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Whether by some strange pre-existing factor of his personality, or his practice of going to bed at late hours and waking up at the crack of dawn, Johann had always been far more of a morning person than Dante.
Dante had gotten far more than used to waking up barely coherent with Johann’s happy humming drifting into the bedroom from the kitchen. Even on the mornings Johann hadn’t already gone out to face the day at the unbelievable hour of 6 AM, Dante could always, without fail, at least be sure to wake up to the other side of the bed empty.
It wasn’t as if he minded. The quiet mornings where he’d woken up to the aroma of coffee already wafting in and coaxing him out of bed, with golden sun rays gently streaming past the curtains... those were always the very best mornings. He’d gotten so used to trudging out of bed and into Johann’s warm embrace, his tired grumbling being met with bright smiles and soft kisses, he almost hadn’t realized they’d formed any sort of routine over the time — was it years now? — that they’d been together. A luxury so sweet but so automatic that it became too easy to take for granted.
That day, however, definitely did not count as one of those mornings.
The shock of actually waking up beside his partner hit Dante so hard it just about completely jolted him out of his fatigue. He sat up completely in bed, blinking at Johann’s catlike curled up position. As Johann had bunched up in blankets, sleeping on his side, Dante couldn’t quite tell from his back whether he was awake. His only indicator was the slow rise and fall of breathing he could barely make out.
“Um.”
Dante’s head shot up, his eyes landing on Riche in the doorway, with just her head poked in and hand on the door frame. He let out a sigh quiet enough not to wake Johann but aggressive enough for her to get his point. “Jesus Christ,” he hissed, “you scared the shit out of me. Do I have to put a bell on you?”
“Just ‘cause you’re tired and bitter doesn’t mean you can take it out on me,” she retorted, eyebrows furrowing in worry at the sight of the other lump in bed. “Is he okay?”
“Dunno,” he murmured.
“You’ve got that client at 11. It’s 9:30 now. I was right about to wake you up, but I thought he’d gone out somewhere since I noticed he wasn’t up yet...”
“Yeah.” Dante pressed a hand to his own forehead, groaning, fingers running through his hair. “That’s probably not gonna happen.” He managed to drag himself to the edge of the bed, sluggishly pulling himself up onto his feet. “Are you heading out?”
Riche nodded through a grimace, eyes locked on Johann. “I have to go to the library. I’m doing some historical research for a client, so I planned on being there for at least a few hours. But...” She bit her lip. “Maybe I should stay, just in case.”
“Go do what you gotta do. I’ve got nowhere else to be for now.” As he passed her by the door, Dante couldn’t help but flick her cheek, just hard enough to make her whine at him. “If there’s really some sort of emergency, I’ll send my bat over. He’s just sleeping in, anyway.”
Rubbing her cheek, Riche swatted a hand right back at his shoulder. “Fine. But you better send me updates if he’s okay.”
Dante just grunted back at her in response. Way too early to use any more words than necessary.
Once Riche left (after arguing back and forth, “it’s fine, he’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, just go to the damn library so I can caffeinate in silence”), Dante trudged into the kitchen to start making breakfast.
Usually, the coffee-making part had always been Johann’s job. So, as Dante fumbled through the process, preparing eggs, bacon, and toast while half asleep, he couldn’t help but feel a strange gratitude creep up in his chest. He’d just about forgotten entirely what it felt like to wake up so early with no one to dote on him. It’d been so long since he’d gotten up without Johann’s smile to greet him that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to make his own coffee.
It only made the length of time he’d known Johann and Riche all the more perplexing. After all, he knew logically that it couldn’t have been more than a few years. So why is it that every moment falling into these habits and being in their presence felt so right? It should, he reasoned, be impossible for something this special to have developed in far less time than it took for his life to all turn to shit long before now.
But here they were. If Dante could find a home so near-perfect it made him dizzy, even despite all he’d been through, then either fate must be real or disaster must be preparing to strike.
Johann appeared in the doorway looking like a dishevelled and disoriented ghost. Emphasis on the ghost part, since he’d seemingly materialized in the kitchen, leading Dante to nearly drop his steaming frying pan directly on his own hand.
“You,” Dante began, putting the pan down on the stove and looking him over with wide eyes, “look horrible.”
