i know I already sent a request and this may seem greedy but you write diavalen so well soooo👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀 diavalen fluff perchance??? So like it’s late at night they’re tryna sleepy sleep together but diav keeps waking up to the smallest things and ends up waking valen up as well but!! Valen comforts him and then kiss kiss mwa mwa then honk shmimimi time🥹🥹🥹🥹 and then Diav wakes up and trips on a rock or something then dies (just to make it canon)🥹🥹 I’m very normal about them
Small Things, Quiet Night
The room was dark in the way only late night could manage.
Not empty.
Just still.
The curtains were drawn, the lamp long since turned off, and the only light left came in faint stripes from the city beyond the windows, soft enough to barely count as light at all. Everything had gone hushed in that strange, private way that made the world feel like it had finally remembered to stop moving.
Valentine was asleep first.
Or at least he had been.
Diavolo lay beside him with one arm bent under his head, eyes closed but not fully surrendered to rest, the way he often was when sleep came too close and he refused to trust it.
Valentine’s breathing had finally evened out beside him.
For a while, there was peace.
Then the smallest sound made Diavolo’s eyes open again.
A soft shift of fabric.
A creak in the floorboards from somewhere in the house.
The brush of the blanket when the wind nudged the windowframe.
Diavolo went still immediately, every muscle in his body tightening in the dark as if the room itself had changed its shape.
Valentine stirred beside him.
Not awake.
Not yet.
Diavolo stared at the ceiling, jaw clenched, listening to the house.
Another sound.
This one even smaller.
He exhaled through his nose, irritated with himself for reacting at all, but already unable to settle back down. By the time he shifted his weight in the bed, Valentine had begun to wake.
A faint, sleepy hum.
Then a low voice in the dark. “...Diavolo?”
He froze.
Valentine turned slightly toward him, still half-buried in sleep, one arm sliding lazily across the mattress until it rested near Diavolo’s waist.
“What happened?”
Diavolo stared at the ceiling like it had personally offended him.
“Nothing.”
Valentine was quiet for a second.
Then he gave the tiniest sigh. “That is never true when you say it like that.”
Diavolo closed his eyes briefly. “There was a noise.”
Valentine hummed again, as if that explained everything.
Then, because he knew him well enough to understand what this meant, he asked in a much softer voice, “Do you want me to tell you it’s nothing?”
Diavolo didn’t answer right away.
The silence between them was not tense.
Just honest.
Valentine shifted closer in the dark, his body warm against Diavolo’s side, and reached up slowly to touch the edge of his jaw. The gesture was careful enough to feel like a question and familiar enough to feel like home.
“It’s just the house settling,” he murmured.
Diavolo said nothing.
Valentine’s thumb moved once against his cheekbone.
“You heard a door or the window or the wind or something equally dramatic.”
Diavolo’s eyes narrowed slightly in the dark. “You’re mocking me.”
Valentine’s mouth curved, though Diavolo could only just make it out in the shadows.
“Affectionately.”
That almost made him scoff.
Almost.
Instead, he remained very still while Valentine’s hand settled at the back of his neck, the pressure gentle and grounding.
“I’m sorry,” Valentine whispered, now fully awake enough to sound amused but still too sleepy to hide how fond he was. “Did the terrifying sound of the mansion breathing offend you?”
Diavolo gave him a flat look that Valentine absolutely could not see clearly enough in the dark, but he seemed to sense it anyway because he smiled against the pillow.
“You’re impossible,” Diavolo muttered.
Valentine shifted just enough to press closer, his forehead brushing Diavolo’s shoulder.
“You woke me up to say that?”
Diavolo was silent for a second.
Then, reluctantly, “...No.”
Valentine’s hand slid from his neck to his chest, palm resting there with quiet, steady warmth.
“You’re doing it again,” he said softly.
“Doing what?”
“Pretending nothing unsettles you.”
Diavolo did not answer.
Valentine knew the silence meant yes.
That was the thing about him. He could make an observation feel like mercy just by saying it gently enough.
