and your heart, love, has such darkness

// divide me down to the smallest I can be //

It's easily been over a week since they'd started this very important nonsense to get Asta's head screwed on straight about gore crows, and Danta is already over it. Don't get him wrong, he knows it's important and that it's imperative that his lover feels good and safe and all that other warm fuzzy stuff, but he's also not been able to share a bed with him, and sleeping alone is not something he's used to any more. Add in the fact that he's all but insisted that Asta keep the den in their room so he can have something familiar, and the Maverick has found himself sofa surfing in his own damned house.

The only saving grace is that there are plenty of offers for him to stay in other people's beds, granted.

But either way, he's tired and cranky and still probably only about 10% as bad as Asta must be feeling as they trudge up to the top of Peekaboo Rise, a brisk wind ruffling his fair hair, his coat buttoned tightly against the Flowerbirth chill. It's threatening to rain, it looks like, the rising sun having barely made a difference to the light given the thick grey cover of clouds overhead, but... fuck it, right? Better here than anywhere Asta has good memories.

"Remember when we drop-kicked that void tangleweed off this hill?" Speaking of good memories. Smirking, even tired, Danta glances over his shoulder to the butcher and finally falls to a halt. "Will here work?" he asks, nodding to a log up ahead that someone has been crafted to use as a bench to enjoy the view.

Dantalion

// put your, put your v-v-venom in me //

you see right through the lies in my eyes, and it's all underneath
if you take the time to scratch the surface,

It has been terrible. And the only saving grace for the butcher is his tour of getting gifts, visiting Stormbreak and the Greatwood in the attempts that he might be able to be away from home long enough for Danta to get some semblance of rest in his own bed, rather than having to stay on the couch. All that to say that he knows it’s been hard, and he hates that it is, and so he’s trying to make it go by as quickly as possible. Ripping the bandaid off so that he might be able to face his fears and swallow them down and grow.

He's dressed in all black, gaunt and pale from lack of sleep and the inability to stay asleep consistently, and at least with Danta he doesn’t have to pretend to warm up or not be as fucked up as he feels. He wears an overcoat, just in case it does rain, though he feels as if it were fitting to look as much like a drowned rat as he feels inside.

Nodding numbly, the butcher tries for a smile that’s equally as exhausted as it is a touch worried. He hasn’t seen a gore crow (or a crow of any kind) since staying the night in the Climb. His palm has healed, but the scar remains pale against his skin. “I do.” He murmurs, trailing after Danta toward the bench for the look out. “It’ll work well, darling.” He murmurs, withdrawing his hands from the pockets they’d been in as he nudges Danta lightly with his shoulder, trying to bring some warmth into the moment even if he feels already clammy and cold. Flashing him a bright smile, he steps up to the bench and waits for Danta to hop up onto it and shift or shift before he gets up there. “I will just need a few, I believe.”

Astaroth

i'll show you where the hurt is

// divide me down to the smallest I can be //

"Good." Letting his smile fade, he nonetheless feels a flush of warmth in his chest as Asta nudges against his shoulder, the Maverick resisting the urge to simply grab hold of the other man and nap right here in the dewy morning grass, and to hell with nightmares and the cold. Conjuring a fanged grin of his own as if to match the butcher in his mask for the day, Danta steps up to the bench and rolls his shoulders. "Then we'll make this quick," he confirms with a nod. "I'll try to get you a good selection. You can just gather them up, you don't need to touch me."

Probably a good idea not to in fact; Asta likely isn't aware of it yet, but as a corvid Danta isn't entirely appreciative of people pulling out his feathers when they aren't ready. Sighing out a breath, he tips the other man a quick wink. "Remember it's me, yeah?" he murmurs, before plopping to sit down on the log and then exchanging fair hair and pale skin for the black feathers of a gore crow.

Fluffing himself out considerably at the cold once he's fully shifted, Danta hops a bit so he isn't facing Asta, especially since their encounter with the crows in the Climb, and starts to preen through his feathers.

Dantalion

// put your, put your v-v-venom in me //

you see right through the lies in my eyes, and it's all underneath
if you take the time to scratch the surface,

The masks are worn, slid into place for both of their benefits. And the butcher keeps that easy smile on his face despite not feeling a single inch of the ease of which the smile suggests. “Alright.” He murmurs softly, slipping his hands behind him to clasp together at his lower back to prevent him from doing anything he might regret later. He’s fairly certain he’s in control of himself, but it was better to be safer than not these days.

Especially when he felt like he was a walking hairpin trigger.

