14. Dante
DANTE
The room transforms the moment Virgil and I step inside.
I can sense his hesitation—the way his feet drag against the threshold, the tension in his shoulders.
It makes me wonder if whatever he does to connect with my mind has linked us in some deeper way.
Dread rolls off him and echoes into me, hollowing a pit in my stomach.
If I were alive, my hands would grow clammy.
That was a tell I always hated. One I could never train away, no matter how many negotiations I sat through.
Now my body seems to have no connection to my emotional state at all. Leaving the last genesis, running through my memories, my heart should have raced until it ached. But there's still no heartbeat. No pulse. Nothing but the quietly ticking watch face on my wrist.
I keep my emotions off my face regardless. That's a skill I've long possessed, and I somehow feel that my distress about facing whatever this room holds would upset Virgil. I don't understand why, nor do I comprehend why it’s imperative not to further burden this man.
Perhaps it's simply because that last room has me reflecting on the harm I've done others.
And Virgil is one more in a long list.
I asked him to continue with me. To walk through his temptations. To face his pain. And he did so with minimal complaint.
The space is bright, early morning light seeps through a north-facing window in a modern home.
Clean lines, warm wood, the kind of casual elegance that costs more than it appears.
Virgil's eyes trace the scene like a scientist landing on a new planet, absorbing as much as he can in his brief time here.
My eyes catch on the bed. Or rather, the man sleeping on it.
Matthew has aged. Even in sleep, there are wrinkles around his eyes now, a few strands of gray threading through his dark hair. He has an arm thrown back carelessly against the pillow. Another arm appears from beneath the covers and wraps around his waist. A man leans down and kisses his cheek.
"Time to wake up."
"Five more minutes," Matthew grumbles.
Of course. Matthew was never a morning person.
The man nuzzles into Matthew's neck. "If you don't wake soon, you won't have a minute to yourself. And you know you need it in the morning.”
"I want sleep, not alone time."
The man chuckles, pulls Matthew closer. "Future Matthew will not appreciate that sentiment."
Matthew grumbles, but he's smiling. The door flies open, and two children bounce into the room and onto the bed faster than physics should reasonably allow. The youngest one, perhaps not yet old enough for school, has a mess of soft curls haloed around her face.
"Daddy! Papa! It's Christmas! Santa came! Hurry, wake up! You have to come see!"
"Five minutes," Matthew repeats.
The older child plants fists on his hips. "You're going to make your cinnamon rolls, aren't you, Daddy?"
Matthew opens a single eye and grins at the boy. "Maybe."
The little girl gasps and leaps onto the other man. "Papa, tell Daddy he has to make us cinnamon rolls, and he has to get up now."
"Matthew," the man intones, solemn as a judge laying down a verdict. "You heard your daughter."
Matthew groans, but there's a laugh laced into it. "I'm up. I just need five minutes."
"I think Santa mentioned," the other man says, "that there might be something special waiting in the foyer."
The children's eyes ignite.
"Well, go see what it is."
They scramble out, a thunder of small feet on hardwood. Matthew falls back against the pillows. "You're a saint, Joshua."
"Not even close." He kisses Matthew's cheek and produces a small gift wrapped in ivory paper and gold ribbon. "But this might get me closer to canonization."
"What?" Matthew sits up in bed. "I thought we said no gifts."
Joshua only shrugs, but his dark eyes gleam. "Are you going to open it or not?"
Matthew tears into it with a kind of joy that makes him seem twenty-something again—smile bright, all pretense of dignity abandoned for pure delight.
He rips back the paper, unfurls the bow, slides the box open, and pulls out a folded document.
"Babe," he gasps. "You said you couldn't get the time off.”
"I know." Joshua's grin has been growing the entire time he's watched Matthew unwrap the gift. "But then I realized my husband would be about as devastated to miss this trip as our children will be if they don't get their cinnamon rolls within the next thirty minutes."
