I, nor any of us here own any of the Devil May Cry characters. Unless you happen to work for Capcom, then you've got some serious explaining to do.

When They're Not Around...

Dante sat on the couch, kicking his legs lazily and staring at an empty television screen. He hadn't been tempted to turn the box on and go channel surfing for the past hour or so; he'd already done that, and found that nothing engaging was on. There wouldn't be for the next few hours, he knew, because in the madness induced by boredom he'd planted himself in front of the screen and scanned through the entire television guide menu until he could recite the order of shows by heart.

He looked over to Vergil, who was flipping through a magazine and reading. Well, "reading"- he hadn't heard a single page flap from that book yet.

This much was obvious: they were both bored out of their minds, and today was one of those days where nothing they thought up seemed to amuse them any.

Dante yawned. "Hey, Verge.."

"Yeah? What is it?"

"I'm bored."

Vergil rolled his eyes. "Gee, I never would've noticed."

Dante crossed his arms and made a face. He always has to make a comment from anything, he thought . He opened his mouth to say something rude, but thought better of it. A few seconds later, he opened it up again. "There's nothing to do around here, is there? I mean, mom and dad went shopping... eh, wait," he paused and thought back to what happened. Their mother had suggested that they go shopping, to which their father's response was to stand from his seat, walk out of the house and sit himself outside on the doorstep to literally watch the grass grow. He'd been promptly dragged to the car by his ear, so if anything, their mom had been the one on the shopping excursion. Their dear old dad was just taken hostage.

Good thing they avoided that fate. "Yeap, they went shopping," Dante finished with a shrug of his shoulders.

Vergil nodded absentmindedly, and flipped to the next page after realizing his eyes had glazed over the same line 30 times in a row.

They wasted a few more minutes in silence, then Vergil slammed the magazine shut and tossed it away. "...Wanna see if there's anything to do around the house?"

Dante stopped kicking his legs. "Sounds good." Even if the aforementioned anything-to-do happened to be running laps around their abode, it was more amusing than the silence.

Their feet pattered around the floor as they went from room to room to see what they had, but they paused when they got to the kitchen. Vergil went in first and Dante trailed just behind, and his eyes widened at the sight of the fridge like he'd never seen it before in his life. "Whoa! Hey, Verge!" he jumped up and down in excitement. "We can just kill some time raiding the fridge!"

Vergil scoffed at the idea. "We? Dante, if it were up to you, you'd be raiding the entire kitchen just by yourself."

Dante made a blank face, then tried to retaliate— "Oh yeah, well, you- er- uh- ...shut up!"

Vergil looked away. "Whatever, let's go see what's in the fridge. But we're just going to look."

Dante opened the fridge—mumbling a few choice obscenities under his breath—and Vergil looked in at the gallons of milk, canned food, and other things one would normally find in a fridge. He noticed something odd and unfamiliar, and reached his hands in and pulled out a case of bottles that looked oddly different from the bottles of soda in the fridge.

Needless to say, they were bottles of beer, but Dante and Vergil are underage, so they wouldn't know.

Vergil turned the box around. "What is this?"

Dante stood on his tiptoes, wanting to get a better look by peering over his brother's shoulder. "So, what's in the bottles?"

Vergil replied with a voice laced in sarcasm, "Oh, I don't know. Why not grab one and find out for yourself, genius?"

Dante huffed. And snatched a bottle right out of the box. "FINE then, maybe I will!" He flipped the cap off from the bottle but his annoyance died out as quickly as it'd shown up. He hesitated and sniffed at it instead. Strange... he couldn't pinpoint what it was but he could catch a faint scent of lemon. A very faint and barely-there scent- he had a hard time believing that it was even remotely related to lemonade.

"Well?" There was genuine curiosity in Vergil's voice, so Dante shrugged and took a sip. He looked sick to his stomach. The organ in question churned and he spat at the floor, expelling the offending drink.

"Ugh! Blech! That's—gross, all bitter and weird!" He wiped away at his mouth like there was no tomorrow.

Vergil took no heed and grabbed the bottle from his brother's hands. "Your taste buds must be failing you today. I'll try it!" He took a swig but his expression soon matched Dante's. He refused to add to the mess on the floor, and swallowed his gulp. It didn't taste any better going down. "Ack, you're right!"

"Uhm, uh, maybe it's just that bottle?" Dante took another one, opened it, and drank. "Ew no. This one tastes bad too!"

They were at a loss for ideas, but the older twin suggested, "Maybe it's an acquired taste?"

"You mean like... Tootsie Rolls?"

Vergil nodded, and they both looked down at their bottles, contemplating just how valid his idea was.

"Okay, here goes..."

They each took a sip and fought down the urge to spit. Gulp.

"Any better?"

"No," Vergil replied.

Sip, make a face, gulp.

"Now?"

"No."

Sip, make a face, gulp.

"How about now?"

"Not yet."

It continued on until they were each half-done with their bottles.

"And now?"

"Bleh... it doesn't even taste weird anymore, just bitter and cold."

"Like you most of the time?"

Vergil paused just as the bottle was at his mouth and thought about that. A moment of silence and, "... You're right," he said with a sob. Dante just gave him a consolatory pat on the back but he continued to sniffle, defeated by a mere zinger.

Vergil's mood improved when they went on their second bottles and he exercised his ability to run around the kitchen with the nearest marker uncapped and dragging against the wall. By the third, the caustic remark about his attitude and his mutilation of the kitchen wall was long lost under loud and ringing laughter and the fact that they were swaying on their feet and hanging onto each other for support. They were slapping each others' shoulders and tears streamed down their faces and they were so out of breath there wasn't a sound coming out of their mouths but they were still laughing.

