Chapter 29: Chapter - 29
Through the haze of alcohol and the trumpeting tempo of the Wienar Blut, Naruto was forced to admit that he'd fucked up. The mere thought of being married off was still enough to send the Gremory heir's stomach into a nervous swoop, but his fiancé was not at fault.
It was hard to maintain anger and distance at a eleven year old girl. Ravel Phenex was no schemer. She was only very small and very pink, and not at all evil.
The lack of intimidation didn't make Naruto's thick tongue any less stilted though. Harmless she might seem, but Ravel was still a ball and chain. "I have to say, I admire your dress. Was it commissioned in-house?" Stupid, stupid small talk.
Sasuke would have chuckled his fucking ass off, the prick.
Ravel pinked, shaking her head slightly as Naruto led her through a tight spin. "No. It's a Focalor piece. Viazhal, not Matilde."
They grimaced in shared sympathy. Viazhal was a sour old crone with a tongue sharp as her needles and little care where or how she poked. If not for her status as the mother of the Lord, few indeed would share space with her.
Alas, Viazhal Focalor was the mother of the Duke Focalor, and she'd been a fixture in Underworld fashion for half a millennium. Any noble with the means to buy them had at least a dozen dresses or suits designed by her, even if her great granddaughter Matilde was almost as skilled and a hundred times more personable.
"Did you cry?" Naruto teased, drawing on every ounce of his geniality and managing a wide smirk. "I know that dusty wrinkled biddy gets her kicks from it. Fond memories to warm her icy cold heart at night. God knows that's the most she could hope for."
Ravel giggled under her breath, blue eyes briefly scanning the crowd before returning to her betrothed. "I didn't. Riser did though. Ruval told me that when he was little, he used to hide in the bathroom for hours crying when momma told him that Viazhal would be coming to design him a suit."
Cocking a scarlet brow, Naruto pulled the girl through another twist. "Are you sure?" he wondered dubiously. Naruto had actually met Riser Phenex before. Delicate and emotional were not the first, or even the tenth words the redhead would have used to describe him. "He seems like a yakuza. I'd have thought tears were too girly for such a big manly man."
"Riser's a weirdo." The Phenex girl offered bluntly, grinning and curtsying as the first dance came to an end on a long haunting violin note. "He's a perverted older brother. He keeps bugging me to join his peerage because he wants a 'little sister type'."
What.
That was just – the implications of that.
Incest wasn't strictly frowned on by the Underworld, but it was hardly like they were all Nero either. And Naruto was the furthest thing from that, because beneath the devil flesh he'd still lived twenty odd years as a human.
"Absolutely not." Escaped Naruto's mouth as the pair turned to step off the central floor and to the side with much of the crowd. Regardless of if Ravel was his fiancé, that didn't mean Naruto was going to tolerate some incestuous pedophile deviant sniffing around. He'd thought better of Riser, but apparently, the blond bastard was a pervert – and probably a panty sniffer to boot!
Ravel grinned mischievously, looking less like the daughter of the gallant house of hellbirds and more like a scamp. "Why not? Are you jealous?" The informality wasn't what she'd been educated to do, but bringing people to a less rigid mood was one of Naruto's skills.
"Sure, whatever. I'm just not okay with some pervert siscon hovering around any underage girl." Naruto rolled his eyes.
Amusement crossed Ravel's elfin face, and the blonde rolled her eyes right back. "Yeah okay, ojisan. Relax, Riser's a perv but he's not that kind of perv. He just wants to collect them all, like Pokémon or postage stamps or something."
The absurd image of Riser Phenex dressed to the nines in Ash Ketchum's gear, running about the Underworld throwing pokeballs at young women flashed behind Naruto's eyes, and he broke. A wild howl of laughter rippled out of his throat, drawing a disgusted look from a middle-aged demoness.
"You're just a little spitfire aren't you?"
*
The rolling sound of Naruto's braying laugh just barely broke over the music and chatter, and the look Rias gave Sasuke was outright mutinous. Evidently, it was Sasuke's fault if Naruto couldn't handle his liquor and made a fucking fool of himself. Then she stepped sharply on his toes with a harsh heel, but his sense of pain numbed by the alcohol burning through his bloodstream.
"That was not so polite." Sasuke scolded, swaying the redhead in his arms with pure grace and no evidence of his drunken state.
Rias hummed, baring her white throat as her Pawn dipped her. "You know what else is not so polite? Stealing the wine of our host and getting drunk with my thirteen-year-old nephew in the bathroom."
"You're still on about that?"
The verdant green of her dress leeched the blue from Rias' eyes, letting the orbs shimmer like burnished emeralds. If not for the nauseating mingled orange and yellow that pulsed over the ballroom with yet another rotation of the colours of Phenex's magical flames, Sasuke could have appreciated it.
"You make it sound so nefarious." Sasuke chuckled, low baritone vocal cords rumbling. The bowtie around his neck was not quite tightened properly, and when the cloth rustled once more against the skin of his neck, the Uchiha had to violently repress the urge to tear it off. "But I forgive you. Jealousy can be fetching at times."
Fucking alcohol. It was supposed to make him mellow and lethargic, not hypersensitive to every little fucking thing. The violently rainbow lights annoyed Sasuke. The way Sasuke and Rias followed Naruto and Ravel surreptitiously around the dance floor like lost puppies annoyed Sasuke. Koneko's eyes digging into the back of his skull from time to time annoyed Sasuke. And most of all, the way Rias' soft form was teasingly pressed against him when the music picked up annoyed him.
Contrary to popular belief, Sasuke was not asexual. His trouser snake worked, and in times like this, it worked too damn well.
