He's not certain if it's frustration or disappointment that she speaks with when she notes that scent is not as long-lasting as she would like. Whichever it is—assuming that it is either of them—Vergil finds the presence of such an emotion difficult to ignore. Vergil's smile fades a little upon hearing it. He likes to think that he does well in navigating Mizu's emotions when they arise. Their similar temperaments allows him to have a better sense of what may alleviate the distress or discomfort she's experiencing from them. But this is not one that Vergil knows even in the vaguest sense could be helpful for her in soothing whatever it is she feels over the impermanence.
So, he continues tracing her skin and he answers her question.
"It varies, depending on the circumstances," he says, turning his head slightly to press a kiss to her shoulder. "For example, on mornings I wake uncertain if I will see you that day, I wish I was with you so we could waste hours of the morning in whatever manner we pleased. But the closest I can be is imagining the weight and warmth of you on the bed beside me."
Vergil pulls back from resting his head against her shoulder to look at her properly. It's plain that he is looking at her that same way before they got into the bath together, but Vergil also holds in his mind's eye the image of her that he describes.
"The gentle sound of your breath and that look of peace on your face when you're still sound asleep, neither of which I possess the heart to ever willingly disturb because if I did not know it was a gift you've unwittingly given to me countless times, I would think it mere fantasy for all the calm and peace I feel within myself." The hand at her back slips away in favor of intertwining fingers with one of her hands. "But if I know I am to see you, I've no need for such visions to act as comfort in staving off a lonely morning. I've all my thoughts of what is to come even if it is a great test of my patience to have to wait and fill my time with other things between waking and when I see you again because all I can think of is what I wish to do with you, to say to you, to share with you.
"Mizu, you are among my first and last thoughts each day. There are reminders of you for me littered throughout each day I am not at your side that I'm sure you would find foolish. But you bring me peace and happiness each time I think of you, and I think of you often."
Familiar as Mizu is with her own thoughts of Vergil when they are apart, thoughts that only fade when her focus is so intense nothing but her current actions fill her mind, Vergil's descriptions are not that great a surprise. Her bed feels cold and vast when she wakes up alone in it, and she rises immediately, instead of the many hours Vergil gets her to stay when he's there. Without him, it's simply a place to sleep and to take the necessary rest to get to the business of her day. Nothing special.
It is indeed a lonely morning. Those weeks at Amrita, whatever else they did, introduced her to them by spending every night together. That might have continued afterward, save that Dante stayed with Vergil. Then Nero arrived. Mizu will not tear him apart from his family nor ask him to choose between them. A fool's errand, even if she were so selfish of him and his happiness to consider trying to keep him all to herself. That would never work, and if it did, in the end, it would only leave him alone. Far better that Vergil has people, the life he came to Folkmore to seek, with or without her.
Mizu does not understand how he can think so well of her, how thoughts of her can bring him peace and happiness without the dark shadow of separation that waits for them. It is of her making without any need of the fox spirit's interference to heighten the drama into a tragedy.
"I am not that good," Mizu declares, "You wonderful idiot."
She pulls him in for a kiss, hard and demanding. Demanding what, Mizu isn't certain, only that she needs Vergil and something from him. No, perhaps it's to give something to him. She breaks it off with a grunt of frustration to kiss and bite her way down his jaw and to his neck. There, Mizu makes yet another attempt at leaving her mark on him. She sucks and bites and pulls on his skin. Over and over, she gives herself to the effort, but the mark doesn't stay. It never stays. She leans her face into his neck, eyes damp. That image he painted will disappear after she does. Mizu knows it.
Mizu kisses him harder than he would expect, leaving his kiss in return likely a little clumsier than she would prefer. There is passion in the kiss, but there is something else he feels in the intensity behind her kiss that Vergil cannot name, cannot identify. Except, he thinks, he has heard similar talk before. Not as heated, no, and certainly gentler, but...
Mizu breaks the kiss with a noise that sounds near to a growl, but Vergil does not stop her. He does not, however, sink into the feeling of her mouth against his skin. There is too much disconnect between the act and himself, between Mizu and him for him to feel even the harshest press of her teeth as happening to his own skin. For all that Mizu has been confused regarding his thoughts of and feelings for her, never has she had such force behind her refutation of it. Not even when he called her beautiful had there been such an energy behind it.
He finds it... he finds it so difficult to understand. Months ago, he had taken her on the floor of her living room, and in that fit of passion sprung forth a greater intimacy than either of them had ever really known. Vergil let the words slip from him as quietly as he could for fear of a reaction like this one. But he received its opposite then.
She buries her face in his neck and Vergil wraps his arms firmly around her. He doesn't believe it will make a difference to how she's feeling, but Vergil doesn't know what else to do, how to possibly soothe what she's feeling. He considers it briefly, but declaring his feelings firmly and true would likely only produce a worse result. Mizu knows how he feels, and to some extent, that appears to be the problem. Asking her to explain it to him doesn't even cross his mind as a possibility. Teasing her even gently or at his own expense just seems cruel. So, he is left without any words. Not his own. Not borrowed. Useless as it feels to him, a warm embrace and silent patience is all he can offer.
The warm water fails to ground Mizu. Her emotions roil inside her, turbulent and unrelenting. Guilt and pain and sadness well up overwhelming. Mizu holds onto Vergil tightly and doesn't let go. She doesn't want to let go of him, not now, not in the future, not when she leaves. Yet she must. She will. That's always been how they will end. She knows it. He knows it. Damn well, the fox spirit knows it. He holds her tight, and Mizu holds onto him.
She feels his heartbeat against her, and Mizu focuses on the steady beat. It slowly calms her until her breathing feels less ragged. Until she feels more like herself. More at ease. As foolish as it is, it's him. It's Vergil grounding her as he's grounded her so many times before. The thought Vergil will come to hate her or despise her or wish he hadn't known her, once she is gone, continues to come to mind. It may be true, and there's nothing she can do about that. She's been clear about her goals, about her plans, from the very beginning.
Mizu continues to lean against him, and unlike when they spar or make love, she feels small. "I'm sorry," Mizu says softly, "That wasn't your fault."
Vergil deserves better. The least Mizu can do is treat him right while she's here. His feelings and thoughts toward her are wonderful, better than she deserves, but his and his to have. Mizu will not pretend either of them are perfect. Vergil's done terrible things, but he's never done them to her. He's never treated her anything less than well.
"Did you ever plan to stay," Mizu asks, "in Fortuna?"
Vergil doesn't need nor want an apology from Mizu, but he does not dismiss it all the same. He recognizes that it's part of Mizu's reassurance. While he feels strongly that he shouldn't need nor want that either, he does. Vergil is soothed when she says the reaction is not his fault, the implicit message being that he's done nothing wrong. It's easier to believe her now than it was over the noodles. Or, well, it's easier to accept in the moment than it was that night. Vergil isn't certain if it's because of that experience, or if he's just simply grown a little more confident that his overtures of love and affection are not wrong. No matter how uncomfortable such vulnerability may make either one of them, Vergil is certain that his feelings are not wrong. He just may perhaps misstep from time to time in how he expresses them, and that can be wrong albeit not intentionally so.
