AN: Thanks for the reviews/alerts/reading this story. This one is going to be really short but I decided to post it as it rather than wait another day or two to add on to it because of work and responsibility. I told my boyfriend to go play Call of Duty so I could write this lol. I do not on DMC, I wish I did thought because I would revoke the right of the fifth game to be released and fire all the people at activision who thought that it was ok to make Dante look not sexy.
The only sound in the office was the quiet breathing between Dante and Nero. Dante resorted to sitting on the floor by the coffee table, close enough to check on Nero but not too close as to be sitting right next to him. Their breathing matched one another's, sometime through out the night becoming sync. The slow rise and fall of Nero's chest was the only indicator that he was even alive. His body laid perfectly still, the venom having fully worked its way through his body now.
Dante moved closer to Nero as he realized it was time to clean the wound on his arm. He lifted up Nero's demon arm into his hand. The skin on his arm was coarse on Dante's human flesh. He held the arm in his hand for a moment, gently moving Nero's arm to look at the areas of infection. The wounds were dominant against the black and red flesh. Scabs of mixtures of blood and pus as his body tried to fight off the infections covering his arm.
"What are you doing to yourself kid?" Dante whispered out loud as he continued to look at Nero's arm. Dante lightly ran the tips of his fingers across the rough flesh. The tips of his fingers began to tingle lightly. Dante looked down at his fingers, the tips of them giving off the same feeling of being asleep or when your adrenaline starts running so fast that parts of your body start to get that light feeling. It wasn't from either of those things though as Dante could feel the steady beat of his heart under his chest. His fingers lingered on the blue pulsing of the Devil Bringer. The prickle began to spread its way up his fingers and into the palm of his hand the longer it rested there.
Dante pressed his palm flat against the flesh, letting the feeling spread its way up higher to his arm. A small sigh of breath escaped Nero's lightly parted lips. Dante quickly pulled his hand away as he looked down at Nero who was still just as lifeless as a moment ago.
What am I doing? Dante looked down at Nero again, his face perfectly still. The sweat from his fever had stopped indicating that the fever must have broken recently. Dante grabbed a tube of ointment out of the open medical kit on the coffee table. He squeezed the amber tinted ointment onto his fingertips. Dante let his hand hover for a brief moment above Nero's arm before he finally pressed his fingers onto an irritated part of the flesh. His fingers mixed the ointment on the breaking skin, small trickles of blood sliding out from under the scab.
Dante continued to clean Nero's arm until every inch of the infected flesh had the healing ointment on it. The feeling that was in his fingers had made its way up to the end of Dante's arm and was spreading its way to his chest now. He moved Nero's arm to rest on his bare chest. Dante abruptly stood up from the floor, quickly making his way into the kitchen.
He turned on the kitchen sink, letting the cool water run over his hands. The mixture of antibiotic ointment and blood ran down the drain, off of his hands. His hands stayed under the water long after the blood was washed off of them. With the water turned to as cold as it could possibly be he left his hands under it. He turned them over to stare at his finger tips. The small tingle still lingered in them. The cold of the water was starting to numb his hands but the feeling still resting under his fingers stayed there. He left his hands under the water until the cold of it began to fade as his body became used to the water and the skin on his fingers began to wrinkle. His hopes that the water would wash away the feeling was slowly slipping from him.
Dante shut the water off before heading back into the main area of the office. Without bothering to try off his hands he stood in the middle of the room looking between the area on the floor where he had spent the past few hours and his desk. A few minutes passed before he finally decided on going back to his desk where he was able to trust himself not to go back over to Nero where he was tempted to have his hand touch the pulsing arm again.
With the chair pulled back to almost the wall he sat down, putting his feet up on the desk while he rested his head against the wall. His eyes rested on the young man on the couch. His blonde hair slightly disheveled, the long parts of the front of it covering his closed eyes.
The curtains on the windows were starting to show the early morning light breaking through. Dante rubbed his eyes knowing that he needed to get some semblance of sleep soon. A few more minutes passed all the while Dante kept his gaze on Nero making sure that he still saw the slow rise and fall of his chest.
His eyelids began to grow heavy, the sleep now threatening to overtake him. Dante stood up from the desk, kicking the chair back into place. Lying across the pool table in the far corner off the room was his red leather coat. He quickly picked it up, rolling it up into the shape of a flattened ball. He laid down on the wooden floor, directly next to the couch in the small area between the couch and the coffee table. With his jacket for his pillow he laid his head down, his eyes somehow growing heavier now that his body was starting to relax.
Dante lifted his hand up to Nero's devil arm. His fingers hovering in the air for a moment. He pressed the pads of his fingers onto Nero's arm once more. A slow pulsing began to run under his finger tips. The sensation of the prickling came back stronger now, the feeling from earlier never having completely faded. With his fingers pressed down harder he could feel the thumping beneath the flesh. It matched evenly with Nero's breathing.
It's his pulse.
At first Dante thought that it was a little odd that he could feel his pulse even through the thick skin. With a few more seconds of his hand resting against the soft pulsing, Dante decided to leave his hand there. He told himself that it was just as a reassurance to keep a check on Nero's pulse regardless of feeling spreading from his fingers up to his arm.
With Dante's arm resting up on the side of the couch; his hand lightly grasped around Nero's arm, his eyes began to close. A sleep over took his tired body the only noise left in the room was the once again matched breathing of the two men.