A/N: When I started Vergil's Oneshots, I never expected myself to be writing so many mini-stories. Still, I enjoy this very much, and I hope my readers enjoy my stories as much as I enjoy writing them.

[The Daily Lives Of College Boys]

"I'm home." Vergil called as he closed the door to the apartment behind him, setting the grocery bags down on the floor before taking his shoes off and leaving them neatly at the side. A small bristling sense of irritation came when he saw the mess of the entrance –shoes thrown haphazardly –but he long knew that no amount of nagging would get through to his apartment mate.

"I'm home." He called again, louder this time just in case he was not heard the first time. Vergil picked up the bags again, stepping into the apartment proper as he looked left and right. There was no signs of life anywhere in sight through his journey to the small kitchen, and he sighed heavily as he set the groceries down.

Dante was supposed to be home. He knew his twin brother did not bother himself to join any clubs in their college. He also knew that Dante did not have his part-time job today, so there was no reason for him to be out of the house.

Unfortunately, Vergil was Dante's twin brother, so he knew that if Dante was missing from home now, then he was probably spending his time at the arcade playing shooting games and wasting money meant for their independent livelihoods.

Setting the groceries aside on the counter, Vergil left them alone as he made a beeline for the phone, pressing quick dial and waiting impatiently for the phone to pick up.

"The number you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the beep." The female voice came through the phone, but Vergil was not an idiot. Also, this supposed 'trick' had been tried on him countless times, and while it had never worked once, it had never stopped the fools from trying it again and again.

"Trish, don't be an idiot and get Dante on the phone." Vergil growled before the woman could pretend to make a monotonous beep.

"You're no fun, you know that?" Trish complained, and he could imagine her rolling her eyes as he heard the phone being passed.

"The number you are trying to reach is currently-"

"Dante, if you are not home in one hour, I will lock the door. I have a major test tomorrow, and I'm not having you making drunken noise in the next room." Vergil interrupted before the man could try the trick once more. Really, he could not understand which part of Dante's brain could not comprehend the fact that a cheap trick like that was never going to work, particularly for him.

"You can't do this to me!" Dante protested, loud above the noise of the arcade in the background. "Mum said we should support each other while we are away from home."

"Mum also said that you can't go to the arcade more than twice per week, and it's your fifth time now." Vergil countered evenly. "I give no concession: back in an hour, or the door is locked."

It was always moments like this that Dante truly hated the fact that his twin brother was studying to be a lawyer regardless of how apt the profession was for Vergil's sharp tongue.

"Then I'll go back home and complain to Mum about how you locked me out."

"Good luck going home without money." Vergil answered. "To save you time going to the station to check prices, the train back home takes six hours and 50 dollars."

He heard a pause, then Dante shouting in the background.

"Oy, Trish, do you have 50 dollars?"

"Go borrow from a loan shark if you want that much money!" The reply came back in a shout from the background, followed by a whining complaint from Dante.

"Alright, you win. I'll be back in time." The younger twin brother finally admitted his defeat, and regardless of the number of times he had won his brother in a verbal argument, Vergil still smirked softly to himself.

"If you are late by even a minute, you are sleeping outside." He warned, and left no space for Dante to protest before shutting their connection off.

Now that he had confirmed that his brother would be coming back soon, Vergil dropped his school bag on the couch before making back to the kitchen. The evening was darkening the skies, and sounds of nightlife of the neighbours faded into the apartment. Vergil was silent as he focused on his cooking, cutting with precise speed and accuracy.

Prior to moving out, Vergil had never tried his hand at cooking before since his mother had been an excellent cook. Eva Sparda was also deathly protective of her kitchen, and any attempt of cooking by the men and messing up her kitchen had been a definite no-no. But now that Vergil not only needed to provide meals for himself, but also for his useless little brother, the first thing he had set to learning after moving out was making meals. Fortunately, he found that he had some decent skills, and following recipes found on the net usually worked out right in his favour. So far, he was silently proud of his track record of having only two failed food experiments.

It also coincidentally worked in his favour that his usual customer was a man who could eat dirt and claim that it tastes like heaven.

