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"Cohabiting Half-Demons?" It's more likely thank you think - Part 3

Part 1 | Masterpost

Fandom: Devil May Cry Ship: none, this is all brotherly feels with a dash of Nero Summary: It’s post DMC5, and things are good. Vergil’s relationship with Nero is still up in the air, but six months in Hell and two months of cohabitation with Dante has gotten them pretty used to each other. There’s literally no issue between them, except all of Dante’s friends seem to think there is. Warning: this chapter in particular is very heavy, Dante is in a very bad place and does not care much for his life.

Part 3

Dante asks when, because there’s no point in asking why. He knows why. This moment was alway inevitable. Everyone always leaves in the end.

Dante is not worth staying for.

He knows and yet he still can’t help a tiny roundabout why; are all the options on the other side of the continent? Why so far away? If Vergil wants to be left alone so badly Dante won’t bother him, but the other side of the fucking continent!?

Vergil’s simple yes, is worse than getting stabbed. Dante would prefer getting stabbed to this indifference, like it is the most logical thing in the world, and maybe it is to Vergil? He never goes halfway does he. He wanna leave he’ll be doing it properly, Dante should count his blessings he hasn’t just gone to Hell.

But then he wouldn’t leave Nero like that.

“Why?” Vergil asks darkly why Dante is asking, “Do you feel like you need to keep an eye on me?”

That, makes Dante snap. He hadn’t thought he had to, but now that he brings it up.

“I don’t know, Verge!” He walks forward, throwing his hands up. “Every time I lose track of you for a few years, you come back with a freaking apocalypse! Do I need to keep an eye on you?!”

And Dante’s eyes lands on Vergil’s notebook, and he remembers every single time Vergil has put it and various thick tomes away whenever he is around. He remembers Lady accusing Vergil of plotting something, and Dante doesn’t want to believe it.

“Why don’t you just come out and say it?” Vergil sneers.

Dante wants to trust that Vergil won’t bring about another calamity in a quest for power. He thinks, he thought, he knew Vergil well enough to know that isn’t what he wants anymore.

He meets Vergil’s wild gaze with his own resignation.

Most of all, he doesn’t want to fight his brother anymore, not like this.

Vergil leaves through a portal and Dante is left staring at the spot. If he could have just reached out and stopped him, but his arms feel heavy and useless.

He doesn’t even know if Vergil will bother coming back for his stuff.

Dante should be used to this, he’s been on his own for more years than not. Ever so slowly his feet bring him over to his desk. His chest aches at the realization it has been cleaned.

Vergil has been off in particular since Dante’s last job with Nero and he’s been wishing ever since that he pushed Vergil to agree to come along, but Nero is a sore subject and Nero would have seen it as Dante forcing them to spend time together, even though Vergil definitely did want to spend time with Nero, but to make Nero actually believe that…

Eh, it was such a mess.

He came home from that job, expecting some sort of commentary. Maybe an observation of that taking rather long for two supposedly expert devil hunters, maybe Dante’s edge was getting dull - And the job had truly been more about finding the demons than the challenge of dispatching the hiding bastards. He had been looking forward to a bit of verbal sparring with the promise of maybe a bit of actual sparring.

Sure they couldn’t go all out in the city, but a little sparring on the rooftops was always a fun time.

He’d come home to a baffling amount of cleaning supplies, just left out in the middle of the floor and a Vergil who only greeted him with a neutral “Hello Dante.”

What was Dante supposed to do with that?

The silence stretched in the aftermath of Dante’s bewilderment, and before he knew it the chance to greet Vergil in turn in any way natural had passed him by. Was Vergil mad at him? Were the cleaning supplies some sort of hint?

Keeping Vergil in his peripheral sight he’d slowly made his way to the bathroom, all the while wracking his brain trying to figure what he had done to deserve the silent treatment. Aside from the lack of commentary, Vergil didn’t feel mad. It was throwing him off.