He’d never imagined someone could be so pale yet so flushed at the same time. His normally tidy hair was a mess of tangles, and he hadn’t yet bothered to change out of his pyjamas. By the look on his face, you’d swear he was lost in his own kitchen, awkwardly finding himself bumping into corners as though he didn’t know they were there. Did Johann always look like this when he woke up and Dante just didn’t know it yet? He thought that couldn’t be true, as fatigue seemed to be deeply set in his face as Johann forced an exhausted and uneasy smile. He barely managed, through a terribly crackly voice, “Good morning, my love. We have an appointment today, don’t we?”
Dante barked out an incredulous laugh, looking his partner up and down. “You cannot be serious.”
“Of course I am.” But as he tried to speak again, his voice got caught off by a cough that sounded so painful it made Dante wince.
“Okay. Sit down and eat your breakfast. And take as much time as you need, because there’s no way we’re still going to that appointment with you being this sick.”
Johann frowned, but padded over to sit at the kitchen table with a huff. “I don’t get sick.”
“Then what’s all this?” Dante asked, gesturing vaguely at Johann’s everything.
“I don’t get sick,” Johann insisted. He looked down at the food in front of him and sniffed. Loudly. His nose sounded like it was blocked by more snot than a person could produce in a lifetime. If it were possible, he seemed even more pale just looking at the food in front of him, food that he’d normally be so excited to eat in the morning. “I just have a bit of a cold. We’re going. That’s final.”
“If that’s a cold, I don’t even want to know what being sick looks like to you.”
It’d taken Johann 20 minutes to eat his breakfast, which he didn’t manage to finish. He hadn’t spoken a word as he ate. Just grimaced the entire time he forced it down. He left behind an entire slice of toast and most of his bacon.
Getting dressed became an entire other issue. Johann spent a couple minutes fumbling with the buttons on his coat alone (despite there only being two buttons) before he turned to Dante, eyes full of tears.
“Hey, it’s okay, come here,” Dante soothed, stepping forward to tenderly cup Johann’s face in his hands. “Sit down on the bed. Let me do it.”
He did sit down, thankfully. But his lip quivered, and Dante could feel his heart breaking in two as he knelt in front of him to do the buttons up for him. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Dante slipped both the buttons into place easily. His heart sank. This shouldn’t have taken longer than ten seconds, at most.
“For...” Johann swallowed a tight lump in his throat. It didn’t go away. “I don’t know. Being so useless to you this morning.”
Now Dante’s chest hurt even more horribly. “Come on, don’t say that.” He carefully took Johann’s shaky hand in his own, but as he looked up at him, Johann immediately dropped eye contact, as though he was ashamed to be seen in such a sorry state. “You’re having a rough day. How many times have you taken care of me through far worse?”
“That’s different,” Johann murmured, barely audible. “That’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“Don’t be like that. If you’re taking care of me all the time, who’s supposed to take care of you?” Dante glanced up to the clock hanging from their wall. 11:05. They were already late. He got up with a sigh. “Look, I may as well just send my bat over to Riche and ask her to let our client know we’re not—”
“No.” Johann stood abruptly. “We made the appointment, we can’t just...” He looked dazed, blinking away a blurry world, and he swayed on his feet. “...cancel.”
Dante just barely managed to catch him in his arms before he could hit the ground, and words spilled out so quickly Dante almost didn’t recognize his own voice. “Okay, that’s it, we’re not going. Are you okay?” He gently, though somewhat frantically, maneuvered Johann onto the bed, who let out a frustrated groan. “Are you okay?”
From where he laid sprawled out on the bed, Johann forced open his eyes, glaring up at Dante. “Fine. Peachy. I stood up too fast. Nothing more.”
“I should get a doctor, shouldn’t I?”
“Do not.”
“You’re fucking ill, Johann. I can’t let you refuse to—”
“Dante,” Johann began, trying to keep his composure. He stared up at the ceiling instead, taking a deep breath. “I am not seeing a doctor. There is no situation that could possibly occur where I will ever see a doctor. That’s not an option. Not before today, not after today, and most certainly not today.”
A silence hit the room harder than either had been prepared for, and Johann couldn’t bear to look at Dante’s face, so he squeezed his eyes shut instead. “Don’t make me go,” he pleaded. “I’ll stay home if you want me to. Please don’t make me see a doctor.”
Dante watched him, waiting for him to say something else. When more words didn’t come, he sighed, turning to a dresser behind him. He pulled open a drawer, grabbing a little round container and a pen. “I won’t force you,” he said, opening the container to pull out a tiny slip of paper, “but I’m not happy about it.”
