Seeing all the pile of laundry that he had to wash (including himself and his daughter), Dante decided to do everything in the bathroom. Helped by Angel, he moved all his clothes and washing materials to the bathroom upstairs. First, he took off his soaked clothes and helped Angel undress, then filled the bathtub with warm water. While waiting for the water to fill in, he grabbed the shower and washed himself and his daughter. First he started scrubbing Angel, then himself. Then he rinsed the bubbles off their bodies, and then he grabbed a bottle of Zwitsal children's shampoo. Seeing his father holding the familiar yellow shampoo bottle, she quickly went for the door, only to find it locked. Angel turned to her father, who is now smirking with an evil face and snickering.
"Come on, it's not that scary… it's just shampoo."
She banged on the bathroom door, a hopeless attempt to escape. Dante didn't care, and dragged her to his side. She flailed and whimpered, but her father is just too strong. He then sat down on the plastic stool, locking his daughter with his right arm and opening the children's shampoo with his left hand. He poured some of the clear yellow-colored liquid on his palm, and started to scrub her hair. She whimpered and flailed like crazy, as if Dante washed her hair with acid. For once, he thanked god she's mute, because all that she could do is whimper and flail. Had she had the ability to talk, she must be screaming on top of her lungs and he will have to deal with screams too. He gritted his teeth, because she is getting harder and harder to control. Thinking that her hair is already clean enough, he grabbed the shower and turned on the tap. Warm water started to spray from the shower, and he pulled it closer to his daughter
Just a final spray, and then we're done.
"Okay, close your eyes. I'm gonna spray your head"
He started to spray her head, and she stopped moving.
Good. She's calming down…
But he was wrong.
She started to flail again, and whimpered more. The shampoo bubbles make his grip more slippery and he had to hold her harder to prevent her from slipping away to the floor. He tried hard not to let her go until he saw some of the bubbles are red-colored and soon realized in shock that it was blood. At first, he thought that she was bleeding until he saw his own hands full of scratch.
"What the?"
He gripped her fingers and saw her long nails with bloodstains on the edge. She was scratching him. Of course, the scratches don't really matter to the devil hunter, because it will be gone in the next half an hour or so due to his demonic blood. He turned his attention to her, and saw her eyes full of tears and he can tell that she was really upset.
"Angel,"
He pointed to his hand that looked like a cat's scratching post with an unhappy face, and hit her head lightly. She winced and quickly stroked her head, gesturing that it hurts. But he just shook his head and sighed
"Bad girl."
He then held her up and dipped her into the tub, gave her a pair of rubber ducks, a plastic boat and a set of bathtub crayons. Then he wrapped a towel around his waist, dragged the bucket of dirty laundries that are piling up high near the stool, sat on the stool and started to wash them. While he was scrubbing his shirt to the washing board, Angel poked him from the bathtub. He turned back and smiled
"What is it?"
She pointed up and they both saw bubbles flying up in the bathroom. Dante scrubbed his shirt some more and more bubbles are appearing, which makes her more excited and now she's jumping around in the tub to catch the bubbles.
"Bubbles… they're pretty, right? Can you spell 'bubble'?"
She raised her hand and spelled "bubble" with sign language. He stroked her head and smiled, and then continued on washing the clothes. At first, she kept trying to catch the bubbles and her jumping makes the water from the tub tossed here and there. The water spilling keeps hitting Dante's back, sometimes little droplets of water squirting his face. He wanted to shout to her telling her to stop, but he decided to shut up when he remembered back when he was her age, he and Vergil was even more messy in the bathtub. Eva never blamed them despite they were making the whole bathroom as if it was just knocked down by a tsunami, not to mention that the two brothers were splashing and screaming during the bath. Luckily she got bored after a few minutes and sat back on the tub and goes back drawing with bathtub crayons all over the bathroom walls.
Even though he got more clothes to wash than this morning, it doesn't take him that long to clean all of them. After he finished washing everything, he helped his daughter out of the tub, unplugged the bathtub cork, sprayed her body to clean off the bathtub crayon marks, then gave her a dry towel from the cupboard.
"Here, dry yourself. Stay on top of the mat until all the water drip from your body so you won't make a mess out there."
