Work Text:
Scenes From Another World
[8:38pm, 15th of June]
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“Nico,” said Nero, clinging to the door for dear life, “I swear to god, if you don’t slow down I will throw up on you—”
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” said Nico.
“Try me,” said Nero, and pretended to gag towards the driver’s seat. Nico threw a punch in his direction and spat something about upholstery prices and punctuality, but dutifully eased the van out of a demonically frantic swerve and into a speed that would impress an F1 driver. Heart no longer at risk of catapulting out of his body through his mouth, Nero settled back into the passenger seat.
It didn’t take long for the old family manor to drift into sight, haloed by the descending twilight. Against all odds, Nico managed to maneuver the van the rest of the way through the rocky roads without popping a tire or surrendering them both to the sweet release of death. As they came to a rolling stop on smooth asphalt, Nero threw open the door and sprinted up the steps.
The front door swung open before Nero’s knuckles even brushed wood, and there was his uncle, the soft scarf Kyrie had knitted for his forty-second birthday swaddling his slightly flushed cheeks. Pale eyes blinked slowly, gummily, like he’d just woken up, and there was a moment of panic as Nero thought, shit, not again, before his scruffy face—but not confused, Nero noted with a hint of relief, not anxious or blank or terrified—split into a grin that’d charmed many-a-book agent and fan.
“Nero!” Dante exclaimed, and dragged Nero into a time-honored nephew noogie Nero only endured because he loved the man, damn him. “You’re late, you little scoundrel!”
“Sorry, got held up at the shop,” said Nero, cowed. Once Dante decided he’d had enough, Nero straightened his jacket and pressed down his mussed-up hair. Futile effort, since his uncle had had twenty-something years to master the art of the noogie, so he gave up and said, “How’s the party?”
Dante pulled back just enough to lean himself against the doorframe, a self-satisfied smile curling his mouth. His silver hair was longer than it’d been a few months ago during his worst episode to date, drawn back into a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck with a yellow ribbon—Grandma’s handiwork, no doubt. “Missing a certain someone,” he said. “Kyrie’s in the kitchen, prepping dessert. But we saved you dinner.”
Triumph flushed through Nero. Kyrie always made the best sponge cake. “Great, I’m starving. You owe me.”
“I do, don’t I,” said Dante, fondly, and gazed at Nero, far too grateful for his comfort. Nero rubbed his nose, embarrassed and pleased all in one. Domesticity suited Dante. He smelled a little like Grandma’s favorite perfume, and there were ink marks on his calloused fingers, obvious when he waved his hands around as he spoke. His fans would be ecstatic, especially after the seven-year hiatus.
Speaking of. “Dante, I want to introduce you to someone.”
“Oh,” said Dante, suddenly crestfallen, and Nero had a brief oh crap moment before his uncle said, gently, “Does Kyrie know?”
“Fuck off, it’s not like that,” said Nero, cheeks reddening immediately. Dante laughed, a sound Nero refused to admit warmed his chest, just a little. He stepped to the side and gestured for Nico to join them from where she stood by the van, frozen in place. “This is Nico, my prosthetics engineer. I’ve been working with her to update this bad boy. Thought she might like to meet the family before I drove her home.” He raised his prosthetic arm and wiggled his newly tuned fingers, feeling a still-foreign rush of glee at how easily the movement happened, each joint calibrated to perfection. “Want to introduce yourself, Nico?”
Once, a man strode up to the counter of Nico’s autoshop while Nero was helping himself to her cleaning tools, slapped the cigarette outta her mouth, and shrieked something about how you stupid little girl, you ruined my fucking engine! Nico had waited for him to finish his tirade, then took her ash tray (metal, by the way), slammed it into the guy’s temple, and lit another cigarette on the smoldering remains of his truck after taking to it with a heavy wrench.
Now, she stumbled up the stairs like a freshly born colt, tan skin so red her freckles practically glowed. “Mr. Esposito, i-it truly is an honor,” she said, stuttering, and Nero rolled his eyes at the near-hero worship glittering in her eyes. She even had the gall to grab Dante’s hand and shake it vigorously. “I’m your biggest fan—been followin’ your work since Tower of Legacy. The way you wove Vergil’s backstory in Fortuna with Dante’s own journey in Capulet City was nothin’ short of g-genius. Genius, I tell ya!”
