Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The world is black and blue, and Vox is sure by the throbbing in his joints that his body is, too. 

A sharp stab runs through his middle. Then, a recollection: arms flailing, feet stumbling and failing to find purchase, hip colliding with the corner of his desk before he’d met the ground in a mess of sparks and twitchy limbs. He thinks he’s lying there, still, sinking into the coolness of the floor.

He isn’t entirely sure.

His memories are fragmented— jagged pieces of a mirror he can’t quite put together. He can feel them, ghosting beneath the surface of his consciousness, his grasp eludes them by a breath. They're a series of flashes; snapshots in time he can’t place, an amalgamation of senses, hot bursts of emotion without context.

The memories are there, so unbearably close, but he can’t quite make sense of them. 

He remembers pain. A deep pang in his chest that had spiralled, twisted his heart and mind into something indescribable that had led him here— body broken on the floor, hot and cold and achy all over, entombed in an impenetrable darkness. He remembers the verbal blows traded on-air. The seething rage bubbling beneath the surface. Thick clouds of ozone choking the room. 

He remembers that he had been winning, for once, and then everything was red, red, so obnoxiously red—

Eyes that bore into him without seeing him, a blinding suit as timeless as the man who wore it, dripping lines beneath a crooked smile that matched his own. It had consumed him, in that moment. Become too much, too quickly, morphing into a flash of white before his vision blinked out entirely.

Vox had felt the cables detach from the back of his cabinet, felt the rest of his senses drift as his mind willed itself to shut down, and then…

Nothing. 

Nothing but the present, the flickering blacks and blues he can’t quite seem to place— and that damn pulsing behind his eyes. He doesn’t know how he’s managed to fuck up his vision. Hell, he doesn’t remember the last time he’s suffered through a system crash this awful. 

Vox grits his teeth against the fresh wave of pain that accompanies the next spasm. His body is tired and his skin singed to oblivion. How long has it been?

Minutes?

Hours?

Maybe he’s been lying here a week now, teetering on the edge of wakefulness in what he’s only half-sure is still his office. 

He is used to always seeing, always knowing. Even if his own hellish body failed him at times, his powers rarely did. There was always another screen to hop into. Always another escape. 

Yet now, as he musters all the strength he has left to tap into the endless stream that lies at his fingertips, Vox is met with nothing. There is no gentle hum, no ebb and flow, no warmth from the data that is supposed to course through his veins like blood. There is nothing at all.

It’s as if the cord to his line of power has been snipped right in the middle, leaving only a cold silence on both ends. 

Fuck, he thinks. He must have crashed so hard he’d taken out the power grid in the process. Probably permanently fried a good chunk of the tower’s tech as well. 

There is no way for him to jump without a connection. No way for him to confirm where the fuck he is with his visual processors still on the fritz. He sees nothing— not the bleeding red nor the screeching white from earlier. Inky shadows pound into the back of his head, bringing with it an insuppressible pain that tears a scream from his throat. 

It hurts, it hurts, fuck, it hurts—

He can’t die. He knows that. Not like this, not without a blow from holy arms. But fuck, it feels like he’s reliving death with each passing second. His skin is on fire— hot and raw and overwhelming all at once. 

His breaths come in too hard, too fast, too painful— is he even breathing? Or has he been holding his breath this whole time? He can’t tell. He doesn’t care to find out. 

The smell of burnt plastic lingers in the air. Apart from the whirring of his fans and the occasional spark, it is deathly still. He is overheating but the room is frigid, the ground beneath him stiff and unfeeling.

Vox commands his body to do something, anything. He stays limp. The only movement he can conjure up right now is involuntary, and each convulsion that runs through him only adds another beat to the drumming against his skull. He wills the agony to go away. If his will were stronger, it may have worked. 

After who knows how long, it comes. A light at the end of the tunnel.

One he can't see, with his visual processors on the fritz from who knows what, but a light nonetheless, bright and burning, bringing with it a cacophony of voices. They are harsh and screeching, like a pair of stray cats fighting over scraps behind the dumpster, and muffled, at first, before a gust of wind blows in from somewhere and strips them clean of their filter. 

The door, Vox thinks deliriously. 

The voices reach a crescendo before they cease entirely. Even from a distance, Vox catches the sharp intake of breath. Twin gasps. Then— a scuffle.

Heels clack against the walkway at a dizzying speed, growing louder by the second. Vox groans as his mind fights to decipher their movements, to stay awake against the offending noise that threatens to overwhelm him once more. He feels the glitches intensify, jolting him against the ground with a sharp cry. 

“–ox! Are you–” 

“–n you hear us?” 

“Oh fu–”

“His screen–” 

It’s a barrage, an auditory attack that leaves him feeling like one of those jack-in-the-box toys— popping in and out of the world only to grasp mere fragments of it, left disoriented with the motion and frustrated with the missing pieces.

He can’t quite place the voices, but his body does not recoil when hands reach for him. 

“–ick, grab h–” 

“–’s all twitchy–” 

His screen melts into the touch that cups his face. His mind still fights to process—those voices, their cadence, those hands—Vox knows them so intimately it frustrates him. On his left, someone whispers soft reassurances. The unfamiliarity of the emotions behind them strikes a pang in his heart, and somewhere in the dark recesses of his glitch-riddled code, his mind is telling him he is safe. 

He is lifted off the ground by vanilla-scented hands, and Vox slips further into the darkness. The rest of the world drowns out as his head pillows against someone’s chest, soft and warm. 

-V-

He’s died again, he thinks. Or dreaming. 

There are hands all over him— on his chest, his face, his arms. Something taut and cotton-like wraps around the left half of his screen. Everything is still shrouded in that damn shadow, but this time there’s the occasional flicker of light that filters through when his body jostles, granting him a peek of the outside world.

Vox glimpses blurs of lavender and mocha— faces, he deduces, that bob in and out of view. 

Everything else is coated in varying shades of reds and pinks. He tries to think of the red of Valentino’s wings. The plush couch in their shared tower. Velvette’s hair. The tacky wallpaper he’s tried for years to get rid of. 

Instead he thinks of pinstriped suits and bloody claws. It plays on loop—his voice, staticky and dripping in condescension, smile stretched so wide Vox can almost see the seams–  

You aren’t looking too well, old friend.

Speak of the devil. A figure steps out from the flickering shadows, stance brimming with the practised poise of a gentleman. He is dreaming, Vox decides, because why else would Alastor grace him with even a fraction of his attention?  

There is a barely-noticeable pressure around the edges of his cabinet. Cinnamon-scented perfume floods his sensors before something pokes at his screen and his face erupts in pain. He can’t help the sharp cry that escapes him. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry– shit, Valentino, hold him down!” 

“I’m trying!”

“Well try harder, dammit!”

Everything is red, again, so blindingly red that Vox fights against the urge to shut his eyes.

The demon before him only smiles wider, mocking him. A stuttering screech pierces the air as Alastor tilts his head to the side. 

How amusing.

He is dreaming, he must be, because why else is he the only one who sees him? Another round of glitches overtakes him, leaves him gasping in the shock and pain of it all. Static crackles amidst a dark chuckle. He feels nauseous. 

“Damn it. He’s still panicking.”

“Shit, I’ve never seen him this bad.”

“Why the fuck would you tell him, you moron? You know how he gets whenever that radio bitch is involved!”

“I just wanted to mess with him a little, I didn’t know he’d fucking crash over it! I thought- I mean, fuck, it’s been so long-”

My, my. 

Did my return send you into such a tizzy that you can no longer discern reality from fiction?

He is dreaming– yes, that’s it, for sure.

Vox ignores the dread that creeps into his stomach as Alastor steps closer. Ignores the way his heart jumps to his throat at the idea of a confrontation because holy fuck, it’s been seven years and he’s here and he’s real–

“Vox stop- just stop moving! We’re trying to help!” 

He must be dreaming, because the touch that grazes his cheek feels far too gentle. 

Did you miss me that much? 

Red drips between Alastor’s grin. Drips, drips, drips until it trails down his chin and onto the floor, melting into the inky darkness. Everything is purples and browns, reds on top of more reds, mashed together and existing on different planes all at once. 

Come morning, it will be back to gaping wounds bandaged by bitter resentment. But for now, Vox hopes he’s not dreaming, because he’ll never get a chance like this again. 

“His ports are all fried, too. Shit, Vox, what did you do? ” Vanilla. How saccharine.

“A-Alastor…” Vox manages at last, his throat burning around the name. He forgets every insult, every accusation, every goddamn word he’s been building up for the better part of a decade. 

Cinnamon, this time, with a scoff. “Yeah, no shit.”

“You came back,” Vox says, and the air stills.

Static creeps in on the edges of his vision. He does not know whether he receives an answer or if he’s met with the same cold silence as seven years ago. He’s back in the dark before he finds out. 

-V-

His return to consciousness is graced with significantly less pain. His head feels considerably better, but there’s a light pounding behind it that persists. Vox also finds that, this time around, he can see. Finally.

Everything is muted and crackled like the edge of a well-worn photograph, laced with distortion and the occasional hiccup of a glitch. Colours swirl in dizzying wisps when he shifts his head, but fuck it. He’ll take this over empty voids and crash-induced hallucinations any day.  

The surface beneath him is soft and well-worn, his body half-sunken into… the cushions of a couch? Their couch, Vox realizes. He’s in the penthouse of Vee Tower, tucked in underneath a shark-print blanket. 

The lights are on, a sure sign of the backup generators doing their job. He’s not sure what the rest of their technology—and the rest of Hell, for that matter—looks like right now, and he’s not too keen on finding out. He needs a few more minutes to recoup before dealing with that mess.

Vox moves to sit up on the couch, wincing at the ache that accompanies the motion. His muscles are sore and his limbs twinge with fresh pain.  

“Welcome back to the land of the dead.” 

Vox jumps and nearly tumbles off the couch. He squints at the figure sprawled across the second couch, recognizing the unmistakable purple amongst the red. “Val?” His voice comes out scratchy and hoarse. He does not remember screaming. “What happened?”

“You crashed,” Val says, seemingly unperturbed. “We found you on the floor of your office. You’ve been in and out the last couple of hours.” He swings his legs from the couch to the floor, back arching as he stretches. “Vel should be back any minute now, she just ran out to pick up a few things.” 

Vox tries to hide his panic. Hours? Fuck. Longer than he’s used to, and even now, he can feel the lingering effects on his body.

He tries to remember, to think back to the spark that started it all— but he comes up empty. Shit. It’s been a while since he’s experienced this level of data corruption. His brain feels muddled, as it always does after an unexpected shutdown, his memories swirling between the merciless waters of a whirlpool. He reaches for them.