Vergil steadily made his progress of putting the small meal together, his mind a careful blank. While he could not claim that cooking was now his hobby, he found that he quite enjoyed the process of making a meal since it could clear his mind from the thoughts of the day. A long moment of silence that was provided by the absence of his little brother in the apartment kept Vergil in a good mood as he took his seat at one side of the dinner table, two other set of utensils set and ready to receive the usual customers.

Vergil did not have his enjoyable silent meal for long before the doorbell rang over and over again. He did not bother rushing to the door, putting on the appropriately irritated face when he greeted the man who had existed for as long as he, but could not mature along with him.

"I'm home!" Dante declared happily as he pushed his way in, kicking his shoes off at the entrance before jumping up the step, then charging straight in. "I'm starving!"

"I hope you made my share again today." Trish smiled helplessly at her boyfriend's childishness, inviting herself in and taking off her shoes delicately.

"Dante will kill me if I forgot." Vergil answered, closing the door behind the woman and following her further into the apartment. "When are you going to start paying me for the grocery bill?"

"That's not how you speak to your future sister-in-law." Trish admonished, hanging a shameless grin as she took her usual seat, and invited herself to the meal without asking.

Truly, Dante and his girlfriend were two of the same kind. It took a special species of woman to be able to exist on the same level as Dante's self-confidence, shamelessness and general nonchalance of social norms. Much as Vergil was unwilling to claim this, Trish was made for Dante. There was no doubt about it. His brother was crazy, and the woman was equally crazy to match up to Dante's unending fire.

"Woman, if you are my sister-in-law right now, the grocery bill is going to be the least of your problems." Vergil answered with a growl, but the two of them had actually been through this conversation long enough to Trish to no longer care.

"Lighten up, bro. She'll pay when she can." Dante paused in between inhaling the spaghetti to put in a good word for his girlfriend, but he was the worst person to give this kind of assurance.

"Then when will you pay your due? I made it very clear when we moved that if I'm going to be cooking your meals, we're splitting the costs." Vergil fought back.

"Dante, why did you move out of your house to escaping your nagging mother to move into an apartment with your second nagging mother?" Trish asked, laughing along with Dante when he did.

"The two of you are college students with part-time jobs, for gods' sake. Is it really too much to ask for money to feed the two of you?" Vergil would have thrown his hands up in defeat if only he wasn't concentrated on having enough food before the two newcomers vacuumed everything off the table.

"Chasing money is a bad way to live, Vergil." Dante answered in his best old-man voice, and with the spaghetti beard that he was currently sporting, it was strangely apt.

"I don't want to hear that from the man who was going to sleep with cougars to get easy money."

"Between helping out in gang wars and sleeping with rich old women, I'd say choosing the latter is always a better choice. They have more money and are more generous to good-looking sugar babies like me." Dante made his puppy-eyed look that Vergil assumed would be a cougar-killer, but at the moment only made him throw up in his mouth.

"Just be glad that at least have sugar-mommies ready to shower you with money." Dante's girlfriend put in, completely nonchalant about the fact that he was talking about sleeping with other women in front of him. "All I'm getting is cat-calls and disgusting old men trying to get a peek up my skirt at the café. I swear, if another one pretends to drop their napkin on the floor when I'm at their table, I'm going to make sure that the next thing that drops to the floor is their balls when I cut it off."

"I wanna watch when that happens." Dante's answer was –as expected- unbecoming of a boyfriend. To be very honest, other than the fact that the both of them were crazy and fit each other very well, the way they interacted with each other in front of Vergil could not give him a single sense that they were madly in love.

"I'm done with the two of you." Vergil announced, pushing his chair back. "You're on washing duty, Dante. If I see a single speck of food left on any plate, I will kick you out."

"Tyrant!" Dante protested, but Vergil gave no care as he picked up his bag from the couch, and retreated into his room.

Vergil was glad to have his own silence once again in the darkness of his tiny room. Apartments were hard to come by at cheap prices near their college, and they had to make do with whatever they could afford. A positive thought was that the smaller their room was, the less Vergil needed to clean. Similarly, the smaller it was, the less likely Dante would be to invite his friends over to their already-cramped apartment.

Sitting himself at his tiny but comfortable study table, Vergil drew out his thick textbooks, stacked them up on the side and brought out a few worksheets as well. His marked essays stared back at him in the soft light from the table lamp, and he smiled secretly to himself to see A+ written in a circle on the top right hand corner. The teacher's comment was written too: 'At this rate, getting the Bar will not be hard for you'.

