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It wasn’t unusual for there to be days where Val refused to leave his office, short of the Porn Studio catching on fire. And even then, it was… debatable.
It wasn’t like the Studio couldn’t run without him. Hell, some of the whores would argue that it ran better without his constant meddling—films were finished on-schedule, with minimal trauma to all involved; everyone clocked out on-time, and no-one went home crying. Angel would be able to make it back to the hotel well before Charlie’s bothersome curfew, which would make the Princess of Hell happy, which in turn would make Angel happy. Happy that he wouldn’t have to endure another of her well-intentioned lectures—
It seemed like today would be one of those days. They only knew that Val was in his office because his secretary had told them so through clenched teeth, her smile forced and twitching at the corners as she tugged on a handful of her ashy-white hair. His door was shut, as it usually was, and no-one was particularly anxious to receive a bullet between the eyes for poking their head inside. If he was going to come out to abuse them, he would do so in his own time. There was no point in poking the sleeping bear, so to speak.
When Val doesn’t show his face for the rest of the day, most of the whores count their blessings and try to hurry out of the Studio before their luck changes. It was on the way out the door that one of them ran headlong into one of Val’s favorite streetwalkers—a rather well-endowed cat-demon with three thick, fluffy white tails.
Her face was dripping blood so dark it was almost black, her left eye blackened and nearly swollen shut.
“What happened?” The demons crowded her, helping her into a nearby chair when she proved to be too unsteady on her feet to keep standing. The cat-demon shook her head, unable to bring herself to speak quite yet.
“Iffa john did this to ya, we need ta tell Val.” The idea of speaking to Val, of telling him what’d happened to her, only seemed to upset the cat-demon more. “C’mon now, ya know he’ll take care of it for ya…”
She sniffled, “Ya don’t… I-I wasn’t…” She buried her face in her hands, wincing when that caused her to put too much pressure on her still-fresh wounds. Fresh blood seeped between her fingers, staining her luxurious fur a deep, unforgiving crimson. “I was m-mugged!”
“Shh,” Angel wasn’t sure when, but one of the demons had gone to fetch a basin of cool, clean water and a washcloth. They used it to dab at some of the blood that was matting the fur along her jawline—
Through her sobs, she was able to convey a mostly-coherent account of what’d happened to her that night. Apparently, she’d just finished with a client, who’d paid her handsomely for her services. Quite a bit higher than the standard rate that Val expected his streetwalkers to charge. She’d been about to pocket the money when an ox-demon had appeared out of nowhere and demanded that she turn over all of her earnings from that night. She’d refused, more afraid of what Val would do to her if she returned empty-handed—
He’d been… disinclined to take ‘no’ for an answer, and had taken an almost sick delight in crushing her wrist to the point where she could no longer keep hold of the cash without sobbing. Cash in hand, he’d bashed her face against the brick a couple of times for good measure, before abandoning her in the alleyway.
She couldn’t even claim to have gotten a good enough look at him to make complaining to Val worth his while.
All she knew was that she was out several hundred dollars and couldn’t afford to go another night without eating.
“Angel, couldja go an’ get Val?” It seemed like they’d all forgotten that Val was having one of those days—and Angel wasn’t particularly anxious to be used as target practice. “Please?”
He sighed, “Yeah, I… I’ll just… go an’ see if I can coax ‘im outta hidin’.”
He was absolutely going to die.
The rest of the demons were still attempting to convince the poor, frazzled cat-demon that this was the right call. Angel was silently hoping that a hole would open up in the bottom of the elevator, that would send him plummeting down into the comforting darkness of the elevator shaft. Sure, it would hurt like hell when he finally reached the bottom, but he had a gnawing feeling that whatever was waiting for him on the other side of Valentino’s door would hurt that much worse. The soft ping that sounded as the elevator doors closed sounded like a death toll.
…Maybe he was being overdramatic. Maybe Val locked himself away in his office every once in a blue moon because he was tending to all of the administrative work that came with running a business of this size. Or maybe he had overlord business to attend to. There has to be… paperwork, or something… that comes with ruling over such a sizeable chunk of Hell. He’d never seen Valentino do anything of the sort, and he had serious reservations about Valentino being capable of anything other than violence and cruelty—
He’d seen the man’s Voxtagram account, alright? He’d shot his own dog just because he thought it was annoying, after having it for less than a day. Nothing was sacred to Valentino. He’d only care about that poor girl getting mugged insofar as it meant he wouldn’t be receiving his cut of her profits.
