i'm a long-shot and a bad bet

VESPER

Vesper considers with a slow tilt of his head, the kind that suggests he’s turning the idea over from every angle, weighing its shape and its shadow. The candlelight gilds the contours of his face in soft gold, but his eyes stay cool, assessing. "Be that as it may," he murmurs, voice low and thoughtful, "I’m surprised even she can get away with toyin’ around Mort's gates." It isn’t doubt, more a quiet acknowledgement of the rules most gods pretend to obey. Dygra, apparently, isn’t the sort who bothers with pretending.

Danta’s grin flares sharp enough to taste before he even speaks, the man’s thoughts spilling colour and implication long before his mouth confirms them. Vesper almost smiles at that, a subtle curve tugging at the corner of his lips as he hears the list spoken aloud exactly as he expected: experimenting, interrogations, dispute-settling, very rough sex. Nothing in it surprises him; the Maverick wears his appetites openly, every thought textured and hot with confidence.

Vesper begins to ask, his tone dry, amused, genuinely curious. "And in all that, are you usually the one givin’ or the one ta—" When a sudden, sharp pull seizes the core of him—clean, familiar, divine—and the shadows at his feet recoil like startled birds. His breath stutters once, the world tilting in on itself like someone has yanked the thread he’s anchored to.

There’s no flash of light, no dramatic flare; one moment he’s standing in the Rage Room, half-turned toward Danta and the next he's gone.

wake me when it's over
like a bad dream

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I thought of angels choking on their halos //

"You can feel free to take it up with her," Danta says, voice laced with smoke and challenge, his thoughts all but vibrating with the anticipation of seeing another deity's demigod question his dark lady. And there's nothing malicious in it - if anything, it's a true curiosity to witness the clash of two ideals at work (even if he's understandably biased in who he think would come out on top).

Meandering around the room as Vesper begins to talk, the Maverick barks out a laugh even before Vesper finishes his question - not that he actually gets to, you understand. Turning as the other man simply stops speaking, Danta is halfway to asking what's caught his tongue when he realises he's really, actually just disappeared. "Wh--"

Looking under the table and out of the door for good measure, he scoffs under his breath and shrugs. "Okay, bye."

Dantalion

// get them drunk on rose water //

VESPER

Vesper snaps back into the Rage Room like a bowstring released; silent, immediate, and with the unmistakable aftershock of having been dragged from one kind of heat straight into another where it hits him all at once.

The air here is cooler, the candles still flickering, the scent of smoke and blood unchanged. But he is different; cheeks flushed high with colour, the line of his jaw sharp with tension, the faint tremor in his breath betraying everything he’d normally bury beneath silk and shadow. And below the belt—no mistaking it—his body makes a far more transparent confession.

He braces a hand against the dark stone slab at the centre of the room, fingers curling into a fist so tight his knuckles pale. His teeth grind once, the muscle in his jaw feathering hard enough to ache. Shadows ripple around his boots, unfocused and restless, like they’re struggling to remember which room they belong to. A single, uneven breath leaves him. Then another.

When he finally lifts his head toward Danta, his voice is low; roughened, scraped raw by the six-second blur of heat he didn’t get to finish. "I’d quite like to smash somethin’ now." His blue eyes cut toward the open doorway, pupils blown wide and glittering like stars drowning in deep water. The silent command is unmistakable: close it. He doesn’t care whether Danta stays inside or out.

Only that the door shuts.

wake me when it's over
like a bad dream

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I thought of angels choking on their halos //

Danta's reaction is very subtle as Vesper speaks behind him as if he'd been there the entire time (he nearly jumps out of his skin, you're correct), fire licking at his feet as he whips around to look at the returning demigod. "Does that happen often?" he blurts before he can help himself or get a good look at the other man.

When he does though, the trill of dark heat that ripples through his mind and body might not be visible, but Vesper will get a taste of it nevertheless. One does not simply show up in a room where anything goes looking halfway to desperate for a fuck - and with a very prominent hello to go with it.

