Saturday 24 August 2013

Dante



A picture says a thousand words. Write them.
Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about this picture.
Be sure to tag writeworld in your block!

Source and image credit: 
gnefilim.deviantart.com
Her heels clicked on the pavement as she hurried to class.
“Hey?” The hissed call came from the stairwell, down below street level.
She looked around stupidly for a second before she glanced over the railing and down. She saw a guy with dark spiky hair and the bluest eyes she had ever seen. He seemed to be hanging onto the wall as he peered up at her.
“Can you help me?” he asked.
“Ah...” She was late for a lecture and she might have thought of her herself as a good Samaritan but there was something edgy about this guy.
“Never mind,” he grunted, clearly assuming her hesitation was a ‘no’.
She saw the blood on his leg. “You’re hurt.”
He gave her a look that basically told her to go away and leave him to bleed. He had already bled a lot.
“I didn’t know you were hurt,” she argued.
“Right.”
“What can I do to help?”
Silence.
“You did ask me for help,” she hissed down at him.
“Do you have a car?”
“Yes.”
“Bring it.”
She blinked. Talk about curt. He just ordered her. She rifled in her bag for her keys, trying to think if she still had the towel from her yoga class in the trunk. Wait a second, her common sense said. You can’t just put this guy in your car. Where does he want to go? Hospital? How did he get injured?
“To... take you to the hospital?” she checked.
“No!” He was almost too vehement. “No hospital.”
Now she knew that how he had got hurt was illegal or dangerous or both. Hospitals would keep records and records could be given to Police. She started to back away.
“Please,” he said. Those eyes pleaded with her.
Her hand on her keys, she turned and hurried back to her car. This was insane.
She parked in a no standing zone right at the top of the steps, grabbed the towel and left the motor running. As she started down the stairs he had moved towards them but couldn’t get up the bottom step. She hesitated for a moment and then put her shoulder under his arm so that he could use her as a crutch. Together they made their way up the flight of stairs. He grunted in pain a couple of times.
“Back seat,” he said when he saw the car.
That was a good idea; he could lie down and hide below the window level. At least it seemed like a good idea until she saw how tall he was. He fitted in and she shut the door.
“Last chance,” she said to herself, but she wasn’t listening. She had felt hard lumps under his coat that had to be guns and something else on his back that she couldn’t begin to guess what it was. It couldn’t be a sword even if it looked like one. That would be nuts.
She risked a glance at him at a traffic light. He had passed out. The bleeding had slowed. His belt was literally holding his leg together. Looking at the wound made her feel like throwing up. His leg had been cut multiples times in a parallel row. It looked like claw marks.
She drove into her garage and then hesitated to wake him up. She sighed. He was already here and he would know where she lived. No going back now.
She touched his face and he startled, grabbing her hand much quicker than she expected.
“W-we’re here,” she squeaked.
“Sorry.”
“More stairs I’m afraid. But they are inside... so nobody can see.”
He gave her an odd look.
“What?” she demanded.
“That was smart.”
She humphed a reply.
These stairs were just as painful as the first set. She left him sitting, leaning against the wall in her kitchen while she found the first aid kit.
“Should I pour alcohol on the wound?”
“Fuck, no!”
“Oh, is that bad?”
“The worst. Just water.”
She poured some disinfectant in the water and tried to clean the wound. “You need to take the pants off...”
“Boots first,” he said.
She unlaced and pulled off his boots, then he slid sideways and clunked onto the floor. They were guns. He pulled them out and placed them down carefully; one black one white - a matching pair. He shrugged out of his leather coat. He looked at her face before he started to pull off his pants.
“I’ve... seen it,” she mumbled. Not him, technically, but she wasn’t an innocent.
The belt had to be loosened and the blood had dried and stuck the material to the wound. He groaned. “Just... pull it off-”
She grabbed the legs of his jeans and pulled them off before he had finished saying it. His sentence ended in a yowl. He panted quickly. She kept her eyes on his leg. Or tried to.
When he had got his breath back he said, “You need to bleach the blood off the floor.”
“Later. This will take weeks to heal,” she muttered as she sponged at the wound.
“I won’t stay more than one night.”
“One night? Really?” She passed him a bottle of water.
“That’s all I’ll need.”
“What? How?”
He shrugged. “I heal fast.”
“That fast?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t believe him. Nobody healed that fast. She taped it up with loose dressings and helped him to her bed. She only had one bed. He pulled his tank top over his head and lay down with an exhausted groan. “Weapons,” he mumbled at her.
She fetched them and put the guns on the side table and the sword on the floor next to the bed. It weighed a ton. She pulled the top sheet over to cover him but could not resist checking him out. Gah. He had a beautiful body. Wide shoulders and slim hips like a swimmer and covered in muscle. All he wore was a pendant on a leather thong and a bandage.
She cleaned up the blood, rinsed out his clothes and washed his boots. It kept her busy. She ate a light dinner and poured a large glass of red wine. She stood in the doorway and watched his chest rise and fall as he slept. She was worn out but felt odd about sleeping next to him. She started watching a movie and fell asleep on the lounge.
~~~~~~~~~~
A noise woke her. She stared at the TV screen, glowing bluely. The dvd player had turned itself off. She peered at the led clock on the display. Nearly three am.
The shower was running. She stood and stumbled towards the bathroom. He’d left the door open. She got a glimpse of his muscled back and an odd white tattoo at the base of his neck through the glass screen. It was glowing.
“Hey,” he said.
He was washing his hair. Her eyes dropped down to the injured thigh. Nothing. Not even a mark.
“Wha-?”
“Told you.” He sounded smug.
“That’s impossible.”
He turned the water off and stepped out of the shower. He stood right in front of her naked and wet.
What are you?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“Nephilim.”
A half angel? She shook her head. “Not possible,” she repeated. She noticed he had brought a gun into the bathroom. Why did half angels need guns? “If that’s true, then this isn’t your world.”
“No. I fell through a rift.”
What hurt you?”
“You do not want to know.”
Perhaps he was right on that one. “It had claws.”
He nodded.
“Can it hurt me?”
“You cleaned up the blood?”
She nodded.
“Then... no.” He looked down at her, gauging her reaction.
“What’s your name?”
“Dante.”
She nearly snorted. It was perfect. She stared at his bare chest. Reaching out slowly she brushed down his flesh with her fingers. “You feel...”
“Human,” he said. His voice sounded throaty and low.
He was warm. Wet. He had smelt like sweat and blood before he was clean. She looked up at his face. He had a scar going through his right eyebrow and down to his cheek. She traced it. He kissed the inside of her wrist. She was surprised. Maybe she shouldn’t have been. He was naked and standing very close to her.
“Let me thank you,” he suggested.
“You can’t...”
He raised an eyebrow.
~~~~~~~
He could.
~~~~
© AM Gray 2013
AN: I had to look this one up. Devil may cry is a computer game and the pic is a guy (drool) cosplaying the central character Dante. I have probably broken a lot of game rules or canon, but *shrugs* … this is what fell out of my head after five minutes research.


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