~Sometimes, All You Need Is A Little Love~

You were drunk and dejected, for it had been one of the most horrible days of your life. You cannot declare yourself as an experienced adult, but your twenty-one years of life had not been easy either. You were birthed to poor parents who already had two children before you, and couldn’t understand why their protection methods didn’t work. Your elder siblings were cleverer than you, and they obviously got more attention than you from your parents. They were doted on by your parents, always praised while you kept yourself locked up in your room blasting music.

But that had been your rough teenage life –in which you tried everything ranging from drugs to marijuana, from partying to having sex parties. You used to be the craziest, funkiest kid in town that no one could control, and your parents gave up on you. You were destined to be on a one-way road to failure, but you somehow never got ruined. Somehow, even with countless unprotected sex with different boys who desired and hungered after you every day, you were protected from STDs and pregnancy. Somehow, smoking and alcohol never gave you cancer. Somehow, drugs never killed you no matter how much you took, and somehow, you never once got caught for vandalizing.

You counted it on your luck. You called it your fortune. You were enjoying the life every adolescent kid dreamt of –doing whatever you could, satisfying your every wants with not parental control.

And then adulthood happened. Your parents kicked you out when you were of legal age, and you had to go around homeless and penniless. You scored no good grades –not because you were stupid, but because you skipped every single examination possible. Finally, you tried –by some means –to scrape what little life you could together. You jumped jobs faster than fashion changed clothes. You worked a range of jobs, but never stayed in any for long. The bosses either found you too lazy, or you found yourself too lazy to do anything on the job.

And then you found an old boyfriend, and move in with him in return for sex. He suggested that you go work as a prostitute, and you told him that if you didn’t get a stable job within three more months, then you would do so.

You knew you were at the bottom of the society, the scrape at the bottom of the bottle that could never be washed away. People like you were undesired in any community, but still, people like you always existed. You knew that either you started to do something about your life, or you would stay like this –miserable and selling your body. But you had no goal. You never had one, and you never stayed interested enough to do anything of your own interest. Perhaps sex, booze and drugs were the only things that kept you on edge, and you knew you were going to destroy yourself someday.

You could not help it. You couldn’t find a job, you got frustrated. The more frustrated you were, the more people you looked for to vent your frustration. You vented it all through sex, and thought you felt dirty doing so, you knew no other way. You knew you were loose, but you grew up like this. Eventually, the old boyfriend you lived with began to advertise your bedroom positions to his friends, and you got paid to put on a show.

It was the only source of income you could get, but your conscience began to come back to eat you. You turned more to booze, and you often came back drunk high on beer.

Today. Today was worst. You met your elder siblings, and saw them with their successful husbands and wives. They refused to acknowledge your existence, and turned their noses when you tried to get their attention. Only your parents looked core-shocked at the state you were in, but after that they tried their best to ignore you too. It was like you never existed in their family.

That was why you were so drunk today. You could not understand why your parents ostracized you so much in your childhood. You blamed them for where you were now. You were self-delusory, but you didn’t care. You didn’t want your life to be like this. You couldn’t help it: you convinced yourself.

You were even drunken than you usually were, and you couldn’t even make out the road in front of you. You knew no cars would be out in the midnight, so you were walking –or just swaying slowly –out in the open. In your hand was another bottle of beer that you had yet to chug down. You weren’t even sure if you were on the right route home. You hoped that you would wake up the next day, hopefully in bed. It didn’t even matter if the bed you woke up in didn’t belong to you, but a stranger you had never met. You just wanted to wake up in a bed, in the arms of a man.

You made out a figure standing at the far end of the road, just standing and waiting.

“What the fuck are you waiting for, you dirty bastard? Come on, I know you wanna turn me on my front and put that dick in me!” You didn’t know that you were shouting, but slurred words spilled and your mind was dull.

The figure didn’t move, and it pissed off your drunken mind. You lumbered heavily over to the figure, watching as he slowly became more distinguishable. He wore a fedora, a tight three-quarter length coat that hugged his body. He wore proper shoes, and didn’t even look the slightest bit shabby. He was watching you carefully.

