Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dante mutters a quick and thorough apology, anxiously meandering through the silence. ‘The rent for this goddamn place. You wouldn’t believe how little it pays to put evil on its ass. And then there’s the electricity, the heating.’ He indicates vaguely to some moth-eaten lampshade, some cracked radiator, as though he can give explanation for the disarray of his living, as though Vergil could meaningfully condemn what is so inherently Dante.

‘It’s fine, Dante,’ he says. Old wood creaks beneath his boots. His body is a hard and shivering kernel beneath the blue, and there is a stiff damp scent in the air, of mildew and mould, old cigarette ash, the sourness of liqueur. Dante and his drinking. But then, Vergil can understand in his own way, this immense deflection, this careful avoidance. It is precisely his own understanding that has led him here.

He wanders over to the front desk, scattered with pornographic magazines and empty takeout boxes. You will always affront me, Vergil thinks, trailing his fingertips through the dust of Dante’s hardly put-together life. Your need to polarise yourself from me, to exist in utter contradiction. But then, I know that it is not your conscious doing, any more than it is mine. We will eternally oppose one another. We are fated to it. 

His thoughts are punctuated by Dante, who tugs at his soaked coat sleeve and says, ‘Come upstairs with me.’

And now I must be ceded to you, or to myself, whichever it may be.

Vergil does not answer, and Dante does not relinquish his hold on Vergil as they mount the stairs together, their footsteps bearing a burden neither of them will admit to.

Any admission would be meaningless. I despise you, I need you, I fear you. All of it is contained already within a single utterance of your name.

Dante.

Dante leads him, one brother shadowing another, into a small and sparsely-furnished room, scuffed at the corners, worn, from the very last thread of the Persian rug lying faded on the nailed floorboards to the silent ash in the fireplace, the cold sheets. The venetian blinds are half-raised. A shaft of light falls over the bed, Dante’s bed, with little droplets running over the sheets and onto the floor, giving the room an unreal cast. Vergil’s breath catches. To be this close to all that he has missed. There is a tremor in his hands as he partially undresses himself, because he has played this arrangement before, because he knows what it means and what it does not, and he knows most of all that this is variation on a prescribed theme, their theme.

His coat is a bloody heap upon the floor, torn, and sanctified, in a way that only Dante can understand, can share in, because he is the one who has sanctified his brother thus. This long, and not a word spoken of it. I could weep blood. I could weep the sins of the world.

‘I’ll find you something to wear,’ Dante says, prying through what he can of himself, to find something suitable for Vergil. A loose shirt, underwear. 

Vergil can’t keep from trembling, he is almost ill, dripping cold water over the rug as Dante tosses a few articles on the unmade bed and comes to Vergil, who is far from him now. He doesn’t say a word, only runs his hand through the silvery hair hanging over Vergil’s eyes, and as Dante slicks it back, his hand lingers, water running down over his knuckles. ‘There you are,’ he says, as though recognising them only through their distinction, but Vergil moves away, letting the hair fall back, and says, ‘Here I am.’

I owe you this, Dante. Just this once. I owe you an uncovering.

He sees his brother hesitate, evidently stunned. But, in the way of things, in the way of Dante, he shrugs it off, a magnificent diminishment, and scratches at the stubble creeping across his chin. ‘Water’s running. Should wash some of that blood off.’ 

He is right, of course. Vergil is consecrated in his and Dante’s blood, his barest form clad.

‘Alright.’

There is no approach either of them can take in which the tension between them is malleable. Instead it is a rigid presence, pressing each of them to the very walls. Dante discards his red leather and drapes it over a button-backed armchair. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off each of his spattered boots, tossing them to the floor. And then the same, for his gloves.

Vergil can only look at his brother and draw the blood from his lower lip, give himself something to taste other than his own failure. Dante stands, comes to take him by the wrist, and Vergil does not pull away. In admitting himself to this room, to his brother, he has forfeited himself of the right to object and deny, to flee, to disguise. Here I am. So little said between them, bearing such tremendous significance. They are not yet formed for conversation, for exegesis.

