HEY LOOK, BEFORE APRIL FOOL'S COMES BEFORE EASTER! No this is not a joke. Although it is still April 1st where I am, so I win! Ha HA!
Another lighter-ish one. Dramarama is kept to a minimum in favor of some hurt/comfort funny fluff. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but I just typed it. You'll see what I mean. By the way, welcome back to the time when Dante and Lady worked alone together.
(PS I'm 9 pages into the next chapter of The Passage of Time—I should be able to finish it on Friday, since I don't have class on Friday. No I haven't been neglecting it! I just got back from Spring Break before I could finish it, that's all.)
Observance
April Fool's Day
April 1st, 2001
It wasn't that she didn't trust him—
No, it was exactly that.
No, it—
Lady sighed tiredly and shifted her weight. She hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, having stayed up late chasing after a whole mess of demons in some factory an hour out of the city. By the time the last Enigma had been killed, she was ready to pass out, and had promptly gotten on her bike, driven back into the city, and fallen asleep immediately. Not that the sleep had been good; she had nightmares that night, but she didn't particularly want to think about them.
Instead, she stared up at the big neon "Devil May Cry" sign that was fixed above the entrance to the building. During the day it was always off, letting the daylight illuminate the building instead, but at night it was this big, bright beacon in what was otherwise a fairly sketchy neighborhood, glowing red like the Devil in question. She wasn't sure why, but the low hum of the neon sign was always oddly comforting despite the fact that it was distracting. It blocked out most other noise, so should she get attacked she would have had a harder time hearing the assailant coming. Still, she enjoyed letting the hum fill her ears and dull her senses, because despite the added danger she didn't feel unsafe.
Why that was, she wasn't sure, but she wasn't going to think about it because it was distracting her from the task at hand.
Surely Dante would have heard her motorcycle pull up, having gotten accustomed to the sound of her bike in the months of working together. Surely he wondered what she was still doing outside when she usually just pulled up and barged in. Did he assume that she was planning something, just like she was worried that he was planning something?
Lady did not like April Fool's Day.
"There you are!" Dante exclaimed, sitting up in his chair and putting his feet on the ground. "About time you showed up."
Lady cautiously shrugged, looking around the room with suspicion. It didn't look any different—it was just as dirty and cluttered as it had been yesterday. Yet again, if Dante were to try to prank her, would he be subtle or obvious about it? She had no clue.
Honestly, she wasn't sure why she was so convinced Dante would start an all-out prank war with her on April Fool's. She had never spent that day with him, so she didn't know from experience if he came up with ridiculous pranks with the aim of humiliating the prankee, but he certainly seemed the type to do so. He liked making stupid, immature jokes; she wouldn't put him past setting up stupid, immature pranks.
She just had to take it easy. Be cautious, of course, but not suspicious. There was no saying he would do anything, but it was best to be on the lookout for unusual behavior in his part.
"I got us coffee," Dante said, getting up and grabbing two cups from his desk that she hadn't even noticed before.
That set off some warning bells in her head, in part because she hadn't even noticed the two cups on his desk—what else hadn't she noticed?—but also because he didn't usually go out and buy coffee, or drink coffee in the first place, or do her very many random favors in that vein. "When did you go?" Lady asked.
"Eh, maybe thirty minutes ago?" he answered, shrugging. "I rushed back to make sure that you didn't show up when I was out, but you made me wait anyway." He laughed and frowned at the same time, a face that she usually assumed meant that he was about to tease her about something or otherwise bust her balls. "Why'd you wait ten minutes before coming in?"
"Was it really ten minutes?" She was stunned: she knew that she had stalled for time out there, but she hadn't thought that she had spent ten minutes. Five at most, but not ten. "I got lost in thought, I guess," she said, and she wasn't lying. "Didn't realize ten minutes had passed."
"It happens," Dante responded, and then shoved the cup into her hands. "Here. Drink."
"Where did you get it from?" she asked, observing the cup from all angles. It looked like a plain coffee cup with an ordinary white plastic lid. But that didn't mean that it was a plain coffee cup with an ordinary white plastic lid, nor did it mean that there was liquid inside and not a snake or something. She shook the cup lightly, and felt liquid sloshing around—okay, fine, but that didn't mean it was coffee. He could have peed in a cup.
"Deli two blocks away," he answered, watching her stare at the cup and test it. "You ever been there?"
"No." She opened the lid, flinching—and nothing but steam rose from the cup.
"It's actually pretty good," Dante continued, sipping from his own coffee. "They make a mean ham sandwich." Seeing that she was staring at the coffee hesitantly, he added: "Look, it's not from some frou-frou coffee shop, but it's good coffee. Watch, I'm drinking it." He took a long sip from his cup, and then looked at her pointedly.