After a shower, and a fresh change of clothes Dante was so ready for things to go back to normal, but he’d found himself paralyzed, words shriveling up in his throat.

Something was up with Vergil and until he figured out what that was, he was wary of miss-stepping.

It led to some of the most uncomfortable days in Dante’s existence. Vergil would greet him, neutral and civil. Dante had hesitantly started doing the same, but it was like their connection was missing. It felt like navigating a trap he was just waiting to spring with one wrong move.

Vergil started to avoid him and maybe Dante really should have seen it coming, but he hadn’t. Brothers fought, this was just a tiff, even if Dante had no clue what he’d done. He’d been sure Vergil just needed some time, and things could come back to normal.

In the months since returning from Hell, Dante had become accustomed, maybe a little addicted, to the feeling of returning home to Vergil. It was such a novel feeling, having reason to come home. The shop was brighter with him around. Whenever he returned from a job his eyes always sought Vergil’s favorite spot on the couch, right in the sunspot that provided the best light for his reading.

But then these past weeks Vergil had been gone more than not.

Dante missed Vergil, and pathetically he’d taken to napping on the couch when he wasn’t around. Vergil’s scent was strong there, and it helped Dante remember that Vergil was actually here. He wasn’t dead, murdered by Dante’s own blood soaked hands. He hadn’t even recognized his own brother, it was only when he saw the amulet the taste of victory turned to ash and-

They were just having some off days. Things would go back to normal in a bit.

Dante hadn’t meant to be nosy. In fact he’d resolved from the beginning he wouldn’t be butting into Vergil’s business. Vergil needed privacy and space, and if Dante had been better at respecting that, maybe he wouldn’t have run away that day, maybe mom would still be alive. So he had been purposely ignoring whatever Vergil was researching. He was choosing to trust.

Lady had not been by since their fight, her opinion was clear and in retrospect had been from the beginning, though she’d held back from voicing it for Dante’s sake until the spar.

Still, it was Dante’s choice.

So Dante hadn’t mean to be nosy, but he hadn’t been able to miss the fact that those were printed pieces of paper sticking out of Vergil’s notebook when he passed by the coffee table on the way to the kitchen that day. He’d intended to just leave it be, but printed pages, distinctly with a look that made it clear it was printed from the internet. While Dante preferred his old rotary phone and didn’t have much interest in new technology as he didn’t much see the point, and digital and wireless signals tended to be a bit disrupted around him anyways, it didn’t mean he couldn’t recognize it.

Who’d taught Vergil to use a computer?

He couldn’t help but stop and look from sheer bafflement. Looking became reading - he wished he hadn’t - and he felt like the floor dropped out from underneath his feet. With shaking hands he had pulled out the sheets of paper, that was so clearly apartment listings - non smoking, no pets, of course. He’d chuckled, helplessly, humorlessly. Then he’d seen the addresses.

Vergil wasn’t just moving he was leaving.

Things wouldn’t go back to normal. There had never been a normal. It had always just been temporary. Dante had been a fool to think Vergil felt comfortable here. A fool to hope they could ignore the years between them and be brothers again.

You would think he had learned by now.

Dante didn’t know when he started drinking, only that if he made a bit of effort, it promised oblivion on the other side.

Oblivion hadn’t lasted long enough, and as Dante looks at his desk - cleaned and tidied, not even smelling the least bit of alcohol, which he knows it should have, because there’s no way he didn’t spill any in his inebriation - he doesn’t know what to think. A week before he might have interpreted it as Vergil caring, now he’s too worn out to figure out Vergil’s motives. Possibly the smell just bothered him, it could be as simple as that.

His eyes fall on the picture of their mom. His chest feels painfully tight.

“I’m sorry, mom,” he rasps, past the tightness, “I tried.”

He goes back to bed. He can’t bring himself to ruin Vergil’s work.