All that comes back are fragments.

Velvette holding a disembodied arm and screaming her head off about some model. The crash of a glass near his head, the stifling smoke of Valentino’s quarters. A glimpse on a screen, distorted and hazy and…red.  

Alastor. 

Fuck, Alastor. He’s back. The realization hits him all over again as his brain fights to pick apart his memories. 

Live broadcast: real.

Alastor threatening him on-air: real.

Blue-screening in a fit of panic: real.

Seeing Alastor for the first time in seven years: real. No, wait— not real. That…didn’t happen. Right? Fuck.

Waking up in Vee Tower: real? Or another symptom of his own delusion? 

He attempts to run a system diagnostic only to be met with an endless stream of pop-ups and error messages. Vox tries and fails to quell his growing panic. Fuck, maybe he’d damaged himself so badly this time around that he’s trapped himself in a nightmare derivative of his own memories. 

Maybe he’s so irreparably broken that his program can no longer distinguish between life and fantasy. 

Maybe his body is still lying there on the floor of his office, frigid and broken and alone.

Someone is calling his name. 

Hands. There are hands on him, their touch feathery and uncertain. One rests on his shoulder, grounding him. Another rubs soothing circles into his back. Two more hover in the air, waiting. For what, Vox doesn’t know.

“Hey, hey- breathe, amorcito. Breathe,” Val says, and Vox tries. “You’re okay.” He feels far from okay.

They sit like this for several minutes. Val’s movements are awkward and unpracticed, and his reassurances come out like verbal somersaults. It is nothing like the flawless performances he puts on in bed. It is imperfect and unfamiliar and…different. But he continues, and in these rare moments of vulnerability, Vox finds that he enjoys it. 

“So. What happened to protecting our image?” 

Valentino’s leering voice pulls him out of the moment, and Vox feels his screen heat up. “There’s a big difference between gunning for every whore that pisses you off and dealing with legitimate threats,” he hisses.  

“Is that what happened? You dealt with it?” 

“Fuck you.” Vox spits, because the wound is still fresh. 

“Classic.” 

Yes, okay. Maybe it is hypocritical on his part, but he hadn’t really been anticipating a response when he’d put out that broadcast— much less a beatdown so severe he’d end up frying his own systems. Vox does not entertain the topic further, for his own sake.

With his emotions teetering on the edge of another crash, and that smug look on Val’s face, he chooses not to risk it. “Help me up,” he says instead. 

“What? Why?” Valentino draws a long puff from his cigar, a puzzled look on his face.

“I gotta deal with…all this shit.” Vox gestures towards the large windows of the penthouse, where the rest of the city stands frozen and blanketed in shadow. The crimson sky seems brighter, now, against the inky black. 

“Oh, hell no. ” 

Vox blinks. No?

“Not now,” Val amends. “Vel would actually have my head if I let you walk out of here looking like this.” 

“The rest of Hell is going to have my head if I don’t fix this! Do you have any idea how much of a shitstorm this could cause?”

“Vel can handle it.”

“It’s not just that,” Vox huffs irritably. His migraine has increased tenfold, but he’s too worked up to care. “The paperwork, the lost revenue, hell, now I’ll have to draw up new plans for the city-wide generators seeing as how they didn’t fucking work!” 

“They can wait,” Val says firmly, and there’s an undercurrent of… something in his voice. Caution. Hesitancy. As if he were trying to calm a scared animal. 

Vox tenses. “I’m fine, Val.” 

“You look like you’re about five seconds away from seizing back into cyberspace.”

Vox rolls his eyes at that, ignoring the way his vision distorts at the motion. He moves to stand up, arms trembling at his side and readying themselves to push— before an immovable object knocks the breath out of him and sends him sliding back down into the cushions. 

“Lie the fuck back down, Vox.” Valentino has a hand on his chest. His touch feels feather-light, and Vox realizes with a resigned tiredness that he hadn’t even needed an extra limb to keep him in place. Perhaps he is more exhausted than he'd thought.

It is then that Velvette bursts in, eyes wide and arms laden with a box. 

“Oh, thank fuck,” she says, and Vox thinks for a moment she almost looks relieved. “You’re awake.”

“I am.” 

“What the actual shit, Vox?” Aaaand here it comes. Val makes his way to the open bar to concoct a drink and Vox lets out a heavy sigh, his shoulders slumping as he meets Velvette’s glare. “Do you have any idea how this makes us look?”

“Like a fat fuckin’ joke?” Val pipes up with a grin, and Vox wants to kick him.

“What’s the damage?” Vox asks wearily. His eyelids are heavy, and he fights to keep the glitches out of his voice.

“Your stupid tantrum cost us a fuck ton of money, obviously, not to mention questions. There’s at least a dozen gossip blogs yapping about it, and every network across the pentagram wants a statement. Ton of stupid fuckers who want to back out of brand deals, too.”

Vox winces. “That bad?” 

“Obviously.” Velvette rolls her eyes. She moves to place the package in her hands down onto the floor beside the coffee table. “One of the most powerful Overlords, AKA CEO of VoxTek, losing his shit on live television? Bit hard to ‘trust us’ if they know everything can be lost at the drop of a hat.” 

Velvette is right, he knows. He’d built his brand on reliability. To have his facade crumble so easily is downright pitiable. It is nothing short of embarrassing, the way he loses himself the moment Alastor is involved.

“’m sorry,” Vox mumbles tiredly, because he doesn’t know what else to say. 

Velvette’s face loses some of its grit, and she moves to plop down onto the floor by his legs. A scowl colours her features as she pulls out her phone, fingers already moving and expletives spilling from her mouth in angry mutters. Damage control, it seems.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, eyes still fixed on the screen.

“Fine.”

“Liar,” Val accuses, and Vox shoots him a pointed glare. “He’s still glitchy as fuck.”

“Dick.” 

Val sticks out a tongue between a sly grin, gold tooth glinting in the low light. There’s a freshly-made cosmopolitan in one hand and a crude gesture in the other. Velvette snickers from her spot on the floor, and Vox would be lying if he says his mouth didn't twitch at the sight. 

A splitting pain rushes through his head, then, and he jolts at the suddenness, raising a shaky hand to his screen. His fingers brush against the jagged indents that run across its surface before they catch on something soft and felt-like. Vox frowns. Bandages?

“Figured you’d appreciate having some of your sight back,” Val says, taking notice. “You’re welcome.” 

Velvette snorts. “Oh please. As if your clumsy hands could pull that off.” 

“I helped!” Val insists, a hint of indignation in his voice. “I held the bandages! And all the other shit.”

It feels…strangely thoughtful, to know that they had cared enough to patch up his screen when he was so out of it, despite knowing the entire monitor would be replaced as soon as he would wake. A glance at the assortment of supplies on the coffee table tells him it must have been a real bitch trying to jigsaw his face back together. 

“What did I do?” Vox asks, and the other Vees quiet. He still doesn't have a clue how he'd managed to get his system so far beyond the usual level of fucked.

“When we found you, your screen was already sorta shattered,” Val says slowly. “We uh. Weren’t sure how it happened until we brought you back here. At first, we thought you’d just cracked yourself open on the floor. You were seizing left and right and glitching like crazy. Just…completely out of it.”

He swirls his drink around, eyeing it with a suspiciously-thoughtful gaze. “You were saying things. Nothing that made much sense, but then-”

“Your face imploded,” Velvette says simply.

Vox blanches. “What?”

“Satan’s tits, Vel, way to drop it on him,” Valentino mutters. He reaches for his cigar this time, taking a deep breath before exhaling. Sickly sweet clouds float across the room and Velvette swats them away as they near.

“You were taking forever,” she argues, pointing a finger at the moth. She puts her phone on the coffee table beside a roll of electrical tape, turning from her spot on the floor to face Vox. “And you were creeping me out.”

“What?” Vox says again, because there is nothing about this conversation he understands. His head is spinning, round and round like a carousel. “Why don’t we circle back to the part where my face fucking exploded?”

“Imploded,” Vel corrects. “Like. Without any external force damaging it.” What. The fuck. “I take it this is new?” 

“Uh, yeah.” Vox says. “I just…how…?”

Vel chews on her lip, her eyes darting back to Val in silent conversation. “Beats me,” Val says, and alarm bells go off in Vox’s head. He’s lying, or at the very least, sugar-coating it. “You just started mumbling about a bunch of shit and then it sorta just…happened.”

“What did I say?”

“Huh?”

“What was I talking about, before it happened?” Vox grits out impatiently. He is tired. His body is screaming and he needs a nap and he can’t keep playing these games because he feels like he’s going to pass out any minute now. He is tired of not being in control. Of not knowing.

He does not care what the answer is, does not care for the cushiony words to soften the blow— he just needs to know.

“Alastor.” Valentino stares long and hard at him, expression unreadable. “You were talking about Alastor, and then next thing we knew, your screen was in pieces and you’d nearly killed yourself from the inside out. I didn’t even know that was possible, to be honest.”

“Oh.”

It is all he can say in the face of such a revelation.

He’d always known Alastor was his greatest weakness. But to this degree? How could someone be so entangled with his very being that the mere thought of him could short-circuit his entire system? It's humiliating, the very thought absolutely deplorable.

He meets Val’s stare, and the moth recoils.

There’s something more behind Vox’s eyes— behind the anger, the loathing, behind even the barely concealed fear, lies raw hurt. A pain so potent that years of delicately-crafted smiles and posturing cannot hide. Something so deeply rooted within him, ingrained in his code and intertwined with his very essence, it would take tearing him apart bit by bit to ever be rid of it. 

Like an eternal virus, Alastor haunts him in a way Vox is not sure he can ever escape. Deep down, he isn’t sure he wants to. 

For Val, that realization cuts deeper than anything else. Because honestly, how could he ever compete?

“I think you should rest,” Val says at last. His voice is quiet, restrained; he places his empty glass on the table with a soft clink. His limbs are rigid and he looks like he’s barely holding himself back, and Vox reigns in his discontent— he does not want to deal with one of Val’s tantrums now, of all times.

“I will,” Vox starts, then he pushes, just a little. “Just as soon as I square a few things away. The blackouts-”

“They’re just being dramatic,” Velvette says, breaking her silence. “They can deal without power till the morning.”

“But the revenue-”

“Already got my whores scheduled for overtime for the next few months,” Val smirks. He makes his way over to Vox, quiet ire forgotten and replaced by playful words as he claims the empty cushion on his right. “Should be enough to make up for at least a good portion of it, eh, amorcito?”

