Work Text:
Chain-Smoking
Angel doesn’t even start to come to until Vox has satisfied whatever bullshit little power trip fantasy he’s been on and Velvette has adjusted the last of those ridiculous fin-like ruffles on the back of his ugly dress. The whole thing is blue, it’s Vox’s color, it’s Vox’s stupid fucking plan to feed Vox’s delusions and to satisfy Vox and Vox alone. Velvette grumbles and goes along with it, but Valentino is stewing.
The spirals in Angel’s eyes keep spinning and the vacant look inside them twists Valentino’s guts into something nasty. Same as it happened that first time in Angel’s dressing room. Angel had been in a shit mood because of that dumb shrill blonde acting like his babysitter and white knight, Val had been pissed off after having to call and yell and hang the stupid contract over Angel’s head to get him to show up to do his fucking job. Val had had every intention of talking to Angel after the shoots, since Angel had avoided him masterfully since the moment he arrived, but then Vox had shown up and decided to make good on that little agreement Valentino barely even remembered agreeing to. There was a bottle of Love Potion in Angel’s dressing room and Val had planned on sweet-talking and sweet-fucking Angel until he agreed to come back, but no, that wasn't what Vox wanted.
Whatever, sure. Val hated the way Vox pulled up the chair and grabbed Angel’s jaw like he belonged to him, like he was VoxTek property alone and not Valentino’s most treasured and unique soul contract. Vox never fucking got it. Time and time again, he spewed the same bullshit words and bullshit questions whenever he decided that Val wasn’t paying him enough attention, and he was too much of a bitch to come out and say what he actually wanted. Instead, Vox would sneer. “You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with that whore.” What Vox wanted was for Val to be perpetually at his beck and call, but since he refused to say it, Valentino refused to acknowledge it.
Val smoked compulsively outside in the balcony while Vox did whatever he needed to. He didn’t want to see it. The second he saw Angel’s jaw go slack, his stomach dropped and so he turned around and stepped out, and by the time Vox came out to get him with the most infuriating self-satisfied smile on his glowing face, Val flicked the last cigarette off the railing and buttoned up his wings.
Angel was confused, he seemed drunk, and Valentino wanted nothing to do with him. Even when Angel blinked and slurred “Val?” he merely scoffed and told Angel to clean up because he was a mess, and then he left. He spent the rest of the night sulking in his heart-shaped bed, smoking one cherry-scented cigarette after another until the bedroom was filled with red smoke like a misty forest. Vox wasn’t stupid enough to act like he didn’t know what was bothering Val, so that week, Val spent it alone.
From what he’s been told, every other time Vox has used Angel has been “long distance.” Valentino didn’t even know that such a thing was possible.
He’s never seen quite Angel like this, so completely gone, so limp and empty and as useless as a fucking ragdoll. That heat and tightness in his stomach almost make him ill, but even after he’s left alone in his penthouse, all he can do is hold Angel’s languid hand.
“When the fuck is he gonna wake up!?” Val had barked at Vox before he rolled his fucking deer and his fucking chair towards the elevator. “I don’t want—” Val blinked, rolled his eyes away from Angel’s pathetically sad face and sighed. ‘I don’t want him like this.’ Simple enough words, but so goddamn difficult to get out. “When is this shit wearing off?”
“Ah, just give it a few minutes. He really fought me this time,” Vox said and preened his bow-tie, so goddamn proud of himself, so smug, so fucking chill. Valentino wanted to rip that head off his skinny little neck.
But Vox, as always, couldn’t see anything beyond himself.
“Oh, and don’t forget to go see Velvette so she can fix your outfit. I want you looking—”
“Get the fuck out.” Valentino didn’t raise his voice. He glared at Vox with his eyes glowing red and the rain screaming behind the glass, and at least Vox had the intelligence to fuck off without trying to argue. So after a sigh and a grunt, Val was left alone.
He still holds Angel’s wrist in his hand, limp and small, delicate, easy to snap like a twig. Angel sways for a second and that look on his face is still the same: sad, empty, soulless in a way Valentino has never seen on this face and horrifically unnerving. This isn’t his Angel, this is a disgusting empty shell.
