He cups the back of my neck in his hand, and this time when he teleports I know what's happening. This time there is no disorientation, no reeling shock. This time the landing is soft, as the world dissolves and is replaced, falling away like shreds of ripped-up wallpaper.

It takes only a second for reality to shift in this place, for him to bring me where he wants me. I'm not even taken aback—not until I look up and realize where we are.

Here are my posters, lining two whole walls, continuing onto the ceiling, spilling onto the floor. Here are my rumpled white sheets and blankets, carelessly thrown back and left that way, as if I'd just woken up there that morning. Here's my vinyl, and my clothes strewn all over the chair in the corner. Bullets and a crushed pack of gum on the nightstand.

"Your room," Vergil says. "Every chaotic detail."

Everything just as I left it. As if I'd just stepped out to the kitchen for a midnight snack. As if we still existed here. He's right. It's flawless.

It's brutal.

I'd say it's like a punch in the gut, a stab in the heart, a kick in the teeth, but none of those things ever really hurt me. Not like this.

Vergil's voice intrudes on my horror, rough-soft, mild and relentless. "Do you remember that night? I came to you."

"I remember." You don't forget it when the best night of your life is followed by the second worst day. Maybe even the worst, but if so, you won't ever hear me admit it.

Vergil's hand still rests at the back of my neck, and he uses it to pull me in close. His lips hover, millimeters from mine. "Shall we revisit our past, brother?"

I feel my face contort. "Not here."

"My room, then," he says. "Everything is just as it was. Even the hole you made in the cherub with your idiot sword. Do you remember?"

"Stop asking me that." My voice sounds like it's being dragged over pavement. "I remember everything." I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing the heels of my hands against them until I see stars.

"It can happen again, Dante." He stares at me, and his attention is all mine, now. "Everything can be like it was. Let me drown your sorrow, brother."

I can feel myself coming apart at the seams. I clench my jaw and it holds me together. "Not in this extra-credit diorama you made. It's a sick fucking joke."

"It's nothing of the sort." Vergil's brow is white and cold. "I'm giving you what you want, Dante, because you refuse to dwell in the present. Or the future."

I close my eyes, losing cohesion. I'm staggered, breaking down like a marionette. "Then take me to the present, Vergil. Take me to hell. I don't care where you take me, but I can't be here."

I feel his hands leave me, and I open my eyes. Nothing changes. It's dark. Dark as the beginning of a world. Away from that disquieting nightmare aquarium, my unease recedes. Darkness is nothing new.

"Vergil," I say, and I'm surprised when I actually make a sound. Somehow I expected the vacuum of space, the silence of nonexistence. I wonder if he's tricked me, banished me to a mirror dimension or put me on ice in oblivion, so that he can do his disappearing act yet again.

"Yes," he replies, from somewhere not that far away. It's noncommital. An acknowledgment, no more.

"What is this?"

"This is where I sleep."

After a moment a tiny blue flame blooms into life, and I see it burning on the tip of his index finger. Vergil turns away from me and lights a candle. That one candle is enough to show me everything I need to see. He blows out his fingertip with a dark smile.

We're in a bedroom of sorts. Not one I've ever seen before. Cavernous, with walls of rock. I can barely make them out in the dimness. I'm standing by the bed itself, a spartan steel four-poster frame with a canopy of white gauze.

"What have you got up your sleeve?" I feel my eyes narrow.

"There's nothing up my sleeve. Look for yourself."

And with that he pulls off his exquisite longcoat, unceremoniously shedding the glory of twilight-colored silk that defines him. Now he is a more visceral Vergil, lean and stripped-down. He stands before me in his tailored breeches and smartly chevronned black vest, booted to the knee, arms bared and muscled.

"See?" His voice is coarse and caressing. I feel my temperature rising somewhere south of the equator.

"You're a terrible brother." Those are the words I say, but in reality they have no meaning.

Vergil eyes me. "You're not so great yourself," he drawls, in his rusted tone.

"Come here."

He moves toward me, with leisurely intent. "I found myself in a dark wood," he murmurs, "where the straight way was lost." He pauses, tilts his head. "Do you know who that is?"

"No."

"That's Dante, Dante."

I don't know where my coat is. I don't know where my guns are, and for once I don't care. I'm half-naked in the semidarkness, and fully hard underneath my leather pants.

When he gets near enough I seize him and bring my face near his. I breathe him in, I feel the lack of distance between us. I'm drunk on it. His lips just touch mine, like frost. I clutch his face, overcome, urgent. His lips part and crush against my own, our tongues meet and align. I lose myself, I fall into my own body. As I fall, the flames rise up.

I struggle at being my brother's keeper. It's easier being his lover.

He pulls back, watching me with narrowed eyes. I see the icy blaze of arousal there. I hold his face in my hands, impulsively, wanting to feel him, to reassure myself that he's real. That I've caught up to him at last.

"Vergil—"

He closes his eyes for a moment, brow furrowing. "Gloves off," he murmurs.

I oblige, biting the flaps, yanking them off and throwing them onto the floor. He lets me strip his chevronned vest. Lets me run warm barbarian hands all over the cold, chiseled ledges and angles of his torso until I'm beside myself with desire and disbelief.

He stands like a statue, absorbing my touch until he can take no more. He breaks form; shoves me back onto the bed and kisses me without remorse.

His mouth against mine is all I've ever wanted. I know that now.

I feel him reach between us, his hand easing over the rise of my cock, the gesture excruciating; slow and possessive.

"Don't stop," I breathe, and grind against his palm.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Vergil whispers in a gritted subtone. What do you dream of, I want to ask him, but the words die on the altar of my lips, as they are sacrificed to his.

I think Vergil is speaking secrets into my mouth between languorous kisses, and I cannot grasp the enormity of them when we part; I cannot hold them, no matter how much I might want to.

Maybe I don't want to.

It might not be convenient to my philosophy, the way I've carved it out in my life. I need to keep him pressed against the page in two dimensions. Cold and beloved. Hated and irreplaceable.

"Strip for me, brother," Vergil's mouth breaks from mine to whisper. He draws back all at once, watching me with cool eyes as he reaches down to slowly unzip his boot. "Leave nothing between us."

I fumble, unbuckle my own boots and kick them off. My pants follow in short order.

Vergil huffs out a dry, quiet sound, some distant relative of a laugh. "Have you learned nothing from all your little friends at Love Planet? You won't pay the rent like that."

He stands up, holding my gaze, and his hands find his fly, easing it open with deliberate leisure. "Do you know why I came to your room that night, you galactic idiot?"

The sleek leather parts company with his body, and I almost lose it. I haven't seen him like this for so long, so long. He's the mirror of me, but I never see myself there. Only Vergil, all cold blue moonlight and hard perfection.

He moves toward me, all at once, a flash of motion, and now he's against me, he's seized my face, holding it in his hands with tender violence.

"To give you a piece of me," he intones into the scant space between us. "Something to hold, something to remind you, because I knew I couldn't stay."

"But it's shrapnel," I tell him, overcome. "It burns, Vergil."

"I know it does," he says. His voice is soft and taut. "Because I took a piece of you too."

"You bastard." My lips move, but the sound barely issues. "You bastard, you—"

I'm silenced by his mouth. He moves in like winter, swift and killing. I groan, I grasp him. I clutch and claw. "Shhh," he says, as he breaks from me, and seals my lips with the press of his index finger. "Do you know, Dante, I prefer it when you call me…brother."

"Brother." It's a bitter whisper.

"Yes," he breathes. "I'm here."