathroom, only to be discovered by the matron, who’d evidently just heard something or maybe she’d intended on using the bathroom herself, but suddenly the lights would turn on, and he’d be startled into a freeze in the suddenly bright hallway and the matron would scream. Nero had certainly felt like she scared him more than he scared her with all her screaming, but he supposed turning the lights on only to have a pale white haired child standing there unexpectedly like some sort of ghost, could be rather shocking. Still, it’s not like she didn’t know Nero - maybe there had been something more eerie about him he didn’t realize at the time? He’d heard her confessing to one of the ladies that volunteered that Nero had to be some kind of demon, throwing glances across the yard at Nero who was pretending not being able to hear her whispering about him.

In retrospect, she had been right. Still sucked at the time. 

Now at least, he doesn’t have to worry about screaming old ladies when he moves around in the dark - only the occasional screaming Nico - and this is his and Kyrie’s and the boys’ house, their home, not some place that’d rather Nero got lost some day in the forest and didn’t return. He sighs, letting the feeling of home settle in. 

He walks quietly up the stairs, skipping the creaking fourth step by habit. 

Their bedroom is at the gable, at the end of the hallway. The sloping walls makes the place feel safely enclosed, while the window faces the Fortuna Castle Town skyline. When he opens the door his lips curl up reflexively, and his heart beats an extra beat; Kyrie. 

She’s moved all the way onto Nero’s side of the bed and is hugging his pillow. 

He stands there a moment, soaking everything in. 

He doesn’t intend to wake her when he slips into bed - on her side cause she has conquered his - but he cannot help moving close to her and encircling her in his arms. She turns towards him, relinquishing his pillow to snake her arms around him in return. Her eyes stay closed, but her lips turns up as she simply says “Nero.”

Nero feels fit to burst with warmth. “Hey, Kyrie. You can keep sleeping, I’m just gonna sleep myself.”

She hums an agreement, relaxing properly.

Nero intends to go to sleep. He even closes his eyes, but his mind circles back around to the events at the Devil May Cry.

“I can hear you thinking,” Kyrie yawns. 

“I’m sorry,” Nero hurries to apologize, “don’t mind me.”

“Just tell me what’s wrong, did something happen on your job?”

“Dante and Vergil has returned.”

“Are they okay?” Kyrie asks with worry, raising herself up on an elbow.

“They’re fine,” Nero grumbles, "they returned a whole week ago."

“Oh Nero.”

Nero sighs, “It’s fine, I already yelled at them.”

She huffs in amusement, “Only you could put it like that.”

“Dante called me his favorite nephew, and he actually sounded genuine, but I lost my temper. Vergil, he did nothing but frown at me - I thought - but apparently I’m not important enough to inform of their return, I had to find out from Nico. So I yelled, and maybe I went overboard. 

“What if- what if they don’t want anything to do with me now?” Nero finally gives voice to the thought that’s haunted him for hours.

“Nero, honey,” Kyrie says, leaning her forehead on his and he can her the smile in her voice. “I cannot speak for your father, but allyour interactions with Dante consists of you yelling at him.”

Nero’s lips curls up slightly before falling again. Worry, like a persistent worm.

“You didn’t see him Kyrie. He looked so happy and then I yelled until he wasn’t.”

“It seems to me,” Kyrie begins, caressing his cheek, ”that Dante simply showed you what was in his heart all along.”

He presses his lips together, leans into her touch. His eyes, annoyingly, feels a bit moist.

“Had a funny way of showing it,” he grumbles focuses on the annoyance, but there’s hurt he can’t really hide from Kyrie. The ‘dead weight’ still stings, as does the fact Dante had apparently known of their relation since the day they met and never bothered to tell him. Had to be a cryptic bastard.

“In the end, there is only one question, that really matters. Despite it all, do you still want to get to know your father and uncle?”

“You know I do, but what if they don’t, they couldn’t even be bothered- and then I was yelling like a brat-“

Kyrie put a finger on his lips silencing him. 

“Then, I will keep you all to myself and they can fuck off.”

“Kyrie!” Nero rears back in startled laughter. Kyrie giggles. 

“Don’t get used to it, that felt strange.”

Nero huffs, drawing her close. “What would I do without you?”

It was rhetorical, because it really didn’t bear thinking about seriously. Still, Kyrie answered simply, “What you feel is right, like always.”

-

Hoping you enjoyed :D This is very much a draft (you can tell by how there's a lot of bare dialogue), but I didn't feel like letting it sit. It will be prone to change before being posted on Ao3, and I had to stop now, because I started contemplating how losing Kyrie would really break Nero and whether he would force himself to go on in her memory or he would break, if he would whisper apologies because he couldn't be the man she thought he was - anyways that is way too depressing, and is not gonna happen in this AU, but ah, there's some very angsty potential there.

Next I plan to have some Dante and Nero interaction, gotta ponder how I wanna go about it.