Disclaimer :- Devil May Cry and all it's characters are the property of Capcom and are being used here in compliance with the terms found on their website.
What it Means to be Human
There was a sound of smashing glass and Nero felt some of the remains of his whiskey and lemonade splash his cheek as he kept his eye's locked to Dante's. A few beads of sweat were making their way down the young man's back but no fear or even surprise showed on his face as he stood stock still, jaw clenched. Dante whistled appreciatively.
"Not bad kid. You didn't even blink, though I've got to wonder if your eye is just better than I give you credit, or if it's a sign of blind trust and stupidity on your part." Stepping forwards heavily, and chuckling to himself, Dante sank down onto the sofa Nero had not long ago occupied. Nero had to suppress a groan as Dante actually did start to sip straight from the bottle now. When he spoke again, however, there was no sign of mirth and playfulness. It was as if the whiskey had brought him to some inner sobriety. "We're killers kid. No matter how we try to dress it up, that's the truth you've got to be able to face. If you don't you'll lose it soon enough or retire early." He placed Ebony momentarily against his own temple, his meaning pointedly clear. Both men stared at the weapon; a sleek fully functioning device, designed, like the two of them, for one purpose, killing.
"Dante," Nero's voice came out small but level, "I think it might be an idea to call somebody."
An expression of boredom crept across Dante's features and he tossed Ebony on to the coffee table in front of him and returned his attention to his bottle.
"Do as you please." He all but spat the words.
Finally feeling free to move and breathe, Nero reached the desk and paused, one hand hovering above the phone. There was no address pad of contacts numbers, simply a list of local restaurants that did take out tacked to the wall. It was foolish to think that Dante would be so organized and so he settled for lifting the whole telephone and carrying it over to the sofa.
"Call someone." Nero ordered, thrusting the device under Dante's nose. His tone made it clear he wasn't in the mood to be messed about. Dante tutted and tipped the bottle back again. "Now who's being childish?" Nero roared. Slamming the phone down onto the coffee table, he reached out with his Devil Bringer to wrench the bottle for Dante's grip. "Call, or I'll smash it over that thick head of yours!"
Whether it was the threat to his person, his booze or because he was grudgingly impressed by Nero's suicidal persistence, Dante kicked a leg up onto the table, slammed it down hard enough for the receiver to bounce up and caught it in midair. The warning glare he gave Nero, reminding the rookie that even drunk Dante was by far the more skilled of the two. With each spin of the dial, Nero's stomach trembled as he struggled not to give in and break eye contact. Dante's accusing stare made him feel both embarrassed and ashamed so that he gave in and looked aside before the last rotation had finished. When he glanced back Dante hadn't so much as blinked.
"It's me," Dante spoke into the mouthpiece, his voice frosted and harder than Nero had yet heard it. Somehow it gave him the impression that this phone conversation was not something he was ever supposed to see. "Yeah. Yeah." Dante closed his eyes and gave a small, bitter laugh. "Jack." He looked over at the bottle still in Nero's grasp. "Nearly half."
"Nearly all." Nero spoke loudly so that the unknown party could here.
"Yeah it's the kid. No, I won't. See you in a bit." He threw the receiver down into its cradle and crossed his booted feet on the table.
"Satisfied?" he asked tartly.
Nero ignored this and planted himself heavily on the sofa next to Dante. He allowed himself a heavy sigh carefully avoiding eye contact as he wasn't in the mood for losing another staring match. Somehow, seeing Dante as unguarded as this felt as much like a betrayal as it did a measure of trust. Silently he wondered if that was what the gun play earlier had been about; Dante's way of seeing how much trust Nero had in him, before choosing to return that trust. That or the man really was the impulse driven fool he made himself out to be.