So, maybe he was doing something important. Or maybe he was having phone sex with his boyfriend. Angel didn’t rightly know, and he hadn’t cared to find out. But now—the doors to the elevator slid open with another soft ping, and Angel stepped out into, well—
Absolute. Fucking. Chaos.
“There’s something wrong with Mister Valentino.” His secretary babbled, looking completely and utterly at a loss for what to do. Angel eyed the mess of bullet holes in Valentino’s door, shaking his head.
“Just ‘cause the bastard needs ta work on his aim don’t mean anythin’ is wrong, toots. If anythin’, I woulda thought you’d be glad that he—” The secretary shook her head, frantically taking hold of Angel’s hand and leading him over to the door.
“Listen.” She said, keeping her voice low enough that Val won’t be able to hear them through the holes.
Angel was skeptical (and more than ready to get his ass on the road—it wasn’t often that he had an entire evening to spend with Alastor and he fully intended to make the most of it), but complied—if only because he was worried she’d push him straight through the door if he didn’t. Pressing his ear to the mutilated wood, he listened for a moment, then two, until finally, he heard something wet and nasally. It sounded like someone who’d never cried before breaking down into full-bodied, gut-wrenching sobs.
“What the hell?” Angel whisper-yelled, everything about what he was seeing and hearing raising his hackles. “Is he… cryin’?” He didn’t think it was possible. In fact, he wasn’t wholly convinced that he didn’t just hallucinate the whole thing.
The young girl beside him shook her head, “N-No, I… Well, yes, clearly. But I think that it’s… more than that.” Angel doesn’t know if his brain could handle much more—it was having a hard enough time comprehending this. “I think that he might be having a… a…” her eyes nervously darted back and forth, “a panic attack.”
“Val.” Angel repeated, like they could be talking about anyone else. “Havin’ a panic attack.”
“Have you been on Voxtagram yet today?” She asked. Not for the first time, Angel had to wonder what exactly Valentino’s secretary did all day, aside from scroll Voxtagram and attempt to stay out of Valentino’s way.
Oh, and spy on him, apparently.
Not bothering to wait for Angel to respond, she pulled up the latest post on Valentino’s Voxtagram account. Angel barely had the chance to wonder when Vox had gotten around to reinstating the Porn Overlord’s account, when he saw it.
It was a ring, featuring a jaw-dropping, flawless, natural blue-diamond that must’ve set Valentino back a pretty penny (it was nice to see that he wasn’t just pissing away all of the money that he earned on their contracts… not). The gemstone was set in a white-gold band, with some odd-looking divots in the back to make it easier for it to slide over a thick, curved talon without taking damage. Even if Angel had never had reason to be interested in one before, he knew an engagement ring when he saw one—
And this… this was the mother of all engagement rings.
The rest of the picture, however, was not nearly so romantic. The table had been set with plates taken right out of the 80s, as was Val’s aesthetic, piled high with takeout from their favorite fast-food chain. There were a couple of candles on the table that’d been recently extinguished, if the billows of blue-gray smoke coming up off of the burnt wicks was any indication. The ring itself was sticking up out of a pile of half-eaten fries, which had grown cold and soggy underneath a veritable mountain of ketchup.
The post was captioned ‘I ain’t takin the bastard back this time’, followed by a broken-heart emoji, followed by several colorful hashtags—including #fuckvox and #loveisalie. The hashtag #fuckvox was filled with similar posts, made immediately after one of their many break-ups, but this one seemed… more final, somehow.
Had Vox rejected Valentino’s proposal?
Had Vox broken up with Valentino and thrown the ring back at him?
There were any number of possibilities, each slightly worse than the last. Perhaps contemplating the finality of his relationship had put Val into a mood… or maybe he was having a legitimate breakdown because Vox hadn’t come crawling back to him and the idea of their relationship actually being over was too much for him to handle.
Either way, it wasn’t really Angel’s problem.
