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The bleak, stormy daylight had begun to fizzle out, dimming Vergil’s room further into a grey darkness. He couldn’t stop himself from watching the shadows grow. They spilled across the dull carpet, threatening to blur into sinister shapes plucked from Vergil’s memory. Wings, spikes, the helmet. But he hadn’t felt as haunted as he’d grown accustomed to, lately.
All because of the warm body pressed against his under the duvet. Soft sleep-laden breaths filled up the silence between the bouts of thunder, lulling Vergil’s woes. In a duet with the constant patter of rain, the ambience begged Vergil to close his eyes, too, and fall asleep right next to Nero. His sweet child.
He can’t recall the last time he’d fallen asleep beside someone else. Do the fitful rests that he and his incorrigible twin took in Hell count? Vergil is uncertain about that; only one of them had slept at a time, after all. And it was far from restful, though companionable.
(He hadn’t fallen asleep with Nero’s mother, afterwards. She had asked him to, he remembers, even as he can’t recall her voice or her face. The woman only left behind an indistinct image of desire and warmth; and their son.)
Perhaps then, this was a luxury he hadn’t indulged since he was a little child. Before all the cruelties of the world revealed themselves to him with eager malice. Back when Dante was neither his greatest enemy nor his mortiferous savior, only his brother.
Though he wasn’t the best judge of how familial relations work, if recent… events… were considered. His eyes slid from observing twisting shadows to the man dreaming against his side.
Nero had curled against him as if Vergil had never hurt him, had never ruined his life and thrown all the boy’s longing back into his face with venom and acid. As if Vergil was a safe place. Naive, the cruel animal in him said. A saint, the wonderment and poetry replied in his heart. The truth must be somewhere in-between these extremes of his soul. Vergil was eager to find out. To keep getting to know the man who saved him by defeating him.
His hand hovers on the pillows by his son’s head, inches away from his soft hair. He does not want to wake him, yet finds it difficult not to caress him. Any moment he wastes denying comfort to him feels like another betrayal against his own blood. He has twenty-odd years to make up for, and he intends to pay his debts with interest.
Yet, in the growing darkness of his room, resting in disarming warmth and worn out by their rather eager coupling, Vergil can admit to the fear that constricts him. Since he was that little child, grasping the sword too large for him as the lifeline it was, fear followed his every waking moment to the point that he thought himself fearless, for he forgot to acknowledge it. How could he, when he didn’t know its absence anymore? Even his memories of the soft before were tainted.
(How could Vergil find solace in recalling his father, when the man left them to this twisted fate?)
The body next to him shifted, as if Nero could sense his spiraling thoughts. Too unsettled to restrain himself, Vergil lets his hand fall into the now-familiar pattern of running his fingers through the boy’s soft hair. The motion soothes him. So simple, yet the yawning chasm of guilt over abandoning his own baby to fend for himself feels less cavernous.
Nero leans into the touch and his blue eyes flutter open. The haze of sleep leaves him quickly as he zeroes in on Vergil’s face, blush rising up across his cheeks. Cute, his mind can’t help but note, forgoing the more comfortable and verbose descriptions.
“Hi,” Nero says, voice groggy from his recent wakefulness. Vergil doesn’t know if he can truly handle someone looking at him with so much fondness. Even Dante disguises his pesky affection with a teasing edge.
“Hello,” he opts to greet back.
For a moment, Nero looks thoughtful, his eyes tracing the features of Vergil’s face. What does he see, he wonders? Does his child look for his own features he inherited? Is he trying to point to differences, gifts he’s gotten from his late mother?
(Vergil doesn’t ask. He never knows what is the right thing to say.)
“I guess we got stuff to talk about,” Nero settles on, unaware of his father's strife. Vergil stifles a grimace, but evidently is not successful as Nero frowns in response.
That animal that constitutes half of him rises up again. Run, it demands, hide, blaring in danger. That is frankly a better suggestion than its usual demand of fight fight fight. But while Vergil had relied on his demonic instincts to survive, they could hardly help him live in this new domesticity he'd been thrust into. Months after their return from Quiploth-cutting, he can admit that Nero (and most likely Dante) won’t turn his vulnerability against him. Even if participating in it feels like chewing shards of glass.
Therefore, Vergil urges Nero to proceed (get on with it, like ripping a bandaid, a voice that sounds like his annoying twin advises) with a stiff nod.
“I’m gonna start by saying I really like this,” Nero begins. He sounds nervous as well. At least this won’t be a one-sided exchange in putting their shields down. “I dunno if you noticed, but I’ve wanted this for… a while.”
Vergil had noticed, though not immediately. Not until that drunken night, aware of the weight of Nero’s stare, pinning him down for hours. He didn’t quite understand what it meant, then. Caution, a devil observing the strongest opponent in the room? But then Dante was always there, and in the silence of his mind Vergil can admit they were at least equals, if not… Not finishing that thought. Did the boy have something to say? He wished then he’d hurry up and say it, because whatever skill humans had to sense each other’s feelings, Vergil never quite developed it.
