Is it Wrong to Have a Harem in DxD

She fell asleep after.

Her breathing slowed against my neck and her legs loosened around my hips and her body went heavy. Her hand was still in mine between us. Her grip didn't relax. The rest of her let go, her pulse dropping under my fingers where they rested against her throat, but her hand stayed tight on mine and the sleep could have the rest.

The Boosted Gear's gem pulsed one more time. Faint. The last of the energy transfer settling into my reserves like heat sinking into stone. Ddraig was quiet. She'd been quiet through the whole thing, which was her version of tact. Ten thousand years of hosts and their mornings. She'd learned when to shut up.

I lay there. Rias's face was close, forehead against my chin, her breath warm and damp on my collarbone. The room smelled like us. The bird outside had come back, two notes, the same one that had been going since the first morning I'd woken up in this body, and I still didn't know what it was.

Her eyelashes moved against my skin. A twitch, not a blink. Her mouth was soft, slightly open, her lower lip still bitten pink from earlier. A strand of crimson hair was stuck to the corner of her mouth and I pulled it free and tucked it behind her ear and she didn't wake up.

The light in the room had gone from pale gold to actual morning. School in two hours. Asia was probably already downstairs.

I didn't move.

She woke up fifteen minutes later. The exhales got shorter, her body tensed in stages from the feet up, and her hand in mine squeezed once, hard, before relaxing. Testing. Finding me still there.

"Ise." Her voice was rough. She hadn't opened her eyes.

"Still here."

Her mouth curved against my collarbone. She pressed her lips to the skin there, unhurried, and then pulled back and opened her eyes and blinked and the blue-green was blurry with sleep and she looked at me from six inches away.

"What time is it."

"Don't know."

She sighed. Closed her eyes again.

My cock was soft against her thigh. She was warm and wet between her legs where I'd been inside her, and when she shifted her hips the slickness was audible in the quiet room and her ears went pink.

"I need a shower," she said. She didn't move.

"My shower's small."

"I know." She'd used it before. The first time, she'd been horrified by the water pressure. The Gremory estate probably had showers that could strip paint. Mine had a handheld nozzle that dribbled.

She sat up. The sheet fell to her waist and the morning light hit her breasts and her stomach and the pink flush that ran from her cheeks down her neck and across her chest. She looked down at herself, at the marks on my hips where my fingers had been, at the redness between her thighs, and she didn't cover up. She'd stopped covering up after the second time. The composure still reassembled itself in other ways. Spine straightening, chin lifting. But she'd stopped pulling sheets to her collarbone. That part was done.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and her feet found the floor and she stood and her legs were steady. They hadn't been the first time. She'd wobbled and caught the desk and I'd pretended not to notice and she'd pretended not to care. Now she stood up like a person who'd been getting out of this bed for weeks, which she had.

She walked to the bathroom. Naked, her hair a disaster, the red falling to her thighs and swinging with each step. I watched her go because I wasn't dead and Rias Gremory walking naked across a room was worth the attention every single time regardless of how many times I'd seen it.

The bathroom door closed. Water started. She left the door unlocked. That was new as of last week.

I got up. Put my boxers on, found a shirt on the floor that was probably clean enough. My body felt good. The energy transfer from Rias was warm in my chest, a low steady hum alongside my heartbeat that was becoming familiar. Devil energy. Warm, dense, a little dangerous at the edges where the Destruction lived. I'd learned to tell the difference between hers and Akeno's. Rias's energy felt like standing near a fire. Comforting until you forgot what fire did. Akeno's felt like the air before a storm.

I went downstairs.

The kitchen smelled like rice and miso. Asia was at the stove. She was wearing her Kuoh uniform with the apron over it and her blonde hair was pulled back and she was stirring the miso with the focused attention of someone who was still learning the recipe.

"Good morning, Issei-san." She turned. Green eyes, clear, awake. She'd been up for at least an hour.

"Morning, Asia."

She glanced at the ceiling. The bathroom was running. She looked back at me. Her mouth opened, closed, and then she turned back to the miso and stirred.

"I made extra," she said.

That was it. She'd been setting the third plate for weeks now. The first time had cracked her open. I remembered her jaw trembling, her hand tight on the spatula, the courage it took her to be okay with what she was seeing. Now the third plate was automatic. She set it the way she set the first two, with the chopsticks aligned and the placemat smoothed, and the routine had worn the edges off the pain or just buried it. I didn't know which.

I poured myself water. Leaned against the counter. Asia was quiet in the kitchen, comfortable in a way she hadn't been at first. The spice rack had been reorganized, there was a small herb pot on the windowsill she'd planted herself, the oven mitts were hung where she liked them.

"The tamagoyaki is better," I said.

She brightened. "Your mother taught me to use more dashi. And to keep the heat lower." She held up the pan. The rolled egg was neat, even, lightly browned. "She said the edges should be soft, not crispy."

"Looks perfect."

"Thank you." A small bow, sincere. She set the pan on a trivet.

Footsteps on the stairs. Rias came down with her hair damp and finger-combed, wearing one of my t-shirts, a grey one, too wide, the collar slipping off one shoulder, and a pair of shorts she kept in the guest room. She'd put them on after the shower. The shirt was mine. This was becoming the uniform: his shirt, her shorts, bare feet on the kitchen tile. She wore the Gremory name to school and my laundry to breakfast.