Except… there was a poor girl downstairs who really needed Val to put his big boy bodysuit on and go bust some heads. And that apparently wasn’t going to happen short of someone taking their life in their hands, going in there, and forcibly untwisting his fishnets.
…And because Angel didn’t have an active death wish, he was all for volunteering Vox.
“Dontcha have Vox’s number on file or somethin’?” She mumbled something about Val having him on speed-dial. “Cantcha call ‘im and have ‘im come straighten-out Val’s hot fuckin’ mess?”
She gave him a look, “You think I haven’t tried that? He told me, absent Mister Valentino trying to burn down the Studio, not to bother calling back—and even then, he only wanted to make sure I’d take pictures to upload to Voxtagram.” …Yeah, that sounded like something Vox would say.
“Didja tell ‘im that Val’s blind ass is usin’ his door for target practice?” The moth’s eyesight was spotty on the best of days—he was liable to shoot something important and end up accidentally burning the building down.
And, much as Angel would love to see this place burn, he really needed the money it brought in.
She nodded, “I even told him that Mr. Valentino was crying—he called me crazy and said I had to be hallucinating, but—” Both of them flinched when a loud thump echoed from inside of Valentino’s office, followed by silence.
Angel rolled his eyes, pulling out his hellphone. “…I’ll show ya how ta make an Overlord come runnin’.”
Why was he here, again?
Vox crossed his arms over his chest, his neon-blue talons picking at the frayed material of his t-shirt. There was a part of him that wished he’d dressed up a bit more to make the trek to the Studio—it wasn’t often that he allowed himself to be seen in public in anything other than his iconic pinstripe suit, after all. There was another, larger part of him that reasoned that it was almost ten o’clock at night and he was over-tired from burying himself in work for the last twenty-four hours. And, to be perfectly honest, right now? Valentino wasn’t worth his suit.
Still… perhaps he should’ve taken the time to find a shirt that wasn’t riddled with holes. Even after all this time in Hell, he still wasn’t quite used to how sharp his talons could be… and how weak shirt fabric was. It was almost embarrassing, how frequently he ruined clothes just because he couldn’t put his fucking hand through a hole.
Whatever. It wasn’t like he was here for pleasantries. He was here to drag Valentino out of his fucking office, even if the larger Overlord went kicking and screaming. And then he was going to run for the hills, before Valentino could take whatever pole had gotten shoved up his ass and use his screen for batting practice.
He’d just gotten his screen replaced. Nothing was worth going through that hell again.
Not even a battered whore, whose face was more blood than fur.
…Fuck, she’d looked really bad.
Angel Dust was waiting for him outside of the door to Valentino’s office, presumably having sent Val’s secretary home once he’d realized that Vox intended to take his sweet time getting to the Studio. He liked to think he made pretty decent time, seeing as he’d had every intention of letting Val burn the place to the ground—figuratively and literally. He’d been ready for a nice, relaxing night in with Vark when Angel had posted a picture of Val’s door to Voxtagram, with the caption ‘Daddy tried to make a glory hole. I think his aim’s a little off lol’.
And… well, there were a lot of interestingly endowed creatures in hell. Val very well could have been trying to make his office door into a glory hole (honestly, he was kind of surprised that the moth-demon hadn’t thought of it before). But something about that, coupled with his earlier conversation with Val’s secretary…
Well, it’d struck a chord. So, here he was.
“Bout time ya showed up.” Angel griped, mumbling something under his breath about Charlie getting on his ass for being late—again. “Look, he’s in a real bad way, so if ya could make with the—” He mashed his hands together, moving them back and forth in a way that Vox thought was supposed to symbolize ‘kissing and making up’.
Vox’s left eye twitched, glitching out ever so slightly. “I don’t kx-know what you think I’m gx-going to do.” He said, “In fact, I can almost gx-guarantee you that mx-my going in there will mx-make things worse.”
Angel rolled his mismatched eyes, “Yer the one that broke ‘im. Yer the one that’s gotta fix ‘im.”
Vox stared at him like he’d suddenly sprouted a second head. The idea of him breaking Valentino was absolutely preposterous. Sure, Val claimed to love him, and on some days, he could even believe him. But you weren’t supposed to treat the ones you loved in the same way you treated your whores. You weren’t supposed to raise your hand to them and leave them kneeling in a sea of glass, left to pick up the shattered pieces of their thrice-damned body while you prattled on about something as inconsequential as an incorrect drink.