With noises of Dante and his girlfriend's loud flirting drifting through the door, Vergil diligently put his whole attention into his studies. If he was being completely honest with himself, Vergil was actually confident to ace the test even without the focused revision. Still, uncertainty of the future (and the test) was always a college student's worst enemy, and thus Vergil found himself flipping through the textbook easily.

It was hours later in the wee hours of the morning when Vergil finally brought himself back to reality, the only sounds of crickets in warm summer night filling the apartment. Closing the textbook, he waited for a long moment, wondering if his brother had –against all odds- fallen asleep. The clock sitting on his bed rest flashed a neon 2:23am, and Vergil's doubt only increased. It was definitely still too early for a night owl like Dante to be asleep. The man slept more in his classes than he actually did on his own bed after all. Vergil had once made the terrible decision of taking an elective course in the liberal arts department and ended up in the same class as his twin brother. It had been a nightmare and it had quickly become the most dreaded class of the week for the rest of the semester.

The main reason, expectedly, had been Dante. Because his brother –even with a girlfriend –had been a shameless flirt, his classmates had initially assumed that Vergil shared the same personality trait. He had been put unwittingly on a pedestal during the first lesson when Dante introduced Vergil as a law student and highlighted (with extra emphasis on the word) that he was still single. Vergil had never been able to get a single proper lesson afterwards throughout the semester and that was when he discovered that he would never take a step into the liberal arts building ever again until Dante graduated from that chaotic place.

He was doubly glad that neither his brother nor Trish were ambitious enough to try invading his peaceful life in the law faculty by taking their elective courses there.

Vergil decided, after the long moment of waiting for any type of sound, that Dante had somehow slipped out of the apartment without his knowing. Irritated at his brother's way-faring ways that usually ended up with Dante asking him for money, Vergil checked Dante's bedroom just to be sure that he had not jumped to the wrong conclusions, then made for the phone once again.

Before the two of them had moved out of their house, their father had sat Vergil down seriously one day without Dante's knowledge. It had been warning lecture about the dos and do-nots that college students-to-be were supposed to receive, but the problem was that Dante was not in attendance. When Vergil eventually asked his father why Dante was not receiving the same words after the lecture, there was only one reply.

"I know nothing I say will sink in for him. I'm going to have you watch over him, Vergil. I'm sorry, but you and I both know that he hasn't matured mentally the same way you have. If I'm being completely honest, the only reason your mother and I are allowing him to move out is because you are going to be there as well."

The truth was always there, and nothing had improved even after one year of independence from their parents so far.

Vergil paused at the phone, surprised to see a bright yellow post-it note stuck on the phone. He suspected that the paper –and most possibly the pen too –had been stolen from him, but what took more importance was the content of the note.

'Going out to buy some midnight snacks. Don't lock the door!' Wrote in Dane's handwriting, and in a corner of the note was a lip mark made with a very bright red lipstick that Vergil immediately knew who it belonged to. What was supposed to be suggestive/sensual was completely ruined by two fact: firstly, it was note from his brother and secondly, Trish's handwriting beside the lip mark said 'Dante's disgusting lips saved for you'.

Still, regardless of how disgusting the general idea of the note from Dante was, it gave Vergil a good idea of where his brother and the girlfriend had gone. Briefly wondering if Trish was going to come back along with Dante to spend the night again, Vergil left the phone alone and retreated to the bathroom for a shower.

The cool water was a good refresher for a hot summer night, and Vergil allowed himself to a can of Dante's beer (the only thing he was stealing back in reply to everything that had been stolen from him) when he emerged from the bathroom with his hair still semi-wet. The silence of the night (save the melody of the crickets) was Vergil's good partner as he sat on the couch, scrolling through his phone.

He frowned quietly to himself when he opened an email from an unfamiliar person who had introduced himself as a scout from a talent management company in the email proper. Scanning through the first few introductory sentences, Vergil did not take long to decide to delete the email without a reply. Regardless of the number of times Vergil had explicitly told Dante not to, it appeared that his brother was still giving out his email address to talent scouts on the street.

Vergil was just deciding that Dante was going to be the reason why his life was a living hell when his phone chimed with the notification of receiving a new text message. It was a message authored by his student from one of his various part-time jobs.