“I know,” Johann mumbled. “Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” Dante grumbled back. “It sounds weird.”
“S... Okay.”
Really, Dante didn’t have any other choice. If Johann would be that insistent, to the point he was willing to relent and stay home, there was no question that he had good reason. His stubbornness quitting out on even that proved exactly why there was no other option.
Spreading out the little piece of paper on the dresser, Dante squinted as he wrote out a coded message to Riche. JH sick, notify client. He glanced up at his and Johann’s bats, hanging from a perch at the other side of the room, seemingly fast asleep. “Oi. I know you’re pretending.”
His bat squeaked in annoyance, as though it were complaining. “Don’t give me that,” he retorted. He raised an eyebrow at it and held out his hand, wiggling his finger in a come hither gesture. “C’mon. I don’t have all day.”
The bat burst into bitter chirps back at him (surely the bat equivalent of heavy swearing), flapping its wings and taking flight in Dante’s direction. It landed on the dresser, and Dante crouched down to screw open the capsule around its neck. He looked over at Johann, still laying down, his hands over his face. “Can I get you anything? I’ll have to get you water, for sure.”
“No,” Johann quietly responded. “I want to stay here for a minute.”
Dante focused his eyes back onto his bat, putting the slip of paper in the tiny capsule and screwing it closed again. He held out his hand. “Up.”
The bat stared up at him. It definitely would’ve been crossing its arms at that moment if it could. “Up,” he snapped, “before I make you into a soup.” He could’ve sworn it huffed at him, but it did climb onto his hand.
He made his way over to an open window, throwing his hand out aggressively. “Now fuck off,” he ordered, and the bat did just that, in a flurry of wings and angry squeaks.
Turning to Johann properly, Dante still couldn’t see his face from being covered by his hands. He could barely make out the little jerks over Johann’s torso, the sobs so quiet he had to strain to hear them.
Dante studied the floor instead.
It wasn’t as though Dante had never seen him cry. He’d fallen victim to Johann’s crocodile tears far more often than he cared to admit. The real tears, though, were tears that Johann had always tried to hide. He’d woken up to muffled sobs far more times than he could possibly count, whether it was on the other side of the bathroom door or right by his side. And there was one particular close call a couple years ago. If Dante were entirely honest, he hadn’t been completely sure he was going to make it out of the situation he’d gotten himself into back then alive. Johann clearly hadn’t, either. Johann begged him to be more careful with his clients after that, and he now rarely met clients alone anymore, aside from that quack bastard.
Despite how Johann hadn’t wanted Dante going to meet new clients alone, the idiot still went out late most nights, sneaking out the door in a foolish assumption that Dante hadn’t noticed. As if he was keeping a dirty little secret. Dante wasn’t blind to that. It felt easier to ignore than to face whatever ugly truth was hiding behind those actions. But frankly, and interestingly enough, the hypocrisy of it all was what Dante hated the most; knowing that he’d been coerced into not seeing clients alone while Johann had no problem with doing it himself.
Sometimes the reality of Johann’s lack of self-respect hit Dante so hard it made him want to throw up.
He’d always been so quick to shower Dante with more love and affection than he felt he deserved. And despite how Johann had taken care of him through all the times Dante was too injured to do everything himself, Johann never gave him the chance to do the same.
That, Dante decided, ends today.
“By the way...” Dante’s words came out softer than he’d intended. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I was thinking, it’s been a long time since I’ve made soup. And it’s supposed to be really good for you when you’re sick. So I’m... yeah, I’m gonna make soup.”
“I don’t quite like... soup...” Johann weakly confessed, finally removing his hands from his face, wiping his tears. “Can’t you make something more like you normally do?”
“Oh. I forgot. Have I ever fed you mine, though?”
“No. You haven’t.” Johann laughed. He let his arms drop onto the bed with a bounce. “I wouldn’t have let you. Soup is disgusting.”
“Not my soup,” Dante huffed, scowling in mock offense.
As Dante already left the room by the time Johann could think of a response, Johann stared up at the ceiling, too weary to fight him on the issue. “Whatever you say, dear.”
Even the thought made Johann turn green. He somewhat began to regret not yet telling Dante exactly why he didn’t like soup. And that would certainly be a conversation he had no will whatsoever to have during what was seemingly the worst illness of his life so far.