At her question, Vergil's gaze darts away to elsewhere in the bathroom. He has no desire to lie to Mizu—never has and never will—but the answer comes coupled with shame and guilt. It's not something that he allows himself to dwell upon, but that is the only way he finds peace from it given that the unintended consequences from his choice irrevocably shaped the rest of his son's life. Never mind the lingering question of whether or not Beatrice's life was cut short as a consequence of his absence. There is nothing that can ever truly make the guilt and shame with that leave him entirely with both of those things weighing upon him.
"No," he admits with his next breath. "I was merely there to gather what information I could about my father."
Her apology only came for Vergil's benefit, so he'd know not to blame himself. Mizu's sorry to hurt him, even in those moments, when he might blame himself. It isn't his fault, not tonight and not when she leaves. It's the least she can do to make sure he knows that. Mizu didn't apologize to Ringo because she wasn't in the wrong. The people she's wronged, what few of them she identifies, are dead, and the dead do not need, nor likely want, her apologies. She did what she did. She must live by her choices. It's not entirely unlike leaving swordfather, except Mizu knows Vergil will not ask her to stay.
She watches Vergil's reaction to her question, the pain he feels clear cut. A decision he would change, given what he knows now, given who he is now. He didn't know what would happen as a consequence of his decision. Vergil left Nero's mother behind after what, Mizu's reasonably sure, they both knew was a relationship that would not last. Everything Vergil's told her says the woman was smart. She knew what she was doing, and she made her choices too. Vergil made the choice in line with his goals, in line with what the two of them knew their relationship to be.
Vergil regrets it. Mizu feels worse in that moment, as she traces the smooth skin of his neck, already no mark marring it. He regrets it, however, because of Nero primarily, what happened to him. Perhaps to a lesser extent, whatever happened to the woman he loved. Those aren't concerns Mizu has to contend with. She cannot leave him pregnant, and Vergil is powerful enough to live and to survive on his own without her. He even has Dante and Nero watching his back, should some threat truly emerge. It's not the same situation, no matter that Mizu is merely here to gather what information she can about her fathers.
Mizu cups Vergil's face and kisses his forehead. That he made a fair decision in that moment matters little to him, and Mizu cannot wipe those pained feelings away from him. "You don't know what would have happened if you stayed. Only what happened when you left."
They aren't meant to be absolution. Only the truth. "You were hunted, were you not? You could have drawn that attention to them."
Because the truth, so often, is terrible. Mizu understands only having bad decisions to make, one or the other. She sighs. What happened to Vergil and Dante didn't happen to Nero. That's something.
Mizu speaks sense. There is nothing incorrect about what she says. He has no way of knowing what would have been had he stayed. Vergil already possessed doubts about what sort of father he might have been to Nero had he been there from the beginning even before he knew of Nero's true upbringing. Those doubts, when he imagines what could have been, do not exactly abate even now. For all that he believes he would have loved Nero the moment he knew of his existence to the best that Vergil was capable of loving someone else, there is no telling that it would have been enough or right for Nero. And that is nothing to say of what would have become of him and Nero's mother. There's a good chance they wouldn't have worked out long-term. After all, they were young, and Vergil has now way of knowing how raising Nero would have impacted them. And Mizu is correct that eventually, the demons sent to hunt him would have caught up. There was no guarantee that he could have protected them both when they did, and that he would not relive the same nightmare again. It was that fear, after all, that made him run in the end.
"I know, Mizu," he says, harsher than he means and jerking his face free from her hold. Vergil does not mean to lash out at her. Even if Mizu is probing at old wounds and regrets, he knows there not to be malicious intent behind it. But knowing that does not make it a less of a sore subject. "But what does knowing change? I did not plan to stay in Fortuna, but that does not mean part of me did not want to stay. It was the first—"
Vergil cuts himself off, looking away from Mizu with a slight shake of his head. He's quiet a moment, brow furrowed in a combination of frustration and anger at himself for his past decisions, and his seeming inability to convey why this regret is one he cannot reason with.
"After the attack on my family, I never once thought to stay. Not once did I feel the temptation. Even knowing the likelihood that the families who took me in suffered a terrible fate for looking after me, I never looked back. I do not now." Vergil looks at Mizu in a brief glance, unable to bring himself to fully meet her eyes. "But I will always look back at that decision with regret, Mizu. I had a chance for everything that I truly wanted even beyond my conscious mind. And I threw it away because I was too afraid of losing it. I left without saying anything because I feared I would not be strong enough to walk away otherwise, but I feared being too weak to stay.
"And yet, that choice changed nothing. It merely sealed her fate. Doomed Nero to grow up more alone than he should have ever been."
Vergil does not understand how it is Nero forgives him. Even knowing that Vergil did not know of his existence is not enough to absolve him of the hand he had in Nero's upbringing, in believing himself not to be enough and unworthy of even the barest scrap of love. Vergil does not think if their positions were reversed, he would have the ability to forgive so easily. He certainly doesn't even now.
Logic does not batter back emotions, and Vergil's response reflects that. Mizu lowers her hands and does not hold onto Vergil when he does not want it. It only feels fair that he should say her name that way. How different can it feel to be the one left behind? That's not what Vergil's upset about, but she can imagine frustration that does not aim at himself. There will be time for that. Vergil's hurt, still, and there may be no hurt for this injury if even Nero cannot mend it. Certainly Mizu cannot fix such a wound.
She listens. Of course part of him wished to stay. Mizu assumed as much from the way he spoke about his time there, about the relationship he forged. It would be stranger if such feeling did not form in his heart, an impurity to his purpose. It could make his resolution bitter, or it could make him stronger. From all Mizu knows of Vergil, she'd say it was an impurity in the right place. She could even go so far as to say it's what saved him from shattering a second time, what allowed him to pull himself together again and become who he is.
His need for survival may have doomed families who did nothing more than take in and care for an orphaned child, but Mizu feels no pity for them. By Vergil's own words, people stopped taking him in once he got a little older. People whose kindness does not extend to an older child are not that good. Their deaths do not sit with her, not even if every last family that helped Vergil died. The shame is that those who refused to help him didn't die as well.
Both options Vergil faced sparked fear of weakness. Too weak to leave, too weak to stay. He knew the target he'd place on Beatrice's back if he stayed, and he thought he might be too weak to protect her. The very issue Mizu raised by suggesting he could have brought demons to her. She grimaces a little because she did not mean to call Vergil weak. The fear was logical, however. All his father's strength failed to prevent the calamity that orphaned Vergil and Dante. He sought that power, to be as powerful as his father, to be more powerful. How powerful does he need to be to feel capable of protecting those he loves? Mizu isn't sure, but Nero has power aplenty in his own right.
"Regret it," Mizu says and accepts that he will. "So long as you don't let that regret drive you to further regrets. Make it strengthen you, not weaken you."
Mizu should have seen through her mother from the moment she saw the woman alive and well. She abandoned Mizu and never came searching for her. The woman only saw Mizu back to health for the security and regular access to drugs it could bring. She never should have married Mikio for her mother's sake. Perhaps if she saw through her, Mizu would spend her life wondering how it might have been. If it might have been what she wanted, but she knows now it wasn't. It never could have been.
If only she and Vergil had the opportunity outside Folkmore—
No point wishing for what she saw on the train, that perfect life that offered her everything. Mizu is not the sort of person who can get what she wants.