It looked like coffee, and it smelt like coffee—good coffee, she had to admit—but was it coffee? Or, rather, was it just coffee? Had it put something in it to make it taste awful, something that she couldn't smell? Okay, she had no idea what that might be, but Dante was resourceful; he could figure out how to pull that off. Or maybe he had put a laxative in her coffee, or a sleeping pill, or something to mess with her body.
But he was either a really good actor, or he genuinely was a bit disappointed that she wasn't drinking the coffee that he had just bought her. He wasn't being obvious, but there was a glint in his eye that let her on to his disgruntlement. And Dante was a terrible liar, so it had to be genuine.
She took a tentative sip. It tasted like coffee—a bit lukewarm at this point, but it was coffee. He had even put a bit of sugar in it. She didn't know how he took his coffee.
"Needs milk," Lady finally said, hoping to normalize the situation with a bit of characteristic semi-grumpiness—not that she was a particularly grumpy person, she just had a tendency to be a bit irate with him. Still, she offered him a slight thank-you smile, which she didn't plan on telling him was also a thank-you for not putting something weird in the coffee. She hoped.
Dante accepted the smile, reciprocating with one of his own. "Milk's in the fridge, if you want some," he offered.
And the horror returned. The fridge. Surely he had put something in there. There would be ... Vaseline on the handle, or the milk would be tainted or expired, or something would jump out of the fridge at her, or something, and she didn't want to be there to see what.
"Fine, I'll get it," Dante added, frowning, before retreating into the kitchen.
Lady suddenly realized that she facial had tensed and her eyes widened, her face the very image of terror. What was wrong with her? She kept on showing her hand today, and reacting very poorly to Dante's apparently good intentions. Still, something nagged at her, warning her that he was up to no good despite his friendliness. He was Dante after all: a pompous, slightly flamboyant showboater who more often than not wore a shit-faced grin as he said something arrogant and occasionally lewd. Sure he was a decent guy when you got to know him, but he was so the guy who lived for April Fool's Day, who as a kid hid frogs in beds and rigged things to fall on people, and as an adult still relished in making people jump, squirm, and blush. He had to have something planned.
"There," Dante announced as he reentered the room, milk carton in hand. He had a moderately annoyed look on his face, the shit-eating grin unsurprisingly absent. "Do you still want it?"
"When did it expire?" Lady casually asked.
He glanced at the date on the carton. "It hasn't yet. What's going on?"
"What? Nothing," Lady lied. "I'm fine. There's nothing wrong."
"You haven't acted this way in a while, since before we started working together," Dante said, walking past her to put the milk carton on his desk and lean against the table. She half expected it to collapse under his weight and have him fall victim to a prank that he had set up for her. It didn't. "I mean, are you regretting this?"
"'This' what?" she inquired.
"This working together thing." Dante crossed his arms. "We were cool yesterday. It was a late night and kind of a rough job, but I didn't think it had pissed you off more than any other late-night rough job. And you shouldn't get pissed at me over it."
"I'm not," Lady promised. "I'm just kind of tired, that's all." She didn't need to mention the fact that she was scared of him pranking her, because she didn't need to bring up trust issues when he seemed to be worried about the future of their partnership.
Dante smiled lightly, a smaller version of his shit-eating grin, and grabbed the milk from the desk. "If you're tired, the coffee will help," he explained, taking the cup from her hands. He took a large sip, draining some of the liquid in the otherwise full cup to make room for the milk before returning the cup to her hand. "Say when," he added, opening the carton and pouring the contents into the cup. It was plain milk.
The day was spent both making casual conversation and reading as they waited for someone to call with a job for them. Lady still flinched lightly at Dante's every offer, and had thoroughly examined the toilet when she went to the bathroom to make sure that there was no plastic wrap stretched across the opening or mechanism to make the water squirt back up at her. Dante, for the most part, ignored what she was doing, likely shrugging it all off as antics. If he suspected that it had to do with April Fool's Day, he never brought it up.
At some point in the mid-to-late afternoon when she was on phone duty, she had gotten a call from a kid who couldn't have been older than thirteen, claiming that a demon was in his apartment. For some reason she couldn't just hang up on this kid, even though he didn't know the password. She wasn't heartless, after all.
"I'm sorry," Lady started, glancing at Dante for guidance. He was sitting on the couch, and had glanced up from his magazine. "If you don't have the password—"
"Please!" the boy insisted. "They—it has my sister—"
"Hang up," Dante instructed, as the boy continued pleading into her ear. "If he doesn't have the password—"
"He's a kid, Dante," Lady hissed, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. "It's not like he talks to guys like Enzo to know this kind of thing."
"Lady," Dante said, putting down the magazine and sitting up. "Where would he have gotten the number from if he didn't know in the first place?"
"Aren't we listed?" she asked, frowning.