He stayed like that for a few seconds, listening to the quiet with him, until Diavolo’s breathing finally slowed a little.
Then Valentine tilted his head upward and kissed the corner of his jaw.
Once.
Then again, a little more deliberately.
Diavolo’s shoulders eased a fraction.
“There,” Valentine murmured. “Better?”
The answer was nearly impossible to pretend against.
Diavolo let out a breath, low and rough. “You make everything sound ridiculous.”
Valentine gave a sleepy little hum against his skin. “It keeps you from taking it too seriously.”
A pause.
Then, in a tone that was all but muffled by the blankets, he added, “And it appears to be working.”
Diavolo’s mouth twitched in the dark.
Valentine noticed immediately, because of course he did.
That only made him more pleased.
He shifted higher in the bed until he could reach Diavolo properly, then kissed him more fully this time—soft and unhurried, the kind of kiss that did not ask anything of him except to stop pretending, just for a moment, that he was made of sharper things than he really was.
Diavolo gave in with the smallest sound.
Not dramatic.
Not obvious.
Just enough.
Valentine smiled into the kiss and made a quiet, satisfied noise of his own before pulling back only slightly.
“Still awake?” he whispered.
Diavolo’s answer came after a beat.
“...Less.”
Valentine’s grin was visible even in the dark now.
“That is what I thought.”
He drew Diavolo closer, one arm settling around his back, the other hand in his hair, fingers combing gently through it as if it were the easiest thing in the world to soothe a man like this with nothing more than touch and patience.
The room settled around them again.
The distant city was silent.
The house no longer seemed to care about making noises.
For a while, Valentine kept tracing slow shapes over Diavolo’s back until his breathing changed completely—deeper, softer, the edge in his body finally loosening enough to become sleep.
Diavolo was almost gone when he muttered, just barely audible, “You’re warm.”
Valentine’s eyes opened halfway in the dark.
“Am I?”
Diavolo did not answer.
A tiny, sleepy exhale.
Then silence.
Valentine smiled to himself and pressed one more kiss to Diavolo’s temple.
“Good,” he whispered.
By the time morning came, the two of them had shifted in their sleep until one of Valentine’s hands was still resting over Diavolo’s, fingers loosely tangled together beneath the blankets.
Valentine woke first.
He always did.
The room was pale with dawn now, all soft gold and faint blue, the edges of the night thinning as the city slowly began to move beyond the windows.
He watched Diavolo sleep for a few long moments, expression quiet and unreadable except for the softness that only appeared when no one else was there to witness it.
Then Diavolo began to stir.
Slowly.
Sleepily.
He opened his eyes, looked around the room, and immediately assumed the universe had something terrible planned.
Which, unfortunately, it did.
He sat up too fast.
His foot caught on the edge of the blanket.
He stood at exactly the wrong angle, reached for balance where there was none, and very nearly tripped over the small stone ornament by the bed.
Valentine, still half-propped on one elbow, watched with the calm of a man who had already accepted this was the most Diavolo way possible to begin a morning.
Diavolo froze.
Looked down at the floor.
Looked back at Valentine.
Stared at the stone.
Then—
He stepped forward.
Just one step.
The stone shifted.
Diavolo slipped.
There was a brief, profoundly undignified moment of silence where the world seemed to hesitate, as if unsure whether to intervene.
It did not.
The stone rolled.
Diavolo’s balance failed.
And in a tragic, completely avoidable chain of events, Diavolo —First Boss of Passione, feared and infamous—met his end not in battle, not in betrayal, but by tripping over a decorative rock and hitting the floor with the finality of a man who had always been one inconvenience away from disaster.
The room went still.
Valentine blinked once.
Then again.
“…Diavolo?”
No answer.
The city outside continued to wake up.
The house remained quiet.
Valentine slowly sat up, staring at the very unmoving, very unfortunately deceased man on the floor.
Then he sighed.
“Of course,” he murmured. “It was the rock in this reality, uh?”
And somewhere in the absurd little corner of the world they had made together, morning continued anyway.