“What are you looking at? You want to fuck, do it! Do me now! That’s all I’m good at! Because that’s all I can do, Mum, Dad! You didn’t care when I started to have sex with my first guy! You didn’t care that I was going down the wrong road! Why do you have to turn your eyes away from me? I’m your flesh and blood!” You shouted your grief at the man, unable to keep a lid on how your thoughts were running haywire. In your drunken state, you saw this man as your parents, and you continued to rail at ‘them’.

The man didn’t move, merely watching you as you spewed colorful language and an amazing vocabulary of vulgarities at him. You raised your arms a few times in threat to hit him or slap him, but never had he flinched, and never had you actually made contact with him. Blue aquamarine eyes only watched you carefully, and though he didn’t smile, he didn’t frown.

You did not know it, but he was truly amused by you, and the lengths of your hatred and your amazing vocabulary. He knew of a person –his brother –who cussed with much dirtiness but he found that you could actually rival his brother –and almost win.

In the moonlight that shone directly on his face, he looked perfect to your eyes. He was the perfect man, the man you dreamt to marry. He looked so handsome, so powerful. You didn’t know if he was rich, but the strength of just his posture, just his standing against you while you railed at him was something you had wanted all this while.

At some point, your anger and rage wound down to pure sorrow and grief, and you broke into uncontrollable tears. You pulled your arms around him and cried on his shoulder, glad that he was only a little taller than you. You bawled and cried. You made a mess of his coat and hugged him tight like a teddy bear. Finally, you got some movement from him, as he moved his arms up to hug your back, petting your back as if to get you to relax. You continue to wail and rail at your life, and he just held you.

Finally, the energy that kept you going for so long left you, and you dropped the bottle within your hands. You lost the energy to stand up, and fell into him. He didn’t even falter. He scooped you up in his arms, carrying you bridal style. He made you feel safe, and it was ridiculous, because you didn’t even know his name. All you know was that he had been waiting for you.

You rested your head tiredly against this stranger’s chest, feeling his chest muscles as your looped limp hands around his neck. Beneath the fedora was a handsome face that looked almost like a chiseled statue against the moonlight. You sighed quietly and touched his face. He looked down at you, and gave the first expression. He gave a smile so gentle that you almost feel your heart break at the genteelness it showed.

“Sleep. No more will all of that happen. You are mine.” He declared, and you took him for his word. No more will everything in your wretch life happen. You are his –no matter who he is. And you would sleep.

And so you slept, deep and finally peaceful. It was the first time you were peaceful.

The first time in many many years that you slept deep without a care in the world.

************************************************

You wake up to find yourself naked and weren’t surprised when you found yourself in an unfamiliar bed with a hangover that would most probably have already killed off millions of brain cells. The bed you woke up in was soft and clean-smelling; a strange twist from what you were used to. You smelled no sex from the sheets, and you felt no sores in your sensitive parts, and it made you wonder if you were fucked at all in the first place.

You had gone through this many times –getting drunk and waking up the next day on a man’s bed to realize that someone had sex with you while you were dead drunk. This time seemed so different, and you dared yourself to hope that there was a man out in the world who wouldn’t just see you as a sex toy, but as a human being.

You dragged yourself up, looking around to see a neat, four-poster bed that you were sleeping on. Soft veils covered the sides of the bed, and you were reminded by a princess sleeping at the sight. Except this time, you were the princess, sleeping peacefully behind the protective veils.

It was apparent that this time, you had woken up in a man of certain wealth, for, despite his lack of decorum, you spotted several furniture with exquisite Victorian architecture. The room itself held an aura that screamed of a rich man’s home, and you wondered what luck you must have run into to find yourself in a place like this. Who was the person who brought you here? You hit the side of your head in an effort to clear it from its hangover, delving into your drunken memory in an effort to dig up a face –maybe a name –that could accompany this sense of security and peacefulness you had.

The other side of the bed seemed untouched, and you were surprised to find un-rumpled sheets. No one had slept with you. With a drunken lady in his bed, whoever who brought you here had not even slept beside you. You looked to the bedside table, and saw a note pasted on a jug.

You leaned forward to read the cursive handwriting that seemed to belong to a well-educated man.

I had your clothes washed over the night. There is a robe in the closet. Come down for breakfast after your wash up.