And then those blue eyes dragged across his throat to his chest… Vergil might be unused to parsing out human expressions, but desire was a feeling even the lowest of demons would partake in. The realization startled him a bit, though he kept the iron grip on his physical reaction. It wasn’t… He didn’t…
Vergil could not parse what the revelation provoked in his heart at first. Not disgust, certainly, despite his vague knowledge that humans had taboos about familial relations such as these. The romantic reader in him even dared to bring up images of Morgana Le Fey and her brother Arthur; of Gaia the Earthmother and her son Ouranos. A primordial want, and that fit well with how Vergil knew the world worked -- through forces, through power and connection.
Never one to jump to conclusions, Vergil watched and waited. He catalogued every look, every touch and every gift, more and more certain. And with each instance of his son's strange affection, he felt warmth that had evaded him for so long. It was difficult to admit that being wanted despite all these human prohibitions, against all the harm he’d inflicted, had melted his heart.
Yet, Nero grew up in the mortal world, among the devout, and he had a lover he held tenderly and spoke of fondly. Was his son too entrenched in human concepts of incest and monogamy to carry this affection Vergil presumed?
In the end, it drove him mad, caught between desire and doubt. He was endlessly glad Nero didn’t let him pull away back in the kitchenette.
He had no clue how to put it into words, though, despite his love of poetry. Vergil was unused to speaking with honesty. But Nero had risked so much, more human than him and more vulnerable, and Vergil would never dare to leave him like this without reciprocation.
“I hadn’t at first. As you can imagine, I am… unused… to intimacy, and to having a family.”
The discomfort of talking so frankly of his feelings, of his weakness, was worth the rapturous attention Nero was giving him.
“What changed? You looked ready to jump me downstairs.”
“How vulgar.” Vergil glanced away, uncomfortable with the description. He had grown rather desperate. It was uncouth. But Dante had been trying to ‘get him out of his shell’, even Lady had made efforts to move on from her grudges over his involvement in Temen-ni-gru; he owed it to them to try, no less than he owed it to Nero.
(He hated this, being their charity case, the little feral demon they are trying to domesticate as he jumps at shadows waiting for the long-gone enemy to strike. But Vergil couldn’t live alone. Couldn’t do more than survive. So, reluctantly, still waiting for the rug to be pulled from under him, he had grown to think that this was power -- the people who dared to cross his boundaries and take care of him. Maybe love wasn’t a dream of a scared child -- maybe, it was what he needed all along.)
“I--”
His throat closed up. Vergil’s body revolted against his openness, restraint habitual after decades of necessity. Damn it all. Nero simply waited. Perhaps the poetry’s declaration of him being a saint wasn’t so far off the mark.
“I… found myself enjoying our interactions. More than I presumed was appropriate for a father and son, yet… You seemed unperturbed, and that was enough for me. I never cared for most human sentiments and sensitivities. I am used to taking what I want.”
Nero shivered next to him, and Vergil’s hand paused in its caresses. Was that an improper way to phrase this? Should he find different wording?
His anxious thoughts were cut off when Nero leaned over to kiss him.
“That’s hot,” he simply explained, his pupils blown and blush deepening. The man’s strong arms encircled Vergil, muscles twitching, reminding his father of the power hiding beneath the skin. Pride curled in his heart; his son, his progeny, so strong. The animal in him soothed.
The comfort melted him, and the warmth of the embrace urged him on. Suddenly, he needed to get these words off his tongue before they could strangle him.
“I could not be there for you for most of your life, Nero.” Vergil brought up his hands to cup his son’s beautiful face, relishing in how the boy leaned into his caress. “Mistakes of my own father, I simply repeated them like a blind fool, and made you pay for them with abandonment and isolation.”
Nero’s mouth opened and closed. Perhaps he would refute him, perhaps he would brush it off. Perhaps he would snap out of this madness and remember Vergil for what he is -- the devil, the storm, the villain. But Nero simply leaned his face against his neck, soft lips kissing along his pulse, tender in the way Vergil felt was unearned for him.
(But what if, he thought, he’s gotten it wrong all this time, and he never had to earn anything? What if this love could be given without expectation? That thought terrified him and it freed him in equal measure.)
“I can’t give any of those years back,” Vergil concluded, already growing out of breath as Nero’s caresses heavied across his body, hands roaming, “but I can give you this, myself. If you want me, Nero.”
“Yes,” his son hissed, “I want you so fucking bad.”
“Then you have me,” Vergil promised, words heavy like an oath. Nero didn’t reply, only kissed him again, more desperate now.
That warm, beautiful body that he helped make, that soothed his worries, pinned Vergil beneath, and he happily resigned himself to not leaving his bed for a long, long while.