Oo o oO

Dante looks at the ceiling, eyes half lidded. His breathing is slow, his entire body feels sluggish. He’s lost track of what day it is, but at least he feels fairly certain it’s been only days and not weeks. He turns his head, takes in the mess by his dresser. He’s not even sure he has anymore clean shirts, he’s not sure when he ran out. He’d neglected the laundry since that job with Nero and it all turned weird.

Turns out it was just Vergil who’d finally had enough of him.

Dante had thought Vergil was slowly warming up. He had stopped interpreting every move towards him as an attack. He let Dante close, never for long, but he’d tolerated him leaning on him. Those moments were precious to Dante. They were a comfort he never thought he’d experience again, like little stolen moments of a happier past, moments where he looked to the future with hope, where he felt whole instead of hollowed out.

He thought Vergil had felt the same, thought Vergil just needed time to learn how to live again without constantly being alert. Vergil had even leaned back on him that one time.

How could he had read Vergil so wrong? How could he have been so stupid? Naive fool. He always makes the same mistakes.

He should get up, make an attempt at being normal. It’s not like he has to do anything, he could nap in his chair with a magazine - a tried and tested method. Maybe he’d actually manage to sleep.

He should get up, but the task feels insurmountable. No matter how much he tells his body to just move his ass, nothing happens.

It’s been a while since it was this bad, but he guesses he was due. What is even the point in trying, when the end result is always the same?

He closes his eyes.

He doesn’t sleep, not really, but time passes anyways.

After six months in Hell, Dante had had the illusion of having his brother back. They had reached a sort of equilibrium in their existence. They bantered and fought, but neither were trying to kill the other. Dante really couldn’t ask for more. Every battle either against Vergil or with Vergil at his side made his soul sing. If Vergil had wanted to, Dante would have stayed with him in Hell forever.

Dante stares listlessly at the dust motes dancing in the ray of sunshine escaping the not quite closed drapes of his bedroom window. He wishes they’d stayed in Hell. Things were simpler.

Eventually though, however hard it is to imagine, they reached a point of being saturated from fighting. Vergil had made a roundabout promise of a rematch with Nero which he intended to keep.

Nero of course was worth coming back to. He is such a good kid, the best of them. Dante can never begrudge Nero that Vergil wanted to go back to him.

The return to the human world and the sudden lack of air saturated with demonic energy had conked them right out, they’d barely made it to Dante’s bed.

That was so long ago now, more than three months. There’s not even a hint of Vergil’s scent left in here. He aches at the thought that soon every trace of Vergil will be gone.

Dante doesn’t know how long they slept after their return, but he was the first to wake up, full of restless energy and with so many things to do, such a stark contrast to how he feels now. He’d called Morrison first thing - in retrospect he should have called Nero first, but his priority was making a space for Vergil in an attempt to outmaneuver him before he had the idea to leave.

And look how that turned out.

Really it was Dante’s own fault for mistaking the fact that Vergil didn’t have anywhere else to go with a wish to stay.

It was perhaps also Dante’s fault that Nero and Vergil’s second reunion had gone as bad as it had. Everyone had assumed Dante had already called Nero, so when he found out through Nico, who’d learnt from Lady, a whole week after their return, he was understandably pissed.

He’d chewed them out - that boy sure has a pair of lungs on him and quite the vocabulary, it is always impressive - and dropped Vergil’s book in his lap before storming out.

Nero had of course calmed down quickly. He always does. He just needs to cool his temper. Nero knows now and despite Dante omitting so many things, he still wants anything to do with him. The loss of an arm, which regrew, isn’t gonna stop Nero from getting to know his old man.

Dante has tried to push them together without being too obvious, but there’s only so much he can do.

Now Vergil is leaving, and Dante doesn’t know where that leaves any of them. Has he really read Vergil that wrong? Has Vergil given up on getting to know Nero?

He sighs, closes his eyes. He is exhausted. What does it matter?

Nero probably won’t make the journey to Babel as often, when Vergil is gone. There’s not much point.

It has been a good few months. Like a dream, it was bound to end.