It was so instructional that you wondered what kind of a man would resist having sex with a woman like you, and then order you around. Of course, you believed that there were actually some good men in the world who would leave a slut like you in their bed –not wanting to take advantage of you –but you didn’t believe that any of them existed in your neighborhood.

Still, you were in the room of a man who had treated you well so far, so you obeyed the instructions and got to the adjourning bathroom. You were extremely surprised to find sophisticated marble floors, and a bathtub made of such clean porcelain that you wondered if this bathroom was ever used before. There were bathroom materials set out for you already, and you took the pleasure of a cold shower to clean your head. The hangover was slowly killing you, but at least you were more awake now. At least you didn’t feel like dying.

It was one of the most refreshing bath you ever had in your entire life, and you wished –knowing that it was futile –that you could live like this forever. You accepted the fact that you were doomed to be a slut forever and nothing you did could change it. Still, you could hope and wish for a miracle –though you did not believe in God or any celestial entity above in the skies. Maybe you should start believing, you told yourself as you found the loose bathrobe in the closet. It didn’t seem much, but it covered your decently, and as you tied the ribbon around your waist, it made you feel funnily grand.

You walked out of the room, finding a corridor that led to stairs. At the side were other rooms, and for the kindness that this unnamed stranger had shown you, you replied it by not nosing into his other rooms. You ignored your curiosity and sense of adventure as you walked through the corridor, towards the stairs. You didn’t understand why he said come ‘down’ for breakfast, but now you knew he meant it literally for he actually had stairs in his apartment. Throughout your life, you had been so poor that ‘apartment’ meant a room, an adjourning bathroom, a kitchens and a sitting area cramped up in a pitiful space that could fit only this man’s bedroom.

Barefooted, you stepped down the stairs, feeling cold marble beneath your feet. This man was more than a little rich –you observed as you made slow progress down the stairs. You got the sense that he held little decorum, but in every little thing you saw in the corridor and in the house so far, it held the air of wealth.

You walked down a total of three flights of stairs, trusting your instincts to find your breakfast and the kitchen. On the second floor, you remembered seeing a picture of a white-silver haired man and a woman with cool blonde hair clasping their hands together and smiling at you as you made down the stairs.

They made you seem welcomed –loved –and you wondered who they were. The painter had obviously caught the details extremely well, and you could even see the little twinkle in their eyes. On their clasped hands were rings on their fourth fingers, and it could be seen by their proximity that they were terribly in love with each other.

You made to the ground floor, finding a sitting area that waited for you. You knew you wouldn’t find any food here, so you went turned to your right, finding a long table. Clicks of utensils were the first foreign sounds you heard, and you walked into the room, tilting your body a little to look past the high back chair that was blocking your view of the entire room.

You saw him, sitting at the head of the table, opposite to the door, daintily performing surgery on his breakfast. He didn’t look up at your silent entrance, but the butler at his side caught sight of you and made a quick bow.

“My lady, you are awake. Please, take a seat. Breakfast will be served.” The elderly butler with a pair of thick glasses spoke respectfully, and left his place behind the man’s chair while the man you met finally rested his eyes upon you.

“I hope you had a nice sleep. Take a seat. Sebastian will get the food and you will get painkillers after your breakfast.” He said, and you were suddenly reminded by his soft voice yesterday night before you fell into unconsciousness.

You silently went took a seat beside him at his right, unsure of how you were supposed to act in front of a man so grand as this. The fedora yesterday was gone, and you saw the same brilliant silver-white hair that shone. He kept it short and unruly, and it gave him a certain quality of a bad-boy look. He wore easy, casual clothes today, but no matter what, you could still sense an air of grandness around him.

His sleeveless shirt showed off his arm muscles, and you could not help wondering what he did for a living. What could he be doing to earn him so much wealth, and keep him so muscled? He could not be a businessman –for no businessman would ever have the time to sit at this table pleasantly, taking his time to cut through his food.

“Who are you?” You asked gently, since you couldn’t find a more polite way of starting a conversation without your curiosity getting in the way.