Staring at the ceiling, with its slowly creaking fan blade, Nero found himself thinking hard on the point Dante had made about the true nature of their work. They might try to call themselves slayers, or hunters, even heroes from time to time, but would be truly be able to face it if all these titles boiled down to was a killer in his Sunday best? Demons are people too. If that were true, how many people had he killed? How many were somebody's parents, somebody child? With a cold shiver he remembered a misery wracked shriek in a jungle like forest. Somehow that sound had not penetrated him as deeply then as it did now.
He felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as the voices resounded in his memory; a mother's grief for her lost children and his own blasé retort. Looking down, he noticed his Devil Bringer was glowing fiercely as he gripped the whiskey bottle by it's neck with enough force that it was in danger of shattering. Sighing heavily once more, he closed his eyes and knocked it back.
One small swallow later and he was spluttering, trying not to choke yet holding the back of his hand to his mouth in an effort to keep from spaying a mouthful of whiskey across the table. Through the burning in his throat and mouth he heard Dante burst out in an uproar of thigh slapping, barked laughter.
"You might want to work your way up to neat whiskey kid," Nero glowered back "and no just one swallow isn't going to make me cut that out 'kid'. "
Nero forced down the rest of his mouthful and gasped for air.
"How do you drink this poison? It tastes awful."
"With a lot of style," Dante chuckled. "You don't have to like it. Try the icebox, there should be a couple of cans left. We're going to make a night of it before the cavalry arrives."
As he pulled a couple of barely chilled beers from the tired spluttering fridge, Nero realized that he had no clue who they were expecting to join them. The only friend of Dante's he'd met was Trish and she was supposed to be overseas searching for some fabled Devil's Arm. The chances of her suddenly dropping by were more than a little unlikely.
Depositing the beer on the coffee table, Nero saw that Dante had acquired another glass and was working on the last segment of the bottle now; using what looked like a tall women's fashion magazine as a coaster.
"Can't let you drink alone," he quipped in reply to Nero's dark look. Booted feet back on the table Dante seemed completely at ease as he leaned back into the scuffed leather and draped his arms across the tortured sofa's sagging back. Nero's eyes flickered to the table, checking the gun was still where Dante had tossed it. Quick though the glance was, it didn't escape Dante's notice.
"No need to be so concerned, it's really nothing to worry about. I'm not gonna go blowing any-ones brains out tonight. Just needed to illustrate a point." Nero hesitated on the verge of asking what night he did plan on shooting someone's brains out, but changed his mind.
"Why do you need to get so drunk?" He asked instead. "What are you going to do if someone calls with a mission tomorrow?" Nero could hear the anger brewing in his own voice as he snapped the ring-pull and tried the beer. It wasn't bad, a little sour tasting and a little bubblier than he'd expected, but far more palatable than the burning whiskey had been.
"This isn't as bad as it could be." Dante said in a placating tone. "At worst I'll probably be nursing a head ache tomorrow, but nothing worse. It's harder for me to get drunk than most people."
Nero noted the use of the word people again and recalled that Dante was never one to speak of himself in terms of humans and demons. It was always left to others to say things like "You're not human" or "You're the son of the demon Sparda". The closest Dante had come to defining himself in Nero's hearing had been when they'd first met. The unfinished sentence "Looks like you too are a…" had long preyed on Nero's mind. What had Dante been going to call the pair of them? What did having both demon and human blood make them and how much sway did either side really have over them? Having been raised to think of all demons as evil, Nero had felt that in fighting the enemies of mankind, he was resisting the whispers in his mind, but was he really playing into their hands? Was violence, even against demons a sign of a demonic heritage? If only he knew his parentage some of these questions might be easier to answer, but his only clue was Sanctus' shocking pronouncement that he, Nero, carried the blood of Sparda in one form or another.
Nero's head was beginning to spin, though he was unsure if it was from the pressures of so much thinking, the alcohol he was unused to, or a combination of both.
"You didn't answer my question." Nero pointed out, crushing the empty can in his right hand and shaking his head to try to clear it.
"What question?" Though Dante feigned ignorance, Nero wasn't deterred.