"Come on, lady!" the boy begged, making a strangely strangled noise that she assumed was a suppressed sob. She snapped her attention back to the phone, and wondered if he had said her name or not before deciding that he wouldn't have known to use the capital. "Please! You have—"
The line went dead, and Lady lowered her hand and looked at Dante, appalled. He was standing next to her, his finger pressing the telephone hook down. He looked at her pointedly and explained: "It's April Fool's Day."
"Really? I hadn't noticed," she deadpanned.
"See what happens when they call back," he added. As if on cue, the phone started ringing again, and he removed his finger from the hook. "Go on," he instructed.
She slowly lifted the receiver back towards her ear and slowly said: "Devil May Cry."
"What the hell, lady!" the boy from before shouted. He seemed angry and not scared, that was for sure. "I could have died!"
"Are you okay?" she asked in concern, glancing at Dante to see his reaction: he was staring at some point on the wall, and yet he seemed alert.
"Tell her there's a demon eating your leg!" she heard a voice on the other end of the line faintly say.
"Shut up!" the kid answered, but then quickly stuttered a recovery: "N—no, I mean—shut the door before the demon gets in!"
"This is a prank," Lady asked, though it was more of a statement than a question. "Don't you kids have better things to do?"
"No! There's—there's a demon eating my leg!" the boy insisted.
"Call when you have an actual emergency," she snapped before slamming the phone down on the receiver. "And what are you smirking about?" she shouted at her partner, raising her arms in irritation. "I was had! That's not funny!"
"No, it just shows that you're a softy for kids," Dante responded, laughing lightly.
"I—" she started before realizing that she didn't have a good comeback. "And you're not?"
The phone rang again, cutting off whatever answer he had planned to give, and he growled in irritation. "I'll get it," he said lowly, grabbing the receiver. "Devil May Cry."
"Help me, mister!" she faintly heard the boy say through the phone, and made an annoyed face to clue Dante in to the identity of the potential client. "There's a demon in my house and he's got my sister, and that other bitch wouldn't—"
"Do you actually have a demon in your house?" Dante asked impatiently.
"N—yeah! He's eating my sister's leg!"
"Here's my advice," Dante instructed, though from the tone of his voice it sounded more like a threat than a helpful word of wisdom. "Don't call back unless you actually have a demon eating your sister's leg. That is, unless you want a demon to eat your sister's leg."
"I—I don't have a sister," the boy responded, his voice suddenly genuinely fearful.
"It's okay. I'm not picky," Dante continued, and though the boy couldn't see it, he bared his teeth. The bared teeth quickly morphed into a smile and he casually hung up the phone and returned to the couch. "He won't be bothering us again."
"He hung up?" Lady asked, picking up the magazine she had been reading—it was one of Dante's gun magazines and she had already read it, but in her distraction she had left the book she had been reading at home this morning.
"Yup," Dante informed her, stretching out across the couch. "I guess I scared him."
"Won't he tell someone that you threatened him?" Lady asked in concern. "Not to mention the fact that only Enzo and I know that you're ... well..." She wasn't sure why she trailed off there. Dante was a demon, or a half-demon anyway, but it wasn't something that really bothered her anymore. The fact that she couldn't bring herself to say it then was a bit disconcerting, and from the almost stunned look on Dante's face she could only assume that he felt the same way.
"If he even tells an adult what he had been doing, they would probably just assume that I had lied to scare him off," Dante said, the quick flash of vulnerability on his face disappearing as he spoke. "It's no big deal."
"I guess," Lady responded, thumbing through the magazine to find that one article that she remembered liking the first time she had read it. "Do you get a lot of prank calls on April Fool's?"
"Not usually." Dante shrugged. "Most people don't want to mess with the guy who hunts demons for a living."
Lady laughed. "Good point."
Lady had fallen asleep; she wasn't sure why, or when, or for how long. That had only been the third thought that had run through her head, the first having been: "Was this Dante's doing?" The second: "Oh God, did he prank me when I was asleep?"
After checking her bare legs and arms for scribbles in marker, her hand for shaving cream, or a glass of water by where her hand had been hanging off the edge of the couch, she ran to the bathroom to make sure that he hadn't drawn anything on her face. Surprisingly, there was nothing there—nor was there any plastic wrap on the toilet seat, or a mechanism to make toilet water squirt back up at her, because she checked a second time.
"Something's definitely up," Dante said from his seat at his desk, his arms folded and the magazine on the desk. Lady jumped: she hadn't noticed him there before. "What's wrong?"
"There's nothing wrong," Lady lied. "I just can't believe I fell asleep." That was true, but it didn't exactly make up for the lies she had been telling all day.
"Don't," Dante warned, rubbing his head as if to massage a headache away. "You're acting strangely and I want to know why."