In such a state, Vergil is led down the dim hall and into a bathroom, mounted with windows, tall panes like those in their family home, the chequered tiles so like those he paced when he had lost his soul, but then another white flash sets the room alight, and such frights are put to rest. It is only the dark. It is only my brother’s hands.

Dante leans over the bathtub, passing his hands through the water. They are steaming as he turns off the taps, as he says, ‘It’s hot. Might be that it’s too hot for you.’ He tries to grin as he says it, Vergil notices, and perhaps he does, there in the dark of their reunion, but Vergil sees only his brother’s hands. And then his chest, the coarse tangle of hair, as he discards tattered shirt.

‘What are you doing?’ Vergil breathes, and Dante says, ‘Please, don’t ask that. I can’t answer that. I’ve never been able to answer that.’

‘We shouldn’t,’ Vergil says, more recognition than reprimand. He says it as though he is disinterested in the prevention of what is unfurling between them, here in the dark. He says it with certainty. We shouldn’t, because we have fallen to this place time and time again, and left with greater injuries than any sword can sow. We shouldn’t, and yet: it is for this reason that I came. It is for this reason that you let me.

But Dante pulls apart his belt with one hand, watching Vergil. The thatch of silvery hair that appears as faded jeans drop down his hips and crumple on the floor is enough to make Vergil’s throat dry, and he looks away before his eyes can fall upon anything else. The lust stirs within him, and he cannot hide from his brother as Dante closes in on him, as he begins to pry open the buttons of his vest and drags wet leather down Vergil’s body, tosses it to the tiles. To be undressed thus. He wants to say I can manage fine on my own, but he can’t seem to find the voice for it, as Dante begins pulling at the laces of his trousers.

If there is complacence, Dante does well to keep it from his brother’s sight. Vergil’s cock springs up, slaps against his abdomen, and it is the first time he has permitted himself to see, his gaze dropping down between them to where Dante’s erection is all but pressing to his own, and he sucks in a breath, a dull ache gathering behind his being. At last, he manages a constrained whisper of, ‘After you,’ at which Dante scoffs, turning, allowing Vergil to shed the rest of himself, flushed as he is, shamed as he is.

There is the sound of the water and the bathtub’s acrylic as Dante lowers himself down. He says nothing whatsoever, and Vergil does look, as Dante stretches himself out, one knee above the water, arms draped over the edges, head tipped back, the water lapping at him before it calms, and Vergil’s fists are tight, tight as he follows, as though he is a reflection moving to become one with itself.

His brother’s thighs splay to allow him room, knees against his ribs as he lowers himself down and is received into the dark hot waters of their womb.

And so they bathe together, and the water scalds him, and he is glad that it does. I need to be rid of this self. I need to slough off who I have become. I have carried him for too long. Dante’s palms work against his shoulder, the base of his neck, against scars that faded before they ever had a chance to settle into the flesh. What comes free of Vergil is a deep sigh, and a loosening, of inhibitions, of resistance. It is the first time his brother has laid hands on him without the intent of injury.

‘That okay?’ Dante asks, soft, at his brother’s shoulder, the hot gust of his breath prickling over Vergil’s skin, palpable apprehension underpinning his question. You fear this, Dante, just as much as I.

‘Yes.’ Vergil closes his eyes, his head resting against Dante’s collarbone. To lean like this, against his brother. To feel Dante’s heart, drumming through the water, against his spine. His thighs, crammed close, containing all that Vergil is, has become, in this immense unseating. ‘I wonder when it was that our pulse separated,’ Vergil murmurs, staring up at the dark. ‘When it was that I, that we, became distinct.’

With his hair in his eyes, they are, the two of them, melded into one. And the rain, incessant, with the rest of the world beyond. The rain is only rain. But it is that which is the overture to us, and have you ever thought of that, Dante? How the rain is ours?

But Dante’s voice is cinched, memories slipping past his lips before he can stop himself, Vergil knows. ‘I’ve never been able to get away from you. God knows I’ve tried.’