Yes, to add insult to injury, this whole damned mess had been caused by their favorite fast-food place being out of Val’s favorite soda. Vox had substituted it for something just as good, and Val had punched his screen with the fucking drink still in his hand. The soda had seeped into his internal wiring, almost causing a complete system failure—He’d spent hours making sure that every last one of his components were dry, replacing those that’d been irreparably damaged by the soda, fishing broken glass out of his head, and finally replacing his screen.
He’d been so upset, he’d taken off his engagement ring and thrown it—he’d learned that it’d landed in Val’s half-eaten fries the next day, when Val had posted a pic of their ruined anniversary dinner on Voxtagram with a sad little caption that made him look like an absolute ass.
That wasn’t how Vox had planned on spending their anniversary. Not at all.
Vox sighed. Well, one way or another, Val was sure to be angry enough to give that john a run for his money. “I’d start heading back dx-downstairs if I were yx-you.” He said. “And never mention tx-this. To ax-anyone. Ever.”
Angel flashed him a toothy smile, “Are ya kiddin’? I’m plannin’ on keepin’ this one tucked away for a rainy day. Call it… insurance.” Vox blinked. He didn’t even know what Angel was planning, and he already knew that it was going to end horribly. But hey… not his circus, not his monkeys.
“Still.” He waved his hand, and this time, Angel took the hint.
“Ya two have fun in there. But not too much fun.” Angel said, before disappearing in the direction of the elevator.
Fun. Right.
Once he was sure that Angel was out of the line of fire, he swung the door to Valentino’s office open (if it’d been locked once upon a time, he’d probably broken the lock during his little shooting session). He narrowly avoided getting shot in the side of the head for his efforts, “Don’t anyone know how t-ta fucking knock?”
Vox barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes, making a show of knocking on the already open door. “Bx-Better?”
“V-Voxxy?” There was an unusual tightness to Val’s voice, a quality that Vox couldn’t quite place. He also couldn’t see his (ex)boyfriend in the ruins of his office.
“Val?” Try as he might, he couldn’t quite keep the surprise out of his tone. “What the fx-fuck happened in hx-here?”
His screen was the only source of light in the room (although he’d taken care to dim it slightly upon realizing just how dark it was in there, not wanting to blind the man—Val may have been a complete asshole, but Vox could never bring himself to be truly cruel to him)—and sure enough, it brought out from underneath his desk, his swollen, red-rimmed magenta eyes zeroed in on his screen’s soft, bluish-white glow. Vox was too busy trying to figure out how Val had crammed his giant ass into that tiny little space to realize that Val was quickly invading his personal space, until—
“W-Waah!” He flinched, a bright spark of pain cutting through his screen as Val brought their foreheads together roughly. Although… he didn’t think that Val was trying to hurt him, not right now. It seemed like he genuinely didn’t realize how rough he’d been—
His breathing was labored, like he couldn’t quite force his chest to expand far enough to take a truly deep breath. A few fresh tears drip from his eyes to splatter on Vox’s screen, “V-Voxxy…”
Could he… actually be having a panic attack?
Shit.
“Hey… Hey, c’mere ax-a sec, wx-would you?” It took quite a bit of maneuvering, but he was finally able to get Val to come over by his desk. The desk was suspiciously empty—Vox had a feeling that Val’s paperwork had been the first thing to go when the panic had first set on. But that just meant there was all the more space for him to sit.
Pushing Val’s surprisingly pliant body down into his office chair, he pulled the larger demon between his legs and pressed his head against his chest. Val squirmed a bit, his grip on Vox’s ruined shirt ironclad as he worked through the horrific ache in his chest. He was producing an impressive amount of mucus—enough that Vox was glad he’d opted to wear something a bit more casual. That kind of shit didn’t come out of suits, not without far more effort than he was willing to put in.
It took him a minute to find a channel that wasn’t live—he knew his entire line-up by heart, of course, but he was more than a little frazzled at the moment. The static from the snow was the closest thing to white noise he could come up with on such short notice, but it seemed to work pretty much the same.
