Title: Keeping Score
Fandom: Devil May Cry - Dante, Vergil
Rating: G
Length: 620
Content notes: Fluff, spoilers for DMC5, pre-series
Summary: Dante never has been very good at keeping count.

Author notes: For the fan_flashworks challenge point, and the bingo square family. Thanks to ldybastet for the beta! :)



The large stick Dante had been holding dropped to his side, the one he’d been using in place of one of his father’s swords. His mother had insisted, after all.

Well… maybe not insisted, exactly - more like she’d begged them not to spend the day fighting just this once, but bruises healed far more quickly than cuts and stab wounds, and did far less damage to their clothing. That was almost the same, right?

He grinned and twirled the stick around in his hands a few times, imagining how cool it would look to do that with a real sword, while his brother pulled himself up from the dirt and dusted the worst of the mud off. “That’s another one for me. Looks like I’m winning, huh?”

“Still haven’t learned to count? You must be a constant disappointment to mother. I’m ahead.” Vergil gave his own weapon a few experimental swings and snapped off a broken section dangling from the end with a look of annoyance.

“Ahh, don’t be such a sore loser, Vergil.” Dante leaned forward eagerly, planting the stick in the ground and resting both hands resting on it. “One more time?”

“I’ve had enough.” Vergil shook his head, tossing his stick to one side.

“Already? But it’s still early!”

“Go amuse yourself for once, I’ve got other things to do.”

If Dante hadn’t been watching for it, he might have missed it, but as Vergil spoke his fingers ran along a faint rectangular outline just hidden under his coat. Dante couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Giving up on their fight so he could go do a little reading? Sometimes Vergil could be so boring.

“You’re going to go read that thing again? Haven’t you read it like a million times already?”

“So what? Aren’t you bored of how I’ve beaten you a million times?” The book was slipped out from the confines of Vergil’s coat, his hands treating it like the most precious thing in the world as he flipped it open and scanned a few pages.

Dante wasn’t sure when Vergil had got his hands on the damn book. Just because they were twins, it didn’t mean they had to be joined at the hip, and they both had their places they liked to sneak off to for some alone time. Not that alone was hard, given how far their home was from the rest of the city... No, the thing that bugged him was that Vergil never seemed to be without it now. Made a big deal of showing Dante how he’d written his name in the back to prove it was all his, too. Yeah right, like he’d want some dumb book!

Even so…

“What’s so great about that book anyway. C’mon, let me see.”

“It’s poetry. You wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“Sure I can!” Dante spread his arms wide, proclaiming to the sky. “Thou who has smelt it, dealt it. That’s poetry, right?”

Vergil didn’t even crack a smile. Huh, what was wrong with him anyway? Dante had been quietly developing a theory that Vergil’s sense of humour had been surgically removed at birth. That, or he’d absorbed it in the womb all as part of their weird twin thing, leaving Vergil with a stick up his ass as big as the one Dante was using to beat him with.

What Vergil did do, however, was pick up his stick again, carefully tucking the book back inside his coat. “If you want to look so badly, you’ll have to fight me for it.”

Dante grinned. Maybe there was some hope for Vergil after all. “Now that’s more like it! Best of three?”

“Agreed. Only this time, try and remember how to count…”