‘Even when I fissured myself, you came pouring through the cracks. I have since wondered if, when you knew, it crossed your mind. To end it.’

‘I thought about it.’

‘I see.’ Vergil passes his hand through the water, bearing the sting of its heat. ‘I would have forgiven you, Dante. If you had chosen differently.’

‘What would you have chosen?’

‘That is irrelevant.’

Dante is taut against him. There is a stone in his, and Vergil’s throat, now. ‘Irrelevant, because you wouldn’t have hesitated, as I did?’

‘No, Dante.’

Vergil sighs. He leans forward, hauling himself up and out of the water, and steps out onto the warm tiles, water pooling at his feet. He looks down at Dante, who, for a moment, looks at him with the very same defiance, the very same daring, as he did, all those years ago. ‘Why this, and why now?’

Dante climbs out after him, the water left russet. Steam is rising off their bodies. Vergil can feel it rolling off Dante as he nears. A part of him hungers. A part of him is glad for the ambiguity the shadows provide. For the omission of detail, of provocation. But what he is given is an amorphous dream in which  his brother comes close to him, standing just a touch taller. Can’t you leave it be, Dante? But Vergil knows he can’t. He can’t leave it alone anymore than Vergil can, entombed as it is, as all of it is, within him.

‘What would you have chosen?

‘I gave you an answer.’

‘You gave me a deflection.’ Dante walks him back until he collides with the rim of a sink, a small ache cracking his lower back. Dante’s hands are grasping the bones of Vergil’s hips. The mirror over Vergil’s shoulder holds no reflection, obscured by steam and secrecy. They are not even witness to themselves, only to one another, which is the same, and not.

Wrestle with thy affections. 

Vergil’s blood is in his ears. A fever breaks forth from his lips, blood blotting the surface. 

There is no light to speculate, to anatomise. There is only Dante’s teeth trailing his jaw as he buries his face into Vergil’s hounding pulse, only the hot drag of tongue tasting salt and a lapse in restraint, as he whispers against the skin, eliciting a shiver that Vergil cannot contain. ‘I’ll have it. I’ve waited long enough.’

‘Words, Dante,’ Vergil breathes. ‘You want mere words. I have given you a descant all these years. A refrain formed of all that you are. But you have not been listening.’ He shudders and sighs, head falling back, out of reach of those lips he wants so much to bruise. Dante, have you learned nothing? He grips Dante’s shoulder, fingers biting into bare skin, his other hand seizing tight the rim of the sink.

Dante’s cock, stiff, presses against his own, and he involuntarily bucks his hips. A hot gust of air sears his throat as Dante chuckles, and Vergil bites down on the inside of his cheek. ‘Come on, Vergil,’ he taunts, and there is a flash against the windowpanes, the storm mounting once more. ‘Say it. For me. For your little brother.’

‘Very well.’ 

Patience and reluctance abraded both, Vergil elects to taste his brother. 

He cannot master what sounds slip out of him and into his brother’s mouth, how he moans and sighs, and how in turn he swallows down Dante’s desire, slipping over his tongue. ‘Shall I tell you of how I pined the loss of you?’ he breathes against Dante’s panting mouth, water running down between their faces. ‘Or how our state cannot be severed, how we are one, one flesh, and to lose thee is to lose myself?’ He groans as Dante pushes himself inside his mouth again, puncturing the lower lip, drawing a drop of blood. ‘But you know this, Dante. There is no need for you to hear it. Be contented by what you know.’

Vergil pulls back then, a string of saliva glistening between their lips. Dante looks at him, flushed, swollen, and hard, and Vergil aches at the sight of him.

‘I’ll never be content,’ Dante rebuffs. ‘Not so long as there’s more of you than what I can get my hands on. I want it all.’

How can you?

They are too far gone now, too far into one another, such as they have not been in so many years, in a hundred years. Vergil’s memories are disorientated, shattered against so much perdition, so much loss. Such a relic is he, seething, obstinate, and yet bred to the constraint of his brother. Dante’s breath shudders against Vergil’s lips, or is it Vergil’s breath? Theirs.

‘Dante.’ It is almost an admonishment.