“I will.” Because he’s going to watch him shift, so he doesn’t have a moment to think that it might not be Danta before him, despite how all reasoning would prove otherwise. So eh watches his lover turn into his nightmare, his stomach tightening and sinking, nausea burning at the back of his throat. But he stays still, eerily so, only the ashen tip of his tail flicking to show life. And he’s very silent as Danta preens, thankful that he isn’t facing him while he flits through his feathers. And he waits, hands clenched tight enough that he might bruise the inner webbing of his hand by the time they’re done.

Astaroth

i'll show you where the hurt is

// divide me down to the smallest I can be //

Given that he's not facing Asta, Danta is at least able to settle into grooming himself with ease, feathers fluffing up so he can run his beak through them and check himself over. The only advantage of couch-surfing, in fact, has been his ability to shift wherever he pleases for the most part, so he's relatively chilled out as he goes about selecting some feathers for the butcher's purpose.

A few soft and downy feathers are plucked out, set in a little crevice of the log where they won't blow away, and a similar treatment is given to his wings, one of them stretching out while the other remains tightly tucked in so Asta doesn't worry he's about to take off. Adding some flight feathers to the mix and one loose tail feather, Danta almost neurotically arranges them for Asta to pick up (that's crows for you) before hopping back to let him grab them.

He doesn't want to shift back until the feathers are safely away, just so they can say for sure that they have satisfied this part of the quest.

Dantalion

// put your, put your v-v-venom in me //

you see right through the lies in my eyes, and it's all underneath
if you take the time to scratch the surface,

He watches silently, a statue amongst the faint breeze as Danta preens, watching and blinking relatively in small amounts. Part of it is the exhaustion, part of it is the fear, but he feels almost like he’s not really all there as Danta preens his feathers. Perhaps that’s for the better, though, given that he hasn’t moved. He’s disassociating the best of his ability, without realizing it entirely.

So once he’s satisfied with all the feathers, Asta pays more attention when he hops down from the log so that he can collect them. His jaw is set tight and his smile has fallen for something carefully neutral as he swallows down the nausea that burns at the back of his throat. He has, in fact, bruised his hands as they unclasp and he reaches into the pocket of the jacket, snagging a glass jar to place the feathers into so they won’t be damaged. And only when it’s capped and secured back into his pocket does he exhale a long, slow, measured sigh. “Thank you.” He says to his lover, rubbing at the side of his face so he can shift back. It’s about now that the rain starts, adding to the gloomy feeling of the day so far, though it doesn’t seem to faze the butcher any.

Astaroth

i'll show you where the hurt is

// divide me down to the smallest I can be //

Shifting exactly where he's landed so as not to risk freaking out his lover, Danta appears crouched beside the log only to promptly straighten up, brushing himself off. "Any time," he tells the butcher, scrunching his nose as a fat drop of rain lands on his forehead. "Well at least we avoided it for this long," he mutters, waiting until Asta has properly tucked away the jar before he slinks forward to invade his space.

Not caring what he has to do to manage it, Danta slips his arms around the other man beneath his overcoat so he can draw him close, tail flicking at his heels and his face nuzzling into the side of his neck. "What else is left on your crow list?" he asks softly, figuring that even while it might be raining, he can enjoy leeching as much contact from the other man as he can before they have to get on with their day.

Dantalion

// put your, put your v-v-venom in me //

you see right through the lies in my eyes, and it's all underneath
if you take the time to scratch the surface,

Ignoring the rain to the best of his ability, the butcher focuses instead on tucking away the jar while Danta shifts back, already feeling some relief at the lack of crows in the vicinity now that Danta is back in his regular flesh. So much so that he doesn’t even mind as his coat is unbuttoned and his lover invades his space, easily winding his arms around Danta to press his cheek against the edge of one of his horns, blocking out the rain from coating the Maverick’s skin too much.

“Mm, training nearby them and.. hunting one.” He murmurs, checking off the mental checklist. It sounded so simple to say it aloud, and yet the apprehension of each one of them was something that he couldn’t quite fight through despite putting all of his energy and focus into it. It would require going back to the Climb, and while he wasn’t fond of the idea, he was content with the fact that he didn’t need to do them alone. “Thalassa offered her help for anything I needed.” He admits, sagging a little as Danta warms him up, even as the cold drops of rain fall from his antlered horns into the dark of his hair and the bridge of his nose.

Astaroth

i'll show you where the hurt is

// divide me down to the smallest I can be //

"You'll be done before you know it," Danta makes himself say, because it's better than let's train right now or so you'll be finished in two days then, right. Instead, smiling against the column of the butcher's throat, even as the rain starts to steadily hammer around them the Maverick can't deny that he's comfortable, inhaling a deep breath filled with the scent of honey and smoke and the faint tang of iron, before sighing it out again.

