[A/N]: I've been missing James lately, so he gets quite a part of this chapter 8D Sorry perhaps not sorry for the boring chapter. Not 100% sure yet how to proceed after this. Ah well, we shall see!
The next time Lee opened her eyes and found the world around her a lot clearer than, she noticed that Dante no longer sat next to her. Instead, James now occupied the chair next to her bed, as he had done far too often she suddenly realised, his head bent as he read some shitty magazine that he had most likely gotten from the hospital's gift shop and which now lay spread out across his lap. His brows were knitted together as his eyes wandered the pages, looking at the pictures but not reading the texts.
When he looked up, his body automatically jerked back so that his back rested against the chair, his posture rigid. She had always told him off for ruining his body by sitting like that, after all, and the sight made her quirk a grin. Funny how it seemed that she had changed so much that his bearing no longer seemed that important to her.
It didn't take long before his eyes, wide in surprise, narrowed at her. He let out an annoyed noise and looked back down at the magazine. This time he read what it said as well, and Lee knew that he was going to remain silent until either she said something, or he finished reading the magazine. It was quite a thick one, too. She wondered how long it would take him, but then she realised that saying nothing would be worse than trying to fix the situation.
After letting out a small sigh, Lee murmured, "I'm sorry."
A slight tremor ran through the page he held between his fingers and his eyes stopped following the sentence he had been reading.
"Sorry? For what?" he asked without looking up, his voice tightly guarded. He sounded so nonchalant, as though he were asking her about what she had been doing last weekend. To Lee, it felt like a warning. She was entering a minefield in which every wrong word spoken could mean the end of their friendship. Well, perhaps not that dangerous, but it would most likely define the tone between the two of them.
"For... For being an idiot," she began, not quite sure how else she was supposed to describe what she had done. Then suddenly it hit her, and she sat up a little while pressing a hand against the bandage covering her eye. "For breaking my promise."
Finally James looked up, the distance he had placed between the two of them disappearing the moment their eyes met. His whole face seemed to soften at her words and she might have noticed his lower lip tremble at the wave of emotions crashing on top of him. It appeared that she had given the correct answer after all.
"You promised. You always keep your promises. Boss, you've changed so much these past few weeks, and I'm not sure whether it's been for better or worse yet," he muttered with a shake of his head. He ran a hand through his head with a sigh before he added, "I mean, the last time you ended up here, you freaked out because I got too close to you, but you're already chumming around with Dante and you even allowed those nurses to touch you. And I'm happy for you about that, I'm glad that you're coming out of your shell, or whatever you want to call it. But if all the improvements are going to bring about things like breaking your promises... You've never been predictable or anything, but for you to actually go against your own word?"
Lee held up a hand before the man could continue his rant, and he fell silent. Then she turned it so that the back of her hand was facing him and she bent her fingers a few times to signal him to come closer. With a confused look on his face he obliged, getting up from his chair and moving over to sit next to her on the bed, where she made sure that he had enough space. He opened his mouth to ask her what she was planning on doing but she cut him off by wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pulling him close to her.
"W-what are you doing?" James stuttered as she felt him freeze beneath her touch. He didn't dare move, tried his best not to relax and take in a deep breath of her scent, as he had wanted to do since the very moment he became intertwined in a complex friendship with her.
"You know damn well what this is, and I know damn well that you've always wanted this. I also know that you're jealous of Dante." The boy in her arms gulped at hearing that. "Don't try to deny it. Now don't make me say the bloody word and just enjoy it, because you damn well know it's never going to happen again."
"Ever?"
"Ever."
Her friend sighed once more before he finally allowed himself to relax and take in that deep breath. Lee couldn't help but smile as he buried his nose in the crook of her neck, snaked his arms around her waist and crushed her to his chest - at least with as much strength as he dared to use on her right now.
"You know, I've missed you," he mumbled after a few moments of silence without pulling away from her.