Vergil keeps his gaze averted from Mizu for a moment or two after she speaks. His face turns towards her, but his eyes are slower to follow. He knows he has no reason to feel shame before her. Mizu has never once offered harsh or unfair judgment when it comes to his past choices, no matter the consequences or lives lost. Still, he finds it harder in that moment to feel that Mizu truly sees the whole of the man before her. That she can truly love him without exception, can feel safe enough with him that her deepest, darkest secrets can be entrusted to him even knowing the destruction and ruin he's left in his wake time and time again. But Vergil brings his gaze up to hers, and he does not see all that his guilt and shame says he ought to see looking back at him.
"I choose to stay with you, do I not?" he ask, quietly. Even when he questions whether he has the proper strength to stay, to be what she needs him to be, Vergil has yet to leave when she's asked him to stay. In fact, it's unlikely that he would leave barring her asking him to do as much.
Vergil does not give her a chance to answer, leaning up to press his lips to hers in a bruising, insistent kiss.
A less flawed person, someone who hasn't lived through the bloodshed, rejection, and ambition Mizu has and does, could not be trusted to care for her. All it took for Ringo to turn away was failure to protect someone he felt a connection with. All it took for Mikio was for her to be a better fighter than him. It took nothing at all for her mother, for it was never there—only money. Vergil has no expectation that Mizu protect Nero (no doubt both father and son would scoff at the idea), not even should she soundly defeat one or both of them. Vergil will not so readily abandon her, has never abandoned her to see to her own survival. What mistakes he will still make, they are no betrayal of her.
Mizu only starts to smile, a bittersweet ache in her heart, before Vergil kisses her. Until she needs to leave, Mizu has him, and she parts her lips to let him in. He's here in her home, here in the privacy of her chambers, here in her heart. She trusts him with it all. Her doubts are entirely her own, in herself. Whatever the future brings, she can give herself entirely to Vergil tonight. Perhaps not trust herself to hold him and to take him tonight, too much balanced on the edge of a blade, but she will find a way while here. He deserves that safety. The safety she feels, even now this very moment, with him.
Mizu kisses Vergil back and hopes he feels that safety he's made for her rather than the shame he carries. Everything he might have wished to be for Beatrice, he is for her.
He's claimed her mouth dozens if not hundreds of times by now, but still when Mizu parts her lips for him, he is still just as reverent as the first time. What she gives is what he takes. Nothing more. Nothing less. As has been their way from the very beginning even when playing by the fox spirit's rules. One his hands rises from where it had been wrapped around her, tracing up along the line of her neck until he can hold her face, subtly altering the angle of the kiss.
Vergil kisses her until they're both left just slightly breathless. Their lips barely part from one another, enough that they share in the breath. Almost magnetically, he's drawn to kiss her again, although it's briefer, smaller kisses that still allow for the both of them to catch their breath.
"I love you."
The words are spoken softly and quietly between little kisses, but not in the way he spoke them the first time. That first time, his quiet speaking had been out of hopes that perhaps she would not hear, that he could retain plausible deniability to avoid rejection of such a direct statement his feelings. The quiet way of saying them now is because they are words meant for her and her alone even though there is no one else around to hear them. Vergil does not make a habit of saying them often even after having braved saying them that first time, but he says them now freely. They are feelings that he would have divorced himself from in his youth, yet he is willing to embrace here and now with her.
Mizu continues to kiss Vergil, slowing the recovery of her breath, but she does not care. Times like these, one feels more important than the other. A shiver crawls up her spine with his words, and perhaps breathing is worthwhile to hear them. She hasn't needed to hear them to know them since the first time Vergil spoke them. They pulled the blindfold from her eyes for what Vergil showed her since the first time they were together. Once aware, she sees his love all the time. Spending the night with her. Letting her wear his clothes. Cooking for her. Coming over for the holiday he thought mattered to her. Sparring her letting up as little as before, not treating her as delicate. Just tonight, the way she's on his mind every day.
He didn't have to say them again, he doesn't ever, but greedy, Mizu breathes them in. They are soft and gentle but firm and sure of themselves. No matter that Mizu just made a fool of herself in front of him. It takes a moment to remember that came not long from baring her soul and admitting she's taken representation of him, of the relationship they started, into her sword. That too was tonight. She feels raw and tender but secure in his arms. She kisses him again and again.
His love feels so solid and secure a thing, hers fragile and waiting to break. It hasn't broken yet, and Mizu knows how she feels. She knows how it feels to hear it. So despite how inadequate it feels, it's what she can offer, all she can offer. Her love. With her arms wrapped around him, Mizu says as softly, "I love you."
An imperfect brittle thing, as hideous as she is, yet somehow he makes that beautiful. He sees something in it.
Close as they are and with one of his arms still wrapped so firmly around her, he feels that shiver work its way up her spine at his words. It pleases him more than words can possibly express, and he truly has no burning need for her to say anything back to him. That reaction alone, the kisses that follow, are enough. But Mizu says the words back, and he aches sweetly in hearing them again. Some part of him feels so greedy to be so eager in hearing them once more, but Vergil cannot deny how each beat of his heart afterward feels all the fuller for it. No piece had truly been missing—he's not ignorant of Mizu's feelings even if she also just as rarely speaks of them as him, and certainly not after her confession tonight—but there is still something found in her words that brings about such joy. Impossible as it may be, it feels a return to innocence for as much as Vergil trusts her, trusts her love to be warm and kind and protective. It's things Vergil knows Mizu would never describe herself to be, but it's parts of her he sees even when she cannot. What mistakes she's made or chosen harm she's inflicted on others does not negate that, does not change the fact that's who she chooses to be for him.
Vergil's next kiss is more earnest, more wanting than the smaller ones that precede it. He nips lightly at her lower lip until her lips part for him once more, his tongue meeting hers. He sighs, pleased, as his hand leaves her cheek for between her shoulder blades in almost a mirror of how she so often touches him. Vergil's other arm loosens so that his hand comes to her lap. Fingers drag along her thigh until he reaches her knee, nudging at it to part from the other and grant him access to touch her.
Before she loses thoughts to his touch, something Mizu senses will come, she tilts her head ever so slightly back to where Vergil held it. It's almost nothing. Mizu meets his kiss but lets him kiss her as deeply as he wishes. She doesn't hold her weight but leans back against his hand. All of it trust and love and anticipation. Three things she always longs for with Vergil: sparring, snuggling, and sex. Tonight has been heavy on snuggling, much to her enjoyment, and the bath is no place to spar, not even grappling. She smiles against his face, and a very different sort of shudder runs through her.
Mizu parts her knees as much as she can and stay in his lap. She resists the urge to push closer toward his hand, but one hand reaches partway toward the water before she catches herself from pulling him closer thoughtlessly. He might tease her terribly for it, but after a second thought, Mizu strokes her fingers down his arm toward his wrist to pull it closer. She wants to forget about everything else but them, but him. She's damn well not meditating her way there.
Mizu tugs on his wrist and Vergil has a difficult time not grinning over her impatience even as they kiss. He allows her to draw his hand closer once her legs are parted, but he does not oblige her immediately. Not directly. Instead, he inverts the positions of their hands, placing his over hers. While the change in position may come as a bit of a surprise, Vergil doubts Mizu is ignorant of what he is doing. It's not the first time he's done this albeit the context was a little different. Guiding her fingers to tease over her own folds, Vergil breaks the kiss.