Matthew swipes tears away. "This means so much to me."
Joshua kisses his cheek again. "You mean so much to me."
Matthew looks at him, and I know that look.
I've seen it and felt it. He's in love. He’s in love with someone he's been with long enough to build a life.
Someone he does the routine and mundane tasks alongside—raising children, paying bills, negotiating whose turn it is to take out the trash.
And he's still in love with him like that.
Like it's the first morning and the thousandth morning all at once.
"I'll get the oven preheated and attempt to prevent anarchy while you take a few minutes," Joshua says, sliding away from the bed.
Matthew catches his hand and stops him. "Merry Christmas."
His husband's responding smile carves deep lines, the kind that come from making that expression frequently, from a life spent in laughter. "Merry Christmas, my love."
"Papa! Papa!"
"I'm coming, I'm coming."
The man disappears through the doorway. Matthew sits alone for a moment, staring down at the gift in his hands, a smile softening his features.
"Dante," Virgil whispers, so gently it's like a feather's touch against my consciousness.
I turn toward him, crying. Tears stream uninhibited down my cheeks, dripping along my neck until they catch on the collar of my shirt.
"I'm so sorry," he whispers.
He appears haunted, dark circles are carved beneath his eyes that I haven't noticed before, and his lips are pressed thin with concern.
"Why?" I breathe in reply.
"I'm sure this hurts." He gestures to where the scene has shifted.
The room now smells like cinnamon and melted butter.
Matthew clutches a coffee mug to his chest as he slides a pan into the oven.
Beyond him, a tree decorated with silk ribbons and handmade ornaments glimmers in the morning light.
The children bounce on their heels. Come on, Daddy, it's time to open the presents!
Matthew laughs and walks into the living room.
I turn back to Virgil. "Is this real?"
His brow furrows as he studies the scene once more before meeting my eyes. "I believe so. I'm sorry."
"Sorry?" I laugh. It’s an actual laugh, wet and broken but genuine. "You think I'm upset?"
Virgil glances at the scene—wrapping paper flying, Matthew laughing, his husband holding an empty trash bag—then back to me. "Are you not?"
"No." I sniff and drag my coat sleeve across my cheeks, and I don't even feel ashamed of this display. Of the unnecessary externalization of emotion. Because it is necessary. Wholly and entirely. "He's happy, Virgil."
Virgil eyes me the way one might a startled animal—careful, uncertain. His response comes slowly. “And this makes you happy?”
I nod, more eagerly than I intend. "Matthew deserved better than what I could give him. I thought I’d broken him with my selfish choices.
But I didn’t. He deserved the world, and he got it.
" I gesture toward the scene. To the children tearing into presents, the husband refilling Matthew's coffee without being asked, the easy choreography of a family that knows each other's rhythms. "I'm not sorry or sad. I'm... I'm happy for him."
Virgil's expression smooths entirely until he appears that indeterminate age again—smooth skin and ancient eyes, golden curls catching light that shouldn't exist in this place. His dimples appear, unbidden, as something like wonder softens his features. "Oh. Dante, that's..."
For once, the poet seems lost for words.
The little girl squeals at a pitch that could shatter crystal, hoisting some new toy above her head as she careens around the living room. Matthew and Joshua exchange a private smile, the kind that contains entire conversations, years of shared history compressed into a single glance.
"Come on," I whisper, a smile still lingering on my lips. I study Matthew for one more moment: the laugh lines, the gray hair, the easy joy of a man who found what he was looking for. Then I turn toward the door that’s waiting in the shadows. "This moment isn't for us. We should go."
Virgil looks at me as though I'm a painting he's known his whole life and only just realized is actually a sculpture. Like he’s discovering dimensions he never suspected existed, or angles whose shape he has not yet learned.
Then he nods and follows me toward the exit.
I look back once at the laughter and warmth, at the life Matthew built without me.
And then I step through the door, lighter than when I walked in.