Dante’s hand weighs on his shoulder, seems to bite through the flesh and lodge itself in his clavicle. Will there ever come a time when your touch won’t seem as carnage? More so now, that I am a criminal?

‘What do I need to do,’ Dante pressures, ‘to make you stay? How can I madden you, damn you, drive you to delirium… how do I make sure you don’t vanish the moment I turn away?’

The room spins. There’s a tremor running through Dante, through his voice, his body, through his touch. The old ache resurfaces in Vergil. He stiffens as his brother’s hand sinks through him, rends him from shoulder to elbow to thumb. To split him like a saint, spine to chest, as always. Dante’s need to meld their bones, to mend the wound of their separation, to solder their bodies together again, to correct God’s fault in tearing them from each other in the womb.

Vergil’s lips are still swollen from Dante’s need of him. He draws in a breath. 

‘Be my executioner,’ he whispers, ribs constricting, fingertips numb. ‘Be my priest.’

Don’t turn away from me. Not now. I with thee have fixed my lot.

Dante leans his forehead against Vergil’s. 

‘Alright, Vergil.’

It is in this way that they shadow one another, back to the room, to the unmade bed, sheets deranged as though around ghosts, the rain striking the open windows, all darkness and streetlamps, the scent of it rolling into the room, as though the storm is companion to their conspiracy. 

Vergil lies back, and no sooner is his brother hovering over him, straddling his thighs, and yet there is reluctance. Dante, bridled as he is, has always been, to conscience, to consideration. He doesn’t ask, Are you sure? but the doubt is there, in the room, between their bodies.

Vergil wets his lips, the want paining him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re shy,’ he taunts, then he offers his hips, his cock, stiff and flushed to the very tip, weeping. He offers himself to his brother, and in the dark he feels more than sees Dante’s hand trailing, up and along the underside of his cock. Vergil shudders, bites the inside of his cheek, pushes into Dante’s enclosing hand.

‘Vergil,’ his brother murmurs, descending over him, stroking him, and Vergil moans, seeking the sanctuary of Dante’s mouth, tasting rain. His fingers bruise what flesh they can find. And then Dante’s lips are on his neck again, and Vergil’s cock gives an obscene throb in his brother’s fist. I will die unto you, if it is your request.

‘Use your teeth, Dante. Satiate yourself.’

Tear me. Kill me. I would forgive you.

Dante obliges with a soft sound of pleasure before he sinks his teeth into the bared flesh of Vergil’s throat, to the junction between neck and shoulder. Vergil sucks in a breath, beginning to shake. Appetite whetted, reluctance forgone, Dante groans against him as the first of the blood spurts, hot and sickly sweet, into his mouth and over his tongue. Vergil’s hand comes instinctively to his brother’s head, fingers threading through his damp hair.

‘That’s it,’ he sighs, as Dante runs his bloodied tongue over Vergil’s neck and up along his jaw. ‘You like the taste of it, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ his brother breathes, the blood running, soaking into the sheets. Dante wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a smear across his lips, as he draws back, looking down at Vergil. ‘I’ve missed it.’

‘As have I,’ Vergil murmurs, rising to meet Dante’s mouth, but he is held down, pinned, as his brother’s fist slides and strokes, and the heat begins, molten, and shameful, and exquisite. A low moan catches in his throat and he wills himself to delay, though the way Dante subdues him is a frisson in itself. ‘Dante…’

He shuts his eyes against the magnitude of his desire. It leaves him as so many dreams have, laced with affront, disgrace.

‘Come inside me, Dante.’

There is a silence, a registering, Dante’s hand slowing, stopping altogether.

‘Vergil, you—’

‘Yes, Dante. I… please.’

Be my executioner.

His brother’s lips graze his own, tasting of salt, and blood, and a home that he is too misshapen to inhabit without pain, without grief. Dante’s hand comes to his face, holding. He feels his brother’s cock stir against his hip, and then Dante whispers, ‘Turn over.’

