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Vergilius isn’t quite awakened, but rather forcibly roused from his state of half-consciousness in the middle of the night by a clammy palm making impact with his unflinching face.
“Charon is sleeping with Mephi tonight. Too stuffy. And Verg is too…” Through the impression of her fingers in his face, Charon’s brows furrow, and she makes a squeezing motion with her hands. “Toss-toss, turn-turn. Like clockwork.”
It’s only after he remains silent for a moment that she peels her hand off his face.
“...You are…. so mean to me.”
“Nighty-night, Verg.”
“Nighty-night, Charon.”
As she quietly plods out of the room, she shuts the door behind her, plunging Vergilius into pure darkness and a deafening silence. The absence of any kind of noise is setting him on edge, as if the slightest thing could crawl out of the shadows. Choosing not to dwell in these thoughts, he rises from bed and reaches for the oar leaning against the bed frame, subsequently escaping the oppressive atmosphere by trailing her out into the Corridor. “Hey, Charon, you forgot your…”
She’s disappeared already, the door to Mephistopheles’ main body left slightly ajar. The dim blue-hued light of the night sky attempts to compete with the red tones of the Corridor — and yet, Vergilius’ attention is drawn to a single ray of golden light spilling out into the hallway from the room just across from his own.
Vergilius stops. Hesitates. Turns around, goes back into his room and sets down the oversized weapon against the bed frame, then hesitates again, before snatching the coat that had been neatly folded on the side of his desk and re-entering the corridor. He leaves his door ajar; he’ll be back soon enough. As he feels the carpet under his bare feet, he half considers putting shoes on, or making himself slightly more presentable…
His own sigh of exasperation snaps him out of his train of thought. Get this over and done with, he commands himself. There’s no use dwelling on it.
Raw-bitten knuckles rap against the hard metal of the other cracked-open door in the Corridor, before pushing it further open. The inhabitant of the room startles, the frustrated tick-muttering coming to an abrupt stop as their head snaps towards the sound of the noise. At first they freeze; their shoulders relax briefly, before suddenly tensing again. <…What?>
“What?” Vergilius blurts out at the same time at the sight of their dishevelled room, as if some great tempest had strewn papers and diagrams and recording tapes around it. Dante sits slumped, half-lying in their seat with their legs kicked up onto the edge of the table — the awkward position exposes their wrists and their socks from under their typically meticulously maintained uniform. Perhaps most surprisingly of all is his coat draped awkwardly over the front of their half-sitting body.
The silence draws out between them.
<...You’re the one that knocked on my door? I’m asking you?>
Vergilius holds up their coat. “It seems like you’re in need of this.”
Dante stares at him blankly — or, blanker than their face typically permits — before they hurriedly sit up, both feet scrambling to find purchase on the ground. His coat shifts over their chest, and Vergilius barely holds back some kind of guttural noise as he sees a rare sliver of skin from under the coat. “ Why –” he starts. “Dante, please. Have some decency.”
<...Need my painkillers.> With a weary wave of their hand, they half gesture towards the empty bottles of medicine strewn about their desk, pill crushers and empty syringes balanced precariously on stacks of paper. <And dinner. I got back late to the office, for some reason, so I had to,> their hand comes to a rest on their chest as if waving it around was the most thorough display of effort they could manage, <up the dosage. To make up for it.>
Vergilius surveys the desk, tearing his eyes away from the updated and revised Mirror Dungeon plans to the different types of medication on their desk, some familiar and some not. “Are you insane?” he asks after a moment; Dante lets out a steam whistle in offense. “You’re not supposed to take multiple medications at the same time.”
<What do you want me to do? Suffer? I’m already at the highest dose of everything,> they mumble bitterly to themselves.
“I don’t need you… collapsing in the middle of the night after you experience some kind of undesirable side effects. You’re our most valuable asset, after all.” He holds his hand out. “Come on.”
Despite their frustrations, they find themselves instinctively putting their hand into his. <Where are we going?>
“You need to be monitored. I’m not staying in this room with you.” His eyes flit back and forth between their hand, their desk, and their face. “You can clean up your…mess in the morning. For now, you need to rest.”
<I don’t need to sleep->
“I don’t care.”
<I have to…>
“You can’t do anything right now. Don’t make me ask twice.”
And they don’t, because his grip around them is firm and they couldn’t pull away even if they wanted to. His hand is warm amidst the stale air of the room. The office chair creaks beneath them as one or two papers fall out of their lap, before Vergilius starts to pull and a novel’s worth of documents cascades to the floor. Their other hand firmly grasps the edge of the desk for stability as they stand — the chair slips out from under them, and they nearly collapse entirely. Vergilius holds them upright. Neither of them say anything. Dante grips his forearm for better support, but Vergilius grabs their elbow and pulls their whole arm over his shoulder. It vaguely registers in the back of his mind how large his coat is on them, and how thin their wrist is in his hand, as if they could shatter at the slightest pressure. His other hand comes to rest on the small of their back for support — they lean into it gratefully.
“You’d think you’d be useless on your own,” he mumbles into the side of their head.
<...I know- I know, I’m just. Tired.>
Tired isn’t close to cutting it. Lying down wouldn’t be enough rest, but they sink into Vergilius’ side; that’s some kind of reprieve, even as he leads them out of their room, one unsteady step after the other, swaying heavily.
As he sets them down on his bed, they dare to use their remaining energy to speak up once more.
<Why did you…>
Vergilius tosses a shirt at them. “You’ve soiled your clothing,” he says as it lands neatly by their lap. Dante shrugs their own shirt off, and although the cold air bites their skin, they’re comforted by the darkness covering them. “…and I couldn’t sleep.”