One of Val’s arms snakes around his waist, gentle against the multitude of fresh burns, and the fight starts to drain out of him. “And the presses?” Vox asks half-heartedly.

“I got it under control for now. Move,” Velvette says, and Vox obliges. She takes his left, arms reaching for the blanket to add herself to the shark-printed pile they’ve become. She sighs, leaning into Vox’s side with a frown. “Just…don’t let it happen again. Or I’ll fucking end you.” 

He wants to thank them. For being there, back then. For being here, now. Instead, all that comes out is a quiet “Okay”, because they aren’t like that. The words remain unspoken and the silence stretches on.

For a moment, the lights stutter and Vox curses. Even the backup generator for the Tower needs upgrading, it seems. Another item on the docket. 

“I’ll fix it,” he promises. 

“Tomorrow,” Val and Vel say in unison. 

“Tomorrow,” Vox agrees. He shuts his anxiety away for now, shoves it into a neatly-wrapped box and kicks it under his metaphorical bed, letting his eyes slip closed voluntarily for the first time today.

Tomorrow, there will be violent outbursts and little compassion. They will be back to their usual hellish selves and today will become nothing more than a hiccup in their blood-stained history. For now, he sinks into the hands that caress the side of his face, careful to avoid the broken glass and bandages that litter his screen.

He drifts off to soft touches and quiet breaths.

-V-

The next time Vox wakes, he is alone on the couch. 

The warmth is gone from his sides, but he finds an extra blanket has been carefully placed over the first. The supplies on the coffee table have been replaced with a mug of freshly-brewed coffee. His eyes catch on the box on the floor, recognizing the sleek packaging as one of his own.

He makes a mental note to thank Velvette for the new screen. 

He takes a deep breath and slips off the couch, feet pressing into the soft carpet, already cataloguing a backup of yesterday's memories under Anomalies and Days to Revisit. He pauses, before copying and pasting all deer-related references into a separate folder. A few swipes and an added countdown later, the folder is temporarily locked.

Tomorrow.

For today, Vox clears his mind of all distractions and stifles what remains of the swirling pit of emotions in his gut. Today, he will wear his usual self as if it were his trademark suit- loud and sharp and distracting to everyone but a select few. 

He looks up. Beyond the great big windows the rest of Hell is still dark and shapeless, but inside, vanilla clouds and cinnamon still linger in the air, invisible and sweet.

Chapter Text

At first, it is just an inconvenience. A minor hurdle, if you will. Nothing he can’t handle.

But when a moth flaps its wings, the whispered breath of a mountain halfway across the world becomes an avalanche in little more than the blink of an eye.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Velvette fumes in the middle of the room, her cheeks flushed the same shade as her hair— which, today, is coiffed into a purposefully-messy bun. A pinchful of strands frames her face, curls bouncing angrily as she throws up her hands with an irritated huff.  

Lazing about on the couch, Valentino rolls his eyes. “Okay, scratch that. I just don’t care.” 

“What the fuck, Valentino! Have a fucking opinion!”

“I already told you, they’re all great! You’re amazing as always, darling,” Val preens. He doesn’t spare a single glance at the pages of designs pinned against the corkboard, nor at the multitude of mock-ups on the mannequins further back against the wall. 

Instead he sinks deeper into the cushions, eyes boring holes into the ceiling. He squints at it, pale-faced and utterly captivated, like every little chip and brush stroke contains the secrets of the universe. He looks like a ghost.

A half-naked, passive-aggressive, bitch of a ghost.

“You’re no help at all.” Velvette’s arms cross, her frown deepening. There isn’t even a drink in his hand to warrant being this distracted. Fucking rude. “Usually I can’t get you to shut your trap. Always critiquing the fuck out of me and nitpicking every damn seam like some obsessive freak. Last time I had to hide all the pencils just to keep you from redesigning the entire line! What the fuck’s up with you today?”

“Nothing, Vels.” The answer is instantaneous and hollow, as if he were merely reciting lines from one of his tackier scripts. Val's gaze does not stray from the blankness of the ceiling. “Like I said. You’re amazing, chica. Keep up the good work.” 

Velvette’s nose wrinkles at the stench of his bullshit. “What, did one of your whores cum a little less than usual today? Popped a boner in a scene five seconds too early?”

“Fuck, Vel, why can’t you just take the damn compliment and leave me alone?”

“Why can’t you just be fucking normal and give me some real help here?”

From the bar stool across the room, elbow-deep in paperwork and stewing over cold coffee, Vox twitches. “It’s not rocket science, holy fuck.”

He is tired of the bickering, and he can already see where this is heading; the senseless drivel will only aggravate Vel and fuel a classic Val tantrum, neither of which Vox is willing to deal with today. “Go with the third one, Vel,” he says. “I like the blue.” 

Of course you do— the words go unsaid as Velvette and Valentino both fight the urge to roll their eyes. 

Velvette turns away from the moth and back to the board, glaring at the plethora of designs; if she’s going to stew, might as well be with a better view. “Fine. Whatever.” 

On the couch, Valentino lets out an haughty laugh. “You’re really gonna take fashion advice from him? Mr. Neon-Pinstripes-and-Dorky-Sweater-Vest?”

“I thought you liked- ”

“Well, however bad it is,” Velvette cuts in—and if looks could kill, Val thinks, he’d be an insect six feet under—“At least he’s got an opinion, you twat.”

“Hey-! ”

“If you’re gonna be such a bitch about it then fine!” Valentino practically catapults himself off the couch, teeth bared and all four of his upper appendages curled into tight fists. His eyes are red-hot coals, glowering at the board with pure, unadulterated venom.

The intensity is enough to quiet even Vox, whose complaints cut off with an abrupt halt. 

There is an uncomfortable silence, nearly half a minute of bated breath and raised eyebrows and the faint whirring of electricity in the air, before Val says, without a hint of dishonesty—

“The pink one in the lower left corner’s not half bad. It’s the least blob-like.”

Silence, again.

Velvette’s eyes dart back and forth between Valentino and the board, which is filled to the brim with the slimmest, sluttiest, shortest-cut dresses she’s ever put together in a single collection. Her aggravation grows with every glance. Blob-like, her ass.

It’s insulting on every level. She scowls, the words practically burning in her throat. “Now you’re just taking the piss out of me.” 

A series of white-hot emotions flash across his features. Surprise. Anger. Realization. Anger again.

Then Valentino lets out a dark, bitter laugh, and for a moment, Velvette is taken aback. “You know what?” he says. “I don’t need this.” 

With a swish of his wings and the clatter of heels against hardwood flooring, Valentino storms out of the room.

He slams the door on his way out, the bottles by the bar vibrating with a series of resounding clinks that has Vox frantically grabbing his mug to prevent it from shattering onto the ground. He grumbles under his breath as a few drops of coffee spill out onto the bartop, nearly staining some of the paperwork.

“What’s his deal?” Vox demands more than asks. He does little to disguise the concern in his voice.

“No fucking clue. Not my whore, not my problem.” A momentary feeling of unease creeps into her veins, and Velvette shakes it off. Val acting like an insufferable child is nothing out of the ordinary, after all.

He will be over it by tomorrow. She only hopes he’ll be more cooperative the next time she seeks out his help. Speaking of- 

She gives the corkboard a quick once-over before yanking off a fistful of sheets, including Vox’s earlier suggestion, crumpling them up into one giant paper ball and chucking it into the wastebasket with a perfectly-aimed throw. Vox lets out an offended squawk.

“Nice try, but your advice is shit,” Vel says. “Blue is out. Red's all the vogue now.”

With a resigned sigh, Vox swivels back around on the stool to face the mountain of contracts and brand deals sitting atop the bar. “Of course it is,” he mutters. A bang rings out through the walls—leaving him with a harsh pen mark cutting across a particularly egregious offer from a tech company—as another door is slammed in the penthouse. Their bedroom, Vox guesses.

Then comes the harsh thump of flesh against furniture, the tell-tale sound of shattered glass as whatever victim of Val’s blind rage (the rather nice vase on his dresser, Vox will soon discover) crashes against the floor, accompanied by a string of muffled curses in Spanish.

Velvette shoots him a tight-lipped grimace, mentally stifling the alarm bells going off in her head. “Good luck dealing with that later tonight.”

-V-

There is no point. 

In a fit of thoughtless anger, Valentino slams his phone to the ground. The unmistakable crack of a shattered screen reverberates through the studio, shards like diamonds pouring out from the crevice in the device. Miraculously, the rest of the phone is undamaged.

That’s VoxTek for you. 

“Mr. Valentino?” Landis—or is it Lucas? Travis?— eyes him wearily, clutching his clipboard like a lifeline. The stupid bastard. The hell does he even do around here?

“Get me a margarita, stat. On the rocks,” Valentino grits out. Colours pulse and bloom like flowers, morphing into a pounding migraine that leaves him wanting to claw his eyes out. The sticky fumes of the studio he is usually so fond of send a wave of nausea coursing through him.

He shuts his eyes. “Make it two. And put in an order for a new phone on your way back.” Fuck a damn screen replacement. The whole thing is worthless now.

A stupid, broken, waste of space that can’t even do its job right.

When he is met with silence, Val peels his eyes open to glare at Troy—Trevor? No, definitely Travis—who watches him with a… bizarre expression. His mouth hangs open, and he blinks like a geriatric piece of shit; he looks to the world like a man torn between making a surprisingly astute interjection and shutting the fuck up.

“Well? The fuck you waiting around for, a fucking blowjob? Go before I demote you to cum cleaner for tomorrow’s shoot.” Valentino’s lips curl into a sneer, a faint trickle of red dripping from the corner of his mouth. His glare is deadly. “I’ll make you do it with your tongue.” 

Travis shuts his jaw with a hasty snap. He nearly trips on his own two feet, throwing out a panicked Yes, Mr. Valentino! as he flings the door open and darts out into the hall.

Shutting the fuck up it is, then. Thank Satan.

Valentino rolls his eyes, lighting a cigarette as he collapses into his chair. On set, the make-up artists are nearly done with touch-ups. Various crew members flit around in a mad dash to finalize the scene; props, lights, and cameras alike are adjusted and readjusted, as per his orders, before he finally deems the set barely passable.

Meaning, of course, that the whole thing will be reshot entirely from scratch within the week. Such is the struggle of working for a volatile Overlord with perfectionistic tendencies. Nothing is ever good enough.

“Action, bitches!”