"Good morning, Asia," Rias said. Her voice was warm. Genuine.

"Good morning, Rias-san. I made miso and tamagoyaki. And there's rice."

"It smells wonderful."

Rias crossed to the counter and reached past me for the tea canister. Her arm brushed my side. She didn't look at me but the corner of her mouth turned up. She filled the kettle, set it on the burner, and started preparing tea with the ease of a person who'd done it in this kitchen enough times to know which cabinet the cups were in without checking.

The first time she'd made tea here, she'd opened three wrong cabinets. I'd watched her get progressively more annoyed at the Hyoudou family's kitchen organization, which admittedly made no sense. My mother stored mugs next to the rice cooker and plates above the washing machine. Now Rias navigated it blind. She knew where the tea leaves were. She knew which burner heated fastest. She knew the green cup was mine and the white one with the chipped handle was Asia's.

I sat down. Asia brought the food. Rias brought the tea. Three cups, three plates, three sets of chopsticks. The kitchen was warm from the stove and the winter morning outside the window was grey and cold.

"Issei-san, did you know there are seventy-two types of demons in the Lesser Key of Solomon?" Asia said, midway through her rice. "I found a book in the library. Some of the descriptions are quite inaccurate."

Rias looked up. "Inaccurate how?"

"They describe Marquis Phenex as a bird that sings sweetly." Asia paused. Frowned. "That is not consistent with my understanding."

Rias's chopsticks stopped. A muscle in her jaw flexed. Then her mouth twitched.

"No," she said. "Singing is not the Phenex family's strong suit."

I drank my tea. The conversation drifted. Asia's library finds, Rias correcting demonology with the bored authority of someone whose family was IN the demonology, a brief argument about whether Agares was better classified as a Duke or a Grand Duke that I followed about forty percent of. My phone buzzed on the counter. A text from Matsuda asking if I was dead, because I hadn't answered his last six messages. I typed back a thumbs-up and put the phone face-down.

Breakfast ended. Asia cleared the dishes. Rias washed her cup and set it on the rack and dried her hands on a towel and folded it in thirds and hung it over the oven handle. The same way my mother folded it. She'd picked that up without being taught.

She went upstairs to change. The Kuoh uniform materialized from a small magic circle she kept in the guest room. The Gremory wardrobe service. Clean clothes stored in pocket dimensions because Rias Gremory was not going to wear the same blouse twice. She came back down looking like the third-year everyone knew: blazer, skirt, black socks, crimson hair brushed and shining, every trace of the girl in my shirt folded away behind the composure.

Asia was at the door with her bag. She'd been ready for ten minutes. She was always ready before both of us.

We walked. The three of us, same route, same residential streets, same hedges and vending machines and the intersection where the old man walked his white dog except the old man wasn't there today. Asia walked half a step behind, humming. The hymn. The same one that gave her a headache because she was a Devil and prayer was a physical contradiction now, but she hummed it anyway because it was hers and she wasn't giving it up. Her humming trailed off and resumed and trailed off and she rubbed her temple and kept going.

Rias walked beside me. Her bag in her right hand, her left hand swinging at her side. Our knuckles brushed. Neither of us reached for the other. The almost-touch was its own thing, and she didn't close it and I didn't close it and the gap between our hands was warm.

Kuoh Academy. The gate, the tree-lined approach, the wave of uniforms streaming in. Rias split off at the entrance to the main building. Third-years went right, second-years left. Asia said goodbye and headed for her classroom. I went to mine.

First period was math. I did math.

Lunch. The courtyard.

I was sitting on the bench by the east building, eating a rice ball I'd grabbed from the school store, when Rias walked through the courtyard.

A hundred meters away. Surrounded by third-year girls, because Rias Gremory attracted a social orbit just by existing. She was walking toward the ORC building, bag in hand, posture perfect, crimson hair catching the December sun and turning it to color in the grey schoolyard.

She turned her head.

Across the courtyard, through the crowd of students and the gap of two entire year-levels, her eyes found mine. The same way they had the morning after the first time, when the composure had cracked for half a second into the girl who'd said "five more minutes" in my bed.

But it was different now. She looked at me and the composure stayed intact and the warmth came through it anyway, and her mouth curved, barely, a movement the third-years around her wouldn't catch.

Two seconds. Maybe three. Then she turned forward and kept walking and the third-years didn't notice and the courtyard kept being a courtyard and nobody knew except me and her and probably Koneko, who was sitting on the far bench with a bag of rice crackers and gold eyes that tracked everything.

I finished my rice ball.

The December sun was thin and cold and the courtyard was full of students doing things I wouldn't remember and somewhere in the Underworld there was a wedding invitation being written with Rias's name on it, addressed to a man she'd never chosen, backed by a contract she couldn't break. Grayfia would arrive soon. The fire teleport. Riser Phenex.

Rias was walking away across the courtyard. Her hair caught the light one more time before she turned the corner.

I crumpled the rice ball wrapper. Tossed it in the bin.

Tomorrow was going to be louder than today.