35. Dante
DANTE
A low, distant hum breaks into my reverie. A barely audible thump has me catching my breath. I stand just as the soft chime of my elevator sounds through the apartment.
The doors slide open.
And Virgil steps out, his eyes wary, his hands clutching a small white box.
It's Virgil, but he appears different from how I've ever seen him before. There's color in his cheeks—actual color, a flush of pink beneath the tan. His golden curls are slightly mussed, his cream scarf askew at his throat.
He looks human.
"Oh," he says, seeing me. "You were asleep."
"I was," I whisper, too shocked to say more.
"I had forgotten how... insistent mortal hunger is." He chuckles awkwardly, the sound unfamiliar coming from him. "Your kitchen is lovely, but it lacks an icebox altogether."
I laugh too, and I'm not certain if it's from humor or because I'm on the verge of bursting into tears. "It's there. I suppose I didn’t show you, but it's designed to look like the cabinetry."
"Ah. That explains it." Virgil hefts the box. "I remembered you mentioning that the lobby had refreshments—and they do, as it happens. These pastries smell heavenly, though I believe I gave the concierge quite a start, coming out of your private elevator vestibule unannounced."
I'm just staring at him, and he's babbling, which is out of character for both of us. I manage to find words. "I imagine you certainly did.”
"Yes, well." Virgil looks down at the box, which he's clutching like he's forgotten how to hold things.
Like he needs to anchor himself to something, and the poor pastry box has become his lifeline.
"I returned to the elevator only to realize there was no clearly defined button to return to the apartment.
I thought it might be awkward to ask—that perhaps they wouldn't grant me admittance—and it took me some time to realize the button was discreetly hidden behind that small panel, and—"
"Virgil." I walk toward him slowly, tears falling unashamedly down my cheeks. "You're here."
He clutches the box harder. "I am." The cardboard crumples slightly under his grip. "But why am I here, Dante?"
I cross the remaining distance between us, close enough that I could nearly touch him.
He holds the box like a talisman, a shield to keep the world at bay.
But I can feel the warmth radiating off him, smell something pleasant rising from his hair—something floral and green, like crushed herbs in a garden.
It shouldn't surprise me that this poet, that my poet, would smell of growing things.
There's lint on his cashmere sweater. A glistening of sugar at the corner of his lips. He's already eaten at least one bite of pastry. I can't blame him.
I clear my throat. "I made a deal with him."
"No." He scarcely breathes the word. "No, Dante, please tell me you didn't."
"I did. There was no other way…”
"You've damned yourself? What did he promise you? What did you surrender your soul for?" Color floods his cheeks as his voice rises, and I'm so fascinated by it—by the warmth spreading across his skin, the way his chest moves with actual breath—that I barely hear the words at first.
"A life." He's breathing heavily now, shoulders rising and falling. The air between us smells of cardamom and powdered sugar. "A life full of memories to carry into the dark."
"No," he breathes again. "Oh, Dante. Please tell me it wasn't for my sake you did this. What happened? Why did you not step into the light?"
"Do you think—" And now my voice is rising too, heat rushing to my own cheeks, my heart pounding like it wants to escape my chest. "Do you think for even a moment I would walk into a light that refused to accept you?"
The flush drains from his face. "You damned yourself because of me?"
"I negotiated—"
"He always wins, Dante. Always." The anger has left his voice, replaced by something worse: desperation. "Do you understand what you've done? Do you think we escape hell at the end of this?"
"No. I think we return to it together."
He stares at me for one of those endless moments. But here in the real world—where clocks tick steadily, and the sun climbs higher, painting the walls in gold, and his breathing fills the space between us with warmth and need—the moment stretches differently. More weighted. More real.
"Your plan is to end up in hell again?"
"It is."
"That is a terrible plan."
He says it so flatly that I can't help but laugh.
"I'm not attempting humor," he states.
"I know. But I did consider other factors.
For one, your name carries power in that realm.
Perhaps I can build recognition for mine as well, and we can return better fortified.
And I believe things are shifting there.
I've secured your release from any debt to Satan and ensured he holds no specific claim on my soul either.
I agreed only to attend a certain number of advisory sessions over the centuries, nothing more. Perhaps in time we'll be able to—"
"You sold your soul on a gamble?" Virgil looks genuinely aghast. If his disapproval weren't directed at me, humming against my skin, it might almost be endearing.
"You made a deal based on speculation? Dante, you are the most logical, methodical, risk-averse man I have ever encountered, yet you chose to wager everything—you chose to throw away your eternal fate—you chose—"
I step forward so quickly it surprises even me.
And I kiss him.
I have no idea if this is right. If he'll be pleased or horrified. If my instinct has betrayed me entirely.
His lips are soft. Sweet. He's definitely eaten a pastry—he tastes of butter and honey and quiet Christmas mornings.
His mouth softens after a moment, yielding, allowing me to kiss him more fully.
I lift a hand and graze my fingers through the softness of his curls, down the smooth skin of his jaw, until they come to rest against his neck, feeling his pulse flutter beneath my palm.
He's so here. So physically present. So solid and warm and alive.
"I chose you," I breathe as I pull away.
Virgil stares up at me. His eyelashes have tears caught in them. They're impossibly long.