At what, neither of them had a single clue.

The laughter died down after the fourth bottle and was replaced with a vested interest in vacantly staring at the fridge as if having their eyes fixed on it would cause something to happen.

Dante motioned to the refrigerator lazily. "Uhhh, Verge? Whadya think happens, to, uh,our drawin's?"

"Whuh?"

"Our drawin's!" He repeated more loudly. "I mean, if we draw, a lot, do they, -hic!- do they... do they... does the fridge run outta space or not?"

"Ohhhhh..." Vergil nodded in understanding but then shook his head. "I 'unno."

Dante accepted that, but then his eyes widened back up and he gestured wildly at the refrigerator as if he'd just found the secret to all of life and the appliance was key. "Maybe. Maaaaaybe, maybemaybemaybe... may, be, the fridge... EATS the paper." His voice had taken the same hush of one imparting some profound knowledge.

For once, Vergil looked skeptical. He thought and thought and thought and his rebuttal had formed and he had the most perfect of proof against the idea of fridge eating paper, and when he opened his mouth it all came out condensed into a

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yes-suh!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yes-suh!"

"No, the fridge can't eat paper. Why would it eat paper? That's so dumb. You're dumb!"

"Well if laundry dryers eat socks then fridges can eat paper. Nobody wonders why socks disappear in dryers!"

"That's cuz socks go in the dryers, dummy. We feed dryers with clothes and they take a sock or two as a snack and they spit up the rest. Fridges don't do that unless you stuck the drawings in the fridge and not on it, and paper doesn't go in fridges! Duhhhhh."

That settled that argument, and the both of them reached a greater understanding of fridges and paper and dryers and socks, by which we mean the twins turned to the fridge and backed away in caution.

"We're onto you," Dante hissed at it.

"Don't think we don't know about your little conspiracy with the laundry," Vergil added, pointing an accusatory finger at the appliance.

Given a few minutes, they forgot all about it as well, swept up by the newest conspiracy and perceived injustice. The fifth bottle came with Dante using the last of the discarded permanent marker and penning an angry letter to Santa Claus despite his twin protesting ("It's nowhere near Christmas!"), dismissing that protest with his reasoning ("When's the last time we heard of those elves taking a break? They're probably workin' on toys right now for EVERY kid in the world, ever!") and Vergil agreeing in a heartbeat ("Hey that's true. That's terrible!"). Vergil offered to proofread his scribbled mess of a letter and pointed out a crucial spelling mistake ("You spelled Santa as S-A-T-A-N. That's the stuff they make clothes out of, dummy!") before Dante rewrote the revised version. With the mistake fixed, they were ready to send it in the mail, except they wrote the entire spiel on the table. Unless they were going to pass it off as weighted, wooden, conspicuously four-legged paper, they weren't going to get anywhere.

They abandoned their little project and went about their own business. The sixth bottle marked the point where they officially had 'too much to drink' instead of being just tipsy, and Vergil had given up his fight for balance and took his seat at the scribbled-on table, muttering something under his breath. Dante, however, was trying to keep up a conversation in his stupor.

"Ehh... lissen.. I don' mean 'o hurt your feelings, but this jus'.. isn' working out..." he slurred, trying to see through half-lidded eyes.

Vergil didn't react in the slightest. The conversation wasn't with him.

Dante was all the way at the other end of the kitchen, talking to a broom and trying to keep things friendly, but the unheard response of the cleaning item made him completely change his tone. He jabbed a finger at the broom, offended. "Wha!? Wha' me an' the mop do, is nun a yer business. Y' 'ardly do an'thin' for me anyways," he sniffed. Another pause, then "Wha've you done lately, huh? I mean— I mean— whoa," he groaned, hugging the broom with all his might. "Oh, wha' 'm I sayin', can't stay mad at ya f'rever..." he cuddled it, not even noticing his tone changed. He was so fickle when it came to relationships.

Vergil had finally picked his head up from the table. "Wha's goin' on…?" His eyes regained focus by the time he found Dante and the broom hugging, and he gasped in shock. "D- …Dante!?"

Dante dropped the broom on the floor as if nothing had just gone on, and raised his hands in some feeble attempt to defend himself. "Not what it looks like, I swear-"

"Yes, it is! Y-y-yer ch-ch-cheating on me, I know you are!" Tears welled up in the older twin's eyes, and his voice started to quiver along with his lower lip. He tried to keep it still by biting but it only managed to make him look more pitiful.

Dante staggered his way over to the table, and that was as far as he got before the furniture morphed into an infinitely stretching barrier that made going around it unheard of. He got onto his own seat and leaned over the table to get closer to Vergil. "Eh, no-no-no… Th's 's all a mis'derstandin'..."

Vergil closed the distance and yanked Dante the rest of the way across, holding him by the collar of his shirt. They were nose-to-nose, but Vergil had made it a point to make his voice very loud anyway.

"Yeah, yeah, a misunderstanding!?" he shook Dante repeatedly. "YEAH RIGHT! I hate you, you JERK! This relationship is OVER!"

Dante looked sad. "But... if... then... why're ya holdin' me all... all tender and stuff?"

Vergil was holding Dante like he was about to kiss him. His voice barely a whisper, he replied, "Because I... love you."

They stared into each other's eyes, and time seemed to slow down for that split second—

"...NOT!"

Vergil tossed his brother aside, picked a flower out of his pocket and plucked the last remaining petal from it. Satisfied with having resolved that matter, he went back to resting his head on the table and conking out. Dante stared up at him, looking absolutely devastated.