She then moved to the top of the mat and wiped her body to dry, while Dante sprayed the bathroom wall to clean off Angel's drawings. After he's done cleaning off the bathroom, he went out of the bathroom with Angel and told her to get dressed. He was grateful that Lady and Trish had taught Angel how to dress herself – even though sometimes she still needs some help with buttons and back-zippers. He grabbed one of his jogging trousers from the drawer and put them on, scrubbed his hair and wiped his chest with towel to dry off the remaining water, and went out to the bathroom again. He then grabbed the bucket full of washed laundry and took it downstairs. He glanced to the window outside and saw that the rain is not stopping yet and by the sound of the wind that was blowing really hard, it will go for the rest of the night. He then walked into the washing room and grabbed a plastic rope from the cupboard, went out again and scanned the whole shop area, thinking where he should hang it. He decided to hang it from the second floor railing to a devil skull's horn hung beneath his desk – which was an easy task for him because he can jump extremely high. After he finished hanging all the clothes, he glanced over his hands – the scratches were almost gone, but seeing how wild she went when he washed her hair, he need to do something with her nails.
"Angel! Angel!" he cried for his daughter. It only took a few seconds for him to see her popping out of her bedroom door – she is now fully dressed with pink pajamas with white polka-dots, holding Snow in her arms.
"Come down here for a sec, will ya?"
She closed her bedroom door and went down the stairs immediately, while Dante sat down on his chair and dug through the desk drawer looking for a particular thing. She approached his desk and was surprised seeing all the clothes being hung inside the shop. Her attention turned back to her father when he snapped his fingers and gestured her to come to him. Half running, she obediently approached him and climbed on his laps. Dante shifted her position right in the middle between his legs, and suddenly grabbed one of her fingers with his left hand, and then out of the desk drawer, he produced something familiar that is silver - colored. She knew this – another of what she hated the most after shampoos…
"Nail – cutting time, baby."
Angel whimpered and flailed again, kicking away trying to escape but this time Dante pressed her legs with his, making her getting completely stuck and can't move freely. He fixed his grip of the nail cutter and slowly began to cut her nails. Despite of all the impacts that he received from Angel's desperate attempt to escape his grasp, he managed to cut her nails quite neatly. After he cut the last nail on her left pinky finger nail, she scratched her father the way she did in the bathroom, but this time it didn't work – of course, her sharp nails had been cut. She started to kick her father's stomach when Dante went on with the foot nails (which didn't have any effects at all on him) seeing that it's useless, she ran to a corner of the room where Dante have a shelf to keep his books and magazines (made by Morrison) and sulked, whimpering and crying. Dante sighed. He knew that it will take a very long time for her to stop and he's not in the mood to deal with a four-year-old girl's tantrums.
"Hey, come on. I don't want my little lady to have ugly long nails like those scary demons I hunt…"
She didn't budge.
"…Now that your nails are clean and neat, I'm sure that Patty will be happy to polish your nails again…"
She hissed.
Dante sighed again, then turned around and walked towards the fridge. He hoped that Patty didn't miss the note that he hung on the fridge door this morning and bought the thing that he requested in the note and when he opened the fridge, he smiled in relief. She did buy them.
"I still have two cups of strawberry sundae…"
Angel perked up, and quickly turned her head towards Dante, who is now holding two cups of strawberry sundae on his hands and putting them on the kitchen bar table. She dashed quickly from the back edge of the room towards the kitchen bar table, climbed on the one of the seats and reached out her hands to one of the strawberry sundae cups. But before she managed to grab one of them, Dante took them away. She climbed on the table and tried to grasp them from him, but he put his hands up high that even when she stood up on the table she couldn't reach it at all. She pouted and grumbled, gesturing that she wanted them, but Dante made a stern face and shook his head
"Nu-uh, I won't give them to you until you say the magic word" he said
She raised her right hand and signed 'please', but Dante still shook his head
"One more magic word, because you've been a really bad girl in the bath and the nail-cutting this evening"
She grumbled again, and tried to reach the sundaes. She thought that Dante was being off-guard and she would be able to grab them – but of course he didn't, and in the end she fell back on the glass kitchen bar table again. Had she been a demon, she must be dead by now. She finally raised her right hand and signed 'I'm sorry', Dante thought that it was more than enough, and the sundaes are melting if he waited for too long (since he wanted them too) so he told her to sit properly on one of the bar chairs, and after she obeyed, he set one of the cups on the kitchen bar table and gave her a small cake spoon. Angel didn't miss a second – right after she received her spoon, she pulled the cup towards her and started to gobble the strawberry sundae. Meanwhile, Dante grabbed another spoon and started to eat his own share of sundae, sometimes stopping to wipe his daughter's mouth with napkin. Morrison taught her table manners and she's been doing fine learning it, but she somehow failed at that when she have pizza or strawberry sundae in her mouth. She would devour them as if she hadn't been fed for ages.