"If you're that impatient, perhaps you should take care of matters more yourself," he says, teasing her as she predicted he might, before kissing along her jaw. He speaks low into her ear when he reaches the corner of her jaw. Vergil pushes her fingers gently near to her entrance, drawing a line to a teasing stroke of her clit as he speaks. "Then perhaps the next time you find yourself in my clothes...and alone...I could occupy a corner of your mind."
The reality is that Vergil doubts very much Mizu dedicates much time if any at all to that. Whatever arguments she makes to herself to allow for such indulgences with him likely do not hold much weight in pleasuring herself alone, assuming the thought even occurs to her in the first place. But reality is not the point. The point is building a fantasy. Regardless of whether or not Mizu ever thinks of this later or acts upon it, both of them will still possess the memory of his hand over hers as she pleasures herself in want of him. It's a sweeter thing, he thinks, than to simply miss him. A longing with release that was not dependent upon his physical presence.
With Vergil there, surrounding her and holding her, the scent of him close despite the bath, Mizu wants him and to lose herself with him. A small huff, as he talks, gives away her immediate thoughts, but his voice wraps around her. She lets him guide her hand, his hand over hers a lifeline to what she pushed for. Her fingers move in imitation of his, what he's done time and time again, so much that Mizu knows exactly what she likes and what shortens her breath.
Vergil continues to speak, and the image he paints appears like brushstrokes in her mind. Even then, even in this image, he ghosts the scene. His clothes, his scent, the memory of his hand on hers, weighted further because she feels his fingers over hers. Mizu groans, sinking further against his hand at her back. Her longing for Vergil when he's gone fuels the image he paints. They're together this moment, and Mizu wants him more. Like he's a figment of her imagination.
"When I wear your clothes," Mizu manages, her fingers repeating the slow movements. She bites her lip, not to quiet herself but not to rush faster. When he's gone she always wants to feel him as long as she can. "You're always on my mind."
Sometimes with bodily longing, but that ache goes unanswered until next she sees him. Not this time, not in the image in her mind. She's on her bed in her mind's eye, a book of poetry spread open on the bed beside her. Even the pillow smells faintly of him. It's all him. Her fingers move in small circles. As with swordplay, she imitates ways he's teased her before. She breathes harder. "I lie where you did on the bed."
Between the water and his own strength, Vergil is able to support her weight easily by his hand alone as she leans back against it. Still, he leans in towards her just enough that there's space between his back and the wall of the tub for his tail to manifest. It curls behind her, giving Mizu something else to lean back against beyond just his hand, but snakes its way over her opposite leg along to her inner thigh.
Vergil dips his head to kiss along her throat, nipping at it lightly, and allowing her to seamlessly take the lead in teasing herself with her fingers. He's come to know her body well, and he's pleased to see Mizu's paid just as much attention when she's able to take the lead, touching and pleasuring herself in want of him. To say it's a thrill to bear witness to would be an understatement. And there is a temptation, of course, to pleasure her further beyond her touch alone to both reward and fulfill that want, but Vergil resists it for now. Mizu is taking it slower than that, and he follows her pace and movements.
"Where I would want you. Close to me," he murmurs against her skin. As close as she could be in that circumstance. Vergil returns to her lips, the languidness of the kiss mimicking the movement of her fingers. He breaks the kiss, but remains near to her lips. "You could close your eyes until it's easier to imagine it's not your hand alone convincing you to stay in bed just a little while longer. I'm right there with you."
A thrum moves through her as Mizu feels Vergil's tail first at her back and continuing around her. With his hand still lightly on hers, with his other hand still supporting her back, with her still in his lap, it gives her more of Vergil. More touch and connection and him. An ocean to the smallness of men. She teases herself the way she imagines Vergil would have, if she had not rushed him. His fingers instead of hers. Mizu hungers for more, wanted more and faster, yet she's wound up here all the same.
Already, small grunts and labored breathing escapes her. It's what she needed—to be loved and to be wanted despite everything terrible about her and what she'll do to him. It amazes her, and each time he speaks, each stroke of pleasure, drives away other thoughts so he holds her body and mind. Mizu kisses Vergil back instinctively, but she hungers for his words. So close, she can hardly see him now, but she pretends how she feels him fills the scene in her mind. His body warm and close, holding her, around her, touching her. His clothes a pale stand-in for Vergil but enough to bring him more to life.
"You are the reason I stay in bed," Mizu says, words harder. "You and your... many tricks." Mizu says it affectionately. Vergil has no job that needs doing, and Folkmore does not force it. Yet she's a person of habit, early to rise. Here he goes adding another one, for a morning when she's slept in his clothes and wakes smelling him. The bed would be cold, unless she slept in his spot. So she imagines doing so, going to bed alone, and waking with him curled around her, somehow still on the same side of the bed as her. A fantasy within a fantasy and a pleasant one at that.
Her legs kick a little as she imagines it further. "I tangle my legs in the sheets, like you're holding them."
Vergil chuckles at the affectionate accusation, the sound a low and pleased rumble in his chest. Some mornings, he takes ownership and is in agreement about them being tricks. Other mornings, he takes playful offense at the accusation. Regardless, the outcome is always the same, and he keeps her for a while longer in the morning in their shared warmth. Now he provides no response to it either way, much as he would not be able to lay claim or protest within this fantasy. It's something for Mizu to imagine in whichever direction pleases her most.
At the mention of her sheets tangling with her legs, he moves his tail further along the leg he's draped it over, slipping it beneath her calf. But despite his firm hold on her leg, Vergil does not manipulate the positioning of it. Sheets, after all, would not have the strength to move her legs, but the sense memory of the weight of his tail may return to her another time. Vergil does, however, separate his hand enough from Mizu's to tease her entrance once more with his own fingers.
"Each time you press into the mattress, you press into me." Vergil kisses the corner of her lips before resuming his trail along her neck, teasing at her recently refreshed mark as though he may yet add more to it. "And you know how rapacious my appetite is for you. I won't give you what you want until you cannot stand that want any longer."
Vergil's presence and support of her fantasy, as she speaks it, steels it within her mind, so that should she turn the fantasy into a reality, should she partake in the fantasy they discuss, she might recall how he feels now and feel it around her then. It nudges and presses at the corner of her mind in a warm blissful way that she doesn't look too closely at. Not now as pleasure runs through her and she focuses on his words and hers. Not now as she groans at the all too true promise that he makes her wait, that he drives her to call out his name and, yes she admits, even beg.
There's longer yet, Mizu resists begging far longer than she withholds being demanding. The words Vergil speaks turns it nearly into one of their games, where she must last as long as she can. Her chest heaves, and Mizu presses into his hand and tail with complete trust that he has her and supports her. Her body grows more tense, her toes curling, and she rocks toward her own hand, toward Vergil's.
"I want you," Mizu tells him, "Like metal wants to be forged. It'd be so easy to grant myself relief, but I..." She shudders as she moves her fingers in circles to drive her want further. "Don't. I don't want it to end. I want you."