Oo o oO

Vergil is on the other side of Dante’s bedroom door and his presence draws him out of the haze - there’s a noise building in his chest, an instinctive call for his twin which sticks thickly in his throat. He can’t. He can’t bear the inevitable rejection.

There’s a hesitant knock on the door.

“Dante?“ Vergil asks hesitantly. “Are you… sick?” He sounds somewhat befuddled, and it is almost enough to draw a smile, Dante can so easily imagine the affronted frown accompanying the tone, because how dare things not make sense. They don’t get sick after all, not like humans do, at least not after they grew up.

There’s another moment of silence as Vergil waits for an answer that doesn’t come, then, “Do you need anything?”

Dante’s heart skips a beat and makes up for it with two rapid beats, it feels like summersaults in his chest. Dizzying hopefulness, a “maybe if” suspended with possibilities and then reality crashes firmly down. The fact that Vergil might be worried about him, that he might care, doesn’t really mean anything; Vergil still wants to leave. In fact the idea that Vergil should stay out of pity, because Dante, a grown ass adult, cannot stand the idea of being alone again, is awful.

Dante refuses to be a chain holding Vergil back.

He forces his voice into his most annoying drawl and thankfully the rustiness comes off as someone who just woke, “Can’t a man take a nap in peace?”

Vergil’s presence prickles in annoyance and Dante waits for it, the acerbic comment about how sleeping for days is hardly a nap, or something about how only you could be so lazy, but this Vergil doesn’t respond like Dante expects. He withdraws his presence to the point Dante can hardly feel him, and it is like all the air is sucked out of Dante’s lungs with it. Then he leaves wordlessly, it is only his quiet steps down the stairs that convinces Dante he’s still even there.

Dante throws an arm over his face. He’d thought he was too exhausted to cry. Somehow the tears still come.

Oo o oO

The next time Dante feels sure Vergil is out of the shop, he gets up to take a shower. He brings an armful of laundry, which he stuffs in the machine indiscriminately, because he cannot be bothered with sorting anything. If something changes color so be it.

He can pretend for a little while that things are normal. He is used to live alone. He did fine, even if people were constantly on his ass about the mess and his eating habits. He doesn’t know what people are on about. Pizzas and strawberry sundaes are great food!

The shower helps. He had forgotten how good showers are. He feels a little more grounded in his body, even a little hungry afterwards. His clothes won’t be done for a while so he just wraps a towel around himself before walking to the kitchen, wondering if he has pizza still or if he’ll have to order.

He freezes in the doorway eyes landing on the cookbook. His left hand tightens on the door jamb, until the wood creaks and he lets go before he actually breaks it. The cookbook, Easy Meals on a Budget, had been gifted to him from Patty some years ago, in an effort to make him eat “healthier”. Dante had never actually opened the thing, but not long after his and Vergil’s return he’d found Vergil perusing it thoughtfully.

Vergil had merely shrugged when Dante had casually asked him if he wanted to try to make something. At that point Vergil had yet to even try human food again, having refused Dante’s offers of pizza and sundaes.

Dante’s kitchen could barely be called such at that point, so he’d jumped on this slightest show of interest from Vergil’s side into anything human. The elderly lady who lived further down the street, whom he’d prevented from becoming demon snack a couple of times in the past, was only too happy to help him pick out the necessities in a second hand store. A couple of pots of different sizes and a large frying pan (“cast-iron, dear, a real find, and won’t break if you go a bit wild”, she’d winked at him at that), bowls, spoons, whisk, cutting boards and a good knife.

She’d helped him with a list of food staples as well, which Dante had then bought and stocked the kitchen with. He’d never actually talked to Vergil about it, but then with the option open it didn’t actually take long for Vergil’s natural curiosity to set in.