Dante eyed the little Southern girl at his mother’s doorstep and said, grin turning sly, “Yeah? How’d you like Dominator of Chaos?”
“Uh,” said Nico, face falling slack in the way that meant her mind was cranking at a million kilometers an hour.
Nero took pity on her. “Tell Kyrie we brought the tiramisu,” he advised, and Nico took the opportunity to bow towards Dante with one final flurry of compliments—Jesus, what kind of alien stole her skin this time?—before scurrying past them both to bolt towards the kitchen, where Kyrie’s delicious desserts awaited.
Dante watched her go, strangely nostalgic. “No wonder Ma loves you.”
“’Course she does,” Nero said. “I’m a goddamned saint.”
Before Dante could duck back inside, Nero stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. Gently, so his uncle wouldn’t start, but he didn’t miss the slight stutter in Dante’s step and cursed himself for it. A few months of rehabilitation wasn’t nearly enough time to heal from what that hell-damned psychiatrist had done to him, and he asked, quietly, hoping the man wouldn’t clam up on him, “How’re you holding up?”
Dante’s expression softened. He didn’t look much like Vergil unless the twins ditched the color-coding and diverting styles, but the eyes were the same, a pale blue-green Nero had inherited. He glanced away, then back, burying his face into his woolen scarf: red and blue and purple, his favorite colors. “Good,” he said, and he sounded honest. “Doing better now that—now that I got a new therapist.”
Anger burned in Nero’s chest at the mention of that malpracticing, lying, manipulative bastard, and he got the sudden urge to punch the nearest wall until plaster rained down. Suing the shit out of the fucking hospital was the least of it. They should’ve torn them apart. Vergil should’ve signed the death sentence of every accomplice who’d helped Alighieri poison Dante with fake pills and fake diagnoses for years—and Vergil had wanted to, God had he wanted to, shoulders going violently still when he’d finally unearthed months’ worth of buried prescriptions in that empty, abandoned office—and Nero should’ve—
Should’ve—
But Dante looked calm, sated, so Nero let that anger dissipate like a puff of cigarette smoke, gone into the distant night. Dante continued, still soft, “I’ve been helping Mom out with the house. Gardening, home renovations, all that jazz. And since expanding the firm, Verge’s been coming around more often, so it’s been nice having someone to harass.”
“Bounce ideas off of, you mean,” said Nero.
“Nah,” said Dante, laughter in his voice, and Nero released a breath, half-irritated, all-relieved.
“Good,” he said, and gripped Dante’s shoulder and squeezed. He was bulkier than before; broader across the chest, and plump with fat and muscle in a way that implied Grandma was making good on her promise to feed Dante until he burst after his release from the psych ward. That was good, too. He remembered being small and bratty and yelping because his uncle’s collarbones always dug into his calves whenever Dante hauled him onto his shoulders. “Glad you’re okay.”
Dante squeezed his arm back and said, “I will be.”
Nero made a brief detour to grab the cake from the back of the van (miraculously intact, despite Nico’s best efforts) before they strolled into the living room like that, awkwardly grabbing onto one another, neither willing to be the first to let go. In front of the crackling fireplace, three faces turned to greet them, flushed with warmth.
“The prodigal son returns!” crowed Mary from the soft carpet, nursing a glass of red wine and craning her neck to see them all. She patted the spot next to her. “C’mon, Nero, join us. We’re talking shit about Dante.”
“Hey,” said Dante.
“Only a little,” said Grandma with a gleam in her eye that, Nero realized with a slight startle, Dante must’ve inherited. She looked beautiful; youthful, in her elegant black dress and new velvety shawl in rippling shades of violet and blue that had to be Vergil’s doing. She curled a hand beneath her chin, the one that wasn’t holding her own glass of wine, and said, “Just reminiscing about the time you broke my vanity mirror and blamed Vergil. Or, oh, the time you threw a baseball through the front window and blamed Vergil. Or…”
Mary laughed.
“Hey!” Dante said, louder. Nero released him so that he could sidle up to his mother, who took a sip from her drink and giggled as her youngest son sagged his shoulders and did his best impression of a pouting five-year old. “Not as bad as the time Verge set fire to my wardrobe and blamed Dad, right?”
Sitting across from Eva, Vergil said, “Green does not suit our complexion.” He’d loosened the top button of his dress shirt, and his navy peacoat was folded neatly over the armrest. In his hand was clutched a thin spout of pale liquid and, when Nero approached, he looked up from the book splayed across his lap and told him bluntly, “You’re late.”