"She did? She's very good to you," he says, smirking at the mention of Thal. "I didn't realise you two had gotten so close. I didn't even know she was moving to the Grounds until she was already here. Should I be adding her to the list of regulars in the Dusklight?"

Dantalion

// put your, put your v-v-venom in me //

you see right through the lies in my eyes, and it's all underneath
if you take the time to scratch the surface,

“I am hoping so.” He agrees – because the alternative sounded terrible. He can only stay awake for so long in intervals, and sleeping without Danta by his side was proving to be more and more difficult, though he couldn’t force himself to say fuck it when the threat was very real. And so he waits, suffering quietly, because they both are struggling with it – as he can clearly tell with the embrace Danta indulges in.

And the butcher certainly takes his own indulgence, feeling particularly touch starved despite having very little reason to.

“She is.” Asta hums softly, letting the small smile bloom on his face. As for whether or not to make her a Dusklight regular on the list, he isn’t entirely sure. Not based off of that comment she’d made about Apopo. But… Perhaps. “It is relatively new. She was quite standoffish at first. She despised that I called her darling, and so I had to resort to calling her my dear captain.” Danta would feel the way his chuckle bubbles from his chest up to his throat. “She reminds me a bit of you, if I am being honest.” He teases lightly, nuzzling his face into Danta’s golden crown a bit before he presses a kiss to his crown.

Astaroth

i'll show you where the hurt is

// divide me down to the smallest I can be //

Asta isn't the only one feeling touch starved, evidently, because Danta's wicked hands are finding their way beneath the butcher's shirt before he knows it, pressing against his lower back as if to draw the heat from his very skin to warm his bones. Chuckling as well as he explains about Thalassa, it's only as he admits that they seem similar that the Maverick raises his eyebrows, peeping up from the side of Asta's neck to raise a brow at him.

"No one is like me," he challenges playfully, grinning. "Though given that the first time I met her we fought over a ramphire I was trying to eat, I suppose you have a point." It had been on their vacation in Torchline, now that he thinks about it, and Danta had liked Thalassa despite their rather prickly first meeting. "Either way, it's always nice to welcome another Ancient into the Grounds."

Glancing over Asta's shoulder at the sheets of rain continuing to sweep across the landscape, finally - and very reluctantly - the Maverick starts to peel himself away. "I guess we'd better head back," he says, quickly buttoning his coat against the downpour.

Dantalion

// put your, put your v-v-venom in me //

you see right through the lies in my eyes, and it's all underneath
if you take the time to scratch the surface,

He’s tilted his head enough to be able to spot the peek leveled at him, enough that it warms the butcher’s heart to see as he stifles the previous thoughts of crows to focus on this and the feel of his lover’s hands against his skin, sharing the radiating warmth beneath the layers of clothes he wears. Smiling to see that Danta has figured out the point he’s made, the butcher hums a soft laugh. “So perhaps she may be a regular, it is hard to tell.” He announces, as if to answer the previous question.

But he has to agree – that it is nice to have more of their kind amongst the Grounds, and ones that could care less about whatever penchants of bloodlust the others had. “You are quite unique, though. Do not think I think you otherwise, darling.” He hums through a growing more tired voice, even as he wishes Danta wouldn’t let go just yet.

HE does, though, reluctantly as it is, but once his coat is buttoned up, the butcher doesn’t let him get far – tugging him back against him despite the way he drips everywhere, how his hair is now soaked and the tines of his horns each harbor droplets like a Christmas tree’s lights. “I love you.” He says, a seriousness in his tone as if he’s worried he might forget to say it, tugging him back in against him for a kiss he’s needed for what feels like forever when it truly hadn’t been that long.

Once he’s satisfied, he releases Danta so that they can walk back, rather than stand here in the rain, drowning out the dew that had formed on the grass and leaving the ground rather mushy to walk on.

Astaroth

i'll show you where the hurt is

// divide me down to the smallest I can be //

"I suppose we'll just have to wait and see," Danta says of Thalassa, making a mental note to try and give her his own warm welcome into the Hollowed Grounds, if only so he can say that he's had a one-on-one meeting with her where they weren't trying to kill each other. "And we are both quite unique, I would say," he agrees, a satisfied smile curling across his lips, his tail swaying as if pleased with the compliment.

He's just managed to button his coat when he finds himself suddenly ferried back into the butcher's arms, his lips parting in a question he never gets the chance to properly say. Moaning a note of pleasure and surprise and letting himself relax into the other man's grip, Danta kisses him until he feels as if the breath has been entirely stolen from his lungs, left panting as they part from each other.

"I love you," he whispers, grinning and sidling up close to Asta so they can stroll back together. "And once this is over, you are all mine until I decide otherwise."

~FIN

Dantalion

// put your, put your v-v-venom in me //