“My name is Vergil Sparda. You are at my humble house as my guest. I apologize for not having asked you beforehand when I brought you home, but I will promise that I have done nothing to you. My maidservant undressed you and placed you in bed.” He spoke in the same gentle tone, and you wondered why he never seemed harsh at all.

“Why have you brought me here?”

He didn’t even stop in his quest to slice his food. He kept his eyes on the food, not looking up at me. “You were drunk and I did not know where to bring you. Your family kicked you out, and I do not consider that shabby place you have with that filthy man a home. Even if I brought you back there, you would have woken up with painful sores in your private areas due to that man putting himself in you with no permission. ‘Rent’ he calls it. I call it the most unbecoming and most disgusting method of payment. This is rape, no ‘rent’.”

His voice held no disgust for you, but extreme condemnation of the man you have been living with for the past few years. Strangely, you felt no sting. You didn’t get the idea that he was discriminating you, but you didn’t understand why he knew all about you and you ex-boyfriend.

“How do you know about me?”

He seemed ready to reply, but a tired and rude yawn broke his words. You turned to the source of the interruption, and were surprised to find another man –with the same face and body as him –but with another set of clothes –this time way more shabby and dirty. You turned back to face Vergil, to make sure he was still there, and then turned to the newcomer that was so obviously his twin.

“Mornin’, Verge. Morning, hotness.” The other guy greeted lazily, and you got the sense that ‘hotness’ was referred to you.

“It is the afternoon, Dante. It is no morning.” Vergil –the man who brought you home –replied condescendingly.

“You know it doesn’t matter to me. Wait.” Dante –the newcomer –stopped in his tracks, rubbing his eyes and staring at you. Then he pointed at you.

“I didn’t fuck you! I didn’t have sex with anyone yesterday! Why are you here?”

You wondered if finding a girl wrapped up in bathrobes was common in this household, for the way that Dante had greeted you seemed as if he were used to having one-night stands.

“Her presence here is none of your business, Dante.” Vergil replied him for you, and you turned to see him giving his brother a levelled look. Still, his twin ignored the plain command in his eyes –the command that told him to shut about you –and took a seat down opposite you at Vergil’s other side.

“The fact that she’s wrapped up in a bathrobe, and not someone I had sex with last night is my business, bro. Why is she here like this? I didn’t ask her here.” Dante studied you up and down, as if he didn’t understand why you were here. It was obvious that Dante commonly referred to women as his sex toy, and it reminded you of what you had gone through. You could have met him anytime, and you could have been just one of his one-night stands. Instead, you have met his brother, and things were different for you now.

“Not every woman that walks into this place is your women. Can I not ask a woman here myself?”

“But you have never,” Dante leaned on the table towards his brother, in an in-your-face kind of thing, and it probably disturbed the seemingly older twin who leaned away from his brother’s curious –and accusing –gaze, “unless this woman is your…”

You didn’t understand what he was going to continue when he cut off suddenly like that, but when he gave you a second look, at the state of your clothes, it suddenly clicked.

“Oh my god, you finally had sex with a woman? You dirty bastard! I thought you were pure like a monk!”

From that, you obvious got the idea that Vergil was no loose man who –unlike his brother –had countless one-night stands despite his looks and money.

“I did not. Even if I did, it is none of your business. My sex life is mine. Have you seen me poking my nose into yours?”

“Well, your sex life was too boring for me to bothering myself with. Until today. Tell me, darling,” Dante turned his attention to you, flashing a grin that was so alluring you finally understood why woman turned up at his house for one-night stands, “What is your name?”

“Denna.” You replied, and though you didn’t see it, the side of Vergil’s lips quirked. Vergil knew that the name you had just dropped wasn’t your actual one, and he was amused that you didn’t trust Dante as much as he did. The fact that you refused to give Dante your real name showed how street smart you were.

“Well, Denna, can you tell me what makes you so special that you ended up one night with him? Was he good on the bed?”

You looked to Vergil for answers, but he only shook his head. He wanted you to keep how you met him a secret, and since he had shown you such kindness thus far, you obeyed him. The food came as you looked back into Dante’s eyes, apparently great with giving lies while looking into a person’s eyes since lies had all it had been to keep you alive.