The chaos of a porn set would overwhelm any sane person; it is not a setting even most demonkind are regularly accustomed to. For Valentino, it is a routine— one which he slips into as easily as he picks up his daily cigarette, living and breathing in the process, fumes and all. 

Oh, he’s one of the horniest motherfuckers around, undeniably. He's the biggest pimp in Hell, for fuck's sake.

But once he steps foot onto the bustling set, settling in his custom-made chair beside whatever poor fool he's appointed as director, he enters a different mindscape. Valentino watches the scene not with the eyes of a sex-obsessed pimp, but with the eyes of a critic. 

This is his work, after all. 

The outfits have to slay, the camerawork should be punchy, the lighting seductive, the lines cheesy and wild. The sets have to stand out but seem semi-realistic—for the fan relatability, of course— otherwise, what is the point? People watched to live vicariously through the actors, to become either the fucker or the fuckee, to experience shit that may otherwise never happen in their boring-ass afterlives.

Just because they're dead, doesn’t mean they can’t live a little. 

Today, Valentino sees almost none of it. Bits and pieces of the scene trickle through, and his hearing works well enough to scrutinize line delivery— but his head throbs with the bright colours and harsh lighting, and he finds himself getting pulled out of whatever little he has managed to catch. 

He watches the scene with dulled eyes that glaze over from the sheer incomprehensibility of it all. He cannot see a thing, cannot distinguish object from person unless movement catches his eye, or a voice pops out from the blurry shape and scares him half to death. 

Fuck this. His voice carries the words without any real thought, rising above the familiar yet equally foreign chaos of the set. “Alright everyone, that’s a wrap for today.”

Because honestly-

“Sir?”

“What? We just started-”

“Didn’t you say we had to finish these shoots by the end of the week?”

What is the point?

The voices keep on coming, like pathetic flies buzzing around him in incessant circles. Valentino’s temper flares. “Everybody out! ” If he cannot do his job, if he cannot present anything other than a perfect product, then why bother? Broken screens and blind visionaries have no place in this or any other world.

His voice drops to a growl aimed at the remaining sinners in the room. “Did you not hear me? We’re fucking done here.”

Crew members and actors alike scramble to gather their belongings. Most mumble a squeaked apology and duck their heads on the way out, while the rest run for their lives towards the exit, a mess of uncoordinated limbs and panicked faces. 

Val doesn’t even wait for the room to empty before he shuts his eyes again, collapsing into the cushion of a loveseat with a muffled curse. One hand rubs circles into his temple as another dangles down onto the floor. He tries not to think of the VoxTek camera that lingers in the corner of the room, hoping that its owner has not chosen this moment to take a peek into the studio. How embarrassing would that be.

He could always blame it on a shitty hang-over, Val thinks, as the long-awaited margaritas finally arrive.

He takes both glasses, berates Travis for his tardiness—Everyone’s left, you're all alone here, that's how long you took, you fucking idiot!— and chugs them down in less than a minute. Just past where he sits, between the edge of the couch and the director’s chair, the glass shards from earlier litter the pink flooring like seashells on a beach. 

-V-

“And then, the deranged lunatic brings me some shitty, watered-down excuse for a drink and expects me—me!—to hork it down like it’s Lucifer’s goddamn bathwater. Who the fuck does he think I am? Some dime a dozen whore he just picked up off la calle? Absolutely the fuck not.”

Another day, another endless stream of complaints. From their competitors to the building janitors, nobody is safe when it comes to Val.

“And then— you should’ve seen me, Voxxy, holy shit. I tore that fucker apart with my bare hands.” All four of his arms gesticulate wildly, flailing in time with the beat of his words like a drum. “He didn’t even have time to scream! I looked so hot doing it, too.” Valentino aims a seductive grin at Vox, who is sitting quietly on the floor in front of the couch. 

From his spot across the room—by the bar, pacing and shouting in passionate fits and bursts—the only part of Vox that he can make out is his screen, the entirety of which protrudes above the coffee table. He thinks Vox might be leaning into his palms, like he always does, both elbows laying flat on the surface, a tired half-smile on his face as he listens with little choice in the matter— 

But Valentino doesn’t really know. Not for sure. Even from this distance, everything looks blurry, contours are nonexistent, and objects have blended into indistinguishable masses of colour. 

So, well. He only really has his imagination to go off of, when it comes to the unimportant details.

If there’s one thing he prides himself on, it’s his ability to paint a picture with only the barest of details. He is an artist, after all.

When Vox does not humour him with a retort, the room falls back into the eerie quiet that reigned even before Valentino had begun his tirade.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Val says. “Not even worth sparing the thought. My brain space is valuable, after all.”

He clears his throat, the sound rough like sandpaper against the dead air that threatens to stifle him. Everything lately feels too hot, too confusing, too much. “Enough about me. How was your day? Catch anything interesting in that voyeuristic lab of yours?”

Nothing, again. The fucking audacity—

“Vox?”

The silence dips into awkward territory. Val finds his patience waning and his mood souring, his antenna flicking back against his head with an audible twitch. “Really? The fucking silent treatment? Real mature, Vox. The fuck did I do this time?”

Nothing, nothing at all.

Not the slightest sound, nor a glimpse of movement, not even a hint of acknowledgment. Valentino has half a mind to go over there and yank the prick off the floor by his stupid bowtie.

Fuck it. He’s already on his way. 

He stomps his way closer, relying on muscle memory more than sight to avoid any stray pieces of furniture, his voice raising an entire octave– “Vox I swear to fuck, I’m gonna–”

“Val?” 

He lets out an unearthly shriek.

Valentino whirls around on his heels, limbs tangling and nearly tripping in the process, because Vox’s voice had come not from in front, but from behind him. His features contort in a strange combination of rage and confusion as he lays eyes on Vox for the second time. 

“How did you do that?” he demands. 

“What?” Vox is standing in the room’s entryway with an equally-bewildered look, eyes wide and hands up in mock surrender.

As if he isn’t the one who’d just fucking teleported right in front of his eyes.

“You… you were just there, by the couch! All broody and pissy- I was looking right at you when you-” Val’s head whips back to the coffee table, his expression growing more and more frantic as he realizes with a sickening jolt that Vox had not teleported at all— even with vision as shitty as his own, Valentino cannot mistake the familiar shape of his head, the rectangular blob of black that is Vox’s monitor, staring back at him from the same spot it had been before.

But, there he is. Still sitting by the floor, yet standing three feet away from him at the same time.

“What the fuck? ” Val breathes, feeling like he’s lost his goddamn mind.

Vox—the one on his left, standing—takes a cautious step towards him. “Val,” he says slowly. “Why are you screaming at my replacement?”

Val stutters, the word catching in his throat. “What?” Replacement?

“You do know that’s just- you know. A television. A regular old screen. An inanimate object.”

It is when Valentino turns back to the coffee table, squinting back and forth between the newly-unboxed monitor that sits atop it and the television-headed demon beside him, that it dawns on him. 

On Vox too, it seems, who is stuck deciding whether he should be offended or amused. The look of pure mortification on Val’s face makes him settle on the latter. “Wait-” 

“No.”

“Wait wait wait, hang on–”

“Drop it!”

“Did you think that was me? ” Vox says, and this time, he can’t keep the slanted grin off his face. 

Valentino’s face turns a wonderful shade of pink. “Shut up! It’s not my fault your stupid head looks like that.” He sends him a glare, abrasive and full of heat. “It’s a miracle no one’s made the mistake sooner.”

“Dick.”

“Television.”

Vox rolls his eyes. “Funny. And here I thought you’d already hit the ceiling of your stupidity." He lets his shoulders drop, crossing his arms in one swift motion as he leans back against the wall. "I didn’t know you were aiming for the fucking moon.”

“The fuck do you need a replacement for, anyways? There isn’t even a scratch on you,” Val says, ignoring the jab. He is almost grateful Vox has put the blame on his—nonexistent, thank you very much—idiocy. Valentino doesn’t know if he could lie convincingly if he were to question him on the spot. "You're not planning to fuck yourself up, are you?" 

“What? No. Just thought I’d have a back-up on hand,” Vox says. “It’ll probably just end up filling closet space, though. I’ve always got the usual supplier on hand, but if for some reason that's out of the question, then I'll have something at least." He shrugs. "You never know, after all.”

“Yeah, you never know when it’ll give someone a fucking heart attack.” Val takes the last few steps over to the coffee table, leaning down to get a better look and— oh yeah, definitely just a body-less monitor. How the hell he didn’t pick up on it earlier, well. It's certainly a concern.

One that can wait. “It’s like you’ve been decapitated,” he muses, and Vox pulls a face at that. “Put it on a platter and serve it to someone you hate. Vel could film the whole thing, it’ll be funny.”

“Hilarious. Speaking of, it’s Vel’s turn for dinner tonight. And you know how she gets if either one of us is late.” 

Val shudders. He knows, all right. Vox’s expression tells the same story. He turns to head toward the dining room, but not before flashing Val a tight-lipped smile. “So get your ass to the table before she goes on a stabbing spree with the kitchenware.”

Valentino obliges without argument. Vox has his moments, but pissing off Velvette is a different beast entirely. 

Before he knows it, the three of them are sitting at the dining table in record time, making casual conversation over tonight’s menu— sautéed vegetables with salmon and rice, with a delectable apple pie for dessert. For Valentino, the entire table is a flurry of fuzzy shades he can only tell apart by scent. 

“You’ve really outdone yourself, Vel,” Vox compliments over a mouthful of fish. They’ve all long since stopped questioning the mechanics of his body, including his ability to shovel absurd amounts of food into the seemingly-endless void in his screen. It is best not to dwell on those sorts of things. “How’s the show coming along?”

“Fine, I suppose.” Velvette shrugs. She twiddles with the fork in her hand, using it to swirl the mess of food on her plate in random spirals. Weird. Val doesn’t think she looks any more stressed than usual. “Few of the models pissed me off, so I had to scramble for replacements, and I’m still working out a few kinks with some of the looks. But we should be alright to make the date.” 

“Great.” Vox pauses to reach for one of the sleek blue-black bottles on the table, pouring himself another glass of wine. In meetings and in their own quarters during business hours, it was not uncommon to delegate even the menial task of drink pouring to a Fizz Bot or a dispensable assistant.

But after hours, in the comfort of their own home and amongst such hellish company— it feels like a domestic privilege. 

Vox’s fingers curl around the stem of his glass, claws rapping mindlessly—almost nervously, Valentino notes—against the surface with soft patters, like hail battering down against the window. The beginnings of a storm. “Val?” he asks.

“Hmm?”

“How about you? How is…everything? Haven’t heard much on your end of things lately.”

“Everything's fine.”

“You’re sure?”

Val blinks. What? No. “Yes,” he says.

The word drags out of his mouth like molasses. Velvette is eyeing him with something akin to suspicion, having fallen silent at the exchange. Vox’s grip tightens around the glass, and the air feels thick with something indescribable. Tension, maybe.

Valentino is on edge; his singular antenna lies flat against the back of his skull, coated in sticky sweat.

It feels like a set-up. It’s as if he has unwittingly tangled himself up in a perfectly-laid trap of web— sticky and taut, the prelude to a gruesome death. He stares back at the eyes of the spiders across the table, unflinching. 

“I’m sure,” he says, tone even. Even he doesn’t believe it.

“Okay. But you know, if there’s anything going on, anything at all-” 

“You better fucking tell us,” Velvette cuts in, her nails digging into the tablecloth. “Before you decide to throw another world-ending tantrum and fuck shit up for the rest of us.”

She’s abandoned the fork altogether; her carefully prepared meal sits in front of her, looking like a jumble of mush that’s just been shaken out of a blender. The very opposite of aesthetically pleasing. “I mean it. You’re not a one-man show, Valentino. Your fucking problems are our fucking problems, one way or another.”

Valentino ignores her in favour of glaring daggers at his plate. Bleary outlines of shapes he struggles to decipher in his mind fill up the table. He could tell them.

Maybe they would understand. Maybe it wouldn’t change a thing.

Then his gaze lifts to meet a quartet of deep red eyes, staring back. Expectant. He doesn’t see in them the concerned looks of colleagues, nor the twinge of care that only comes from those he deems friends—

No, those eyes reflect only himself. His weakness. 

Valentino decides right then and there he’d rather die than have their pity.

“Pass the wine,” he mutters firmly. 

“Val-”

“Pass. The. Wine.” Each word spews from his lips like the venom that drips down from the corner of his mouth, staining the pale tablecloth with crimson droplets. At his sides, his fists are clenched. They shake silently underneath the table.

“Get it yourself.” Vox leans back into his chair, arms crossed. Velvette, meanwhile, looks ready to pounce across the table and strangle him blue.

Fine, then. Challenge accepted.

Val bares his teeth and lets out a quiet chuckle as he moves to stand, ignoring the flinch-worthy scrape of chair legs against hardwood to reach for the bottle of wine beside the– oh. Oh.  

There is a problem. 

Two bottles of equal size and colour taunt him from the middle of the table. Shit.

When the fuck did that second one get there? 

He knows without even checking that both are emblazoned with the VoxTek logo— an electric blue V with a series of red lines spanning the circumference of the bottles. Vox’s only request for their home-cooked dinners had been for “at least let the alcohol be of the highest calibre”— to mask the taste of their shitty food, he’d argued.

Ironic, considering he is the worst cook between the three of them.

Trouble is, every bottle of theirs looks damn near the same. The contents of the glass are hidden, tinted behind a dark blackish-blue reminiscent of Vox’s newest screen model. While Val only ever drank the sweet stuff, Vox preferred the bitterness of dry wine. Velvette alternated between the two depending on her mood. 

Valentino is still half-standing, hovering over the table. He can feel the intensity of their stares, watching his every move.

Fucking hell. If he picks the wrong bottle, he’s screwed. If only he could bring it just a little closer to his face…or an inch away from his eyes. Then he could read the label just fine—

But that would expose him like nothing else. 

For a brief moment, he considers playing dumb and pretending he’s forgotten how to read. Playing it off as another lapse in judgement. Val does not think either of them would buy it. 

He begins to doubt Vox had bought it earlier.

To hell with it. The longer he stands there, bent over the table like a gaping fish waiting to get fucked from behind, the worse it looks. He takes a chance and snatches the bottle on the left, plasters the world’s fakest smile on, and pours.

As he brings the glass to his lips, he catches the moment the tension leaves Vox’s brows. The drink hits his tongue and ah— yes, fuck yes! He had chosen correctly. Valentino gulps down the rebranded Moscato like it’s his first time tasting alcohol since dying.

Suck on a cock, Vox and Vel.

Velvette clears her throat, and the low thrum of conversation picks up again, as if the last few minutes of what Val would call a literal silent war hadn’t just happened over the dinner table.

The other Vees still seem wary, but they mask it well underneath the light topics they choose to entertain for the rest of the evening. 

Velvette spills the latest gossip about a string of heated Veets that have been going around online— Val listens intently, joining in with his own take on the drama. Vox drones on with yet another lecture on cybersecurity— Val tunes him out completely, he’s heard this shit so many times he can recite it by heart.

Tension aside, the next fifteen minutes are uneventful. Then, he fucks up.

In the midst of an especially-heated rant about yet another one of his employees, one of Valentino’s flailing arms bumps his wine glass. It happens in slow motion. The glass knocks over, hitting the table with a thud before rolling over the edge and onto the floor.

The crash is jolting.

“I’ll get the broom,” Vox says quickly. Valentino isn’t listening.

He’d misjudged the proximity of the glass—no, hell, he didn’t even see the fucking thing—and it stares back at him from the ground now, an explosion of shards that sparkles in the low light. Laughing at him. One of his hands has a vice grip on his fork. 

It doesn’t matter that the damn thing had been empty. That it had been easier to overlook without colour swimming in it to make itself known. It doesn’t matter that anyone could’ve made the honest mistake of being just a little too distracted, just a little too clumsy.

What matters is that it had been him.

Valentino drops the fork with a clatter and a scowl. There is a loud screeching of the chair as he rises, tall and looming over the other two Vees. Fuck this. 

“The food is shit,” he spits out— as if the statement should perfectly rationalize the off-kilter behaviour he’s been displaying all evening. 

Val doesn’t wait for a response, turning on his heels to practically march towards his room with the vigour of an elephant. He used to call it tactfully retreating to avoid another flare of emotion. Now he calls it running away.

As he leaves, Vox and Velvette exchange a look across the table. They don’t miss the way his gaze avoids theirs. 

-V-

“You’ve been distracted lately. It’s not a good look, Val.” 

His hands are clasped together behind his back, cyan-tipped claws digging into his arms and leaving behind small holes in the sleeves of his jacket. Vox has been lenient, these past few weeks. 

He’s overlooked it—the increasingly infuriating attitude, the studio sessions that are getting shorter and far less productive, hell, he's even pardoned the missed deadlines—solely because the moth has done a piss-poor job of hiding the fact that something is wrong.

But enough is enough.

Vox has called a meeting, so to speak. Difficult to call it that when really it’s just him and Val convening in the latter’s studio.

“Pfft. Who cares what those bitches think?” Val spreads three arms across the length of the couch, wide and uncaring, while the fourth has a death-grip on a martini. 

“You should!” Vox says, frustration seeping into his voice. On his best days, Val is manageable. Most days, it is like arguing with a petulant child. “It’s not just us anymore. Everyone’s noticed. Vel’s been stuck doing damage control on all the shitty rumours that have been swirling around.”

“Again. Who cares? I’m just having a bad week, that’s all. Shit happens. Vel will get the whiny bitches under control, like always, and we’ll more than make up for lost time and money next quarter. So you can calm your ass.” Val crosses a leg over the other, his expression the epitome of seduction.

He leans forward just a little, the fabric of his shirt loosening with the movement, giving Vox a front row seat to the show underneath. “Better yet, why don’t we loosen you up, eh, amorcito? Give this meeting a little spice.”

“Or, what if you stopped changing the subject?” 

This makes the third time he’s counted. Behind his back, Vox’s claws dig deeper into his flesh. 

“Look. This isn’t just a bad week, Val, it’s been over a month,” Vox takes a breath, ignoring the way Val’s eyes narrow into slits, and schools his expression into one that screams professional. 

“You’re behind schedule. You’ve been ending shoots earlier, and even when you’re there you’re not even there. You leave most of the decisions to low-level execs, when it should be your fucking job! How do you think it looks, to see one of the Vees so distracted all the time? It makes us—you—look-” Vox stumbles, then, the words catching in his throat.

“Makes me look what?” Valentino growls, the corners of his mouth turning down into a sharp crescent. 

Vox sighs. There really is no getting around it. “Look, all I’m saying is this: either tell us what’s really going on, or get your fucking act together. Because quite frankly, Vel and I are tired of dancing around the issue.”

“There’s nothing going on.”

At that, Vox scowls, sparks radiating off his frame in rivulets. His left eye widens and fills with its characteristic spiral— not out of intent, but an emotional reflex. “Don’t fucking lie to me!”

“I’m not lying!”

“Satan, Val, you’re so fucking disconnected! You don’t have a goddamn clue what’s going on in that studio of yours.” Vox’s glare is unwavering, hardened with steel in the face of Val’s uncaring scowl.

Holy fuck, it’s like he doesn’t even care.

“Have you even noticed that a third of your employees have been short-changing you? You know those whores will slip anything by you if you don’t even count the bills, what the fuck are you doing? Are you trying to make us look incompetent?”

“I did count,” Valentino hisses, low and unsettling. 

“Clearly not.” Vox is fuming now, his screen brightened to the max as his fists move to clench by his side. He is done with this little charade. Done with pretending they can’t see through his paper-thin excuses.

Done with being nice and delicate with his words. 

“We’re not fucking stupid. You’re hiding something and even the blind man across the street can see it,” Vox says, and Val flinches at the choice of words. “And if you’re not gonna let us help you, then fine. Deal with it yourself. But then fucking deal with it. If your whores know they can pull shit like this, they’re not going to take you seriously. They’re going to walk all over you, think you’re pathetic and weak–” 

Vox has no time to react before a glass comes hurtling through the air and smashing into his screen, martini and all. 

Weak. Weakweakweak-

Vox crumples to the ground, one hand cradling the mess of broken glass that was once his right eye. His gasp comes out with a glitch. “Fzzx-king hell-”

Pathetic and weak. Useless, like discarded trash. A good-for-nothing whore fresh off the streets.

If you didn’t bring in the money you do, you’d be long gone.

You’d be nothing without me.

Another string of expletives brings Valentino back to the moment, the haze of a past long-forgotten slipping off his shoulders like a coat. He struggles to take in the sight of his partner, who is glitching in waves and hunched over in pain on the ground.

That’s not- that’s not right. 

“Vox?” Val takes a few steps closer, wavering and uncertain, before he’s hovering right next to the lump of blue and black on the floor. His voice sounds foreign to his ears. Pitchy and unrefined.

“What thh-he hell w-was that for?” 

He didn’t- he couldn’t have, Valentino thinks deliriously. Then his eyes catch on the broken glass, sparkling on the linoleum like crushed ice, and with a sickening jolt he realizes he did. 

“I’m-fuck," he says, dazed and completely fucking lost. "I didn’t think I’d hit you.” 

Vox’s glare is biting. “You threw it right at me, you prick!”

“I was aiming for the wall!” Valentino's voice pitches up an octave, and there is something panicked, almost hysterical in it. Like he’s trying to convince himself more than anyone else. “I swear I was, I didn’t-I just couldn’t see, I-”

Val cuts himself off with an abrupt stop, arms flittering about like a windmill before one finally settles on Vox’s shoulder. He recoils with a growl. 

“Don’t fucking touch me.” Bits of glass clink to the ground as his body shifts, features twisted into a scowl. 

Valentino bites back a wince. “Vox. It was an accident, okay? I fucked up.”

The flying projectiles is nothing new, nor is it the worst he’s ever done, or Vox, for that matter— but it’s one of the only times he’s managed to cause damage without even the smallest hint of intent. 

His hands, his aim, his panic— they all betray him, deceive him like his sight and strip him of any semblance of control. Staring down at the mangled pile of shards, Val cannot distinguish the ruined martini glass from the bits of Vox’s face.  

“Yeah, well, that seems to be a recurring trend with you lately.”

Val grits his teeth. “I already told you. I’ve got it under control.” The words drip from his lips like sugar-coated lies, sweet and mercilessly deceiving. He doesn’t believe any of it, but what else can he say? 

Vox fixes him with a look that pierces right through him. “Do you?” 

No, he wants to scream. Of course not. Help me.

See me.

Cold rain, beating down on his bruised face like rocks, back sinking against the wall of an empty alley. Nothing more than the discarded trash beside the dumpster.

Don’t leave me.

But Valentino swallows down the bile, the dizzying blurs of half-recognizable shapes and colours that burn holes in his brain, the endless waves of vertigo and migraines accompanying it, and gives a weak nod in response. 

-V-

He does not, in fact, have it under control. 

“Vel, on your left!” 

From across the room, Velvette pivots sharply, hair whipping against her face as she aims a giant sewing needle at the axe-wielding demon that comes hurtling towards her. “Eat shit, bitch!” The resounding gurgle of a throat spurting like a faucet follows.

“Where the fuck did all these freaks come from?” Valentino shouts. Somehow, there is a horde of mismatched demons wielding fucking angelic weapons in their conference room. 

He hadn’t bothered to check the details of whatever boring ass meeting they’d had planned for the next hour, but who knows— maybe he missed the memo.

Somewhere to his left, Vox ducks to avoid another blow, zapping his opponent in the gut with a string of blue light before the—chicken? rooster? they're red and from this distance, Val can just barely make out feathers—keels over with a shriek.

“I have no idea,” Vox says. “But this is a fucking hit if I ever saw one.” He gives the convulsing body a kick for good measure. “This meeting wasn’t even in the books, how the hell did they know where to find us?”

Val spews venom into the eyes of an incoming demon, shooting two quick rounds into her chest before she can recover. Even as her body hits the ground, he has no fucking clue what she’s supposed to be. Everything’s a blurry mess of sporadic colour, contorting and warping with the swift actions of battle.

It’s true, he thinks. Vox is always so damn paranoid about company secrets being leaked, he’s got a whole fucking set-up just for their Vee meetings— a constant stream of random locations on rotation, password-protected doors that change all the time, and hell, he makes sure they don’t even leave a paper trail.

The only proof of these meetings resides in their own phones, which are always closely guarded on their person. 

It’s overkill, if you ask him, and fucking exhausting just to keep up with it all. Valentino would much rather stay in the same boring, corporate room in Vee Tower than have to trudge through the city to hang out in an abandoned warehouse like a trio of crackheads, all for the sake of safety.

Fuck that.

Clearly, it’s turned out to only be a detriment to themselves; today’s exotic location is a desolate building none of them even know the layout of, and to make matters worse, it’s almost entirely devoid of electronics, leaving Vox’s powers limited. 

The surprise of the attack didn’t help things, either; the three of them are still scrambling, trying to find their footing in the unexpected fight. Vel had nearly lost a pigtail when they’d first walked in.

None of the demons here are particularly powerful, but the sheer number of them and the gravity behind the weapons they wield is a little concerning, to be honest.

Val shoots another sinner, this one coming dangerously close to landing a hit. Fucking- how many of these fuckers are there? 

Maybe with careful observation, someone could theoretically get lucky enough to determine where and when they would next meet. But then–

“The real question is, how the fuck did they get in? ” Valentino doesn’t understand how they could have snuck in without at least the password, for fuck’s sake. 

Vox sends him a grimace over his own fight. “Insider knowledge, I guess. I mean, it really doesn’t make any sense at all. The three of us are the only ones with access, and when I did a quick scan of the system, I couldn’t find any semblance of a breach in security.” He swerves to avoid an angelic knife to the face. “Even if they somehow managed to use one of their own devices to hack into our system, I would see it.”

The words register, and Val’s stomach plummets. His fingers turn cold. “Mierda, my phone.”

“What?”

“I dropped my phone a few weeks ago,” he says. “Er- well. Threw it. Anyway, it broke.”

Vox is baffled. “Then what the hell have you been messaging us on?”  

“Well, I ordered a new one like always, but I-”

“You didn’t get rid of the old one,” Vox realizes with a jolt. His eyes widen, growing comically large. “Unbelievable.” 

He stares at Val with an incredulous look, as if he cannot comprehend the sheer amount of stupidity in his words. “Are you dense? You left an open line of communication to us, a whole fucking archive of Vee meetings, just…lying on the floor of your whorehouse? And you didn’t even think to mention it?”

“Fuck, I forgot, okay!” Honestly? Valentino hadn’t even thought the phone would still be usable; the entire screen had been smashed to pieces. Broken, crackling beneath his shoes-

“How the fuck did you forget?" Vox says, unable to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "It’s the one thing I’ve tried to—in vain, evidently—drill into your thick skull time and time again! Cyber-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, cybersecurity my ass.” A—bull? ram?—demon comes charging at him, and Valentino throws him back into a pile of his buddies. He turns to Vox, bringing all four of his hands up to his face to mimic a screen. “‘Don’t keep sensitive information in your fucking notes app, Val!’ ‘Put a password on your phone, Val!’ ‘Don’t make it ‘password’, Val!’ Get off my dick, Vox! ”

“Oh Lucifer.” Vox shuts his eyes, running a hand down his face. “Please tell me you don’t still keep the access codes in your notes.”

“You know my memory is shit!”

“Boys!” Velvette snaps at them from across the room as she chokes out a greyish blob of a sinner. He gags soundlessly, lying in her grasp like a limp doll. “Am I the only one actively trying to get us out of this damn mess? Put your cat fight on hold for a moment before we all fucking die! ”

With a scowl, Vox turns to rejoin the fray. Thick electrical cables grow out of his back, spilling out onto the floor; Velvette is in a similar state, mid-way through a demonic transformation with her sharp claws and set of fangs, coils of thread gathering by her fingertips. 

Ugh, fine. Show-offs. 

Valentino’s wings unfurl, spreading open like a flower in full bloom, beautiful and vivid and wonderfully flamboyant, yet equally dangerous. He picks a target—a stupid-looking green thing in the corner, what is he, a literal fucking snot demon?—claws drawn by his side, venom oozing from every pore in his body, and readies his limbs to make the short flight to take them down. And then–

Something hard and heavy smacks him in the back of his head, throwing off his balance and bringing him stumbling onto his hands and knees. 

“Val!” Over the bouts of ringing, he barely catches Velvette’s shout, high and frantic with something strange. 

He didn't think he could get much blinder, but the spotty whites and blacks in his vision prove otherwise. Fuck, that smarts. Valentino brings his chin up, ignoring the way everything flickers in and out of sight, eyes darting uselessly to assess the threat.

A greenish-blue demon walks towards him. There’s a low, ear-grating sound as something drags against the concrete floor, metallic and heavy. He cannot make out the object, but the golden glow is recognizable even in blurry blob form— an angelic weapon, without a doubt. Probably a blade of some sort, if his ears are to be trusted.

Valentino doesn’t have the time to think, nor the proper sight to assess what the fuck is even going on. All he knows is that somehow, because of his stupid, pathetic, body, he’d been caught off guard, completely missing any and all signs that he'd been targeted. 

The demon steps closer, so close he can see himself in the sleek shine of the holy blade. Pathetic, he thinks again. The red of his eyes stares back at him, practically glowing in the reflection. Stupid, useless, broken-

The demon raises the sword, poised to strike, and Valentino...Valentino fights back. There would be nothing more pitiful than dying on his hands and knees like some submissive whore, at the hands of some blue-green bitch he can't even see. He would be loathe to give anyone else that power again.

Unfortunately for Valentino, luck is not on his side.

The moth lets out a growl, clawed hands reaching out to swipe blindly at his opponent, before— mierda, the thing turns damn near invisible. They’re a chameleon, he realizes far too late, as the sinner thrusts out a blade with reflexes he can’t keep up with.

He braces himself for the pain, for the impact of sharp metal against soft, purple flesh— but it does not come.

A blurry glimpse of magenta and black rushes out of nowhere, colliding against his attacker with an enraged yell, leaving him breathless on the ground. Loud curses and shouts intermingle with the ringing in his head. 

“Valentino!”

Oh- it's Velvette.

She is fighting off the chameleon, her movements frantic and unrefined, their scuffle a smear of browns and reds and greenish-blues. His head still spins but Valentino ignores it, ignores the shaking in his limbs and the adrenaline coursing through him that gives him a high wilder than any drug, and with a quick squeeze of his eyes he pushes himself to stand.

He nearly falls straight back down. Fucking hell, he nearly screams. His body can't do anything right. He is nothing but a sack of meat and gangly limbs, a looming target on the battlefield and a ball and chain to his allies. He opens his eyes and chokes down the accompanying wave of nausea.

Velvette's long-killed the chameleon; her current opponents consist of a trio of unrecognizable demons, and somewhere still to his side, Valentino catches the electric bursts from Vox's own fight. And Valentino- Valentino can't-

He can't even help. He can barely make out what's going on, let alone aim properly in a fight. He's completely fucked. Something hot and sticky coils in his stomach, an angry thing that snakes its way up his throat and clogs his airways. 

And then, far too late, his antenna flicks up at the sudden thud of footsteps, heavy and rapidly approaching, and Valentino whirls around in a futile attempt to locate the source. A scream tears itself from Velvette's throat.