Valentino doesn’t care for empty shells. It’s why he discards sinners once they’ve served their purpose and the light has gone out from their eyes along with their bite. The industry sucks them dry and when VoxTek leaves nothing behind but the bones, Val flicks them off like cigarette butts and revels in the money, the power, and the fame. Angel was never meant to be like that. Angel was meant to be—
“Vo…” Angel slurs the word suddenly, with spit dripping down the corner of his lips and a more prominent sway. “Stopit…”
Valentino doesn’t even want to touch him like this. A brainless doll. Languid limbs and not a single spark of awareness behind the black spirals, a mouth waiting to be opened and holes waiting to be used without a fight. Exactly what Vox likes when he picks an employee to use for the month, exactly what Vox does, what makes his cock so hard there’s wet stains on his expensive trousers at the sight of the pliant zombies. For the first time since he’s been with Vox, the thought makes his skin crawl.
Valentino didn’t leave the motel like he should have. The limo was ready with a wide open door waiting for him but he was stupid and fuming and he stayed, and he heard Angel screaming through the paper-thin, humidity-stained walls and he heard the exact moment Vox finally ripped the fight out of him. Angel didn’t even moan after, not in any way that Val could hear until he swung the motel door open and watched. And watched, and watched, and watched…
Blackout rape movies didn’t sell. That’s what he told Vox, Velvette, the producers, the actors, Angel himself. They wanted to see Angel fight and resist and finally succumb. ‘The audiences’ didn’t want to see a boring sex doll, they hated it.
“Hurry the fuck up, I don’t have all night,” Val grumbles and strokes the inside of Angels wrist with his thumb.
Angel doesn’t speak. He sways like a leaf under a light breeze and keeps staring somewhere miles away where Val isn't allowed, where he probably doesn’t even exist.
At the motel, Angel didn’t move. He flopped under Vox’s thrusts like a fish out of water and made no sound. Vox pressed his face to the pillow and tore his clothes off and Val watched from the doorframe, with a cigarette burning to ash between his fingers.
He lights another one now, then blows red smoke right onto Angel’s face only to be met with a blink, wet eyelashes, and the black and red spiral slowly dissolving into the colors of Angel’s eyes. Too fucking slowly for his taste.
Val snaps his fingers in front of Angel’s face as if that would do anything—he’s never bothered trying to get one of Vox’s unlucky fuckdolls out of their trances, why would he give a shit, so he actually doesn’t know if this is even normal. How long has it been, anyway? Ten minutes? Thirty? An hour? Six?
“Angel.”
“Mmno…” His fingers twitch and grip Val’s, or try to, so that has to be a good sign.
Val hates this. What the fuck is he supposed to do with this mannequin and the memory of Vox climbing on top of him at the motel scorched into his brain like branded cattle? Smoke and drink until it fucking goes away, probably. Val sighs and picks up Angel to carry him through the ornate arch into his bedroom, and the shape of his bed with the red sheets and the swirly bedposts feels like a mockery, hell laughing in his face as he carries his dead bride into the newlywed suite where no lovemaking will happen. Truth be told, Val doesn’t even think he can sleep if Angel is on his bed. As soon as he lays him down right in the middle of it, it feels tainted, soaked in filth and failures and rage.
Perhaps it’s Angel's muscle memory that makes him jolt violently and twitch the second Val lays his head on a pillow, perhaps he’s finally coming to, but Angel grabs his wrist and squeezes it before he falls back with a noisy breath. Val isn’t affected by this, he just isn’t; who in hell hasn’t woken up screaming or crying or gasping from nightmares and bad memories? Angel isn’t fucking special. Even the fucking rain screams down here. And why the fuck should he feel any guilt about this or about the motel, or using Angel like a security camera when this was all Vox’s doing? If Angel didn’t have a choice then neither did he, and that’s just how it fucking works down here. Angel’s been in hell for much longer than Val, he should know better.
His eyes sting. Val shakes off Angel’s frail hand and sits at the foot of the bed, and lights another cigarette because he didn’t even realize when the stupid stick started to burn his fingertips without him even taking a pull. He throws his sunglasses across the room, hears the plastic and the glass crack when they hit the door and he presses the heels of his palms into his eyelids until colors burst behind the darkness. He presses more, and more, and he remembers Vox grunting like a pig and the light above the bed flickering just like the shitty motels where he used to close his eyes and count the thrusts until the sweaty men on top of him came and he could finally get out from underneath them. Angel didn’t get to count Vox’s down, but tough fucking luck.
Before Val, Angel was in the same exact position and he knew what it was all about, and Valentino had come into his life and offered him everything, more than Val himself could ever even dream of in life. Security, safety, warmth, money, comfort, status, pleasure, fame, love, so much love Angel could choke on it, and Angel still chose to spit in his face and throw it away for some stupid bitch and her heavenly delusions. Why was he letting his eyes sting like this and his throat tighten up like this for an ungrateful fucking cunt who wouldn’t think twice about abandoning him again? And Val still took him back, still begged and humiliated himself and held Angel’s hand like he would break if he pressed too hard, and he still longed for him, and he still loved him, and all Angel did was try to run away.