“He saved me yesterday. We got drunk, so…”

Dante gave a laugh so cheerful that you wondered why he was so glad that his brother had finally deflowered a girl. Vergil, for his part, was strangely staying quiet. What was it that he wanted to keep from you? What was it that he would not say before his brother?

“Vergil got drunk? Ha! That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard thus far! Vergil, drunk?”

I looked to the man in question, worried that I had said the wrong things. But Vergil only gave a tight-lipped smile, as if he were just humouring his brother for some reason.

“Yeah, first time. I’ve got a horrible hangover, so can you just shut up and eat your food?” Vergil sounded a little threatening, and it got over to his brother. Almost instantly, Dante fell silent, and I turned my concentration to my food.

Dante lost his interest in you a short while afterwards, and continued to annoy his brother while Vergil kept his eyes on the plate. When he was finished, Vergil merely watched you quietly, and that gave Dante more ammo to shoot at. You, for your part, pretended that you didn’t know anything, and refused to look up even when Dante referred to you countless of times.

Then, there was a sudden break in the conversation. Dante picked it up again, but with an entirely different topic altogether.

“Hey, are there any jobs today? Seeing your girl; it makes me wanna find someone tonight.”

“Check with Nero. He took yesterday’s shift for me.”

“Because you were fucking her?”

“Because I had other commitments. But there is a confirmed break in from the demon world that’s happening today. Someone’s sending Cerberus over today, and it’s your job to send him back.”

“Isn’t that your job?”

“It was. Now it’s yours.”

“Wait? When did I sign any agreement that I would get Cerberus for you? It’s your money, your contract!”

“Then we change the name. It’s not that hard. I’ll do paperwork. You send Cerberus back and get the money.”

“That’s more like it. Why aren’t you doing the job?”

“Cerberus is coming in five minutes. I need to talk to the girl.”

Dante jumped up at that. “Five minutes? And you’re telling me now? You bastard. Where?”

“Downtown.”

“But I need at least twenty minutes to get there!”

Vergil looked up calmly at his brother. “You are a demon. What are you telling me?”

Dante flashed his brother a middle finger, and turned around, running back out the way he came from, his food half eaten. “A half-demon, Vergil! Half!”

Sebastian, the elderly butler cleared the half eaten plate and retreated while you stared at Vergil for the conversation that had passed. You knew you should freak out, you knew you should go crazy at the knowledge that demons existed and that these men were half-demons. But strangely you felt no fear. You were surprised, but there was no fear. It was funny; how you could just sit here quietly, patiently waiting for him to answer your unasked questions.

“As you have heard from my brother; yes, I am a half-demon. We work as devil hunters, and we are the best in the industry. Please don’t be afraid. I am not here to harm you.”

You shrug. “You would have done that long ago if you really wanted to do any real harm to me. But why have you gotten me here? Seriously?” You asked –not so much a demand –because you knew someone like him didn’t like to be intimidated or threatened. Vergil struck you a no-nonsense man, and you wondered exactly how his brother Dante had survived thus far.

You weren’t sure where to place Vergil in your life. You had no roles for him, and you didn’t know what his presence offered for you. He was no sex-partner, no tenant, no familiar friend, nor even just a mere colleague. He fit into neither of those categories, as you had come to categorize the men in your life, and you wondered –for a moment –where he would end up in the future.

“You want the truth?” He asked, giving you such a careful look that you felt like he regarded you like a piece of precious diamond; if he didn’t keep his eye on you, you would be stolen anytime.

“In all honesty, yes.” You replied with a straight face and something resigned wrote across his face, giving you the impression that he had hoped you had asked the question a little bit later.

“I have a demonic half that goes crazy whenever I let it go. My father told us –Dante and I –that when our demon chooses a woman, we cannot turn our eyes away to anyone else. Only that woman can temper the rage of our demonic halves –and truth be told, my demon has been driving me crazy for its search for more power.” Vergil was ready to continue on, but you could make up the rest yourself. This was a typical love story –a typical storybook idea that you knew never existed on earth.

You were a realist, not some little girl locked up in her bedroom reading Cinderella and hoping for a handsome prince to come knocking on her door with a glass shoe in his hands.