"I'm not—"
"Lady," Dante half-shouted, his hand still massaging his forehead in irritation. Lady went completely silent. "I'm ... I'm sorry for shouting," he immediately apologized.
"It's fine," she responded, and wondered why she had been so meek about it.
"No," he muttered, shaking his head as he stood. "Don't... Is this because I'm a demon?"
She blinked. "Why would it be, and why would it bother me now anyway?" Her fear had been realized: he was getting upset over the demon thing. Sure it had been an issue before, but how was she supposed to show him that it wasn't anymore? He was a demon, fine—but that didn't mean he was bad. Just different. Far be it from her to criticize anyone for being different.
"You kind of bolted after the job last night," he explained.
"I was tired," Lady answered, rubbing the back of her neck. "It was late. I knew it would take a while to get home and I wanted to do that before I crashed my bike. I'm sorry I didn't wait for you, but you looked like you would be fine. You were energetic, even."
The confusion on Dante's face was clear. "So, you didn't see...?"
"See what?" she asked now as confused as him.
"No, nothing," he quickly answered.
"Tell me," Lady insisted, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder in comfort. "If it's gotten you of all people all shaken up then I should know about it."
Dante smiled half-heartedly as if to reassure her, but then dropped the act and looked away. "I ... used my devil trigger last night."
"Okay, so?" she asked.
"So?" Dante frowned. "You've never seen it. I thought you did. I thought you had gotten freaked out or something!"
"Why..." she started, but immediately shut her mouth. She didn't need to ask him why he had gotten so worked up when she already knew the answer. Dante would never admit it to her, but she could tell that he always felt a little bit self-conscious about his demonic side, particularly when interacting with her. She probably hadn't helped by continuously insisting on that fact when they had first met, but she assumed that the issue was older than seven and ran deeper than any of her scars.
Dante returned to his chair. The shit-eating grin was long since gone, and all sense of flamboyant arrogance washed clean away. The man she saw was more like a cold, scared child than anything else, one that was staring at her in concern, simultaneously anticipating and wishing away her inevitable rejection for what he was. It was then that Lady realized that the Dante she knew and interacted with on a daily basis was a lie: this was what he really was. She would never tell him, but she respected him—both the arrogant showboater and the scared child—even more now.
Come to think of it, those fears explained the coffee this morning. God.
"Dante," Lady started. "I'm not scared of your demonic side." She shrugged. "It's there. Whatever. And my eyes are two different colors. It's what makes us different from everyone else."
"Thanks," he admitted, nodding at her words of encouragement. Little traces of the shit-eating grin started creeping back onto his face, and while she knew she would miss Vulnerable Dante, she welcomed back the arrogant asshole with open arms.
"You don't have to do it now, but you can show me your devil form someday," she continued, smiling herself. "I'd like to see it at some point."
Dante looked like he was about to respond to her, but something glinted in his eyes. He suddenly leaned back, flamboyant, arrogant Dante having fully returned with a vengeance. "So if it wasn't that, then why have you been jumpy today?"
Lady laughed. Well, he had been honest with her; it would only be right for her to be honest with him. "It's April Fool's Day."
"I know," Dante said, nodding.
"I thought you were going to prank the hell out of me," she admitted, rubbing the back of her neck self-consciously. "You seem like you would be the type to do that."
"Not on the first date," Dante responded, leaning forward with a slightly lascivious look on his face; Lady promptly smacked it off. "No, but seriously, I didn't plan on doing anything," he continued. "Don't really do the pranks anymore, you know? Takes too much effort." He leaned back in his seat, exhaling. "Well, at least everything you did today makes sense. Were you checking for pranks?"
Lady nodded. "I never did them myself, but I got pranked a lot as a kid. It sucked."
"Well, don't worry. I don't do pranks," Dante promised.
"I appreciate it, thanks," she said, smiling.
They both realized after another hour or so of chatting that even if people were calling in with jobs, they would be too tired to work tonight. Dante closed up early, promptly unhooking the phone and dragging himself upstairs with a tired wave goodbye to Lady, who was likewise tiredly shoving the door open. She locked the door behind her, pocketed her key, and trudged down to where she had left her bike—
—which was covered in toilet paper. Lady groaned; her motorcycle was quite literally gift-wrapped in toilet paper. Damn it, she was tired enough as it was and this was just delaying her trip home.
Immediately, she began tearing at the offensive white material, wishing it would all just disappear so she could drive home and once again pass out for what would hopefully be a good night's sleep tonight. When she finally reached the bottom layer, she found, sitting on the seat, a little piece of paper that read: "Love, Dante."
"Son of a bitch," Lady whispered, staring down at the paper in awe. The bastard had tricked her. He had—
Behind her, the bright neon sign was humming, dulling out all other sounds around her. She imagined that it was Dante himself watching her, laughing at her; Lady couldn't help but laugh as well.