After the evening snack, Dante brought the cups to the trash bin and throw them away, while he put the spoons in the sink and washed them, then put them on the dish rack to dry. Suddenly, sleepiness struck him and he almost hit the wall when he walked by the pillar. He glanced towards Angel, who is now lying down on top of the sofa. After looking at her sleeping peacefully, he decided not to move her upstairs – he's too sleepy to do so anyways. He turned off all the lights in the shop, and the room got pitch dark. Light only came from the window that lets the moonshine and the street lights came in. Carefully, he walked towards the sofa and climbed on it, and carefully shifted their positions so that now Angel is lying on his stomach, and his head is now on the pillow. Luckily, she didn't wake up at all, and having her lying down on his stomach has its advantages – she is pretty warm, so he won't have to get up again and grab some blankets or sheets. The rain hadn't stopped and the thunders are glaring outside – he is not scared of them, of course. He's a grown man, and a devil hunter. But somehow because Angel is next to him, he felt grateful that she is. He shifted her body again, now assured that she won't be awake so that her head lying on the sofa and her ears were pressed against his chest, and his arms wrapping her warm body.
And then he drifted to sleep with a smile on his face.
The next day, Lady, Trish, Morrison and Patty decided to visit the two because they haven't been answering calls all day. The phone line is on and both of Dante's and Angel's phone are callable, but there had been no answers no matter how many times they called. Worried that something might happen to them, they decided to go together. But when they enter the shop, all they see are dried, wrinkled clothes hanging on lines that are hung across the shop, and the father and daughter fell asleep on the couch. They giggled, trying as hard as they could not to laugh, because it turned out that they didn't answer the phone because they simply fell asleep.
"Let's just him a break, he's probably too tired" Trish said.
So Lady grabbed a blanket from Dante's room upstairs and covered the two sleeping father and daughter with it, and they decided to help him with laundry since it is obvious that the lazy, pig-headed devil hunter had been trying his best to do all the household business (even though he still need to do a hell lot of work on that). After checking the washing machine and proved that Dante isn't lying, Morrison and Lady went out to Wal-Mart with Morrison's Chevrolet to buy a new washing machine for him, while Trish and Patty stayed to help him iron and fold the laundry. Trish picked them up from the clothesline and Patty collected them in a basket. They tried as hard as they could not to burst out laughing when they found Dante's heart-pattern boxers with a big hole on it, and they continued giggling for the rest of the ironing and folding. After they folded them neatly, they first go to Angel's bedroom to put her folded clothes. But when they opened her wardrobe, a mountain – pile of clothes fell from the wardrobe to the floor. Patty kneeled down and examined them.
"It's all clean… but it's messy…" Patty said. The two female looked towards each other with funny faces.
"Patty, let's check Dante's room… shall we?"
The two put the laundry baskets down and rushed into Dante's room and immediately opened the wardrobe. Just as they thought, mountain – pile of clean clothes fell out. The two stared at each other again, and Patty sighed in disappointment. Trish sighed too, and she dug into her pockets and grabbed her gold D&G Edition Motorola V3. She sat down on Dante's messy bed as she dialed, and signaled Patty to start collecting all the mess on the floor. Finally, the one she dialed answered and Trish spoke up
"Lady, are you still in Wal-Mart? Yeah, can you please fetch some clothes hanger – like, enough to hang all the clothes that Dante and Angel have? No – do I look like someone making a dry humor? Just get around 60 of them. I'll explain it when you and Morrison are here. Thanks"
She flipped her phone closed and shoved it back into her pocket, and went off the bed and helped Patty to pick up the mess on the floor.
"Patty, don't bother to fold them"
"Why?"
"Isn't it obvious that Dante doesn't have any talent with folding clothes?"
"Then what are you going to do?"
"I'll just teach him to hang everything and store the socks and underwear in the drawers inside the wardrobe. Makes it much easier, right?"
Patty stared at her for a while, and then she nodded.
"Right," she said.
And the two started to grab all the clothes scattered on the floor and throw them into the laundry basket.