Vergil does. He lays his cheek against the damp pillow, breathing deep the scent, spine arched, open to the weight of Dante. He trembles, holding tight to the sheets, trembles against his own fragility. It took everything to come back, and yet I have never been more fracturable than now, more prone to breakage. Never more in need of it.

He can hear Dante’s heart racing. He is almost light-headed again as he hisses, ‘What are you waiting for? Hurt me, Dante. God knows I deserve it. Surely you want to. I know you do, so don’t be a coward. Don’t be weak, Dante. Not with me. I will not tolerate weakness from you.’ But will you tolerate it from me?

And it happens abruptly, without preamble. Dante does away with the pretences, rearranging himself, lining himself to his brother. Vergil’s fist closes in the sheets and he turns his face into the pillow as Dante enters him, thick, burning, and all at once. The two of them groan, and sigh. Something trickles down the inside of Vergil’s thigh and he clenches his teeth against the pain of it, the sensation that he is being torn, and how good it is to be split thus, to be so utterly overwhelmed. My conversion so sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.

‘It’s tight,’ Dante pants, and yet he grasps Vergil’s hip, sinking himself in all the deeper, so much so that Vergil almost fails to hold himself up. ‘Fuck, Vergil.’

‘Yes, Dante. Keep—going.’ Rip away that hard black carapace. Let me see that my eyes are not still blood-red, that I am not a corpse reanimated. Let me see that I am alive, Dante. He gasps and cries against each thrust Dante makes, each time his brother’s body slams into him, the ache of it excruciating, enclosing. Through the scar of his being he pursues Dante, one hand shooting back to cover Dante’s hand, a flushed and morose glance over his shoulder to see the pleasure writ upon his brother’s face, the pleasure and the pain of it, yes, because Vergil knows the precise violence of it, to plunge into his brother like this, to tear him apart. Vergil can taste blood in his mouth. He doesn’t know if it’s his or Dante’s. He knows only the slide of Dante’s cock, and how it fills him so utterly, stretching him beyond what he can take, now that he is more human than daemon, more flesh than fortress, more earthly than divine.

Dante pulls him up onto his knees, still inside him, and Vergil leans back against his brother, bruised inside, biting down on his lower lip, as he begins to move back against Dante to meet each gouge. Dante’s hand snakes up through his hair and grasps, tight, drawing a dark moan from Vergil, choked as another hand closes around his throat, constricting.

‘I could die inside you,’ Dante murmurs, as Vergil splutters, failing to draw sufficient breath. The obscene sounds of their act, the slow crawl of diminishing rain, the hand that releases his hair and instead caresses his abdomen, the very place where Vergil had run his sword through Dante, all those years ago, he now expects his brother’s cock to rupture him in much the same way. He expects, he hopes.

‘Just as I have died inside you—many times,’ he chokes out, the heat mounting, spreading just below Dante’s palm. There are too many shadows in this room. There is too much to grasp at. The air rushes back into his lungs as Dante shoves him forward, hand splayed over the side of Vergil’s face, covering him, forcing him down into the mattress. His brother’s cock fills him in a way that he never knew was possible, in a way that demonstrates to him the full extent of his exiguity.

Take it all from me, Dante. Leave nothing.

He does.

‘Dante—I’m—’ The heat prickles, his face aching, inside him aching. He hardens all over, breath tight, as his vision crowds and the pleasure erupts. Dante swells inside him, cursing and groaning, inseparable one, ecstasy expanding, and Vergil’s hip bone shatters under the grip of Dante, and the blood drips down from somewhere, the tears, too, down, down, with nothing left, nothing at all.

—

Morning lights filters down between the venetian blinds, ablaze with dust. The world appears differently, lit up in this way; the glass ashtray on the bedside table, the silver-inlaid pistol beside it, the sheets, wound up around them, stained russet, stale with sex. Vergil awakens to the world as though being born for the first time, and as the light cuts his eyes he turns away, burying his face into Dante, who yawns, stretches, and kisses his temple.

‘You’re still here,’ his brother mutters, and a wry smile tugs at Vergil’s lips as he catches Dante in a slack, open-mouthed kiss.