"Oh," he says softly, voice pitched low with a multitude of sudden understandings. "Dare I ask?" As for Vesper smashing things (wink wonk), Danta reaches back to shove the door closed with a secure, audible click, leaving them both within. "Where did you want to start?"

Dantalion

// get them drunk on rose water //

VESPER

Vesper doesn’t bother answering; not because the question offends, but because the truth is tangled, private, and half-formed even in his own mind. His glance toward Danta is cool, sharp, and edged with the kind of restraint that costs him something to maintain. Whatever reply he might have offered burns itself out behind his teeth.

When the door clicks shut and the Maverick stays on this side of it, something in Vesper settles as he turns away without a word, crossing to the shelves where rows of bottles stand like soldiers awaiting execution. He selects two—rum and tequila, the practical choices of a man who wants results, not tasting notes—and sets them on the slab with careful precision.

Then his shadows move.

They surge up the wall in a single violent sweep, shouldering every other bottle off the ledge. Glass rains down in a crystalline avalanche, shattering across the stone floor like a storm of broken stars. The scent of alcohol bursts into the air—sharp, sweet, intoxicating—and only then does Vesper look back at Danta, pupils wide enough to swallow the candlelight. "Drink?"

He uncaps the rum and brings it to his lips. The pull he takes is long, far too long, enough that his throat works in a desperate swallow and a gasp shudders out of him afterward. He presses the back of his hand to his mouth, jaw tight, the burn of the liquor dragging colour up his neck. Only when he can breathe again does he lower his hand, eyes glinting with something hot and restless. He extends the bottle toward the Maverick.

wake me when it's over
like a bad dream

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I thought of angels choking on their halos //

The delight that crackles through Danta's mind is immediate as Vesper starts the avalanche of breaking bottles. Glass shatters on the flagstones and the air fills with the heady smell of liquor, enough to make the eyes sting even without taking a sip. But Vesper seems intent on that and then some, the Maverick prowling closer, almost circling him, until he finds himself at the stone table as well.

"I'd love one," he purrs, accepting the bottle to take a long pull from it as well - though nowhere near as desperate for the buzz and burn of it as the other man - his free hand reaching out to grab at the waist of his pants to tug him closer. "You seem tense," he says, eyes flicking from the void of Vesper's gaze and down to the obvious tenting in his pants.

"Not sure a drink is gonna cut it."

Dantalion

// get them drunk on rose water //

VESPER

The hunger in Danta’s mind—the sharp, prowling heat of it—slides against Vesper like a balm poured over an already-burning nerve. It fits the shape of what’s still snarling under his skin, that raw pulse Colt left him vibrating with. The Maverick circles him like something dangerous and curious in equal measure, and Vesper drinks it in without shame, without restraint. But the instant Danta’s fingers curl into the waistband of his pants, his shadows react first. They coil around the man’s wrist in a swift, possessive snarl of darkness, not quite painful but absolutely corrective, as if the touch were premature, presumptive. Vesper’s eyes flicker, pupils blown wide, and in that microsecond he reads every flicker of intent in Danta’s thoughts—the lack of hesitation, the absence of guilt, the pure want threaded through with chaos and smoke—good.

Because Vesper doesn’t care whose lover he is, or who waits in some shrine bathed in her own blood and devotion. No part of Danta’s mind screams caution, and Vesper isn’t inclined to supply any on his behalf.

The shadows shove the Maverick’s hand lower, away from the lip of his pants and down to the rigid, straining heat beneath them. The motion is rough, explicit in its meaning. Vesper’s breath leaves him in something like a laugh. "I don’t think so either." The words barely escape him before his hands are already rising, cool palms cupping the sharp angles of Danta’s cheeks, fingers sliding into the man’s hair. He drags the Maverick forward with no gentleness at all, pulling their bodies flush together, the friction of it a bright, electric curse torn straight from the knot in his spine.