To Dante it had been a shot in the dark, because his brother hadn’t really felt settled. He’d seemed half a second from bolting or fighting at every moment since their return. The alertness that was so natural in Hell, was completely misplaced with nothing but Dante to fight - and while they did spar they couldn’t go all out. It had been a stark reminder to Dante that Vergil fell into Hell when he was nineteen, that he’d been in Mundus’ grasp for years, turned into his servant, and then after Dante had seemingly killed him, what then? He hadn’t asked, he’d been afraid to, but it was doubtful Vergil had known peace and safety since then. Considering how Vergil had been at their unfortunate first reunion, perhaps he hadn’t really been able to relax since the fire.

Cooking had helped. The frequency had gradually expanded as well. He didn’t cook anything every day, but some days he made both breakfast and dinner. It really depended on what recipe caught his interest. Shopping had become a thing they did, though Vergil was always tense and frowning the entire time.

Cooking really suits Vergil. Unlike what would have happened if Dante tried cooking, he follows the instructions carefully, but he is also quick to grasp the general concepts. Stir-fry in various incarnations has become his go to, when he isn’t trying something new and Dante can’t help but wonder if it is because Vergil finds it satisfying to cut a lot of vegetables into perfectly even pieces - Dante has yet to tease him about it, because it still felt too new and fragile.

And now he won’t get to. There’ll be no more leftover stir-fry, no eating Vergil’s newest experiment at the small table Dante had found and dragged inside for them. He sighs.

He isn’t hungry anymore.

Dante spends the next days more or less in his chair at his desk, pretending things are normal. He smiles and it feels like a workout to stretch those muscles, but he does it. He quips and finds the most Dante of Dante forth from somewhere. Lazy, devil may care. Nope, don’t wanna do that job, sounds boring, give it to Nero.

He naps with a magazine over his head, drinks cheap beer that he leaves on the desk, but not the heavy alcohol, that can wait until Vergil has properly left. It should not be so hard to go back. He’s lived with Vergil just a little over three months, it is nothing compared to over twenty years alone, but everywhere are signs of Vergil’s presence, new memories overlaid all the stronger.

Vergil comes and goes, and the dissonance between them grates at Dante’s soul, he can only do this for so long, but he digs in and grits his teeth behind the grin.

Trish sees through him and asks if he and Vergil had a fight.

“Nope, he’s moving. All the way to the other side of the continent.” He can’t help but add the last, he can’t help the bitterness either.

She frowns and asks if he’s gonna let him. He snaps that Vergil can do whatever he wants- and if he’s ‘scheming’ something like Lady thinks, then he’ll- and he realizes he can’t, he can’t - then Nero will kick some sense into him. And that’s that conversation.

Morrison finally shows up in person to coerce him into a job, just like old times and after that conversation with Trish, he gives in too easy.

The jobs is legit and Dante doesn’t care. He throws himself into the fight, careless and sloppy, because what does it matter? These demons can’t kill him anyways. He’s stabbed through and it heals, and there comes a point where the demons realize he’s not trapped in here with them, they are trapped in here with him.

He comes back to the shop, stinking of demons and his own blood. Vergil looks at him, and Dante can tell he wants to say something so badly, he can practically feel Vergil fighting with himself. Dante grins and dares him with a raised eyebrow.

Vergil breathes out slowly through his nose and refocuses on the book he was reading.

Dante’s resolve crumbles for just a moment, the smile cracks. He longs to just go sit on the couch with Vergil, to breathe in his presence, so he turns away, heads for the stairs and his bed instead of the bathroom.

It will be better once Vergil actually leaves, he lies to himself.

And that's the end of Dante's pov. Ah this was rough to write. It probably has a bunch of typos, but I do not have the spoons to reread it again right now. That will be for Ao3. Next time the plan is to go back to Vergil's pov of the events in this part, shouldn't be quite as heavy, so hopefully it'll be easier to write.

Any thoughts? Do we just want to knock their heads together and tell them to talk already?

#other people’s fanfiction #dante #dmc dante #dante sparda #vergil #dmc vergil #vergil sparda #devil may cry #dmc

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