“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed,” said Nero. “Wait, are you drinking?” Vergil didn’t drink on principle. Said his firm would fall apart if he took his gaze off them for even a second—which Nero thought did his people a disservice. Vergil didn’t respect or hire incompetence.
“No,” said Vergil, flipping the page on what looked to be one of Garrison Keillor’s poem anthologies. It was the most relaxed he’d seen his dad since the wedding. “This is lime juice.”
“Gross,” Nero said, and tried not to feel fond that his dad was reading one of Kyrie’s favorite collections.
“Hey,” said Dante from across the room in a rare display of twin telepathy, “it’s not that bad.”
Nero shot him a look of disgust and strode over to press a kiss onto the woman of the hour’s cheek. “Happy birthday, Grandma,” he said, setting the platter of tiramisu onto the coffee table. “Sorry I’m late. Brought cake to celebrate.”
“Oh, Nero! My favorite,” said Eva, and beamed. “You didn’t have to. Now I don’t have an excuse to diet.”
“You deserve it, Ma,” said Dante. He’d wandered away and seemed to have decided to sit directly next to Vergil on a loveseat far too small to fit two grown British-Italian men, both almost two meters tall with the width to match. An elbow went into one brother’s stomach; a shoulder into the other’s clavicle. There, sitting hip to hip, they actually looked like twins, silver hair pink in the firelight, though the illusion broke as soon as one grinned, not even a sliver of that sobbing, cowering shadow left in the happy creases of his face. “That, and more.”
“Hear, hear!” echoed Mary, toasting.
Vergil said, raising his appropriately non-alcoholic drink and jabbing Dante (accidentally?) with a sharp elbow, “For once, Dante is correct. To many more celebrations, Mother.”
Dante hooted and reached over to drape an arm over his brother’s shoulders. “You gotta live until you’re at least a hundred, Ma,” he whined, and Eva laughed and complained that her knees were already aching so one hundred was far too old, and Vergil let Dante squeeze him closer with lips that were already tilting into a faint smile.
They toasted to Grandma’s health and longevity and plenty of other blessings before Nero wandered into the kitchen for utensils to share the tiramisu (and to grab a bite to eat). Instead, he found Kyrie and Nico fighting off Trish—Eva’s younger sister—from the towering layers of a humongous sponge cake, complete with rings of candles and swirling purple frosting.
“Auntie Trish,” shouted Kyrie, his lovely, amazing, talented wife whom he hadn’t seen since that morning, when she pressed a kiss to his forehead while he was still bleary with sleep and headed to the family manor to help with the birthday bash preparations, “please stay away from Grandma’s cake!”
“Now that’s just cruel,” said Trish, somehow wielding a plastic fork and plate with the grace of a Roman gladiator. She easily dodged Kyrie’s tackle, stepped over her desperately flung arm, and lunged towards her prize, golden hair flying behind her like a banner of war. “I promise I’ll be gentle. So be a good girl and let me have a taste—”
Nico wrapped her arms around Trish’s waist and yanked backwards just in time, and Jesus, Trish sure was a strong sixty-something year old to fend off Nico of all people. “Not your gal,” she said, digging her heels into the ground, “and this is Mr. Esposito’s momma’s! We ain’t gonna let you ruin her special moment.”
“And I’m Dante’s aunt, so give—it—here—”
“No way in hell, lady!”
“Lady’s the other woman, I’m Trish—”
“Nero!” howled Nico. “Do somethin’, ya useless lump!”
Nero paused, mouth and plate stacked ceiling-high with Kyrie and Grandma’s delicious cooking. “Uh,” he said, eying Trish’s straining muscles and bloodthirsty grin, and felt like he should be protecting his bounty of carbonara, caponata, and roasted artichokes instead, “you gonna be okay, Kyrie?”
“Yes,” Kyrie said, climbing to her feet with a determined glint in her eye. “Take the cake somewhere safe, Nero. We’ll handle the rest.”
She rolled up her sleeves and let out a war-cry worthy of an opera singer as she threw herself at Trish. Nero swallowed a mouthful of tomato sauce, carefully set his plate away from the crime scene, and grabbed a handful of knives and forks before whisking the birthday cake into his arms and sprinting for the living room. Trish’s furious yells chased him down the hallway. He couldn’t stop laughing.
Yeah. They’d be alright.