“Val…”
Angel’s voice cuts through him like a razor, across his throat where the knot was about to spill into tears. He’d much rather bleed than cry.
“‘S that you?”
Val turns sideways and blows out smoke, takes a deep breath before he finally looks up at Angel. He only catches one glimpse of his eyes being back to normal. One yellow, one black, pupils blown. To say that he looks dazed and confused would be an understatement, he barely seems conscious enough to sit up.
“Where ‘m I?”
“My room.” Val answers dryly and immediately averts his eyes.
He thinks that’s gonna be the end of it. That should be the end of it. Angel should groan and piss and whine about having to go back to his shitty “friends” and Val should curse him out and smack him across the face if he pushes the matter too much for his liking, Angel should curse him back and huff and puff, and Val should leave him there to sleep it off because there’s no way he’s leaving the tower now that Vox’s cryptic fucking plan is in motion, but Val can, so he should leave Angel to his misery and his victim complex and go do coke off the bodies of sinners who would actually appreciate everything he could do for them. And then Val should come back and spend the rest of the day with Velvette, avoiding Angel, avoiding Vox, avoiding every fucking thing that led to him being here trying to swallow a lump in his throat and push the flashing images in his head away.
Val has his words ready, too, in case Angel starts to cry about wanting to leave: “You’re not going anywhere so you better make yourself at home when you’re done throwing a bitch fit.”
“Fuck you,” Angel spits out, just as Val expected, so he doesn't even bother looking up. He just sighs and lets whatever pathetic storm come to him, after all this time they barely feel like a drizzle. “You let—you let Vox do that to me, you fuckin’ asshole!”
Angel is too weak to stand, and probably now that he’s not under Vox’s spell, he’s starting to feel the soreness and the pain. So he hisses and kicks his feet weakly, mostly just shoving the covers towards Val just because he’s the closest target for his anger.
“You wanted him to do this, didn’t you? Huh? Just to have me back here, huh? Huh! Fuckin’– answer me, Val!” Angel’s voice comes back to him though not at full force. His words are raspy and paused, though it’s clear he’s feeling every single one of them to his bones. But Val can’t fucking take it.
“You think I wanted this?” He barks, finally turning all the way around and unable to hide the wetness of his own eyes or the blush of his cheeks. His voice cracks, too, but he knows Angel doesn’t give a flying fuck about it. Why should he? Why should Val? “You think I wanted him to use you and parade you around like you were his fucking toy?”
“Well, ya didn’t do anythin’ to stop him, did you?” Angel kicks again, a kid throwing a temper tantrum. Despite how long his legs are, they can’t reach him. “Tricked and delivered me to him like a Christmas present, you horrible fucking cunt!”
“Do you think I fucking wanted to?” Val roars, smashing his fist into the mattress. It stops Angel in his tracks at least, but he's just broken the dam. Val stands up like someone had lit a fire under his ass and it glues Angel to the bed, petrified like a statue. “Do you think I’m happy watching him use you and fuck you like his stupid employees? Do you think I want any of this?!”
“You kept beggin’ me to come back, every fucking day another wall of text no matter how many times I ignored you, what the fuck do you think it looks like that your psychotic sugar daddy suddenly comes and starts zappin’ me like a fuckin’ mosquito? And then—the fuckin’ motel, Val!” Angel’s voice cracks into a wet sob, his eyes shiny with tears, bringing his knees together up to his chest.
“I didn’t want any of this!” Val screams. It comes right from the pit of his stomach, rips through his throat and reverberates in the room.
“Yes you fucking did!” Angel screams back.
Val’s already lost his glasses, so the next best thing is to rip off one of the piercings doubling as buttons on his wings and throwing it against the wall behind his headboard as violently as he can, growling through the sharp pain that sticks thousands of needles down the length of his spine. The words are stuck in his throat, squeezing it until he finds it hard to breathe and impossible to swallow. So he does the same with the next piercing, then rips off a fistful of his neck fluff.
The silence settles between them as heavy as a boulder, crushing Valentino where he stands.
