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Nero’s already running late and he’s going to be stuck here til midnight at this rate. He scoffs to himself, what’s the point of finding the perfect gift if he’s going to miss Kyrie’s whole performance?
He's not sure what exactly brought him to this shop. He's never been inside before and Kyrie hasn't mentioned it before either. But as he'd walked past the building, he'd just gotten a strange feeling that he should go in. Just a random thought in his head, suddenly all-powering. It’s a small antique shop, he realises once he enters, and now he has the unwieldy task of figuring out what to get. She likes trinkets, but like…most people do. Maybe he should go for something decorative. She likes flowers, he knows that, but everyone would give her flowers after a performance. She likes jewellery too, but, well, he doesn’t want to come across too strong.
As Nero continues to mull over the display stand, his arm starts to glow softly. Ugh. What kind of infection glows? And for the record, what kind of infection distorts his entire forearm? He knows he should go to the doctor, but it’s already enough to have his hair and his dress sense. He doesn’t need another target on his back when the doctor snitches on him. But the arm sling’s a shit bandaid if people can still see his arm glow through it. Nero has to find a better excuse for it eventually.
He’s lost in his thoughts when a finger suddenly taps his shoulder. He whirls around to see an older man, dressed in the standard white garb of a Fortunan but with his hood down. The man’s hair is a pale white, which he doesn’t seem quite old enough for but it’s definitely not Nero’s place to say anything about that, and his face is calm yet severe, halfway to a grimace already even when Nero hasn’t opened his mouth yet.
Instead of saying anything though, the man just stares as he drops his hand. Nero gives him a few seconds before scowling, “What’re you looking at?”
The man looks up slightly, now making eye contact with Nero. It’s uncomfortable, but Nero’s already lived all his life like this anyway so he's used to it by now. Despite that, there's something slightly different to think look. The man looks at him more discerning than irritated, like Nero is some new puzzle to solve. He decides he doesn’t like this look much either.
After a further moment of silence, the man finally says, “My apologies. You seemed to be looking for something.”
“And what’s it to you?” Nero bites back.
Despite the aggro in his voice, the man doesn’t seem very perturbed. There’s no rear-back like the people in Fortuna normally do whenever they see or hear him. “I happen to work here. It would be…bad for business for you to loiter.”
Fuck this old dude. “Yeah, well, in that case, I’ll just leave.” Better show up empty-handed than show up late after picking a fight with some random defenseless man.
The man, despite his previous words, immediately says, “I never said you shouldn’t buy something.”
“Yeah, I'd love to buy novelty trinkets from an old guy who can't be bothered to use his words.” Nero moves to back out of the store, now thoroughly pissed off. He’ll find something else.
A hand suddenly grasps his good arm before he can leave, and it takes Nero a second of shock to even register what the man’s doing. He hears him say, “Don’t leave.”
Nero wrests his arm from the man’s grip, more out of confusion than for any other reason. At the same time, the man also darts back shocked, as if he didn’t mean to grab him. “My…apologies,” he grunts out. He pauses, and now suddenly, Nero can’t find it in himself to leave. He continues, “This is my first day. If the manager finds out I chased away my first customer…” Again, he trails off.
Nero says, “What’s it to me?” Internally, he considers staying, because now the man just seems like an awkward mess and it might just be overkill to leave like this. He'd even apologised, which Nero thinks is the first in a long while from a stranger that he's received.
His words cause the man to straighten up, gaining back that faux confidence he held at first. “You could tell me what you’re looking to buy, instead of standing around with your mouth agape.”
“I’m just looking for a present, asshole. No need to get snippy about it.”
He leaves the shop with one last look at the front door, where Vergil—the off-putting man had given him his name along with his purchase—stares back at him. He considers making another crass remark but decides against it. Despite his initial behaviour, Vergil had dropped his hostility rather quickly, and instead started to root through the premises for a nice present. He’d had a brief moment of whiplash before he followed along with him, slowly nudging the choice towards the little necklace now tucked in his coat pocket.
Nero thought he held the monopoly on strange, out-of-character Fortunan men, but Vergil seems to have him beat by a landslide. He’d said it was his first day, even though he definitely looks like he’s already in his 40s. Fortuna works on an apprenticeship system, so most people stick with what they’ve got til they’re old enough to mentor the next poor kid that approaches them with an offer. He feels almost like a mainlander, new to the city, but normally these sorts of things get announced in the public square.
Nero can’t shake the moment when Vergil had asked, “You wouldn’t happen to be an Order knight?"
“Me? Sort of,” he'd replied. Normally, Nero disengages, says, ‘Yeah, I love my commander,’ and leaves it there no matter how obvious the lie is. But with this strange, clearly somewhat-foreign man, he had continued, “I’m not one for authority. They just put me with the knights to fix my anger issues.”
Vergil had breathed out, seemingly out of relief, and said, “Anger issues. I wouldn’t have known.”
He'd grumbled to himself, “Takes one to know one,” and his relative civility caused him pause for a moment. If it was anyone else, he would have bitten their head clean off.
Maybe because he’s never met Vergil before in his life. Everyone else in Fortuna knows him, either personally or through gossip, but this man is one of the only people who’s decided to get to know him first before listening to any of the rumors. It’s a group of people he’s still only able to count on one hand, so it’s a really exclusive club all things considered. So he does appreciate the man for that much, and the gift too. It’s surprisingly sweet, coming from someone so frosty. It’s a nice necklace, not a huge gesture but one Kyrie will appreciate, since it’s something neutral and small that can go with any outfit.
Nero briefly considers for a moment that maybe he should keep the shop on his radar. It’s good to know the few places in town that can tolerate him, and Vergil is a…strangely comforting presence. He’s man enough to admit that he wants people in his life besides Credo and Kyrie, and there’s this clawing urge in his heart that says he shouldn’t let go of this chance before it slips by.
Vergil must be a mainlander, and those tend to disappear as soon as they crop up on the island. They just couldn't take it anymore and left, and Nero sometimes wishes he had the luxury of that choice. But he would never leave behind Credo and Kyrie, so the next best thing is living with what he's got. Now, he seems to be including Vergil in that small group of things he wants to hold onto. Is it really just that the other man had actually listened and apologised to him? Is that all that Nero really needs? But there was that feeling in his head, that he had to go into the antique shop and his arm and...Suddenly, he's interested in who Vergil must be, beyond his obvious foreignness. There's got to be something there to explain that roar in his chest that's telling him that he can't let Vergil disappear on him like all the other mainlanders he's seen in the past. Something more than just a brief conversation, something more. He needs to visit the shop again sometime soon to figure all this out.
It's a long shot, and he's being naive about this again. Nero grits his teeth. He has to stop hoping for a miracle at some point. No reason to get his hopes up over something as dumb as some kind of internal recognition, probably just his brain remembering Vergil or some other mundane crap, not at all the grand possibilities he's been entertaining.
Suddenly, his “injured” arm glows again. This time, instead of some random mainlander sneaking up on him, he hears the distinctive roar of a demon in the periphery, and his arm immediately reaches for the sword strapped to his back. Shit, he’s going to be late.