After all, his few memories of soup were of it being pale, near-tasteless, cold, and fed to him in the most nauseating of moments in his life.
He’d only ever had it in the dark damp chill of a cell, where his sole comfort had been the distant chatter of a couple younger test subjects. The soup he’d eaten back then often only served to make him vomit what little nutrition he had and couldn’t afford to lose. But he’d usually managed to get it down all those years ago. He could force it in himself again if it meant making Dante happy.
Though Johann had already begun mentally preparing himself to smile through eating the one food he couldn’t stand, he wasn’t prepared in the slightest for Dante to fall into his caretaking role with such dedication.
It officially started with Dante dropping a pile of blankets on Johann, enough to weigh him down so much he could barely move his legs underneath them, something that was already a bit difficult to do in his tired state. Next, it was a hot, damp cloth on his forehead, one that Dante insisted on switching out every fifteen minutes, despite Johann’s complaints. Then there were the glasses of water. Surely enough to hydrate him for a week. While Johann slowly came to terms that he had no say in the matter, something about watching Dante constantly bouncing between their shared bedroom and the kitchen throughout the day forced a pit in his stomach.
Honestly, it made Johann feel somewhat helpless. He’d always taken on tending to Dante and Riche as his number one most important job. That would always take priority over his work as an information broker. As for whether it took priority over the other work he carried out behind the scenes... well, that couldn’t possibly count, could it? It was all to ensure a comfortable life and future for his family, wasn’t it?
Being spoiled like this by someone he felt he was supposed to be doting on just wasn’t something he believed he could get used to. It wasn’t even something he believed he’d earned.
Throughout the day, Johann continuously reminded himself that he’d end up having no choice but to eat dinner. But the moment Dante walked into the bedroom holding a bowl, the nausea filled him so strongly that he could feel it filling his face.
“I’m not sure I can eat it,” he warned, struggling to sit up straight in bed. “Even the thought is...” Revolting.
Dante shrugged, sitting on the edge of the bed by his side. “Well, I’m gonna have to force you to try either way.”
“Dante—”
“Listen,” Dante began, eyebrows furrowing with seriousness, “you know I don’t want to make you do things you don’t want to do, but you need to get something in your stomach.” He held out the bowl. “And don’t make that face at me.”
Johann glowered at him, but he took the bowl anyway. “I didn’t even realize I was making a face.”
The bowl, shockingly, was so hot it felt as though it may burn his skin. He nearly dropped it the moment it registered. “What’s it scalding for?”
Dante blinked back at him. “Well, it’s soup.”
“I know that. So why would it be so hot?”
“...Because it’s soup?”
Johann looked up at him with a scowl again, ready to make a bitter quip, but Dante looked like he had sprouted five heads, so he shut his mouth instead. He carefully set it in his lap, the thick layers of blankets protecting his skin, and finally got a good look into the bowl.
Admittedly, it didn’t look so bad. It wasn’t a pale, sickly colour like the soup he’d had in the past. Instead, it was an appetizing orange, full of potatoes, beans, corn and carrots. The aroma wasn’t nauseating like he expected, either. It smelled like Dante’s cooking — nothing more, and nothing less.
He must’ve been unable to hide his expression very well, because Dante said, “I didn’t poison it or something. What’s the suspicious look for?”
“I just don’t trust it,” Johann mumbled back. “It smells like it’s going to taste good, so I don’t trust it.”
Rolling his eyes back at him, Dante picked up the spoon out of the bowl. “Do I need to feed you myself?”
“I’m not a baby.”
“Coulda fooled me,” Dante said, sticking the spoon in front of Johann’s face. “Eat.”
“...I’m having second thoughts about—”
“I swear, if you don’t eat, I’m going to pour this soup down your throat.”
Johann made a disgruntled noise in response, but he did blow on the spoon in front of him. Clearly, he stalled for too long, because Dante felt it necessary to mutter about how it wasn’t that hot.
So, he squeezed his eyes shut, leaned forward, and closed his mouth around the spoon.
Only for his eyes to immediately open wide in amazement.
Dante grinned back at him. “What do you think? Good, right? Right?”
Snatching the spoon from him, Johann swore under his breath. “How the hell does it taste like this?”
“Have your only experiences with soup been tasteless garbage?”