Her words flow with little thought to them. Mizu's too distracted to paint much of an image with her words. It's longing, freely given.
He matches the rock of her hips in the way he continues to tease her with his fingers, using the heel of his hand occasionally to add to the pressure of her circles. Vergil's other hand and tail remain firm at her back in keeping her contained within his lap while still able to chase after her pleasure as she wills it. He does not need the fraying of thought to her words, the loss of an image to accompany them to know just how close she is to her peak. Vergil recognizes it in her movements, in the way her body is growing tenser. Even the way she draws breath, the sounds that slip from her.
He does not think much of what she says about not wanting it to end. At the very least, Vergil does not believe it more than a want of the fantasy to last. Even if it comes coupled with such relief and release, the end of a fantasy is akin to that of waking from a pleasant dream. It leaves behind a good, warm feeling, but the specifics of it are far too quick to fade from one's mind. Mizu is drifting further away from fantasy as she loses herself to the sensations she's feeling here and now. He doesn't doubt that may be yet true should she ever use this moment, this fantasy later in his absence. How much harder might it be for her to hold onto his words, his face, the feeling of his hands upon her when floods of pleasure threaten to drown her?
"Have me then," he says, slipping a finger inside her finally. Vergil turns his head to repeat the words in her ear, little more than a breath as he presses another finger inside her. "It's not the end. I'm yours, Mizu. Whenever you want me, I'm always yours."
The fantasy may take a moment to pause upon her climax as she loses total sense of herself and perhaps even connection with her own body beyond the waves of pleasure crashing into her again and again. But she can still find him once more as she comes down from the high. She may be more cognizant that she's in her own bed alone, tangled in sheets rather than with him directly. But he will still be there. His scent, his clothes, the memory and vision of him in her mind's eye. Even that warm, languid feeling that follows, Mizu can find him close to her still. Vergil hooks his fingers inside her to reach and attend to that sweet spot within.
Mizu presses forward toward pleasure and the release promised rather than turn away from it. Should she turn away, slow down, and relax, she will surely lose the vision in her mind. She needs it to last and to stay with her until the end, if not after, so that she may wrap Vergil around her when he is gone, even for a night. Tenderly, she holds onto it, on the feeling of how he holds her, so it imprints on the scene, and oh that scene continues head on.
She both rocks harder against her own movements and grows tense, body locking up more and more so that it does not listen to commands. Her words are gone, loud moans and whining replacing them. A steady stream that builds in volume with her pleasure. He speaks, and the words penetrate in a haze. Her arm around him tightens, and her hand digs into his shoulder where it lays. Around her, with her, in her, Mizu has Vergil. She can no longer tell whether the fantasy is of her in bed fantasizing or Vergil in bed with her, meeting her pleasure as he is now.
The pleasure overtakes her like the ocean, not one wave but an onslaught of them that surrounds her and keeps coming. Everything flashes blank, and Mizu shakes and shudders. Her fingers stop moving against her, and the tremors ebb away. They leave Mizu warm and boneless. Her head leans against Vergil, and she lets her eyes stay closed a while. She can smell him, feel him, and little else. Her arm hangs limp in her lap, and Mizu stays there, the echoes of pleasure racking through her. She's not sure how long she stays there, it feels both instantaneous and stretched toward forever. She's satisfied then to do...
Nothing. Simply be there in Vergil's arms.
In time, she nuzzles closer and says softly, "I always want you."
Even as Mizu loses more and more voluntary control over herself, Vergil continues to pump his fingers within her. Words leave her, replaced by sounds of want and need and eventually release as she begins pulsing tightly around, and she's never sounded so sweet to his ears. Swept away by pleasure, Mizu keeps a tight hold of Vergil. Her fingers at his shoulder dig deep, bruising in their grip and sure to leave little half-moons that linger just a bit longer than the bruises themselves until she practically collapses against him. Withdrawing his fingers from her slowly as she recuperates against him, Vergil uses his tail to bring her legs together again. He relinquishes his tail's grip on her leg then, allowing it do de-manifest so Vergil can lean back against the tub wall more comfortably. Vergil's other arm replaces where his tail had been around her waist as he holds her there against him. He presses little kisses to her head and what he can reach of her cheek. Until she comes back to him, Vergil has a firm hold on her and allows his little touches to bring her back to her body.
He returns her nuzzling affectionately.
"I am always yours to have," he says back like a sacred promise. Whether it is limited to just her mind or not, Vergil is hers as he promised before. She needn't want or long for him.
For the moment, Mizu believes him. Hers, always. The feeling cocoons her as much as Vergil holding her, and the two link themselves together. In that space, there's no rush to do... anything. Mizu could stay in the water until her skin wrinkles like an old man's. Her thoughts return, but they're different than before.
Vergil is in every part of Mizu's life in Folkmore. More important than what help he's occasionally given to her research are all the memories of reading together. Mizu speaks up when she finds something of interest or something Vergil might have insight into, as different as their worlds might be. He bought her the tools she uses to make weapons, and he's a part of her sword and with it every fight she uses it in. He brought Kai back to her life. Sometimes it's a small part, sometimes it's larger. Like a series of woodblock prints, he can always be found somewhere on each one.
That's why she can say, "I know."
She knows without him saying it, but she likes to hear him say it. Mizu sits up so she can see his face. She gestures toward the bedroom, where they undressed. "You're not getting that shirt back tonight. Or tomorrow. I have one that smells like me you can wear."
To hear her say she knows fill Vergil with a feeling he doesn't know how to articulate beyond that it is warm and pleasant, and satisfies something within him. They are impermanent. There is no version of them that persists beyond this realm that is more than memories. Memories that can and will inevitably fade with time. But this makes them feel more than that. Not some foolish notion that they were inevitable, but that each of them have chosen the other. And nothing can unmake that choice. Vergil watches her with a softer gaze as she sits up, gesturing back towards her bedroom and stakes her claim on his shirt.
"Is that so?" Vergil brings one of his hands up to her face, caressing it. It's no secret he's admiring her eyes this close, as he is often wont to do. "I suppose since you don't intend to send me home without anything to wear at all, I'll indulge your whims this time."
As though Vergil is not always ready and primed to indulge her whims, and that he didn't already have a suspicion that she was going to lay claim to his shirt tonight so it was more or less a foregone conclusion that he would be wearing one of the shirts he left here last time.
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So, he continues tracing her skin and he answers her question.
"It varies, depending on the circumstances," he says, turning his head slightly to press a kiss to her shoulder. "For example, on mornings I wake uncertain if I will see you that day, I wish I was with you so we could waste hours of the morning in whatever manner we pleased. But the closest I can be is imagining the weight and warmth of you on the bed beside me."
Vergil pulls back from resting his head against her shoulder to look at her properly. It's plain that he is looking at her that same way before they got into the bath together, but Vergil also holds in his mind's eye the image of her that he describes.
"The gentle sound of your breath and that look of peace on your face when you're still sound asleep, neither of which I possess the heart to ever willingly disturb because if I did not know it was a gift you've unwittingly given to me countless times, I would think it mere fantasy for all the calm and peace I feel within myself." The hand at her back slips away in favor of intertwining fingers with one of her hands. "But if I know I am to see you, I've no need for such visions to act as comfort in staving off a lonely morning. I've all my thoughts of what is to come even if it is a great test of my patience to have to wait and fill my time with other things between waking and when I see you again because all I can think of is what I wish to do with you, to say to you, to share with you.