“Fuck, what did I do?” Angel starts to sob. “I don't know… I don't know what I was thinking. I fucked up everything.” He’s not just crying, he’s hiccuping, his voice is cracking and his breaths sound painful, and it takes Val by surprise so he sits just as petrified and wide-eyed as Angel was just a second ago. “God, fuck, I’m so fuckin’ stupid. I shouldn’t have left. Why did I want to put on that stupid show anyway? I shouldn’t even have opened your fucking texts. I hurt everyone—"
“Oh, don’t give me this Mother Teresa bullshit,” Val points at Angel’s tearful face: his pitiful eyes, the confusion in them, the streaks of mascara staining his cheeks again. It feels like someone’s put every one of his internal organs inside a blender. “You didn’t even have the fucking decency to tell me you were leaving in the first place and now you wanna come here and cry like a bitch, why? Because your little friends will dump your ass? And you expect me to give a shit? Give me a fucking break.”
“No,” Angel hiccups. He pushes the covers again and brings his upper arms to his face, wiping the mascara tears all across his face like ink spilled on paper. His chest convulses with the force of his sobs and Valentino can’t fucking stand it. “I was stupid, what the hell was I thinking?”
“Fucking stop it!” Val screams and his wings flare wide open behind his back.
His body has a mind of its own, his immediate reaction to Angel’s self-pity party is to lunge forward and grab him by the jaw, squeezing, digging the tips of his claws into his soft cheeks until he forces eye contact. Val is furious, he can feel his eyes glowing bright red over Angel’s tear-filled ones.
Angel hiccups again, He sobs and sits there immobile and languid, not even fighting the pinpricks of Val’s claws on his cheeks. Val’s heart convulses, it twists around itself and sinks deep into his chest with the weight of two sorrows, and he can’t fight it, and it strangles him and hollows him out. One sorrow isn’t even his own, it isn’t one he was ever supposed to carry but it takes up all his space, fills him, weighs him down like an anchor and breaks him.
“Oh fuck off,” he whispers, but Angel throws himself at him and kisses him.
It isn’t pleasurable. Angel’s lips taste of tears and bitterness but Val can’t help but open his mouth to swallow it whole. The horrid taste and its twisted familiarity. It’s not comforting, it only pretends to be. It’s need and anger and hunger and the resentment of every word they spoke and every one they left unsaid. Angel chokes on a sob and clings to the soft fur around his neck, pulls it, uses his lower arms to wrap tightly around Val’s body and frantically squeezes him closer, scratches his sides in his fit of need and starts to bite his lips when he deepens the kiss.
And what does Val do? He should shove him, push him off the bed, throw the ungrateful fucking cunt out the window and watch every one of his limbs twist and break when they hit the pavement. He should slap him, punch him, kick him and remind him that he’s not the one in charge here, he doesn’t own anything here—but then that would be such a gross lie. His body betrays him, from the tingling of his skin to the beating of his heart, because Angel has always owned it. His heart and every ugly thing that’s in it. Val had to crush him. He had to.
Precisely because of this.
He returns the kiss on instinct, he bites back until he draws blood and digs his sharp claws into Angel’s chest as if he wanted to rip his heart right through his flesh to gain control back and remind him of his fucking place. Val doesn’t belong to him. Angel is his. It’s not the other way around. It’s not.
“You swear it wasn’t your idea?” Angel whispers pathetically, his voice minuscule and clumsy, breathy between bitter kisses and salty tears.
Val lifts a hand to squeeze his throat as a warning, his eyes opening a slit and glowing red to drive it home. “Ask me again and I’ll fucking kill you.”
Angel lets out a shaky sob and kisses him again, pulls him closer again, forces Val on top of him and wraps every limb around him with the force of a bear trap. It puts Val in a haze, with the edges of his vision blurring with desire that goes as deep as his bones. Val falls into the trap instantly, chases Angel’s body heat and heaving breaths and soaks them up as greedily as a goddamn sponge, grabbing his waist, his tits, his arms. The fabric of their clothes is suffocating and four sets of hands frantically tear them away, somehow. He squeezes his neck and then his jaw, dragging him into a bruising kiss while he settles and grinds forward between his legs, swallowing his moans. One after the other, forcing friction onto each other until they're panting and their hands become clumsy, dancing around their bodies until Val is guided inside Angel in one smooth motion.
Angel ignores the soreness and hisses through the first sting of pain like it was nothing, for Val, to welcome him, to take him inside like his missing puzzle piece. He’s slick and soft, addictive, perfect; Val buries his face in the crook of Angel’s neck and breathes him in, and it feels like filling his lungs for the first time after being stuck underwater.