"I chose you," I repeat. "I wasn't walking into that light if you couldn't follow. No paradise that won't accept you is acceptable to me. I sat on that cliff after you left, trying to understand what I should do. And then I realized what it was. It was as clear as the light itself.”
"What?" he asks. Virgil lifts his hands to rest against mine, where they curl gently at his neck. His heartbeat flutters like a hummingbird's wings beneath my fingers. He touches me so carefully, as though contact is almost too much to bear.
"That I would join you. Join you in helping lost souls find their way.
What you do is beautiful, Virgil. It's salvation.
It's hope offered to the hopeless. You believe you squandered your soul, but you're wrong.
You have spent it more beautifully than anyone I've ever known.
" I hold his gaze. "And I'm going to stand beside you. "
"You wish to... to join me?"
I brush a tear from his cheek with my thumb.
"Yes. And I knew I'd be safest in that realm if I became like you—a guide, a demon, yes, but unable to be preyed upon. That way, you wouldn’t have to worry about me being harmed.
And if I were making that bargain, I was going to give us this first. A life.
A full life, with very specific terms—no illness, no death sooner than forty years hence, protections I made him enumerate and repeat back to me.
A life where we can build a million beautiful memories together. "
Virgil seems lost for words. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely a whisper. "We will not be able to touch each other in hell, Dante."
"That's not true." I lean closer. "I felt you every moment I was there.”
Virgil stares at me. His lips part, but no words come. For a man built on language, the silence says everything.
I let it sit between us. Let him feel the weight of it.
For two thousand years, this man has walked alone through hell, untouchable and untouched. And here I am, telling him never again. He will never walk that loop by himself again.
“You don't have to do this alone anymore,” I whisper. “I’ll be with you."
"In hell?"
"In hell."
He looks hopeful, then angry. Awed, then devastated. He shakes his head and pulls back from my hands.
"But you sold your soul. Do you understand what that means? I'll have to live forever with the knowledge that I caused your fate."
"You won't." He looks up at me, earnest and stricken. I try to suppress a smile and fail. "We'll be dead in a relatively short amount of time, remember. You won't have to live with anything for very long."
"This isn't a time for jesting.”
I laugh and step closer again. Offer my hand, palm up.
He glances at it but doesn't move for the longest moment.
"Please, Virgil. Let me give us this. It's Christmas, after all. A time for gifts freely given."
He looks up at me, eyes glistening. "You want to be with me?”
"Where you go, I go. I told you I'd find you in the light. But if the light won't have you, then I shall find you in the shadows instead."
Another tear slips down his cheek.
"You have no idea how much life we can live in forty years," I continue.
"We'll gather every memory we can hold. I'll read you every book you've ever wanted to hear aloud. We can travel. Volunteer. Create. Experience things neither of us ever made time for. We start today." I pause, considering, remembering how he’d light up when I described food, flavors he could only imagine, textures he’d never known.
Until now. “Many places are closed for Christmas, but—have you ever eaten labneh? "
Virgil is quiet for a long moment. He stands before me rumpled and uncertain, tear-stained and soft-faced. Beautiful in a way I never could have appreciated when I first arrived in hell, marching my endless roads.
He sighs. "Dante. You know, of course, I have not."
"Then we'll start with that for lunch." My hand still hovers between us, patient and empty and stubborn.
"Will you grant me this, Virgil? Will you let me give you this gift?
It's all I have to offer.” His eyes brighten at the words we once both said to each other in a far different place.
“And when we return to the shadows, we'll face them together. "
He sets the pastry box down carefully on the side table, sliding it so the half-crushed cardboard rests neatly aligned with the wood grain. A small gesture. A familiar one. The careful attention of a man who notices beauty in order.
Then he turns to me and places his hand against mine.
His fingers are softer than I expected. Long and nimble. Callused in exactly the places I'd imagined.
I curl my fingers around his hand and feel the warmth. The strength. The impossible reality of him.
"Forty years," he says quietly.
"Forty years," I confirm. "And then eternity. But we'll have these memories to carry with us. Enough light to survive any darkness."
He looks down at our joined hands. When he looks back up, there's something new in his expression. Something I've never seen there before.
Hope, perhaps. Or the beginning of belief.
"Well then," he says, and the corner of his mouth curves upward—just slightly, just enough. "I suppose you'd better show me where you've hidden the icebox."
I laugh, and the sound surprises me. It's been so long since laughter came so easily.
I don't let go of his hand as I lead him toward the kitchen. Outside the windows, Manhattan glitters in the winter sun, and somewhere far below, the city is waking to Christmas morning.
We have forty years.
We have today.
Outside, a rare Christmas snow begins falling faintly through Manhattan. It drifts against the windows, transforms the city into something Virgil has never seen—and something I'm seeing the way Virgil taught me: with wonder.
His hand warm in mine. His shoulder brushing mine as we step out onto the balcony and watch the world soften, brighten, become possible.
The snow falls upon the living. It falls upon us. Upon this moment. Upon forty years waiting to be lived.
It catches in Virgil's golden curls and he laughs when the cold flakes kiss his skin.
We are blessed, the two of us. Damned and blessed in equal measure.
It's enough.
It's everything.