"You mean me in general or the old me?" Lee retorted, though she was really just trying to hide her embarrassment at the situation she found herself in.
"You know damn well what I mean," James replied as he mimicked her tone. Lee grumbled something incoherent in response.
In that very moment, the door opened and a head of white hair appeared. Blue eyes widened in mock surprise as they met Lee's gaze, eyebrows disappearing under a white fringe.
"I leave you alone for ten minutes and you've woken up and begun cheating on me already?!" Dante yelled. Then he threw his hands into the air, turned around and walked back out of the room, all the while muttering something under his breath. He didn't manage to hide his smile from Lee.
With the magic of the moment having been interrupted, Lee pulled back from James and he reluctantly went to sit back on his chair once more.
"The reason why I broke the promise was... Well, it was partly because of Dante. You know about demons and all that now, but I've known it since the first time I was hospitalised." James's eyes widened in shock and he opened his mouth to exclaim something, but she held up a finger to silence him before continuing. "I guess I hadn't come to terms with it all yet, and especially since I didn't seem to be able to do anything to them. Dante kept having to save me, after all, and you know how much I hate not being in control..."
"You had to prove yourself? But to whom? To me? To Dante?" James asked, confused. "I doubt he minds. It's what he does, anyway. Before you ask, yes, we talked quite a lot while you were out, seeing as we didn't really have anything else to do."
Lee shrugged in response. "I know he wouldn't have minded. But I minded. I had to do it for myself. I don't even know why, exactly. Just believe me that I feel a lot better now and this time I swear I won't do anything like that again."
At hearing that, James began to beam. Before his bubble of happiness could get too big, however, she quickly added, "At least not without Dante."
"Ugh," was all James said in response, sighing and hanging his head. "Should've known."
All Lee could do was give him a sympathetic pet him on the back, which seemed to cheer him up a little. Neither of them were sure what to say afterwards, and Lee was certain that a rift had grown between the two of them, despite her attempts to hinder it. It would take a while for things to settle, but she also knew that, somehow, they'd make it work.
As if reading her thoughts, James spoke his in a soft tone. "Do you think things will ever go back to normal?"
Sitting back, Lee stared at the ceiling, her eye wandering across the surface as her mind was filled with the amount of spots she could count while she tried to figure out a response.
"Were things ever actually normal? I mean, you've had a lot of time to think, so you must have come up with a few scenarios about the Chief as well. Did he replace the old one, or has he been what he is all this time?" James shrugged and diverted his gaze to the ground.
"Whatever happens from this point on, I'll make sure that at least that demon is wiped off the face of this planet. With the Chief gone, who knows what will happen at the office, if I'll get my job back. If I even want it back."
The man next to her looked up in horror and Lee shot him an apologetic look.
"You saw those... things. I don't even want to think about what they're capable of when they go all out. And there are many more out there, probably even more powerful than these were. And Dante seems to be the only one, or one of the few, who is actually out there, trying to fight those monsters. Somehow, catching murderers and arresting thieves seems rather petty and useless all of a sudden."
"Are you trying to tell me you're thinking of quitting?" James asked, his shock from moments before having been replaced by a mixture of understanding and the remains of his hope.
Lee neither shook her head nor nodded, and she kept her face passive, trying not to betray her thoughts through her body language. In the end, not knowing what else she could say without disappointing the boy, she shrugged and replied, "Who knows."
That seemed to satisfy him, and he nodded before the two of them settled down into a companionable silence. James began to flip through his magazine once more while Lee went back to counting the spots on the ceiling, feeling better now that she had at least cleared part of the trouble.
Things had changed and the two of them were going to have a lot of adapting to do, but at least they still had each other.