Angel takes it eagerly, rocking his hips up and scratching a mess of lines down his back with every deep thrust. He bites Val’s shoulder hard enough to leave a mark, then does the same with the sharp angle where his jaw meets his neck, then on his chest, right on the spot where his heart is pounding. Val squeezes Angel’s body with two hands, digs his claws into his soft flesh as if to reach beneath it and carve his name into his bones. His thrusts are slow but deep, dragging each one out to feel Angel’s perfect heat on every inch to the fullest, seeking more comfort than pleasure. He leaves his own marks on Angel: a necklace of bite marks and finger-shaped bruises around his wrists. He grinds into him until Angel squeezes his throat hard enough to make him lightheaded.
“Fuck, Val,” Angel moans and hooks his ankles behind Val’s ass to push him deeper, desperately meeting his thrusts halfway and rolling his hips, throbbing warm and soaked around his cock. “‘M never leavin’ you again, I swear, I swear,” his voice cracks and breaks, there’s tears in the corners of his eyes and he leaves another set of scratches along Val’s biceps. His claws and his words are sharp like needles. Exactly what Val is used to.
“You’re a fucking liar,” Val growls and kisses Angel, moaning at the salty taste of his tears and the hint of iron on his tongue. He rocks into him, feeling his climax coiling in his lower belly, heat rising, heart pounding, mind going completely blank except for Angel’s wet warmth tightening around him in a maddening rhythm. “Liar, you fucking liar,” he whispers it between kisses like words of devotion, and Angel nods.
“I love you,” Angel sobs, arching his back off the bed as he comes. And he comes and comes, his muscles clench around Val like they wanted to suck him in, and he keeps repeating it like a selfishly soothing mantra. “I love you, I love you, Val, I love you…”
“Shut up,” Val covers his mouth and squeezes his throat, watches Angel’s eyes roll back into his skull in another burst of pleasure and it pushes him over the edge. “Shut the fuck up, you’re so full of shit,” he whispers, his own voice strange, weak, pathetic and unrecognizable.
But he buries himself deep inside Angel’s welcoming body, right where he belongs, because Angel was made for him. He’s always known this. He pulls Angel up with three arms tight around his body, crushes him against his own ribcage as colors burst behind his eyelids and shivers roll down his spine. He fills Angel’s hole to the brim, pumps every last drop of cum into it and imagines it cleansing Angel and washing away their sins and their shortcomings. Again, he tries to devour Angel with his kiss, pressing his neck down against his bed, licking into his mouth and biting like a fucking animal.
“You’re mine,” Val growls into his mouth while Angel hiccups and twists with pleasure.
“Yeah,” Angel nods, cupping Val’s face in his hands. “You’re mine.”
Maybe that’s all Val needs. Just to hear Angel say it and for the world to be quiet. Maybe what he needs is to kiss Angel and to feel the marks they leave on each other, bite marks and bruises that make it tangible. The deeper scratches along his back sting and his throat feels sore from the pressure of Angel’s pretty hands, so he knows that Angel loves him, too. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s always been supposed to work.
He doesn’t know how long it takes for Angel to finally let him roll over, but when he does, his bedroom is sunken into darkness and the cameras on every corner blink with a little red light, completely immobile and focused on nothing. Perhaps a wall, the floor, one of the dark corners, out of focus, recording and surveilling anything that isn’t Val lost in Angel’s warmth. And he feels relieved.
Angel curls up at his side and hooks a leg around his hips, his small fingers crawling up his chest towards his neck, his sharp claws teasing the single bruise he left around his throat, invisible under the fluff. Something hangs heavy in the air, besides their silence and the smell of sex, but Val doesn’t have the heart to name it. He can’t.
He just wants a smoke.
“Val…” Angel starts, but Val stops him with a finger gently pressed to his lips. “But I wanted to say–”
“Don’t.”
Quietly, he reaches onto his bedside table and pulls out a golden cigarette case and a lighter. It was a gift from Vox twenty years before, when he was still trying to buy his way into a box of exclusivity, but none of that matters anymore. Val lights a cigarette, he inhales deeply and breathes out red smoke in careless shapes of hearts and swirls, filling the heavy atmosphere with cherries and sandalwood that caress the soft curves and sharp angles of Angel’s body before they dissipate into the air.
He can feel Angel breathe it in, his lungs expanding against his ribcage. Angel stretches an arm across his chest and takes the cigarette from his fingers, takes a long pull and exhales regular smoke.
Tobacco, chemicals, nothing more.