This student of Vergil's, Sakuya, was the sixth high school student that he had to go through in half a year. Working as a private home tutor was a lucrative job, but the hardest part for him was not the content, not trying to hold the attention of his students, but rather trying to get the starry-eyed attention of his hormonal teenaged students off him. For some reason, he had always gotten the bad luck of receiving female students, and he had always had to end the jobs because they simply could not focus on the lessons that Vergil tried to teach.

Nothing good ever came out of a text message from a high schooler at 3am in the morning, and Vergil quietly held his breath as he opened the message.

There it was again.

Vergil did a screenshot with a sigh, attached the picture to another chat and apologised greatly to Sayuka's mother for being unable to help out much. Thankfully, Sayuka's mother was still awake at this time and was quick enough to give an understanding reply, officially firing Vergil at 3am in the morning through a text with a promise that all outstanding fees owed would be sent to him by mail so that he would not have to swing by the house and face the heartbroken teenager again.

Unfortunately for him, Vergil had been through this five times before and the sixth did not give him any more sour feelings but rather a heavy sense of resignation this time as he typed his rejection reply to Sayuka and expressed that he was both resigning and fired from his role as her private tutor. Setting his phone on silent mode because of the message barrage that he knew he would receive in reply, he set it aside as he looked at the clock again.

3:10 am, and Dante still wasn't home yet. Vergil could not imagine what could have delayed Dante's supposedly 10-minutes journey to the nearest 24-hour store for midnight snacks that could have made it at least 40 minutes –and counting. While his brother was expected to take longer than any average person to run an errand (because Dante was as easily distracted as a five year old child), taking four times the normal expected timing was probably a sign that something had happened

Still, knowing his little brother, the chances of Dante and Trish meeting and chatting with friends and ultimately forgetting the timing was much higher than either of them meeting any sort of trouble. Similarly, the both of them had stayed out for the night enough times for Vergil to seriously wonder if they had their own corner for sleep somewhere on the streets.

Still, Vergil had unwittingly taken over the role of their mother ever since moving out and thus he could not let himself off the guard as he waited on the couch, unsure of what to do now that his phone was being blasted with messages and calls from a heartbroken and mostly-desperate high schooler.

Considering the fact that he had spent 5 hours in the afternoon and early evening at his other part-time job after school, serving beverages to girls who would not stop ordering just for a chance to see and admire him up close, it was completely understandable that it did not take long for the poor main character of this short story to fall asleep on the couch.

Three and a half short hours later, the front door to the apartment opened. Trish and Dante laughed at a shared joke as they stepped in, shucking off their shoes haphazardly and emerging into the living room.

"Aww, look at cute whittle Vergy baby." Dante gushed in the most unmanly, pouty voice that he could afford. "Do you have a marker? I wanna draw a penis on his face."

"He is a lawyer-in-the-making, Dante." Trish answered as she casually helped herself into Vergil's room, not hesitation at all after her numerous experiences entering to help herself to something. Neither Trish nor Dante owned a pen or pencil, much less a marker, after all. All stationery they had were previously Vergil's property.

"You're right." Dante replied upon Trish's return to the living room with a stolen permanent market, a thoughtful look hanging on his face. "Let's not be such assholes to him, or he'll lock us out or not make us dinner."

"We should record you saying that again." Trish suggested, standing back and watching with an amused smirk as Dante uncapped the marker and bent over his peacefully sleeping brother laid out on the couch. "Lawyers like them always want evidence of some sort to back up any claims."

"Done. My masterpiece." Dante straightened up after a short moment of silence. "Take a pic."

Trish hid a childish giggle as she whipped out her phone, aiming both Dante's guiltless grin and Vergil's vandalised face in the same shot. Strangely, though, the sound of shutters woke the poor man up as Vergil finally stirred awake from his deep sleep. Stuffing the incriminating marker away in his pocket hurriedly, Dante scrambled back before his brother opened his eyes, throwing a quick excuse that he needed the washroom to run away. Trish took a quick seat nearby, tapping away at her phone in the pretence that it had been what she was innocently doing all along.

"You're back." Vergil's sleepy voice came and Trish looked up from her phone to see the man rubbing his eyes. "Where the hell did the two of you go? Did you even get a midnight snack?"