Down boy.
Red flamed Rias' cheeks, and she hissed under her breath as they drew close once more. "I am not jealous." The denial was steady with just the right amount of heat behind it, and anyone else might have immediately believed it. But Sasuke hadn't been her Pawn for three years for nothing, and the way her gaze instantly shifted to just above his eyes was a familiar tell.
"Liar." Stifling the low prickle of amusement as the girl responded with a pout, Sasuke allowed Rias to subtly lead them around the very edges of the dance floor.
There was something very wrong with him. He was acting more like the flirt he might have ended up as in another life than his usual self. Mustering up the effort to worry about it was beyond Sasuke at the moment.
Marshaling up the effort to do anything but surrender to the heated warmth of intoxication seemed like too much trouble. The long years were unwinding in him, and Sasuke was tired of building walls and cultivated isolation.
"You're going to have an awful hangover in the morning." Rias informed him primly, turquoise eyes tracking Naruto and Ravel as the older pair waltzed on by. The glimpse seemed enough to satisfy her, especially with Akeno lurking just beyond the ring of illumination.
"So are you."
"Excuse me?"
"I told you didn't I? There's no need to be jealous. I'll drink with you any time. In fact, I say we should beg off from here as soon as possible and head back home. I'm sure you've got something decent to drink tucked away there."
"You are impossible."
"That wasn't a no."
*
Yuuto hadn't meant to see it. But then, Yuuto hadn't meant a lot of things in his life. He hadn't meant to be a nameless orphan. He hadn't meant to be picked up by the Church and called 'Isaiah'. He hadn't meant to fail his friends and be killed by the Holy Sword Project, and he certainly hadn't meant to be resurrected and given a new name by his so-called mistress.
Fetching another tray of topped up champagne from the kitchens seemed like the simplest thing in the world. It wouldn't have even been his first trip down there on his little 'servant duty' that night, though it was Yuuto's first trip alone, and things not going how he'd meant them to seemed for once impossible.
But then, if Yuuto had to guess, very few people meant to turn a corner and encounter two men engaged in exhibitionist homosexual acts. There's a certain sensation of riveted horror and mortification that rages through the body when one walks in on intercourse. When that intercourse involves one green haired pretty boy pressed up against the wall moaning with his pants around the ankles while a burly blue haired man pounds away at him, the shock was that much worse.
The Church would have had a fit, thundering about the will of God, casting hellfire and damnation on all sodomites.
The blonde Knight could only stare open mouthed in disbelief, unable to help noticing the slow flex of the taller man's muscular buttocks as he thrust into his smaller lover. It was like the front row seat to Yuuto's very own private freak show. The air he breathed was full of the smack of flesh-on-flesh and the faintest trace of something fishy he could only call 'the sex smell'.
Taking a shuddering breath, Yuuto forced his legs to move. Five steps back and soundlessly around the corner once more.
What the fuck kind of world was this? The Church had always taught him that devils were base creatures lost to lust, but Yuuto hadn't actually seen any of that in Rias or her family. If the Gremory family was having sex, they weren't doing it in public where anyone could just walk right into them.
Yuuto returned to the ballroom in a daze, numbly handing off the plate of flutes he'd fetched to the first servant with empty hands before leaning against the wall to take a trembling breath. Whatever body he had, Yuuto was still human. He had limits. There was only so much culture shock he could take in a short time before he began to unravel.
And Kiba Yuuto was unravelling. The screams of his friends hung in his ears every night he went to sleep. When he woke, the phantom taste of blood boiled in the back of his throat. Some nights, the reincarnated devil couldn't even force himself to slumber. The only thing that made the wallowing despair gnawing at his insides stop was when Sasuke would beat him so hard that the only thing on Yuuto's mind was the physical pain.
Everyone else in their little posse seemed to need to sympathize with Yuuto. Akeno would look upset when she found out that he'd passed another night sleeplessly, and try to ply him with sweets and teasing hugs to take his mind off the past. Koneko seemed to think that if she hung around him like a silent ghost offering quiet companionship that his mind would be settled. Rias always wanted to talk – as if explaining what had happened to him and raging about his need for blazing vengeance would bring Yuuto some closure. Naruto was prone to pseudo-wisdom and dropping pacifistic philosophy about the uselessness of revenge like a self-righteous prick.
Sasuke was different. He'd been different from the moment Yuuto saw him through bleary eyes in the snow. The brittle darkness in Sasuke's black gaze was familiar as kin, and like called to like. Perhaps Sasuke was no longer looking for revenge, but once upon a time Sasuke had, and the Uchiha didn't judge Yuuto for wanting it. He just beat the shit out of him over and over in the most brutal training Yuuto had ever received in his life.
Sometimes, pain could only be driven out with pain. Just like how some evil could only be driven out with a different kind of evil.
"What'd I miss?" Yuuto belted out at Akeno as the tall girl came into view. Violet eyes blinked down at him, and the blonde couldn't help but quail inwardly at the cold calculation in the Queen's face. The Thunder Priestess was on the prowl, and Yuuto's flirty 'senpai' was nowhere to be seen.
"Not much." Akeno replied, turning away to watch her mistress continue to be spun about by an oddly cheery Sasuke. "There were a few jokes passed around about Rias getting beaten by Naruto, but that's typical for any place we go. You think they'd get tired of it. Sona Sitri and her peerage have already left, but that was expected. She wouldn't care for a party like this, and leaving as soon as is polite isn't a shocker."
"So when are we going to leave?"
"We won't be leaving until Rias decides we will, and she won't leave until Naruto leaves."
"Fantastic."
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone