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Vox absentmindedly ran a claw along the curve of one of his antennae, his eyes locked on his phone screen, the pale glow doing little to ease the ache gnawing at his chest. He frowned, waiting — hoping— for a reply that stubbornly refused to come. His Sunshine hadn’t answered.
Not a word.
Not even a petty, half-hearted emoji.
He knew they hadn’t parted on the best of terms last Christmas — the memory still burned, hot and sharp. She had left him stranded and aching, heart pounding and body desperate, in her office. And yet… surely she understood why he’d had to entertain Val’s insufferable demands during that ridiculous, glitter-drenched holiday bash? Surely, she knew he would have chosen her if only he could have.
From the corner of his eye, movement caught his attention — an exasperating sight. Valentino, his sometimes boyfriend, was surrounded by a giggling throng of whores in barely there lingerie, their bodies writhing under the chaotic strobe lights.
The club was a cacophony of pounding EDM, a swirling mess of noise and colour. A giant disco ball spun overhead, scattering fractured rainbows across the sweat-slicked bodies grinding against each other on the dance floor.
Vox stood alone, cold glass pressed against his palm, his scotch as untouched as his mood was sour. Valentino and Velvette had insisted on this enormous New Year's Eve rave, eager for spectacle and excess. Vox had wanted nothing more than to be anywhere else — his tower, his office, or preferably buried between the familiar, comforting warmth of your chest, your fingernails gently scraping against his outputs.
As usual, Val had lost interest in him the second the party kicked off, disappearing into the crowd, an endless performance of shallow flirtations. Vox watched with thinly veiled contempt as Valentino draped his too-long arms around Angel Dust, laughing too loudly, leaning in too close. Rolling his eyes, Vox tipped back a slow sip of scotch, the burn barely touching the chill spreading inside him.
Listlessly, his gaze wandered across the packed dance floor, brushing past faces that blurred together in a haze of insignificance — until he saw you.
Everything else slipped away.
There you were.
You stood like a vision in the chaos, radiant, almost untouchable. The golden dress you wore clung to you in all the right ways, catching the disco lights and scattering a soft halo around your figure. The deep plunge of your neckline teased, but it was your eyes — lined perfectly with shimmering gold shadow — that rooted him in place. They were the same eyes that used to soften for him, used to sparkle when he brushed his hand against yours. Now, they held only a distant, polite professionalism when they glanced his way.
You hadn’t returned his teasing touches lately. You hadn’t lingered at the office after hours. You went home without a second glance, like he was just… someone you used to know. It gnawed at him, but Vox clung to the hope that you just needed time.
You always came back.
Always.
The desperate pull toward you was magnetic. He needed to speak to you. Needed to close the distance, to steal a kiss beneath the crumbling pretense of a New Year’s tradition, to feel something real again. He shifted, ready to cross the floor—
“VOX, BABY!”
The shrill, obnoxious call sliced through the music like a knife.
Vox stiffened, his claws curling slightly around his glass. Across the floor, Valentino grinned like a wolf, eyes wild, holding up two drinks fizzing ominously — tiny capsules of ecstasy slowly dissolving at the surface, glinting like poison.
And just like that, the moment fractured.
“Val,” Vox said through gritted teeth, feeling the unmistakable twitch of his left eye. Perfect. Just what he needed — another headache on top of the migraine already brewing at the base of his skull. The very thought of what could unfold tonight had his stomach knotting: Valentino, drunk, high, and manic, parading through the streets and leaving a trail of bodies and chaos in his wake. A PR nightmare was the last thing Vox wanted to clean up on New Year’s Eve.
“Oh, lighten up!” Val guffawed, his voice loud and grating against the pounding bass of the club. With a theatrical flourish, he dragged Angel Dust into his arms, smashing the spider demon’s head up against his bare, pierced chest. Vox grimaced as Val fondly twisted Angel’s face against the glinting metal of his nipple ring.
“Want some, baby?” Val teased, holding up two glasses that fizzed ominously with something far more sinister than champagne.
“You know I don’t—” Vox started sharply, only to stop himself mid-sentence when he realized with a stab of annoyance that Val wasn’t even talking to him.
Without hesitation, Angel Dust snatched both drinks from Val’s outstretched hands and downed them in a single breathless gulp. Vox could only watch, a slow curl of disgust tightening in his gut. Val let out a low whistle, eyes gleaming unnaturally bright under the club’s seizure-inducing lights.