“Let me guess, you think I am the woman that your demon wants. Give me a break; I might be a slut, but I’m not desperate enough to take in this shit without being sceptical.” The not-so-polite side of you began to show, and strangely Vergil didn’t seem surprised to see this true side of you.

There was a short break of silence that followed after your interruption, and then Vergil continued speaking as if you didn’t cut in at all.

“I didn’t believe in my father’s tale, but the demonic side of us were real. Dante calmed down his demon through sex and drugs. I… took on a different method. But what I did isn’t important. What is important that I do not hear any voice whispering in my mind telling me to kill and look for power when I’m around you. You give me peace, Elena, more than anyone has given me; the peace I have been deprived from young. The total silence feels like addictive music, Elena. I need more of this.” You knew he was taking your words and just rephrasing them in a manner that sounded more pleasing to the ear, but the fact that he spoke your true name with such gentleness and pleading that you felt bad for even thinking of refusing him.

He wasn’t so bad; you tried to convince yourself as you put your utensils back down on the plate. He hasn’t done anything to you –anything bad. He was the first man to respect you as a human, a woman to be loved and treasured.  He was the first man who looked at you, saw the way you were acting –which was pretty unsightly considering you were extremely drunk –and totally ignored the fact that you were a woman who had been enjoyed by many men.

You had long given up hope to marry a rich man and live a good life. You knew Vergil wasn’t proposing marriage, but it was clear that he wanted –needed –you to be around him to give him his peace.

“My being around you calms you down? What do you want me to do? Stick with you 24/7?”

He shook his head with a pleasant smile, a smile that said he was glad that you were giving him a chance. You hoped it was the right choice. This man could change your life, and you didn’t want to leave him just yet.

“Be my girlfriend. I will protect you from the hardships of your life. I will solve everything for you. Just be by my side. I don’t care if you don’t love me. Just stay by me.”

It was painfully obvious in his eyes that he loved, and though he didn’t say it, you saw that he wanted you. But he respected you as a woman, and you didn’t even know him well. You knew he didn’t expect for you to feel for some man you met for less than half a day, but strange enough, his acts of kindness, one after another, warmed your heart.

Still, you were a practical woman –too hardened by life to trust a man who was a half demon.

“How am I supposed to believe all that you say?”

“I can have everything written down on paper. We can seal it in blood. Anything. I know this may seem unfair –for me to bind you to me –but I cannot help this. My demon listens to you, and I am controlled by him. I am addicted on the silence, the peace you give me, and I love you for it.”

You saw his point of view, but you didn’t understand one very important point.

“If you just wanted me around, you could have just paid me. Why go through all that trouble to search about me, and then wait for me at the road yesterday? Why bring me here, treat me so well?”

At that question, he broke off his eye contact hurriedly, as if he didn’t dare to show that he was in love. As if he didn’t want you to understand him at all.

“I know what it’s like to lose everything and everyone. I know what it’s like to lose your parents, your brother all at once. I found Dante again, but the times I went through were horrible. I want to help you through the times; I want to help you prove something to your parents, your siblings.”

And I want to give myself a chance to love you. You could practically see that unspoken sentence in his eyes, and something bloomed in you.

This was the first time a man ever cared about you, your past and your thoughts. This was the first man that didn’t pity you for the sake of seeing you naked in bed. This was the first man who didn’t rape you while you were asleep.

This was a man who loved you for who you were. And god help you, even if you didn’t know that much about him, you loved him back. You loved him back for the way he loved you so selflessly, so stupidly, and so crazily not wanting you to reciprocate the feeling.

You stood up, leaving your meal and walked to his side. With your fingers, his robe closed around your body, you tilted his head up to meet your eyes as he remained seated.

“Thank you, Vergil. No one ever sees me like this. It feels good. Being around you feels good too. You make me calm. You make me safe and protected. You make me wanted, and I want you for all these that you provide me.”

You watched his eyes widen with shock, and you smiled. Silly boy. You weren’t actually so hard to chase after. You had lived through the hard life for too long to demand perfect things. Yet, somehow, it seemed funny how he seemed so perfect for you, and he wanted to be even more perfect.

All you had wanted from a man –though –was some sense of security, the sense that you were being protected.

Sometimes, actually, all you needed was a little love.

And Vergil gave it all.