He used one hand to stroke along the length of Val’s back, his talons gently dipping down between both sets of shoulder blades… His other hand played with the moth-demon’s soft, feathery antenna. They dissolved into a… comfortable silence (there was so much that he wanted to say, wanted to ask, and while he could technically speak while running a program on his screen, it required higher mental function than he was willing to commit to at such a late hour). Val was still crying, but it was a far cry from the full-on sobbing he’d been doing earlier.
His top set of arms were hooked around Vox’s lithe waist, his bottom set pinning his hips to the desk. In any other situation, this would probably be the prelude to something distinctly sexual… but that’s not what he came here for, and he still hasn’t forgiven him for everything that’d happened—
It was then that he realized that Val was speaking. Or, well—trying to speak.
It was rather difficult to understand anything that he was trying to say, with his face buried in his lap.
And then he realized that Val was… apologizing. Or… making a rather colorful attempt at apologizing. The words were all crashing together as he attempted to speak, whilst also stuffing his mouth full of the excess material of Vox’s sweatpants, but Vox was able to understand the gist of it.
Lucifer, he was spending too much time with Val, if he’d become so adept at deciphering his gibberish.
“It’s…” He stopped himself. What’d happened… it wasn’t okay. Val apologizing, and sounding halfway sincere for the first time in forever, didn’t magically make it okay. But… if he told him that… would it make the panic attack worse?
Val’s antenna pressed flat against his head, “P-Please, Voxxy, baby…” Val didn’t beg, which made it quite difficult for Vox to process what the hell was happening right then. “You don’t have to… don’t have to forgive m-me…” One of his upper arms reached out to grab Vox’s left hand.
“Val…” His screen glitched for a second, before switching from the static-y snow back over to his face.
“Just… wear the r-ring again. Please.” He sat there, frozen, as Val slid the ring back onto his finger. He remembered how proud the other Overlord had been to have found a gemstone of such size and clarity that was also a semi-conductor of electricity.
Vox had been impressed, too, even if the ring really wasn’t his… taste.
But it was every bit as showy and ostentatious as one would expect the engagement ring of the soon-to-be husband of the Porn Overlord to be. And that’s what really mattered, right? That the ring showed off Val’s wealth and power, that it showed all of Hell just how well he could provide for his husband.
Vox’s feelings didn’t matter. They never had.
“Mmm… much better.” The tears seemed to be almost completely gone now, which was a relief. Val pressed a surprisingly gentle kiss to the side of his finger, right over the shank of the ring, before snuggling back down into Vox’s lap.
The TV Demon’s eyes widen, “You’re not… are you going to sleep?” Oh, hell no. He didn’t come here to get re-engaged and be used as an oversized body pillow.
“Mmm… and what if I am?” He sniffled, which was honestly probably the most disgusting sound he’d ever heard. “You’re warm. More than. All that electricity has to be good for something, huh, babe?” He smiled. Vox just rolled his eyes. “And that… that was exhausting. You can’t do that to me again, Voxxy, dear. I don’t think my heart can take it.”
Vox scowled, “…one of your girls was mugged tonight. She lost six-hundred dollars.”
Val’s fingers dug into his skin hard enough to bring beads of dark, bluish-black blood to the surface. “…what?”
Vox sat on the floor of Val’s office, amidst the destruction that Val had reaped throughout the day. He’d cracked open one of the many bottles of alcohol that Val kept stored in the bowels of his desk, underneath the fake bottom of one of his drawers, and had been slowly making his way through its contents ever since Val had found his way back to the Studio, soaked in the idiot mugger’s blood, six-hundred dollars richer. Val had curled up in his lap and started purring like a fucking kitten, before falling asleep among bullet shell casings and broken glass because why the hell not.
He stroked his hand idly through Val’s neck fluff and wondered if this wasn’t meant to be his punishment—to love someone so completely, someone who could never dream of even beginning to understand how to love him back. To be so desperate to believe that they could be better, that they wanted to be better, that…
The ring on his finger felt like a noose, and every drop of alcohol pulled it tighter.
“Love you, Voxxy.” He wasn’t sure whether Val was aware that he’d even spoken. He hated the way that his body tensed, butterflies erupting in his stomach at the sound of those three precious words.
He swallowed hard, “I love you, too,” and hated himself even more for saying them back.