Something like that, Johann thought, but he couldn’t answer. He was already shoving spoonfuls of soup in his mouth faster than the speed of light.
Maybe soup isn’t so bad if he’s the one making it.
With Johann once again overwhelmed, Dante ended up needing to comfort him as he cried bittersweet tears into his soup.
The three dhams had all hoped, of course, that Johann would get better as quickly as possible. For Dante and Riche it came from their deep love for him. For Johann himself, it came from his fervent guilt every time they asked him if there was anything he needed.
He did not get better right away. Actually, he somehow got worse.
Over the next couple days, he’d deteriorated to the point that he absolutely could not get out of bed on his own. His fever reached a high that had Riche begging him to agree to see a doctor. He’d ended up desperately avoiding her eyes as he answered that it simply wasn’t an option to allow a complete stranger to examine him like that (“I don’t trust doctors,” he’d admitted, and Riche had shot back by asking him if he was willing to risk his life for that. Johann hadn’t been able to form an answer. Riche ended up leaving to her room without another word).
By the fourth night of Johann being sick, Dante refused to leave his side. He held tightly onto Johann’s hand, sometimes reading to him, other times just sitting nearby as Johann slept, worrying whether he’d make it through the night.
“I love you,” Dante quietly reminded him.
It wasn’t something he said often. In fact, Johann was fairly certain it was the first, maybe second time he’d heard it this month. He’d long come to terms with the understanding that it just wasn’t something Dante was used to saying. Usually, knowing that fact made hearing those words fill Johann with a sense of pride. Tonight, it filled him with dread.
So, from where he laid in bed, Johann gave him a displeased look.
Dante swallowed a lump in his throat, leaning forward in his chair, deciding to stare at their intertwined hands. “I wanted to make sure you know. ‘Cause I can be sort of a dick sometimes—”
“Stop that,” Johann hoarsely chastised him. “Don’t say it like that. I’m not going to die.”
Hearing Dante’s voice get even smaller made Johann’s mind swell, and the room suddenly felt distorted around him. “Just let me have some peace of mind, okay?”
Silence hung heavy in the room, so Dante continued.
“You’re ridiculous. You coddle Riche like she’s your little sister, and coddle me like I’m a kid that needs protecting. You’re unbelievably stubborn, and reckless; far too prepared to throw yourself in danger the moment either me or Riche even get within sight of trouble. You’re secretive, but loud, and obnoxious—”
“This is starting to sound like an excuse to express all the things I do to piss you off,” Johann commented, amused.
“—and,” Dante added, squeezing Johann’s hand, “you’re gentle. You’re kind, regardless of how uncaring and undeserving you try to paint yourself as. You don’t love easy. You don’t trust easy. But when you do, you go all out. I find that admirable, honestly. I can’t even comprehend being fully and unapologetically myself the way you are.”
He knew Dante didn’t realize the weight of that statement, but the irony of his words sent a sharp pang of guilt through Johann.
“You shine so brightly it stings. You tell such stupid jokes, but watching you laugh so hard you snort to the point you can’t even finish it is way better than any punchline. You’ve always supported me beyond what I’d ever dream of asking for. Coming home to your love, waking up to your smile, just existing beside you... it brings me a comfort greater than you could possibly know.”
“That can’t be true,” Johann whispered. “The part that it’s a comfort greater than I could know. Every moment with you makes me feel like I could fly.”
“That’s why, though.” Dante lifted Johann’s hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the back of it. “That’s why me and Riche have been so worried about you. You mean the world to us, Johann. Even if you wish you didn’t, you still do. And if you get worse...”
Still reeling from Dante’s little kiss to his hand, Johann almost forgot how to speak. Or that he was even supposed to speak. “There’s no guarantee I will.”
“And there’s no guarantee that you won’t. You have to stop relying on the assumption that it’ll all turn out fine just because neglecting yourself hasn’t fucked you over yet. It’s unfair to you, and this may be selfish of me to say, but it feels unfair to us, too. I don’t want to have to bury my boyfriend any more than you would want to bury me. What would you do if you were in my situation?”
Johann opened his mouth to argue. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t think of a single argument. “...I’d probably kick your ass.”
“Uh-huh. Sounds like you.”
And he’d probably be inconsolable. He’d be overrun with fear. He’d never leave Dante’s side, would spend every waking moment attending to him, and do anything it takes to get him to a doctor. It would be completely out of the question for Dante to refuse. And if he’d ever found Dante unresponsive, after being unable to get him help...
