not_every_mage | Holiday Inn, Limbo City, Friday Evening

Holiday Inn, Limbo City, Friday Evening

Anders had booked and paid for the room, ignoring the clerk's dirty look at the blood and muck on their clothes. They wouldn't be the only people caught in the day's devastation looking for someplace to sleep tonight

He'd silently followed Dante through the hotel halls to their room, and placed a quick order for pizza before he took off his boots and crashed out on the bed. The thousand bruises and scrapes of the battle stung his skin.

He should shower. He didn't want to move.

He turned to Dante, still registering faint surprise at the newly white hair. (He supposed they were lucky if that was the worst permanent change Dante saw.) Words failed him when it came to addressing the true horror of the day, but he should at least say something

"They said the pizza should be here in about half an hour," he said. "I'm actually impressed it's not longer, considering."

[OOC: For one, NFB.]

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"That'd be nice," Anders said lazily, faint buzz of healing working its way through his body. "And after the pizza gets here we should shower. We probably smell awful."

"I'm not sniffing you," Dante informed him, sliding off the bed and padding to the bathroom.

Truth be told, he was intensely relieved - happy, even - to be able to do something constructive for a change.

He came back shortly afterwards with a bottle of hotel body lotion and a packet of band-aids. "This is all I got," he said, crawling back onto the bed.

"More than I had on me," Anders said, slight smile curving at the corners of his mouth as he turned toward Dante. "I don't even know if I need the bandaids anymore, but the lotion'll feel good. Should I do your back, too?"

It felt good, seeing Dante fussing over him like this -- both because he appreciated the fussing, and because it meant Dante might be all right.

"Only if you want to, and maybe later," Dante said wryly, putting the band-aids aside. "I'm all healed up." Hence the tired, probably. Or at least the physical part of it.

The emotional part of the tired had sent him on an inward tailspin; it might've been bad, had the current definition of inward not included someone else.

He took the cap off the bottle and pressed some lotion into his hand. He smoothed it a little clumsily over a bruise on Anders' shoulder-- this didn't used to exactly be something he did.

Maybe it was a little clumsy, but Anders didn't mind. The important thing was that Dante was doing it.

The important thing was he still had a Dante.

He let out a small, pleased sigh.

"It seemed like everyone got out of the fight pretty well, didn't they?" he asked. "I didn't get a chance to check everyone over, but I didn't notice any lost limbs or major body parts on fire."

"Except for Starsmore, but I think he came out of the packaging that way," Dante said, his fingers moving down along Anders' ribs. "Unless someone was hiding something I didn't see."

"Except for Starsmore," Anders agreed, closing his eyes as the fingers slipped over his skin. "Poor choice of words, I suppose."

"Anyhow," he added as he leaned toward Dante. "I'm just glad it wasn't worse."

"So am I," Dante said. He frowned at the skin under his fingers. "Even if you did get pretty banged up. You'll tell me if this shit hurts, right?"

He was particularly careful over the skin where the claw marks had just been.

"I would, but it doesn't," Anders promised. "Feels nice to have you touching me."

He healed himself a bit at a time as they spoke, taking away scrapes and bruises with a pass of his talented fingers.

"Kathy got it bad, too," he added. "Sword to the arm. I patched it up. I'm sure there were others."

"Damn it," Dante said, frowning. "How bad was it?"

He nudged down Anders' pants an inch or two, to get at his hips.

Anders gestured at his arm, sketching the size of the wound with a fingertip. "It wasn't deep, but it kept opening because it was against the muscle," he explained. "So it bled a lot."

He frowned over at what Dante was doing with his trousers and joked, "Is that your way of making a pass now?"

Dante rolled his eyes. "You got bruises goin' all the way down till here," he said, tapping the side of Anders' hip. "How about we wait until you finish making yourself look less black and blue before the dicks come out?"

"But that would be sensible," Anders said, though his shoulders relaxed before he twisted to look at the bruises Dante had mentioned. "Maybe wait until you're fed, too."

Dante finally pulled his hands away, satisfied with his clumsy, never-going-to-be-a-healer work. "Better plan," he decided, leaning up to steal a quick kiss from Anders. "Fucking hell."

"Fucking hell, what?" Anders asked after pulling out of the kiss, but was interrupted by a knock at the door. "-- oh, good. We have pizza."

He buttoned his pants and went over to pay the delivery guy.

Fucking hell, everything today.

Dante sighed, stretching out back onto the bed. His thoughts were picking up again; he was looking forward to pizza to shut them up again.

At least here felt safe.

Anders returned to the bed with two pizza boxes balanced on his hand. (He had fed Dante after a fight before -- one pizza was an appetizer.)

"Ta-da," he said, flopping down beside Dante with the pizza between them. "Thank the Maker. I didn't realize how hungry I was until I smelled them."

"Speak for yourself," Dante said, snagging a slice as soon as the pizza came down. "Feel like I haven't eaten in days."

The slice did not live long. Woe, pizza slice.

He looked up at Anders once he'd polished it off, weighing another one of the many unanswered questions in his head. "So," he said slowly, "You're cool with... all of this?"

The demon thing, the power, the fight, the part where the dude he'd been sleeping with was liable to be around for decades rather than days, Anders could take his pick.

Anders put down his own half-finished slice. "I ... guess I am," he said haltngly, groping for words. "I feel like I shouldn't trust you, but I do. More than anything. I loved you before we knew any of this" -- the demon thing, the power, the fight -- "and it's not like the person you are has changed. There's just ... more to you, that we didn't know before."

Demons lied. Anders knew that; he wasn't an idiot. But he didn't think it was possible to fake empathy as convincingly as Dante had over the last 18 months. Whatever a Nephilim was, it wasn't anything Anders felt he had to fear.

Dante nodded, and picked up a slice not just because he was still hungry but to have something to hide his expression behind. He took a few bites, and--

Okay, he ate the whole thing. He really hadn't changed that much.

"Demons never did much for me," he said slowly. "Or angels for that matter. But humans did." He picked up another slice. "I wanna do right by you guys," he said. "By you."

Anders blinked thoughtfully, an odd expression crossing his face. "I don't think anybody's ever seen me as representing humans before," he said. "But I'm glad you're on our side."

Dante blinked too, but then he let out a soft laugh. "You don't really represent anybody but you, man," he said. "But you're human and I kinda owe you."

"Yes, you do," Anders agreed lightly, and went quiet as he chewed on some pepperoni.

It was a comfortable silence, but one with some thinking going on behind it. Anders still had questions to ask, and was trying to decide if this was the time.

Dante polished off another slice in the mean time, eyeing his expression thoughtfully.

"What's on your mind?" he asked as he picked up the next slice.

Anders sighed and leaned to the side, propping himself on his elbow.

"That thing where you went all red," he said. "What did that feel like from the inside?"

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