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“Home sweet business building,” Dante said sarcastically as he opened the door to his temporarily unnamed business. It was late in the night when Dante and Vergil got back to the building, the moon was high up in the sky and its light was not doing much for the over-saturated city.
Vergil just gave him a mildly unapproving hum as he walked in, not bothering with words. It was his first time in or even seeing the building, but there was no time to give a tour today. Dante watched as Vergil glanced around his home with a judging eye. Staring at Vergil, who was probably looking down on him for his living choices made his skin want to crawl off.
“...So uhm. wanna sleep on the couch tonight?” Dante offered, looking away from vergil and losing his one sided staring contest. He wasn't quite sure how this whole ‘hosting guests’ thing worked.
“That thing looks like it hasn't been washed in sixty years, in what world do I want to sleep on that.” Vergil poked the old couch that came with the building with the scabbard of Yamato, sneering in disgust.
“I dunno! But I wanna sleep in my own bed and I'm not letting you steal it,” Dante said with a grumble, kicking the floor with a shuffle of his boot. “Unless you want to sleep in the same bed together, you're stuck out here.”
“That's fine. Only because it's a better option than this grubby thing.” Vergil added the last bit like he almost forgot, but the whole sentence shocked Dante into silence anyway.
Vergil stared at Dante’s shell-shocked fish face for a moment before bonking him in the head with the sheathed Yamato.
“Ow!”
“Stop that, you look dumb.”
~~
Dante had asked Vergil a few times if he was sure since they hadn't shared a bed since they were kids. Vergil felt too fatigued to truly argue and just said it didn't affect the effectiveness of the rest(and he didn't want to touch that gross couch with a ten foot pole). Dante looked at him like he had a head injury or something once or twice before letting it go.
They were both soon ready for bed, Dante just changing into comfier clothes and Vergil insisting that he was disgusting while taking a full shower himself, before changing into second hand pajamas.
By the time Vergil was completely done, Dante was already in the middle of the bed almost asleep. Vergil was unimpressed. “We’re supposed to be sharing. Move over before I throw you off the bed.”
Dante grumbled sleepily but complied, not without pulling all of the blanket to the farther side of the bed with him.
...Sometimes, Vergil wonders why he tolerates being around Dante at all. Ever. He gets up on the bed and on his knees, before grabbing a side of the blanket and yanking it as hard as he could, sending Dante tumbling off the bed and to the ground.
“Hey! What was that for!” the not rudely and totally justifiably awakened Dante cried from the floor. He sat up wincing, rubbing the back of his head.
Vergil scoffed, laying the blanket out more evenly. “You only have one blanket, and we have to share. If you wanted to be a cocoon, you should've thought ahead and gotten a second-”
“-Blanket, yeah, yeah, stop already. Have I ever planned ahead besides ‘gonna go fight stuff’?” Dante had gotten up from the floor and crawled back into the bed. He went under the blanket this time instead of wrapping himself up and flopped back into laying down.
Vergil just huffed, getting under the blanket as well. The new environment wasn't doing any favors for him in the sleepiness department. The apparent mess everywhere in the building unsettled him as well.
Maybe he should have taken the couch, or just not slept at all…
He looked at his brother besides him, lying all sprawled out. He would never understand how Dante found that comfortable, and It seemed his sleeping habit of taking up as much space as possible hasn't changed since they were kids. It was just like Dante to not act like anything was different.
He was breathing softly, but just irregular enough to show he wasn't in a deep sleep yet. Vergil had tried to keep a bit of space between them, but Dante took up so much of the bed that there wasn't very far to go. Vergil sighed. The bed smelled strongly of Dante, old pizza crust, gunpowder and uncleanliness. It was oddly familiar yet not. Just like this whole situation.
Being in the same space as his brother again set a certain part of his mind at ease, and despite it pulling at the rest of him to be relaxed too, he just couldn't. Old habits die hard, as they say.