“Watch out!”

Apparently, Valentino thinks, there was a sinner in cahoots with the chameleon. Probably the very same who'd knocked him in the head earlier, some other mess of shape he doesn’t care to decipher, nor does he have the time to, as the pointed end of a blade rushes toward him at a terrifying speed.

He's going to die. He's going to fucking die here, in a random warehouse, he's going to die all over again, in some back-alley, washed-up and forgotten-

In the blink of an eye, someone pushes his barely-standing body out of harm's way, leaving him tripping and stumbling over his legs like a newborn fawn. The wind knocks out of him, hard and rough against his throat.

As he struggles to stay upright, Valentino catches the sharp intake of breath—Vox, he realizes with a sickening jolt, that’s Vox—and there’s the sound of something squelching, deep and wet and utterly gut-wrenching. He doesn’t even want to look.

The familiar sound of an electrical hum starts up, cutting off a sinner's shriek before there's a thump of a body falling to the ground like dead weight. Burnt flesh lingers in the air. Whatever indescribable demon had tried to assassinate Val is evidently lying on the floor in a heap of charred remains, but there is little room to celebrate.

There are slow, jilted steps as Vox makes his way towards Valentino, who finally looks up.

Blinking blearily, he can make out the glow of Vox’s screen, dimmer than usual but still just as eye-catching. The scorched corpse of a demon lies at his feet like a dark shadow. The red of his eyes pales against the blue of his screen, but even with his limited vision, Valentino can tell—

Vox looks exhausted. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, and Val barely has the time to form a sound before Vox’s legs give out and he stumbles to the ground beside him. His form shakes, and with their proximity, Valentino catches the raggedness in his breathing.

He rushes forth, blindly, and falters— his eyes trail down to the other’s shoulder, and that’s when he sees it– 

A splatter of red against the electric and navy blue of Vox's jacket, rapidly blossoming like a flower.

Valentino doesn’t say anything. All he can do is stare, blinking wildly as he hopes, prays, that his shitty eyesight has not chosen this very moment to perceive the reality of the situation. What kind of beautiful irony would that be?

“Shit,” Vox mumbles into the silence, as if he’s only just noticed he is actively bleeding out on the ground. From the way his glitched-out screen fights to stay awake—Valentino catches the amber CRITICAL: Low Power Mode that blinks in and out between gasps—it might very well be the case. 

This is his fault. The crimson that bleeds onto the ground, the pained expression on his face, the glow of gold that traces the wound, taunting him— all of it. It is all because of him.

His stupid pride, the incessant self-pity, his worthlessness— fuck, he couldn’t even hold his own in a damn fight that happened because of him.

Vox’s eyes slip closed for a moment, and Val shakes him awake in a blind panic. “Velvette!” His voice comes out a screech, a needle on a vinyl record that interrupts the middle of the song. He does not recognize it. 

"Val," Vox says, looking up at him. His hand encircles Valentino's wrist, warm and almost comforting. Then the piece of shit cracks a smile. "It's okay. It's just a scratch." 

In that moment, as Vox lies there on the floor, Valentino doesn't see the red on his shoulder, small in comparison to the overwhelming blue of the rest of him.

No— he sees a heap of broken parts and glassy shards, and in his mind he looks just like the phone he’d so carelessly cast aside a mere few weeks ago. Something inside of him breaks at the thought.

Across the room, Velvette is still fending off the remaining assailants, trying her best to simultaneously guard the pair on the ground and avoid meeting the same fate as Vox. 

“Fucking do something!” she yells, her back towards them. It’s a blessing she can’t spare a moment to look at him, Val thinks. He looks like a wreck. His eyes are wide and lost, his upper limbs hovering in the air with an insuppressible shake.

“Put pressure on the wound!” Velvette instructs, and Valentino snaps awake. 

Pressure. Right– he can do that. 

He’s got four hands, for fuck’s sake, they better be good for something. Valentino uses his first set of arms to tear off his silk shirt, buttons be damned.

“Vox? Can you hear me?” 

A brief array of colour takes over his screen, which had gone dark again for a few moments, before Vox’s expression returns, tired but awake. Alive. He nods once.

Val exhales, readying himself to take the plunge, before lowering his shirt over the wound. “This is gonna hurt,” he warns, before he pushes down, hard, trying his best to ignore the pained gasp that escapes Vox. 

Upon closer inspection, Valentino’s heart rate calms down— the wound is deep, but not deep enough to cause death, or even the loss of an arm. But there’ll be scarring for sure, and Val winces at the thought. A permanent reminder of his fuck-up, etched upon Vox’s skin for a hellish eternity.

As if he couldn't feel any worse.

“Motherfu-” Velvette’s voice rings out, before it’s interrupted by the gurgle of a demon as her talons pierce straight through the flesh of his throat. His body drops to the ground with a resolute thump— the last of the stupid fuckers who'd decided that jumping three Overlords was a good idea—signaling the end of the fight. 

There's an eerie quiet in the air, nothing but harsh gasps and the stench of death.

Velvette whips back around, her pigtails dancing in the air, before running through the graveyard of corpses. She slides onto her knees beside Valentino, eyes flitting between the wound and the blood on the ground, before the panic in her eyes disperses, just a little. 

Instinctively, her hand curls around a nasty cut on her forearm. Valentino stares at the blurred edges of the line. It’s a harsh and jagged thing, cutting across the beautiful brown of her skin like a tear on paper. It ruins the look, absolutely tarnishes the doll-like image she’s spent many years perfecting.

Another reminder, staring him right in the eyes, Valentino thinks, as red drips from the wound and splatters the ground below.

“Let’s get him home,” Velvette says, without looking at him. He isn’t the one who’d gotten stabbed, but fuck–

It feels like the knife’s been wedged in there anyway, cold and deep and twisting in his heart.

-V-

Valentino paces for a good hour before Velvette finally emerges from the medical wing. Her right arm is covered in gauze, a stark-white that draws his eyes to it immediately. He rushes to her side, a flurry of arms and legs.

“Vel-?” 

“I’m fine,” she says hastily. Still looking at the damn floor. “It was just a graze. Nothing a little concealer can’t cover up.” Her hand still clutches the injury, nails digging into the bandage with a tightness that looks like it hurts.

Valentino hides his wince.

You did this, he thinks, the sentence looping in his head like a carousel. If he hadn't- hadn't been so careless, so damn caught up in his past-

“And Vox?” Val asks, tone hopeful. He wrings his lower hands together— a nervous habit of his, Velvette knows.

She meets his eyes for the first time since the battle in the conference room. “Well, it wasn’t fatal, obviously,” she says. “Thank Satan it only nicked his shoulder. But it’s angelics, so it’s gonna leave a nasty scar. Apparently it hit some vital circuitry, though, which was what had him crashing in and out.”

Vel sighs, letting her shoulders slump with the motion; it makes her look even smaller, Valentino thinks, so much more fragile— though he’d never say it out loud. “Not much else to do about it but put him on bedrest for a few weeks and let his natural healing kick in. I already fucking know he’s going to fight us kicking and screaming on that.”

Valentino lets out a breath, his whole body decompressing with the motion. Somehow, miraculously, they are all okay. 

Velvette clears her throat, then, her eyes piercing through him with a sudden look. She looks serious, despite the overwhelming relief Val is still bathing in. “Vox wants to call a meeting.”

“Huh?”

“A Vees meeting,” she clarifies. Ah. Well, fuck. 

He already knows the answer, but he asks anyway. “When?”

“Right now,” Velvette says, and her voice firms. "No objections." She grabs his hand and turns on her heel, pulling him along with surprising strength.

Valentino doesn’t fight it; he lets Velvette lead him through the short white and blue corridor, before she brings them to a stop before one of the doors. They push forward to enter, and his eyes scrunch together involuntarily; the room is blinding, fluorescent lighting tinging the pale walls in an even paler shade. The air is thin and sterile.

In the center of it all is Vox, who is sitting back against a pile of pillows on the bed, his screen turned to peer out the singular window on his right.

His head and hands are a startling contrast to everything else in the room. He is stripped down to his white dress shirt, and when he turns to face them as they enter Valentino catches a glimpse of another, different sort of white underneath. Bandages.

"Hey," Velvette says softly, before her voice hardens into something more familiar. More Vees. "We're ready."

"Right." Vox straightens up from his slouch into the pillows. He waits for the two of them to take a seat in the chairs by the end of the bed, before locking eyes with Velvette. She gives him a resolute nod, and with a heavy breath Vox turns to face Valentino. 

“We need to talk about what happened back there.”

Valentino masks his discomfort behind a thin smile. "I don't know what you're talking about." 

"Seriously? You’re gonna play that card?” Vox glares back at him, unimpressed. “Okay. Fine. Then let me make myself more clear— what in the ever-loving fuck made you think that standing around doing nothing during an assassination attempt was a good idea?"

“I got distracted,” Val says smoothly. "That's all."

“In the middle of a fight? What the fuck could have possibly been more distracting than trying not to die?”

It's a thinly-veiled excuse at best, but Valentino is counting on his faux nonchalance to sell the act. He's an irrational and thoughtless man; there's been far too many a case in which he'd jumped headfirst into the worst possible fucking decisions, sometimes without any rhyme or reason that made any sense to anyone but him. 

They know him, it shouldn't come as a surprise. 

Valentino shrugs, his eyes darting to the ceiling in mock indifference. "The fuck do you want from me? I just spaced out for a second, sheeeesh." He leans back into his chair. "In case you didn't notice, some bitch whacked me across the back of the head like a fucking piñata. Of course I was a little out of it."

Vox quiets, for a moment.

Valentino recognizes the glazed look to his eyes; he's deep in thought, the wheels in that bizarre head of his spinning at a million miles per hour, mulling over how to best voice his thoughts without igniting an unnecessary flame. Vox opens his mouth, expression settling into something purposeful, but it is Velvette who speaks next.

“Val, you nearly got yourself killed.”

“No!” The outburst is immediate, and it surprises even Valentino. He takes a breath to calm his emotions, swallowing down the bile that threatens to rise from his gut. They could always read him better than he gave them credit for, but Vel has always had an undeterred brashness to her words that rivalled his own. “I would have been fine.”

“No, you literally would have died.” Velvette’s tone is clipped, and her leg vibrates with an intensity that radiates barely-restrained anger. “If we hadn’t saved your arse you’d be a squashed bug on the floor of a decrepit warehouse right now.”

“I would have been fine,” Valentino repeats. He would have. He just...needed some time to adjust. That's all.

