Chapter Text
Cherry cigarillo smoke rose from the ashtray where he’d put out the butt of his third one. Vox had been talking for hours and it just wouldn’t end. He’d been listening too, that was the sick part. He hadn’t zoned out once. He deserved a blowjob for that. Not from Vox, though that would prevent him from saying more words.
He spread his hands, grinning that cheesy game show host-ass smile. “So that’s pretty much it. Any questions.”
Yeah. Several.
He pinched the space between his eyes. “Okay, so, like… You were in Heaven?”
Vox blinked and dropped his hands to the booth table. Asshole pulled him into a fucking diner to give him a three hour long story. The fact that Velvette wasn’t screaming about her felted ass touching ripped, stained, and kinda moldy pleather was proof that the apocalypse had come and gone. “That’s the part you’re stuck on, Val?”
“That’s the weirdest part.” Valentino leaned forwards and wiggled his fingers in Vox’s face. “You running the princessa’s shitty Hotel sounds like another one of your manic episodes.”
Velvette snorted. “He has you there.”
Ignoring Vox’s protests, he turned to Velvette. “What was it like? Were the angels slutty?”
“I fucked both of Carmilla Carmine’s daughters, babe,” she barked, laughing.
“You didn’t. Oh, babydoll. I’ve missed you.” He held out his hands and she clasped them across the table, leaving Vox to just gawk at them.
“Can we focus?”
“On what?” He kept hold of Velvette’s hands with his top set and gesticulated with the bottom set. “You just talked for three hours about your redemption arc like it has anything to do with me.”
“It has everything to do with you-“ Vox’s antenna sparked and he tried to stand up, but the thing about booths is there really isn’t any way to stand up dramatically in them, so all he managed to do was hit his knees when he tried to leap up dramatically. Never would have happened if they’d gone to Dante’s Inferno.
He hissed, sank back into the seat, and scowled like he was the problem. “Look, I know we can’t be officially the Vees anymore-”
“-because you’re in a polycule now,” he ground the words through gritted teeth, punctuated by a few involuntary squeaks. The reminder that they had a whole fucking fuck-cabal without him made him pull away from Velvette. He loved her, but he was mad at her too. Just less mad than he was at Vox, who was floundering trying to finish his sentence.
“- but you’re… Important to us. We missed you.”
Fuck. Well played, Voxxie. He wasn’t actually expecting genuine emotional vulnerability here. He crossed his arms over his chest and jerked his head towards the window. “Ugh. You’re making it so hard to be a cunt at you right now. I’m pissed at you.”
“You left me to die, Val.”
His fist came down hard on the table, upsetting a salt shaker. “Because you were being a fucking prick the whole time-“
“I was being a prick?! ME?! You let that mangy cat of Alastor’s into my tower.”
“Our tower and now you’re best friends with him, so who fuckin’ cares?!”
Velvette grabbed Vox by the back of his jacket before he could crawl across the table. “Voys, cool it.” Once they had both stopped snarling and spitting at each other, she pivoted to the role of Voice of Reason. As always. Goddammit, it was almost like he never got horribly murdered. Except he had and shit had happened and what was he supposed to do about any of this? “Val, what Vox is trying to say is that we’ve saved space for you. Whatever you want to do, we support you, but we’d like it if you’d join us.
“You just have to dial back the bullshit,” Vox muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
Val just lit another cigarillo. “I don’t know why you’re acting like I’m the worst. I was only a third of the ‘unprofessional behavior’ between the three of us.”
“Yeah, Val, that’s ‘cause there’s three of us!” Vox snapped back, mockingly. “That’s how fractions work.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
“Yeah, don’t talk to him like he’s stupid,” Velvette shot back. The two of them shared a smile that left Vox gripping the corners of his screen, coming as close to putting his head on the booth as he could without his screen touching it.
“Just tell me what you want, Val. The sky’s the limit within vaguely moral reason. Angel doesn’t even live in Pride anymore.”
“I’m not going to your fucking Hotel with that psychotic-“ He lost grasp on English and began to communicate only in Spanish and moth squeaks.
“Great!” Velvette said, almost giddy, as if she’d been hoping he’d choose her. “Then come join Velith. There’s still a porn Overlord spot available.”
Valentino scowled. “And have to compete with whatever pendejo Angel is working with now in Lust?”
“He’s on television now.” Vox waved him off. “You just need to find a talent who really works with that arthouse film aesthetic you used to love so much.”
“You thought those movies were shit and they would never sell.” He squinted, hunting for the indication that Vox was being patronizing again.
He shrugged. “They grew on me.”
Wait.
He wasn’t fucking lying. He knew when he was lying and that wasn’t it. Perplexed, he stared at the ashtray. “I’ll think about it.” He slid out of the booth, took another drag off his cigarillo, and slumped against the table. “You know, this isn’t really how I thought this would go. I thought you’d get all moralizing and preachy and I could just tell you to jump up your royal lovers’ asses and die.”
“We’re the same fuckin’ arseholes we’ve always been.” Velvette was almost pleading with him. That actually hurt. “You can kill whoever you want, so long as they either deserve it or aren’t gonna talk after.”
“And the King and Queen? Alastor?” He looked straight down at Vox, pinning him down. The fucker wouldn’t even look at him. “You’ve got everything you’ve wanted and then some, Vox.”
“Maybe.” He finally looked up again, his mouth pulled down like it was causing him harm to be this vulnerable. Some things didn’t change. Except where they did because Vox was never this vulnerable with him in public. “But it’d be nice to have you too.”
Valentino jerked away before he got lost in his sad puppy gaze. Some things went deeper than hypnotism. “You’re so greedy, papito.”
He headed towards the door and they followed him. Goddammit. Why did they have to make this so hard on him? He transferred his cigarette holder to his lower hands and used the others to smooth back his antenna before he pivoted to face them again, exasperated. “Look, I just got back. I need to reorient myself. The entire city looks different. You two look different. You were in fucking Heaven.”
The other two Vees exchanged looks. Velvette kept nudging Vox with her elbow to be the one to speak and when he finally did, it was through a staticky sigh. “Whatever you need, Val.”
Oh. Okay. That was easy.
“I did miss you both.” He blew smoke rings over his head. “Or I would have if I didn’t spend two years being ripped apart in the fucking Pit because of your stupid Radio Demon.”
He jerked open the diner door with a violent peal of jingling bells. Vox caught it before it fully closed.
Or at least he thought it was Vox. He turned to tell him off for not just waiting for him to get down the street before coming out and giving him the dignity of a proper dramatic exit, but what he found himself staring at, instead, was Alastor, holding the door open for Vox and Velvette to exit and grinning like he found Val’s shock to be the best thing he’d witnessed all day.
“So how did he end up taking the news?”
Valentino’s only reaction was a partially terrified, but mostly deeply irritated: “Fuck.”