“Mmn… go to sleep, Verge.” Dante mumbled drowsily beside Vergil, one eye half open from where he was laying.
“Fine. you go back to sleep too." Vergil replied uselessly, as Dante had already closed his eye and fallen back asleep.
Vergil closed his eyes as well, trying to sleep. It took him a while; for a bit he just layed in silence. But eventually the edges of his mind softened as sleepiness took over his senses. If you asked him, he couldn't tell you when he actually fell asleep.
~~
Vergil had a dreamless night. At least, he thought he did. He had a lingering feeling he might have dreamt, but couldn't remember what. As he woke up, the feeling of forgetting something you just thought of was still clinging to his consciousness. the sunlight that was softly in his eyes quickly washed it away.
He was on his back, compared to when he fell asleep on his side, and he was very warm. Too warm, almost. They hadn't slept in, had they? No, there was no way the soft glow of the sun was the same as the glaring heat of the afternoon sun, and the blanket Dante kept on his bed was wimpy at best.
Blinking blearily, Vergil quickly tried to focus past the sleepy morning haze the room was cast in, only to be greeted with a mop of messy white hair. Directly on top of his chest. It was Dante, head resting on Vergil's chest, pressed against his side with one arm draped over him like some sort of giant koala. Or heated blanket.
Vergil's first instinct upon seeing this was to put as much distance between him and Dante. They were way too close, and if Dante woke up like this, Vergil would probably never hear the end of it.
Right as he tensed and was in the middle of moving, Dante held on tighter in retaliation, mumbling something incomprehensible in his sleep. Now that Vergil looked, Dante seemed very comfortable. He relaxed a bit when Vergil stopped trying to move, a low, warm rumbling coming from his chest.
…that was not something vergil knew humans could do. Was Dante… purring?? He was pretty sure humans were not capable of purring. After a bit of contemplation, somewhere in the back of Vergil's memories he could recall once or twice his father doing something similar. It sounded a little different when Dante did it, but close enough. Hm. so perhaps it was a demonic trait.
Vergil sighed quietly in uneasy defeat, the action softly ruffling Dantes hair. He was a fool even in his sleep, and it seemed there was no escaping this fate.
Vergil watched his brother’s face, though he could only see part of it his expression looked soft, his usual foolish grin or mischievous smirk gone from his features. Dantes cheek was squished against Vergil's chest and he was drooling a bit. He was lucky that Vergil was borrowing the shirt. He could hear Dante breathing softly, could feel the even rise and fall of his chest against his side. The purring came with it too, becoming more prominent with every inhale and quieting with every exhale.
The sun was dancing across Dante’s hair in such a way as to make it glow. In the sunlight they reminded him of spider silk, much too delicate a comparison for someone as brazen as his brother.
Truly not having his best moment, Vergil carefully removed his arm from somewhere under Dante and rested his newly freed hand on Dante's head. His hair was ruffled and disordered, practically the perfect nest for any living creature to live in. So Vergil carefully ran his fingers through his twins' hair. It was only to help with the tangles of course, nothing else.
He brushed the hair back, cautious of not pulling too hard, and he began carefully evening out the strands. They weren't nearly as tangled as they looked, but wouldn't stay in place no matter how hard he didn't really try.
As Vergil gently and methodically worked on his brother's hair, Dante let out a satisfied sigh, the purr amplified momentarily, as he nuzzled slightly into Virgil's sternum. Vergil continued with the careful petting, taking the continued purring and the slightly tighter embrace as a positive sign. Dante reminded him of a cat.
The quiet, peaceful sun warmed moment had Vergil feeling more content than he had in a long time. The warmth coming from his brother was contagious, and He found himself somehow also purring, the sound coming quietly with every exhale. He found himself not caring. He might have earlier.
The soft contact between him and his unconscious twin made him feel the roots of sleep creep into his mind once again. His hand running through Dante’s hair slowly came to a stop, resting in the sun warmed strands as he lost the one sided fight against sleep and closed his eyes once more.
~~