Then his mouth crashes into Danta’s. It’s not a kiss so much as a collision; hungry, fierce, teeth grazing, shadows shuddering around them in a low, answering growl as Vesper devours the distance between them like he’s been starving for something to tear into.

wake me when it's over
like a bad dream

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I thought of angels choking on their halos //

The laugh that spills from Danta's lips is all wicked enjoyment, especially at the corrective lash of shadows around his wrist. Even without Vesper's specific flavour of magic, it's all too obvious that the Maverick is the sort to enjoy pushing boundaries and putting his hands where they don't belong, so the semi-punishment is par for the course. Vesper doesn't seem to mind too much anyway based on where his shadows shove Danta's hand next, his fingers grasping and squeezing him through the straining fabric of his pants.

"Let's see if we can do something else about it then," he purrs, and already the other man's hands are cupping his cheeks and slipping into the mess of his fair hair. When Vesper's mouth crashes against his own Danta is ready for it, unsurprised by the tang of copper against the clash of tongue and teeth and lips, an encouraging hum rising in the back of his throat as his thoughts catch fire and begin to burn.

Tail lashing at his heels and his hand squeezing again at the hard, trapped press of Vesper's cock, Danta coils his arm around the other man's neck, fingers tangling hard in the back of his hair. Rocking into the delicious, not-enough friction of their bodies, it's only as he drags himself back for a sip of air that Danta hoists himself up onto the table soaked with liquor and glittering with broken glass, ferrying Vesper after him as if desperate for another taste.

Dantalion

// get them drunk on rose water //

VESPER

Vesper’s breath leaves him in a low, startled huff the moment Danta’s fingers tighten around the thick outline of his cock; sharp enough to pull a sound from him he normally keeps locked behind teeth. The wildfire rush of the Maverick’s mind is a perfect foil to the lingering, molten echo of Colt’s: bright where hers was shadowed, feral where hers was trembling. It hits him like oxygen poured onto something already burning.

His moan ghosts hot against Danta’s lips, half frustration and half hunger, and when the Ancient pulls back only to slide onto the liquor-slick table, Vesper’s shadows surge automatically. They sweep across the obsidian slab with a ruthless efficiency, shoving the worst of the glass to the floor in a rain of glittering shards, leaving only the smear of alcohol and the promise of bruises behind.

Vesper reaches for the Maverick’s top, and he doesn’t bother checking the seams before he pulls. If it tears, it tears. If it comes off clean, he drags it over Danta’s head in one rough motion, knuckles brushing the other man’s throat as the fabric is tossed aside to join the wreckage below. His hands find Danta’s hips with an urgency that trembles at the edges. Fingers dig in hard enough to bruise, hauling the Ancient forward until the heat of him is pressed tight against the rigid length trapped inside Vesper’s pants.

wake me when it's over
like a bad dream

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

// I thought of angels choking on their halos //

Raising his eyebrows, half surprised and half impressed, at the way Vesper's shadows are quick to clear the obsidian of the glass and other debris, Danta can't help but grin. He'd have happily suffered the cuts knowing that the room would put him back together afterwards, but he doesn't have time to say as much before the other man is seizing his shirt to yank it off his body. It does come over his head today, much to the Maverick's shock as well, and no sooner are his arms free again when Vesper's hands grasp his hips and drag him flush against the full, hard length of him.

"I'm sensing some impatience," he purrs, reaching up to brush long fingers against the sharp jut of his jaw, his free hand reaching out to unfasten the demigod's pants as if to offer the smallest bit of relief, but of course he can't do much else with them so tightly pressed together. Not for Vesper, anyway. "Allow me," he whispers, shifting back just enough to hook his legs around his waist, laying back against the cool obsidian so he can lift his hips and shimmy further out of his clothes.

Dantalion

// get them drunk on rose water //