He feels Dante stir against his thigh, giving a low whine as Vergil slips his tongue in, and then he withdraws with a light graze of teeth of Dante’s lower lip. ‘Still here.’

To be together like this, verging on domesticity. 

‘I half expected to wake up alone.’ Dante reaches over for his pack of smokes and lights one up, sighing thin grey plumes, as Vergil sits up. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve dreamed about you, but it’s not usually—like that. Are you—okay?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Vergil stands, stretches, the tender bruise inside him faint now, but there still. The morning air chills his skin, draws gooseflesh. He regards Dante, smoking in bed, staring at him, a hunger flickering lazily between drags. The way the sheets cling, accentuating, suggesting. ‘Things cannot be as they were before, Dante,’ he says.

To know that such a life will never be ours, can never be ours. 

‘You’re going to have to be a little more specific.’

Vergil sits on the edge of the bed, rakes a hand through his hair. ‘We haven’t spoke about what happened on Mallet.’

Dante smokes, blasé, though his voice tightens. ‘What’s there to say?’

‘I remember, Dante. All of it.’

The light that cascades over Dante’s chest slips off as he reaches for the ashtray, but Vergil offers himself instead. The cigarette hisses as it chars his skin and he stifles a groan, a red and ash-stained blemish left beneath his collarbone. Dante tosses the cigarette into the ashtray and sighs.

‘Corrupting the innocence of your sweet little brother? Or so I imagine that’s the gist of it.’

‘Ours was never a conversation in morality,’ Vergil says. ‘I never took you for a purist.’

‘Don’t bother.’ He glares at Vergil, incredulous. ‘I repulsed you. It was obvious.’

‘I repulsed myself,’ Vergil clarifies. ‘And therefore you, as you are an extension of me. As I am an extension of you. It was self-loathing.’

‘And now?’

Vergil stretches out alongside his brother’s legs, propping himself up on an elbow. His hand rests on Dante’s shin.

‘Now,’ he says, ‘I have suspended all judgement.’

Dante scoffs. ‘And what a relief that is.’

Ignoring the wryness of his brother, Vergil continues, because it must be said. It must be known, between them. It must be named.

He leans down to press a kiss to Dante’s skin.

‘There are certain things you must know about Mallet Island,’ he says, regarding his brother softly. ‘In truth, the recognition did not come at once. For that I am glad. Had I known you from the very beginning, and still committed such acts, I wouldn’t have been able to… I did not know you, Dante. Not until the end, but by then, it could not be undone.’

Despite his reluctance to be drawn into the past alongside Vergil, Dante sits forward, dragging his hand over his eyes and giving a short, discontented sigh.

‘I could not have stopped it, Dante,' Vergil continues. 'Even if I had wanted to.’

‘And did you, want to?’

‘No.’

There is a silence.

‘I see.’

‘Our torments may also in length of time become our elements,' Vergil murmurs, dropping his eyes for a moment before meeting Dante's again, the shame gathering. ‘Such as it was with you. It did not matter, Dante, that I did not recognise you. It was you who I pursued in every violent act that prevailed beyond my own will. You who I had in mind, even when my mind was not my own. I will never forgive myself for having inflicted such a thing upon you, and what is more, I will never forgive myself for having delighted in it.’

Condemn me, Dante. See me for what I am, or do not look at me at all.

But Dante only comes towards him, the sheets sliding from his body, light burning, and grabs hold of Vergil’s jaw, forcing him to meet his eyes. There is humiliation in this, too, but Vergil is stunned by the way his brother is looking at him.

‘You want to be absolved,’ Dante realises, because it is true, and Vergil can only nod.

‘I want,’ Vergil begins, throat taut, aching, ‘you to do unto me as I—as I have done unto you. I want a greater affliction. I want—’ And then his voice breaks off, because it has never been used in such a way, to form such phrases.

Leave me broken at your feet. I am so tired, Dante.

Dante's face is luminous. The stubble creeping over his jaw is coarse, razing Vergil's skin as his brother bends down to kiss him.

‘Then we’d better start from the very beginning.’