"Mizu, you are among my first and last thoughts each day. There are reminders of you for me littered throughout each day I am not at your side that I'm sure you would find foolish. But you bring me peace and happiness each time I think of you, and I think of you often."
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It is indeed a lonely morning. Those weeks at Amrita, whatever else they did, introduced her to them by spending every night together. That might have continued afterward, save that Dante stayed with Vergil. Then Nero arrived. Mizu will not tear him apart from his family nor ask him to choose between them. A fool's errand, even if she were so selfish of him and his happiness to consider trying to keep him all to herself. That would never work, and if it did, in the end, it would only leave him alone. Far better that Vergil has people, the life he came to Folkmore to seek, with or without her.
Mizu does not understand how he can think so well of her, how thoughts of her can bring him peace and happiness without the dark shadow of separation that waits for them. It is of her making without any need of the fox spirit's interference to heighten the drama into a tragedy.
"I am not that good," Mizu declares, "You wonderful idiot."
She pulls him in for a kiss, hard and demanding. Demanding what, Mizu isn't certain, only that she needs Vergil and something from him. No, perhaps it's to give something to him. She breaks it off with a grunt of frustration to kiss and bite her way down his jaw and to his neck. There, Mizu makes yet another attempt at leaving her mark on him. She sucks and bites and pulls on his skin. Over and over, she gives herself to the effort, but the mark doesn't stay. It never stays. She leans her face into his neck, eyes damp. That image he painted will disappear after she does. Mizu knows it.
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Mizu breaks the kiss with a noise that sounds near to a growl, but Vergil does not stop her. He does not, however, sink into the feeling of her mouth against his skin. There is too much disconnect between the act and himself, between Mizu and him for him to feel even the harshest press of her teeth as happening to his own skin. For all that Mizu has been confused regarding his thoughts of and feelings for her, never has she had such force behind her refutation of it. Not even when he called her beautiful had there been such an energy behind it.
He finds it... he finds it so difficult to understand. Months ago, he had taken her on the floor of her living room, and in that fit of passion sprung forth a greater intimacy than either of them had ever really known. Vergil let the words slip from him as quietly as he could for fear of a reaction like this one. But he received its opposite then.
She buries her face in his neck and Vergil wraps his arms firmly around her. He doesn't believe it will make a difference to how she's feeling, but Vergil doesn't know what else to do, how to possibly soothe what she's feeling. He considers it briefly, but declaring his feelings firmly and true would likely only produce a worse result. Mizu knows how he feels, and to some extent, that appears to be the problem. Asking her to explain it to him doesn't even cross his mind as a possibility. Teasing her even gently or at his own expense just seems cruel. So, he is left without any words. Not his own. Not borrowed. Useless as it feels to him, a warm embrace and silent patience is all he can offer.
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She feels his heartbeat against her, and Mizu focuses on the steady beat. It slowly calms her until her breathing feels less ragged. Until she feels more like herself. More at ease. As foolish as it is, it's him. It's Vergil grounding her as he's grounded her so many times before. The thought Vergil will come to hate her or despise her or wish he hadn't known her, once she is gone, continues to come to mind. It may be true, and there's nothing she can do about that. She's been clear about her goals, about her plans, from the very beginning.
Mizu continues to lean against him, and unlike when they spar or make love, she feels small. "I'm sorry," Mizu says softly, "That wasn't your fault."
Vergil deserves better. The least Mizu can do is treat him right while she's here. His feelings and thoughts toward her are wonderful, better than she deserves, but his and his to have. Mizu will not pretend either of them are perfect. Vergil's done terrible things, but he's never done them to her. He's never treated her anything less than well.
"Did you ever plan to stay," Mizu asks, "in Fortuna?"
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At her question, Vergil's gaze darts away to elsewhere in the bathroom. He has no desire to lie to Mizu—never has and never will—but the answer comes coupled with shame and guilt. It's not something that he allows himself to dwell upon, but that is the only way he finds peace from it given that the unintended consequences from his choice irrevocably shaped the rest of his son's life. Never mind the lingering question of whether or not Beatrice's life was cut short as a consequence of his absence. There is nothing that can ever truly make the guilt and shame with that leave him entirely with both of those things weighing upon him.
"No," he admits with his next breath. "I was merely there to gather what information I could about my father."
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She watches Vergil's reaction to her question, the pain he feels clear cut. A decision he would change, given what he knows now, given who he is now. He didn't know what would happen as a consequence of his decision. Vergil left Nero's mother behind after what, Mizu's reasonably sure, they both knew was a relationship that would not last. Everything Vergil's told her says the woman was smart. She knew what she was doing, and she made her choices too. Vergil made the choice in line with his goals, in line with what the two of them knew their relationship to be.
Vergil regrets it. Mizu feels worse in that moment, as she traces the smooth skin of his neck, already no mark marring it. He regrets it, however, because of Nero primarily, what happened to him. Perhaps to a lesser extent, whatever happened to the woman he loved. Those aren't concerns Mizu has to contend with. She cannot leave him pregnant, and Vergil is powerful enough to live and to survive on his own without her. He even has Dante and Nero watching his back, should some threat truly emerge. It's not the same situation, no matter that Mizu is merely here to gather what information she can about her fathers.
Mizu cups Vergil's face and kisses his forehead. That he made a fair decision in that moment matters little to him, and Mizu cannot wipe those pained feelings away from him. "You don't know what would have happened if you stayed. Only what happened when you left."
They aren't meant to be absolution. Only the truth. "You were hunted, were you not? You could have drawn that attention to them."
Because the truth, so often, is terrible. Mizu understands only having bad decisions to make, one or the other. She sighs. What happened to Vergil and Dante didn't happen to Nero. That's something.
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"I know, Mizu," he says, harsher than he means and jerking his face free from her hold. Vergil does not mean to lash out at her. Even if Mizu is probing at old wounds and regrets, he knows there not to be malicious intent behind it. But knowing that does not make it a less of a sore subject. "But what does knowing change? I did not plan to stay in Fortuna, but that does not mean part of me did not want to stay. It was the first—"
Vergil cuts himself off, looking away from Mizu with a slight shake of his head. He's quiet a moment, brow furrowed in a combination of frustration and anger at himself for his past decisions, and his seeming inability to convey why this regret is one he cannot reason with.
"After the attack on my family, I never once thought to stay. Not once did I feel the temptation. Even knowing the likelihood that the families who took me in suffered a terrible fate for looking after me, I never looked back. I do not now." Vergil looks at Mizu in a brief glance, unable to bring himself to fully meet her eyes. "But I will always look back at that decision with regret, Mizu. I had a chance for everything that I truly wanted even beyond my conscious mind. And I threw it away because I was too afraid of losing it. I left without saying anything because I feared I would not be strong enough to walk away otherwise, but I feared being too weak to stay.
"And yet, that choice changed nothing. It merely sealed her fate. Doomed Nero to grow up more alone than he should have ever been."