“WOOOO! I'M READY TO FUCKING PARTY!” Angel howled, flashing a gold-capped tooth that caught the kaleidoscopic glare. He looked utterly manic, electric, one wrong word away from lighting the whole room on fire.
Val turned back to Vox, his grin a razor’s edge of dangerous amusement. “Vox, baby, why don’t you loosen up tonight?” he purred, slinking up behind him.
Vox stiffened as Valentino’s upper set of arms began massaging his shoulders in lazy, sensual circles. From a lower hand, Val took a drag from a slim glass pipe, exhaling a thick plume of sickly sweet pink smoke right into the space between them. The smell clung to Vox's suit, a grotesque mix of candy and chemical burns.
“The fact that I’m even here should tell you plenty,” Vox muttered darkly under his breath, his brows knitting together. His crimson gaze slid sideways, catching Angel Dust's hazy, drugged-out eyes hungrily raking over Val’s body. Slowly, Angel’s hands slid downward, fingers tracing the deep, sharp V that led toward Val’s hips — vulgar, desperate, sloppy.
Vox felt something inside him wither.
Their relationship — if you could even call it that — was built on necessity, not affection. A power play. A strategic alliance between two ambitious monsters clawing their way through Hell’s hierarchy. Sure, Vox would fuck Val when the mood struck, whisper sweet nothings neither of them believed. But more often than not, Val was off screwing Angel Dust or whatever studio trash happened to wander into his orbit.
At first, it stung — a poison needle of jealousy, Vox refused to acknowledge.
But now?
Now his eyes drifted instinctively toward the spot where his Sunshine had been.
Gone.
An empty space where she once stood, glowing gold against the dark. His stomach dropped.
Shit.
The realization hit him like a dousing in an ice-cold bath, cutting through the haze of booze and smoke.
He needed to find her.
He needed—
Before he could tear himself away from the vulgar display unfolding beside him, a deafening roar swept through the club.
“TEN! NINE! EIGHT!”
The countdown had begun.
Suddenly, he felt Valentino’s arms snake around his torso, pulling him close. The overpowering scent of sweat, alcohol, and cigarettes filled Vox's nose. The crowd pressed in on them, a chaotic mass of limbs and howling voices, a fever pitch of expectation and madness.
Right.
On paper, Vox and Valentino were a united front — Hell’s most glittering, blood-soaked power couple. They had to be seen together, strong and seamless, no cracks in the façade.
No weakness.
And besides, Val was useful. They were both getting exactly what they wanted: power, influence, control.
As the countdown thundered toward its inevitable climax — “Three! Two! One!” — Vox…
He surrendered.
He let Valentino crush their mouths together, accepted the heated, messy kiss, tongue and all, while the surrounding crowd erupted into a frenzy of bodies writhing together in every unsavoury way imaginable. The air was thick with sweat, cheap perfume, and the crackling energy of desperate, drunken celebration. Couples clung to each other, grinding and gasping, lost in the madness of the moment.
Vox kissed Val back mechanically, cold calculation lurking beneath the heat. This was for the press. A display. A carefully crafted illusion of unity. A reminder to Hell itself that they were a force, a kingdom bound not by love but by necessity.
Power. Territory. Survival.
He told himself this as Val’s hands roamed possessively across his back, as he tasted alcohol and smoke on Val’s tongue. He told himself this was all that mattered.
And yet —
His eyes drifted.
Searching.
Hunting for a flash of gold, a spark of warmth, a reason that wasn’t power.
And then — there you were.
Standing frozen at the edge of the chaos, your golden dress catching the fractured light of the disco ball like a wound, your face unreadable.
Watching him.
Watching this.
For a heartbeat, everything else dimmed — the music, the lights, even the suffocating weight of Val's embrace.
Your eyes met his.
And in that instant, Vox felt something break.
It’s for power, he wanted to scream across the distance between you. You understand, don’t you? You always have!
But you didn’t say a word.
You didn’t yell, or cry, or rage.
You simply turned.
Turned away, just like you had last Christmas, when he'd made the wrong choice and left him alone in a dark office filled with unspoken words.
Vox stood there, still tangled in Val’s grasp, hollowed out and burning from the inside.
You understand, he thought bitterly. You have to.
You always have.