"Why do you need to drink like this? Is this life really that bad?"
Dante smiled awkwardly and seemed to be trying to work out how best to begin an answer. This evening had been the longest continuous conversation the two had shared and it was starting to wear on him.
"I don't need to drink, and no, I'm not just saying that. The truth is that I have to do something and it simply seemed the most appealing distraction for tonight. I always indulge more than is healthy when I need to get my kicks so I like to vary them." He held up a hand and started counting off on his fingers. "Drinking, eating, training, sex, gambling. Some of my favourite vices."
"Training?" Nero blinked confused.
"Anything can be a vice if you over indulge. I mean look at these." He flexed one arm, displaying stone muscles. "Perfection takes dedication kid." He grinned wolfishly. "We've call got our ways of keeping the darkness at bay."
"We?" Nero asked and regretted it, embarrassed that he'd fallen into parroting, prying. He felt that he shouldn't be quite so interested, but the beer seemed to have loosened his natural reticence.
"Most demon hunters I've met have had their little ways." He played with his glass as he spoke. "Trish can be a real slave to that bike of hers sometimes and when it comes to clothes she tends to spend all my cash as well as her own." He ran a hand along the collar of his shirt. "If it wasn't for her spending sprees I'd probably run out of clothes on a daily basis." He mused. "Then there's our little collection." He indicated the many displays of weapon adorning the walls. "That's something we both share a bit of a passion for, even if some of them can be ridiculously temperamental at times."
Nero swore he heard a scandalized female voice murmur "Oh really?" and hastily started on another beer.
"So is that why you've survived so long in this business?" Nero asked, wondering if perhaps this was the real gem of knowledge he'd come to the city to learn.
"I might be," Dante conceded, "though a bloody minded attitude and a talent for the work also helps." He gave a smirk which faded quickly as he poured another drink only to find the bottle now stood empty. "Still, it's a little early for you to be worrying about this side of things kid. You seem to be doing well on the mindless compulsion front."
Nero frowned, seeing that Dante was looking over at the bar as he said this, and thumped his beer down feeling insulted.
"This is the first time I've drank I'll have you know," he began heatedly, his voice sounder a little thick "and I'm not just doing it for the distraction." As he spoke he realized the lie in this, seeing as the screams, "my children!" in his head had now stopped, but he'd be damned if he was going to admit it to Dante.
"Not quite my meaning." Dante chuckled, deciding to let that emphatic denial slide, and gestured with his glass at Nero's sword, still standing propped against the bar. "You make a cute couple but you really need to get a room."
Nero could feel a blush rising and he swiped at his nose reflexively. He knew he might show her a little more attention than might be deemed healthy, but he could see a queue of innuendo in Dante's eyes, and was determined to cut him off.
"Alright already," he hurried, as Dante's glee faded into a put-out pout. Clearly he'd been waiting for an opportunity to make jokes about Nero polishing his sword in public. "So maybe I can be a bit obsessive as well, but does it really work?"
"Well if it means you can still do the job with full satisfaction then yeah. It gives you a bit of distance to make the tough choices as well. You should ask Trish about it when she gets back. Or better yet" he added, standing up at the sound of a speeding motorbike screeching to a halt outside "why not ask the lady of the hour?" He stood up and moved to sit on the desk, leaving Nero vaguely confused.
Nero's brows furrowed as he was about to askew what on earth Dante was on about, when the front door was kicked into the wall, causing Dante to wince again.
"What the hell do you think you're doing wasting the money I lent you on booze Dante?!"
Author's Note: Not sure when my next up date will be, though I'm hard at work on the next chapter of this as well as one or two other Devil May Cry stories. Thank you so much for the kind reviews and I hope you continue to enjoy this as much as I'm enjoying writing for you. I've decided not to let this slide into yaoi or shonen-ai which it kept trying to do though I might write a sequel/continuation of Something On His Mind...