<Me neither,> they laugh as they pull the shirt over themselves. It sits loose around their shoulders, too wide around their shoulders shaking slightly with bewildered laughter. Their gloved hand comes to rest on the top of their forehead as they lay down to rest. <Haha… Sorry.> Vergilius stands by the side of the bed. Monitoring. Just like he said. They kick up their legs and attempt to close their eyes and do as he asked, to get some rest, and slowly they allow their vision to fade. They try to remember what he told them once; to clear their mind and think of the Star before them.
The warmth by their side leaves them, and before they can register what they’re doing, their arm shoots out and grabs him by the wrist.
“Dante?” he murmurs quietly. Their name rolls off his tongue like blood, soft and sanguine and dangerous in its wake; the rasp, the slight crack in his voice evidence of having pushed through his dermis and bore fruit at bearing themselves whole. If they could be intoxicated — ironically, considering that they are in the literal sense of the word — they would be off that sound. Satisfaction fills them at this little breakthrough; though, it would be impossible to admit any of that to him, so instead, they loosen their grip on his wrist.
What are they asking of him? What right do they have to ask of him more than he’s already given up for them?
Without giving themselves time to ponder any of those questions, Dante props themself up on their elbow and pats the space next to them. An approximation of something between a single exhale and a laugh of disbelief escapes Vergilius.
“Seriously, Dante?”
<I’ve had my fair share of near-death experiences now, but I refuse to let freezing to death while Faust is repairing the HVAC system to be my downfall.>
Vergilius searches for some sort of response, and yet Dante still manages to find another way to goad an answer from him. Under the low light of their flames, they point at him, signing out a single word.
Cold?
Vergilius stands there, takes in a deep breath, and lets out his longest sigh of the day. “You… are an enigma.” Dante lets out an alarmed horn blast as Vergilius begins to unbutton his shirt. He rolls his eyes. “Oh, grow up. To hell if you think your presence is enough to interrupt my regular sleeping habits. Now move over.”
With a small clap, Dante does as asked, shuffling with more energy he’s seen out of them in the past ten minutes. <If I die tonight, it’ll be on you.>
“What’s to say I won’t crush you to death?” Vergilius quips back as he gets back into his own bed, and suddenly it feels as though rest actually welcomes him. Then, if it were the most natural thing in the world, Dante places their head on the back of his shoulder.
Flames curl around the side of his face, warm yet not overbearing. Vergilius focuses on letting the tension escape from his shoulders and jaw. Just what was he thinking? The seconds pass as their ambient ticking fills the room, marking each and every moment he chooses not to push them away. It’s almost welcoming — a small reconciliation in the midst of the night, still separated with enough room to fit a handprint’s space between them. And of course it’s Dante that fixes everything, letting everyone have their happy ending aside from them; just as long as they’re self-sacrificial enough, as long as there’s still enough of them to give to others. And to think that he’d dare insult them, to make them bury their head in shame and paperwork for the chance to impress him or set things right, to overwork themselves until-
Vergilius cuts his thoughts off. “You should be taking better care of yourself, Dante.”
There’s shuffling behind him. <What’s it to you?>
“If you died…”
They laugh semi-deliriously at his words, as if it were an impossibility. He doesn’t know what to follow it up with, aside from things that have been said a million times before. We will die. The Sinners will die. The company will fail.
They reach over his side, seeking his hand — with minimal reluctance, they find his palm and draw a cross on it, before beginning to trace out a single line on his skin.
I…
I. The wretched word that indicates desire, personality, individuality existing in a place that so desperately wants to stifle anything of the sort. I, Vergilius ponders. If you die, I’d be to blame. I wouldn’t have saved you in time, or I would have pushed you to your limits, sent you on a mission that I knew would fail in the starry-eyed promise of justice and desperation. If you died, I…
W O N T
I won’t.
It’s that simple. The lull of silence that grows between them is filled with the quiet burning of material muffled against pillows, and soft breathing barely audible further than beyond the confines of Vergilius’ bed. Then, with their finger still to his palm, Dante hesitates. There are so many things they want to say, words that escape them in sounds not mutually intelligible, phrases and hopes and dreams that sit resting in their heart and are never spoken aloud. To confess them would be sin, to withhold them would be the utmost betrayal of what they have left of themselves. What comes out instead is a series of lines, curves, and squiggles, up his wrist, and then over the centre of his palm.
They don’t even think about it — it seems like the natural progression for their hand to wrap around his until the webbing of their fingers slot neatly against the padding of his palm.
<...Do you want to know why?>
The rhythm of their voice stutters and grates as if their mechanisms have worn away through overuse. Vergilius makes no indication he’s heard them at all; maybe that’s what gives them the courage to finish the thought.
<I have to save you too. And I can’t do that if I’m not good enough.>
There’s a very quiet click before something starts humming — the bus’ ventilation seems to whirr to life at an opportune moment to fill the air with white noise. Charon’s small night light flickers on, the dim silver light casting just enough brightness to make out the silhouette of Dante’s fingers against his own. Vergilius tears his gaze away, but the radiant heat of their head and the gentle dip of the mattress behind him serves as a constant reminder of their presence.
The quiet grumble of his voice almost blends into the ambient noise of Mephistopheles’ engine.
“Go to bed, Dante.”
<...Okay.>
They squeeze his hand so subtly that it’s impossible to tell if it was intentional or not — yet, as they shy away from that intimate gesture at the tips of their fingers, their entire body seems to curl into him; their arm digs slightly further into his side, their knee presses up against the back of his. Their head casts shadows over his face from just before his shoulder, as if they weren’t in a fight five hours ago, as if they weren’t coworkers, manager and guide, or strategist and tactician, or anything at all. They simply were, and that was enough.