"Good morning to you too." Trish answered. The words '#1 Genius' scrawled across Vergil's forehead made Trish's effort to force back her smile a hard one. "We met Dante's friends on the way to the store and ended up playing a midnight basketball game because those idiots couldn't understand that their 5-people team was losing against the two of us."

"You could have called." Vergil answered irritably. He had not expected to fall asleep on the couch and his neck was aching now from being in the same position for too long.

"Weren't sure if you were awake." Trish answered shortly. "Are you sure you can take your time? It's already 7:15."

"It is?" Vergil reached over to check his phone, wincing at the number of missed calls and unread messages accumulated over the night. "It is."

While everybody understood that Vergil Sparda was basically any student's best role model, nobody knew how the man actually looked when he was flustered and rushing towards the bathroom to freshen up. Trish and Dante were the only two people in existence who had the advantage of watching the always-composed college boy trip over his feet in his own groggy rush, knock into the low table and topple magazines all over the floor.

It took Vergil a few precious minutes to have his teeth brushed at the sink in the kitchen since Dante was still monopolising the bathroom, and was dressed quickly in another few minutes.

"Isn't it okay to be late just by a bit?" Trish's question in her raised voice came through the open door as Vergil swiped the required textbooks and worksheets into his bag. "Dante and I always go to classes five minutes before it ends. None of our lecturers are complaining."

"They are not complaining because they have given up on the two of you." Vergil answered, running back to the living room. "I have a test in the first period, and I'm not going to let my studying go to waste."

"I'm sure you're going to score even if you started the test five minutes before the end of the class." The answer continued while Vergil flipped through the mess that his brother had made on the low coffee table.

"Have you seen my wallet anywhere?" Vergil asked, not bothering to continue the previous conversation.

"Dante!" Trish shouted now, her strong voice definitely reaching through the bathroom door. "Wallet!"

The reply came in the form of the bathroom door opening, Vergil's wallet flying out, then the door slamming close again.

"Did you guys steal my money again?" Vergil fussed as he rushed to pick it up where it laid innocently on the floor. "How many times have I- Never mind, I have no time for this right now. Is there still any money left?"

"Some." Trish answered, joining Vergil at the entrance now and watching him pull his socks on. "Depending on how much you need."

"What kind of answer- Never mind, I'm late."

"Are you making dinner tonight? Dante wants meat."

"He gets meat when he pays for it. With his own money." Vergil adjusted his shoes to make sure that they were comfortable for his imminent run to school.

"I have work until late today, so don't cook for me. I'm going home." Trish answered.

"I'm surprised you even still have a home to return to. Don't you consider our place your home?"

"Give it a few more years. You're going to wish you never said that."

"Already regretting it. Bye." Vergil bade, wrenching the door open. "Tell Dante I'm going to be taking extra shifts at the café today. I got confessed by my student again yesterday."

Vergil would have been out the door, if not for the call of his name that made him turn back to see his brother's girlfriend offering a small bottle. A short moment was all it took for him to recognise that it was nail polish.

"You're going to need it. Trust me." Trish said.

"What did the two of you do this time?" Vergil swiped the bottle quickly.

"In short? Permanent market. Your face. Dante's idea."

"Did he draw a penis?"

"You are a lawyer-in-the-making, Vergil." Trish repeated, not surprised at all at Vergil's immediate natural assumption of his brother's intended action. "You deserve more praise. Go, or you are going to be too late to wipe it all off. Just run fast enough so that people don't see. Or run slow, if you like. Show the whole world your new face."

"What did he write?" Vergil refused to budge now that he knew there was something socially inappropriate written on his face.

"They are praises." Trish answered, this time actively pushing the man out the door now. "You will really be too late to wipe them off at this rate."

"What kind or praises-" Vergil's protest was cut off when Trish gave him a hard shove that sent him stumbling fully out the open door.

"See you, Mr. No.1 Genius. It will be nice for your faculty mates to know that you are still single and ready to mingle." Trish could not help her tease, slamming the front door shut and locking it.

"He's locked out. You can come out now, coward." Trish raised her voice to be heard, grinning to herself as she walked away from the door, a spring in her step.

It was just another normal day for the Sparda brothers, after all.