Vergil does not understand how it is Nero forgives him. Even knowing that Vergil did not know of his existence is not enough to absolve him of the hand he had in Nero's upbringing, in believing himself not to be enough and unworthy of even the barest scrap of love. Vergil does not think if their positions were reversed, he would have the ability to forgive so easily. He certainly doesn't even now.
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She listens. Of course part of him wished to stay. Mizu assumed as much from the way he spoke about his time there, about the relationship he forged. It would be stranger if such feeling did not form in his heart, an impurity to his purpose. It could make his resolution bitter, or it could make him stronger. From all Mizu knows of Vergil, she'd say it was an impurity in the right place. She could even go so far as to say it's what saved him from shattering a second time, what allowed him to pull himself together again and become who he is.
His need for survival may have doomed families who did nothing more than take in and care for an orphaned child, but Mizu feels no pity for them. By Vergil's own words, people stopped taking him in once he got a little older. People whose kindness does not extend to an older child are not that good. Their deaths do not sit with her, not even if every last family that helped Vergil died. The shame is that those who refused to help him didn't die as well.
Both options Vergil faced sparked fear of weakness. Too weak to leave, too weak to stay. He knew the target he'd place on Beatrice's back if he stayed, and he thought he might be too weak to protect her. The very issue Mizu raised by suggesting he could have brought demons to her. She grimaces a little because she did not mean to call Vergil weak. The fear was logical, however. All his father's strength failed to prevent the calamity that orphaned Vergil and Dante. He sought that power, to be as powerful as his father, to be more powerful. How powerful does he need to be to feel capable of protecting those he loves? Mizu isn't sure, but Nero has power aplenty in his own right.
"Regret it," Mizu says and accepts that he will. "So long as you don't let that regret drive you to further regrets. Make it strengthen you, not weaken you."
Mizu should have seen through her mother from the moment she saw the woman alive and well. She abandoned Mizu and never came searching for her. The woman only saw Mizu back to health for the security and regular access to drugs it could bring. She never should have married Mikio for her mother's sake. Perhaps if she saw through her, Mizu would spend her life wondering how it might have been. If it might have been what she wanted, but she knows now it wasn't. It never could have been.
If only she and Vergil had the opportunity outside Folkmore—
No point wishing for what she saw on the train, that perfect life that offered her everything. Mizu is not the sort of person who can get what she wants.
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"I choose to stay with you, do I not?" he ask, quietly. Even when he questions whether he has the proper strength to stay, to be what she needs him to be, Vergil has yet to leave when she's asked him to stay. In fact, it's unlikely that he would leave barring her asking him to do as much.
Vergil does not give her a chance to answer, leaning up to press his lips to hers in a bruising, insistent kiss.
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Mizu only starts to smile, a bittersweet ache in her heart, before Vergil kisses her. Until she needs to leave, Mizu has him, and she parts her lips to let him in. He's here in her home, here in the privacy of her chambers, here in her heart. She trusts him with it all. Her doubts are entirely her own, in herself. Whatever the future brings, she can give herself entirely to Vergil tonight. Perhaps not trust herself to hold him and to take him tonight, too much balanced on the edge of a blade, but she will find a way while here. He deserves that safety. The safety she feels, even now this very moment, with him.
Mizu kisses Vergil back and hopes he feels that safety he's made for her rather than the shame he carries. Everything he might have wished to be for Beatrice, he is for her.
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Vergil kisses her until they're both left just slightly breathless. Their lips barely part from one another, enough that they share in the breath. Almost magnetically, he's drawn to kiss her again, although it's briefer, smaller kisses that still allow for the both of them to catch their breath.
"I love you."
The words are spoken softly and quietly between little kisses, but not in the way he spoke them the first time. That first time, his quiet speaking had been out of hopes that perhaps she would not hear, that he could retain plausible deniability to avoid rejection of such a direct statement his feelings. The quiet way of saying them now is because they are words meant for her and her alone even though there is no one else around to hear them. Vergil does not make a habit of saying them often even after having braved saying them that first time, but he says them now freely. They are feelings that he would have divorced himself from in his youth, yet he is willing to embrace here and now with her.
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He didn't have to say them again, he doesn't ever, but greedy, Mizu breathes them in. They are soft and gentle but firm and sure of themselves. No matter that Mizu just made a fool of herself in front of him. It takes a moment to remember that came not long from baring her soul and admitting she's taken representation of him, of the relationship they started, into her sword. That too was tonight. She feels raw and tender but secure in his arms. She kisses him again and again.
His love feels so solid and secure a thing, hers fragile and waiting to break. It hasn't broken yet, and Mizu knows how she feels. She knows how it feels to hear it. So despite how inadequate it feels, it's what she can offer, all she can offer. Her love. With her arms wrapped around him, Mizu says as softly, "I love you."
An imperfect brittle thing, as hideous as she is, yet somehow he makes that beautiful. He sees something in it.
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Vergil's next kiss is more earnest, more wanting than the smaller ones that precede it. He nips lightly at her lower lip until her lips part for him once more, his tongue meeting hers. He sighs, pleased, as his hand leaves her cheek for between her shoulder blades in almost a mirror of how she so often touches him. Vergil's other arm loosens so that his hand comes to her lap. Fingers drag along her thigh until he reaches her knee, nudging at it to part from the other and grant him access to touch her.
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Mizu parts her knees as much as she can and stay in his lap. She resists the urge to push closer toward his hand, but one hand reaches partway toward the water before she catches herself from pulling him closer thoughtlessly. He might tease her terribly for it, but after a second thought, Mizu strokes her fingers down his arm toward his wrist to pull it closer. She wants to forget about everything else but them, but him. She's damn well not meditating her way there.
nsfw warning
"If you're that impatient, perhaps you should take care of matters more yourself," he says, teasing her as she predicted he might, before kissing along her jaw. He speaks low into her ear when he reaches the corner of her jaw. Vergil pushes her fingers gently near to her entrance, drawing a line to a teasing stroke of her clit as he speaks. "Then perhaps the next time you find yourself in my clothes...and alone...I could occupy a corner of your mind."
The reality is that Vergil doubts very much Mizu dedicates much time if any at all to that. Whatever arguments she makes to herself to allow for such indulgences with him likely do not hold much weight in pleasuring herself alone, assuming the thought even occurs to her in the first place. But reality is not the point. The point is building a fantasy. Regardless of whether or not Mizu ever thinks of this later or acts upon it, both of them will still possess the memory of his hand over hers as she pleasures herself in want of him. It's a sweeter thing, he thinks, than to simply miss him. A longing with release that was not dependent upon his physical presence.
Re: nsfw warning
Vergil continues to speak, and the image he paints appears like brushstrokes in her mind. Even then, even in this image, he ghosts the scene. His clothes, his scent, the memory of his hand on hers, weighted further because she feels his fingers over hers. Mizu groans, sinking further against his hand at her back. Her longing for Vergil when he's gone fuels the image he paints. They're together this moment, and Mizu wants him more. Like he's a figment of her imagination.
"When I wear your clothes," Mizu manages, her fingers repeating the slow movements. She bites her lip, not to quiet herself but not to rush faster. When he's gone she always wants to feel him as long as she can. "You're always on my mind."