The tears hit Johann a lot quicker than he’d anticipated, with absolutely no time to react. He barely managed to pull his arm up and over his eyes. “That’s messed up,” he mumbled, lip quivering. “You know it is. Saying things like that, knowing how it’d affect me...”
“I’m sorry,” Dante murmured back, giving his hand another reassuring squeeze, and to his credit, he did sound remorseful. “I just don’t know what else to do aside from making you see it from my perspective.”
“I’d kill you before you ever got the chance to die from such a stupid, stubborn decision.”
“I believe it.”
Johann let out a frustrated groan, wiping his tears with his sleeve. “Okay,” he started, “what about Vanitas, then?”
“Huh? What about him?”
“He’s...” Johann forced out a laugh, realizing the full absurdity of the situation. “He’s a doctor, isn’t he? If it’s someone I know you trust — even though he seems completely untrustworthy — I might... Ah, I don’t know. It’d be better than a stranger.”
Dante shot up from his chair so quickly that it knocked over. “Really!?”
“Yes, really. Calm down, before I change my mind.”
“Right,” Dante breathed out, “right. Of course. I’ll send my bat over, then.”
“At least have the decency to ask him in person.”
“I have to stay here with you.” Dante leaned in to press a kiss to Johann’s forehead. “It’s non-negotiable. You’re stuck with me until you’re better, okay?”
Face reddening, Johann barely managed to respond, “Okay.”
Vanitas was not an expert in nursing someone back to health from the flu, nor was he very keen on being woken up in the middle of the night to a bat screeching outside his window. He’d arrived at their door in a rage, grumbling things about how this is what he gets for showing concern when it seemed as though that “stupid bald-headed bastard” could’ve been in danger.
The bright side of it all was that Vanitas knew enough to help, and even determined what he thought to be the root cause of it all.
As it turns out, stress is a wonderful way to weaken one’s immune system.
Dante shot Johann a looong glare finding that one out.
Arguably, Johann was even more displeased being asked to “take it easy for a few days, even after you’ve gotten better”.
“It’s already been a few days of me laying down doing nothing,” he’d argued. “I feel so useless sitting around when I could be working.”
“Darling,” Dante had told him, purposely drawing it out in a way that made Johann’s cheeks burn bright red (despite how embarrassing it was to Dante, calling him such a thing), “you can stand one more week of letting me and Riche treat you for once. We don’t mind, you know that.”
He, again, didn’t seem to have a say in the matter, anyhow — Dante just fell right back into his caregiving role without so much as a complaint, but with more than a few demands that Johann continued to stay in bed.
It wasn’t all as bad as Johann had expected, really, at least when he got used to it. With Dante having already been around him so much, and the added knowledge that Johann’s illness was only so bad from the stress he’d been under, there wasn’t much concern for whether or not Dante himself would get sick, too. Which meant that, many nights, Johann would get his dearest Dante all to himself.
Just over a week after the first morning Johann had gotten sick, Dante woke up to find Johann’s side of the bed empty.
His mind ran straight into panic within seconds. Despite how the rational piece of him kindly asked him to slow his thoughts the fuck down, he couldn’t help himself from fumbling his way out of bed and straight down the hallway.
As he found himself in the kitchen, the first thing he processed through his bleary vision was Johann, standing by the counter next to two mugs with a sheepish smile. Then, the smell of coffee hit him. “You,” Dante began, narrowing his eyes at him, “are supposed to be in bed.”
“Oops?” Johann supplied. When Dante frowned harder at him, Johann pointed at the mugs on the counter. “I made coffee.”
“I can see that. And you’re awake.”
“Yep. At a normal time, finally.”
“You’re supposed to be resting until you feel better.”
“I do feel better!” Johann insisted, though his voice sounded somewhat hoarse. “Being cooped up in bed just makes me feel sad. And I’m taking it slow.” Tracing an X over his chest, he added, “Cross my heart.”
Dante stared at him, still unamused.
But the moment Johann opened his arms, that warm smile Dante missed seeing so much filling his face, he couldn’t help but cave in. Without a moment’s hesitation, he inserted himself right into Johann’s embrace, melting into the hug.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Dante murmured.
“Always was. Be sure to drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
“...Mhm. Just give me one more minute. I want to stay like this for a little longer.”