Not much later, James went back to check on Anna. It almost felt as though Lee and her sister had gotten a divorce, and James was the poor kid who had to switch between parents every week or so. He had had a guilty look in his eyes when he had announced that he was leaving, probably arguing with himself about how Lee was awake but her sister wasn't. His argument had been put to a stop when Dante had barged into the room and taken James's chair from him, shooing him out of the room with no option to protest. It seemed today was full of people who were expecting a whole declaration from Lee about why she had done what she had done. But then again, they deserved it and she owed them whatever they wanted from her.
"Doc said that you'll probably be free to go tomorrow. Something about only keeping you here to make sure that something with the wound on your eye not happening. Or something like that," Dante said without waiting for Lee to greet him.
Lee nodded her thanks and shifted back up so that she was in a sitting position again, this time sitting cross-legged. She wanted to ask him a question, one that had been on her mind since waking, but she wasn't sure how she was supposed to word it. Even in the state she had been, when she had ran into him after waking for the first time, she had seen the flicker of doubt in his eyes. It hadn't been difficult to think of what it could have meant, especially after her stunt, and she feared whether bringing it up now would only make his hesitation at the decision disappear.
Seeing the serious look on Dante's face, however, pushed her to voice her thoughts anyway. Who knew what would happen if she didn't.
"Are you..." Lee began, but found that her mouth was failing her. "Do you... God damn it all." She covered her face with her hands, nails digging into the skin of her forehead as she told herself to get a grip. Why did her heart give that painful squeeze whenever she wanted to say the words?
End it.
Are you going to end it?
Do you want to end it?
Yes, he was thinking about it, she knew that much. And she knew why. It didn't matter that she felt like begging him to stay with her, that she had already opened herself up too wide for him to let her fall now. Even though she knew it would have been her own fault in the first place.
A sigh pulled her out of her train of thoughts, making her look up from behind her hands that had turned to fists somewhere along the way. The serious look was still there, but it seemed less reluctant. He had made up his mind, whatever that might mean.
"I told you that I won't be going anywhere, didn't I? I'm in far too deep, anyway. If you hadn't said those words, I might have left already," he muttered while reaching out for Lee's wrists to free her face. He stared right into her eyes, those blue eyes that had managed to make her blush in the past and that still made her heart race in her chest.
Frowning, she asked him, "What words?"
Dante smiled a knowing smile and shook his head. She knew she wasn't going to get anything out of him no matter how she pushed, so she let it go. She had a feeling she'd find out soon enough, anyway.
"But you had been planning on leaving? Because I... Because I'm reckless, right? I get it, you know. I used to wonder the same thing about James, why he would stay by my side even though I treat him like shit, and I treat myself even worse. But he was too stupid to think for himself, so he never thought about leaving. You, on the other hand... I'm going to have to change, aren't I?"
The half-demon bent forward and surprised her by pressing his lips to her forehead, which still sported slight imprints from her nails. "But you've already changed, haven't you?"
Had she? She had agreed with James when he had talked about it with her, but was it actually true? Had she really changed? She thought back to how she had wondered about how she could have taken a break from her work so easily. And that horrible dream, in which she had chosen Dante. She had given James his first hug ever, too. Was it not true, then? Why was everything about change today, anyway?
Dante tapped a finger to her head, grinning as he did so. "Has anybody ever told you that you think too much? Just believe me when I tell you that, since meeting you, you've changed. And I'll just add that it's been for the better. Now if you can just keep yourself out of trouble, at least when I'm not around, that would be just grand."
Slowly, Lee nodded. She still wasn't quite sure about all of this, just as she hadn't been sure with James. Still wasn't. But they'd all manage, somehow. For now, however, she was content with the way things were.
At least now she had a reason to buy an eyepatch. She had always thought that those things added to one's personality.
In a sudden burst of, well, she wasn't quite sure yet, Lee reached up and grabbed Dante's arm that he had used to flick her head and hadn't retracted yet. She pulled him towards her and he startled a little as she pressed her lips to his. The machine that was keeping track of her heartbeat went crazy as their tongues moved against each other.
Without breaking the kiss, she freed her body of the device and ignored the flatline that filled the air instead.