Sometimes with bodily longing, but that ache goes unanswered until next she sees him. Not this time, not in the image in her mind. She's on her bed in her mind's eye, a book of poetry spread open on the bed beside her. Even the pillow smells faintly of him. It's all him. Her fingers move in small circles. As with swordplay, she imitates ways he's teased her before. She breathes harder. "I lie where you did on the bed."
It's what she sees.
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Vergil dips his head to kiss along her throat, nipping at it lightly, and allowing her to seamlessly take the lead in teasing herself with her fingers. He's come to know her body well, and he's pleased to see Mizu's paid just as much attention when she's able to take the lead, touching and pleasuring herself in want of him. To say it's a thrill to bear witness to would be an understatement. And there is a temptation, of course, to pleasure her further beyond her touch alone to both reward and fulfill that want, but Vergil resists it for now. Mizu is taking it slower than that, and he follows her pace and movements.
"Where I would want you. Close to me," he murmurs against her skin. As close as she could be in that circumstance. Vergil returns to her lips, the languidness of the kiss mimicking the movement of her fingers. He breaks the kiss, but remains near to her lips. "You could close your eyes until it's easier to imagine it's not your hand alone convincing you to stay in bed just a little while longer. I'm right there with you."
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Already, small grunts and labored breathing escapes her. It's what she needed—to be loved and to be wanted despite everything terrible about her and what she'll do to him. It amazes her, and each time he speaks, each stroke of pleasure, drives away other thoughts so he holds her body and mind. Mizu kisses Vergil back instinctively, but she hungers for his words. So close, she can hardly see him now, but she pretends how she feels him fills the scene in her mind. His body warm and close, holding her, around her, touching her. His clothes a pale stand-in for Vergil but enough to bring him more to life.
"You are the reason I stay in bed," Mizu says, words harder. "You and your... many tricks." Mizu says it affectionately. Vergil has no job that needs doing, and Folkmore does not force it. Yet she's a person of habit, early to rise. Here he goes adding another one, for a morning when she's slept in his clothes and wakes smelling him. The bed would be cold, unless she slept in his spot. So she imagines doing so, going to bed alone, and waking with him curled around her, somehow still on the same side of the bed as her. A fantasy within a fantasy and a pleasant one at that.
Her legs kick a little as she imagines it further. "I tangle my legs in the sheets, like you're holding them."
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At the mention of her sheets tangling with her legs, he moves his tail further along the leg he's draped it over, slipping it beneath her calf. But despite his firm hold on her leg, Vergil does not manipulate the positioning of it. Sheets, after all, would not have the strength to move her legs, but the sense memory of the weight of his tail may return to her another time. Vergil does, however, separate his hand enough from Mizu's to tease her entrance once more with his own fingers.
"Each time you press into the mattress, you press into me." Vergil kisses the corner of her lips before resuming his trail along her neck, teasing at her recently refreshed mark as though he may yet add more to it. "And you know how rapacious my appetite is for you. I won't give you what you want until you cannot stand that want any longer."
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There's longer yet, Mizu resists begging far longer than she withholds being demanding. The words Vergil speaks turns it nearly into one of their games, where she must last as long as she can. Her chest heaves, and Mizu presses into his hand and tail with complete trust that he has her and supports her. Her body grows more tense, her toes curling, and she rocks toward her own hand, toward Vergil's.
"I want you," Mizu tells him, "Like metal wants to be forged. It'd be so easy to grant myself relief, but I..." She shudders as she moves her fingers in circles to drive her want further. "Don't. I don't want it to end. I want you."
Her words flow with little thought to them. Mizu's too distracted to paint much of an image with her words. It's longing, freely given.
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He does not think much of what she says about not wanting it to end. At the very least, Vergil does not believe it more than a want of the fantasy to last. Even if it comes coupled with such relief and release, the end of a fantasy is akin to that of waking from a pleasant dream. It leaves behind a good, warm feeling, but the specifics of it are far too quick to fade from one's mind. Mizu is drifting further away from fantasy as she loses herself to the sensations she's feeling here and now. He doesn't doubt that may be yet true should she ever use this moment, this fantasy later in his absence. How much harder might it be for her to hold onto his words, his face, the feeling of his hands upon her when floods of pleasure threaten to drown her?
"Have me then," he says, slipping a finger inside her finally. Vergil turns his head to repeat the words in her ear, little more than a breath as he presses another finger inside her. "It's not the end. I'm yours, Mizu. Whenever you want me, I'm always yours."
The fantasy may take a moment to pause upon her climax as she loses total sense of herself and perhaps even connection with her own body beyond the waves of pleasure crashing into her again and again. But she can still find him once more as she comes down from the high. She may be more cognizant that she's in her own bed alone, tangled in sheets rather than with him directly. But he will still be there. His scent, his clothes, the memory and vision of him in her mind's eye. Even that warm, languid feeling that follows, Mizu can find him close to her still. Vergil hooks his fingers inside her to reach and attend to that sweet spot within.
"Come for me."
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She both rocks harder against her own movements and grows tense, body locking up more and more so that it does not listen to commands. Her words are gone, loud moans and whining replacing them. A steady stream that builds in volume with her pleasure. He speaks, and the words penetrate in a haze. Her arm around him tightens, and her hand digs into his shoulder where it lays. Around her, with her, in her, Mizu has Vergil. She can no longer tell whether the fantasy is of her in bed fantasizing or Vergil in bed with her, meeting her pleasure as he is now.
The pleasure overtakes her like the ocean, not one wave but an onslaught of them that surrounds her and keeps coming. Everything flashes blank, and Mizu shakes and shudders. Her fingers stop moving against her, and the tremors ebb away. They leave Mizu warm and boneless. Her head leans against Vergil, and she lets her eyes stay closed a while. She can smell him, feel him, and little else. Her arm hangs limp in her lap, and Mizu stays there, the echoes of pleasure racking through her. She's not sure how long she stays there, it feels both instantaneous and stretched toward forever. She's satisfied then to do...
Nothing. Simply be there in Vergil's arms.
In time, she nuzzles closer and says softly, "I always want you."
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He returns her nuzzling affectionately.
"I am always yours to have," he says back like a sacred promise. Whether it is limited to just her mind or not, Vergil is hers as he promised before. She needn't want or long for him.
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Vergil is in every part of Mizu's life in Folkmore. More important than what help he's occasionally given to her research are all the memories of reading together. Mizu speaks up when she finds something of interest or something Vergil might have insight into, as different as their worlds might be. He bought her the tools she uses to make weapons, and he's a part of her sword and with it every fight she uses it in. He brought Kai back to her life. Sometimes it's a small part, sometimes it's larger. Like a series of woodblock prints, he can always be found somewhere on each one.
That's why she can say, "I know."
She knows without him saying it, but she likes to hear him say it. Mizu sits up so she can see his face. She gestures toward the bedroom, where they undressed. "You're not getting that shirt back tonight. Or tomorrow. I have one that smells like me you can wear."
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"Is that so?" Vergil brings one of his hands up to her face, caressing it. It's no secret he's admiring her eyes this close, as he is often wont to do. "I suppose since you don't intend to send me home without anything to wear at all, I'll indulge your whims this time."
As though Vergil is not always ready and primed to indulge her whims, and that he didn't already have a suspicion that she was going to lay claim to his shirt tonight so it was more or less a foregone conclusion that he would be wearing one of the shirts he left here last time.
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