Velvette’s voice is laced with fury. “Does this look fine to you?” Her arm motions back and forth between her bandaged one and Vox, who shifts uncomfortably on the bed. Val feels sick.

He suddenly finds the fabric of his shirt to be the most fascinating thing in the room, staring at it sightlessly as he twists and tugs on the fabric. 

“Valentino.”

“Val-”

“Fucking look at us.” 

He drops his hands in his lap and raises his head. Vel and Vox are looking at him, unyielding. The anger has mostly dissipated, leaving behind twin looks of…confusion? Concern? Some bizarre combination of the two. They know the answer already, surely. They would be idiots not to.

But still, they do not put the words into his mouth. They sit in silence, waiting for him to admit to what everyone in the room already knows; he feels like a child, waiting to confess to stealing from the cookie jar.

It is both cruel and annoyingly kind. 

“Okay," Val says at last. "I'll tell you. But only because you're both being such cunts about it." He fights the urge to bring his hands together, settling them instead on the arm rests of the chair. It feels like there's something crawling underneath his skin, burrowing its way into his flesh. Fuck, there's something so utterly humiliating, so vulnerable, so...

...so naked about the admission.

Valentino lets out a breath, long and drawn-out. "I’ve been having…problems.”

“You’re not having a psychotic break, are you?” Vel asks bluntly, and Valentino is taken aback.

Vox, to his credit, looks horrified. “Vel, what the fuck?”

“What? As if that would be fucking news. Between the three of us, there’s more than enough crazy to go around.” She shrugs, before turning back to Valentino with the most apathetic expression he’s ever seen. “Are you suicidal?”

Val chokes in disbelief. “What? ” 

“Do you want to die? ” She presses, as if it wasn’t clear the first fucking time around. What-

What the fuck?

Where the fuck did she even get that shitty ass idea from? Valentino turns to Vox, hoping to get some backup, or some semblance of an explanation— but he’s shocked to see Vox staring back, expectant, as if he’s waiting for him to clarify the situation.

Holy shit, they both think this?

“What the fuck are you two talking about? I’m not trying to kill myself, you fucking idiots.”

“Are you sure? ” Vox says, at the same time Vel scoffs out a “Coulda fooled us.”

“Why would you– of course I’m sure! What the fuck!”

“I mean,” Vox says, leaning forward just a little on the bed. His expression twists into something uncomfortable. “You basically gave up on doing your job entirely. You've been distant and avoidant. And then you...fuck, Val, you just stood there. You nearly died twice in the same day and it's like you just...let it happen."

Vox's face pulls into an incomprehensible frown. "Both times, you only started fighting back once they landed the first hit on you."

"Holy- that's not-" Valentino shuts his eyes, bringing a hand up to his temple. He knew it looked bad, but this? It's almost funny how far off the mark they are. "Again, I absolutely the fuck do not want to kill myself. Trust me, if I did, I wouldn't go about it in such a shitty way." There'd be way more flair, obviously. And dicks.

“And what the fuck even is this, huh? Some sort of intervention?”

The tension leaves Vox's shoulders, his body practically collapsing into itself with a sigh of relief, but Velvette-

Velvette is undeterred. Her eyes narrow into slits, full of doubt. "Are you losing your mind, then? Because none of your actions have been particularly sane."

Valentino barks out a laugh. His hands curl around the edges of the arm rests, claws piercing through the plastic. "Thanks for the concern, Vels, but I'm perfectly sane."

“You mistook Vox for an actual television, Val.”

That, for some reason, is what finally tips him over the edge. Valentino’s expression darkens, lips twisting into an angry frown as he whips his head to glare at Vox. “You told her?” 

“Val–”

“What? I’m right, aren’t I? Holy shit, this is an intervention.” A laugh bursts out of him, this one bitter and hot. “Have you two been gossiping about me behind my back? Talking about what a growing concern I am? About how I’m ruining your precious Vee Empire?" The words spill out of him, irrational and thoughtless, but then again— that's the kind of man he is.

Pathetic and useless. Of course they'd talked about him; they could see him slipping, losing what little value he provided, rusting over like a cheap necklace. 

"Why am I even surprised?" Valentino turns to Velvette, his lips curled into a sneer. "Talking shit’s the only talent you’ll ever have." His glare settles back on Vox. "And I’m sure you enjoyed those little Sunday tea talks so much. Must have felt oh so reminiscent of similar times with your dearest Alastor–”

“That’s enough!” Velvette’s voice shakes the room, her gaze as hard as rock. Vox’s claws have ripped holes into the sheets from where he’d dug them in to restrain himself. Valentino catches the slightest tremble in his frame.

“That’s enough,” Velvette repeats, softer this time. “You don’t need to get your panties in a twist. We get it. You’re mad that we care about you. You could stand to be a little nicer about it.” Something glimmers in her eyes, small and consuming. Hurt.

“I-" Valentino swallows the lump in his throat. Regret bubbles in his stomach, simmering like a hot soup. "I didn’t mean it.”

"I know." 

Val knows she does, and Vox, too— they've dealt with him for years, this is nothing new, nothing they aren't used to by now, nothing they've shunned him for or run from, and yet-

“I can’t see shit,” Valentino says at last, and damn, he thinks, that could have been more eloquent.

“That’s not news.” Velvette deadpans. “You wear glasses, for fuck’s sake, and we’ve all seen what you’re like without them.”

Valentino takes a breath. “Well. It’s getting worse. And I don’t-” He chokes, tries to think of words that can better hide his pitiful truth, before he concedes, uncaring. Consequences be damned. “I don’t know what to do.”

Vox shoots him a look, then, strange and perplexed. "Val, what...what are you talking about?"

"Everything. The fight. My job. Your screen." Valentino winces. "Both of your injuries. I- I haven't been myself, I haven't been able to live my fucking life, because my vision is deteriorating. Fast."

There is a resounding silence as the weight of his words hits them, the realization dawning on them at last. 

"Valentino," Velvette mumbles. "You could have told us-"

"I know, I know!" Without warning, Val springs from his chair, arms gesticulating wildly. "I know, and I should have, because what the fuck did I expect? I couldn't hide it forever." A small laugh escapes him. It sounds thin and hollow to his ears.

"It's not even- it's not even that bad, is the thing. I know it’s not the end of the world. I know it could be worse. I could have a fucking TV for a head. Or I could be short.” Vox and Vel pull a face, but they don’t say anything. The dam has broken, finally, and it all bursts out of him, an endless stream of word vomit and sickening emotion.

The jig is up. He has nothing left to lose.

“I could be ugly or limbless or- or whatever the fuck! I don't care if I end up blind. I don't care if I have to wear shitty glasses for the rest of eternity, or that everything looks like hideous blobs, I don't care that it's a shitty reminder of exactly how my life was, I don't care that it all feels way too real, way too close to being alive when I-"

Without me, you're nothing.

Valentino falters, for a moment, before the trickle resumes. He doesn't care, not about any of it. "Fuck, I know I'm dead. I've had decades to come to terms with it. But I don’t need this constant reminder. I don’t need to relive this, I don’t need to wake up every morning in fucking Hell and be confronted with my mortality, with weakness, on the fucking daily. But I can’t- I can’t-”

He doesn't care, he doesn't-

His voice drops to a whisper. He's done circles around the room now, and he's starting to feel dizzy. “I can’t escape it. It’s my fucking sight, I can’t look at anything without being reminded of how truly fucking crippling it was."

His mouth feels worn and dry— a rarity, Valentino thinks hysterically. His heaving chest calms into something almost normal. He lets his arms drop flat against his side, turning to meet the gazes of the other two occupants of the room. 

Velvette is stunned into silence, and she chews on her lip with a strange agitation. Her own nervous habit, Valentino remembers. Vox sits quietly on the bed, claws interlacing, before he speaks for the both of them. 

“Val, we’re not going anywhere. And neither are you." There's something firm, almost reassuring in his tone. "You know that, right?”

“I know,” Valentino lies. He doesn't care, he really doesn't, and yet- "Promise?" he says, and there's a hint of desperation in it. Raw. Painful.

What use are you to me now? Can't even see the fucking cock you're sucking.

"Promise," Vox says, and Vel shoots him a grin with surprising warmth.

"Promise," she says. 

There is no dishonesty, no ill-intent behind the words. No deception. No manipulative contracts and loopholes to bite him in the ass or throw him out onto the streets, cold and half-dead and alone.

Just a simple promise to stay, and to be wanted.

Val's features settle, and for a moment, the room is struck with a silence so potent it makes him itch. It's too much, too warm. It tastes like his venom, sickly sweet and nauseating. Only good in small doses for a high. Absolutely lethal in anything more.

Valentino looks at the pristine bed, glancing between it, Vox, and Velvette. With a seductive grin, he wriggles his eyebrows. "Threesome?"

"Anddd that's my cue." Velvette jumps from her chair like lightning, already heading towards the door. "Have fun, you whores. And you-" She turns to fix Val a glare, all signs of anything genuinely kind wiped from her face in a blink. "Don't ever pull shit like this again. Open your mouth next time, you big baby."

Valentino sighs. "Fine," he grumbles, but already, his chest feels lighter.

Velvette waves a hand in the air, back already turned as she pushes through the door. "Toodles, bitches." 

And then there were two.

Vox eyes him, brows furrowed in suspicion. "Are we actually fucking?"

Valentino laughs. "We don't have to, Voxxy. Not now," he says, glancing at the white gauze peeking through Vox's collar. The sight of it feels a little less heavy, now. "But I do owe you an apology."

"Oh yeah, you've got a hell of a lot to make up for," Vox says, but there's a playful glint in his eyes. 

“I’m gonna make it up to you so hard, cariño,” Valentino purrs. “Just you wait.”

A smirk plays on Vox's lips. Inviting. “How about right now?”

That's all it takes. Valentino crosses the room in two steps, settles himself onto the bed, and pushes Vox back against the heap of pillows with a gentle touch. He leans down, close and flushed, to whisper into his ear.

“Anything you want, baby. Just name it.”

“Well, for starters,” Vox says, a shark-toothed smile stretching across his screen. One hand interlocks with Val's, while the other plunges into his robe. “You could let me put a damn password on your phone.”

How seductive, Val sighs, and he collapses face-first into the pillows beside Vox with a pitiful groan, reluctantly letting the other fish the device out of his pocket— but he can’t really complain. Not when Vox spends the next few minutes fiddling with his phone settings to adjust colours and text size, or when Velvette storms back into the room with a pad and paper, ready to make sexy eyewear the newest trend.

No, Valentino thinks. He can’t really complain.