Archive of Our Own

Angel shouldn’t be here.

It’s a bad idea. He knows it is, he’s not stupid, and if he’d told anyone about it, they would’ve tried to stop him—which is why the only person who has any idea he’s here right now is Alastor, a sadistic shit-stirrer to the max who’d gleefully given him the address upon being asked. But Alastor also only keeps his mouth shut when he’s offered a promising deal, so in exchange, Angel owes him an ‘entertaining story’ when he finishes up his business here—though that’s something for future Angel to worry about. Present Angel is trying not to throw up from anxiety.

He’s been to some seriously seedy places in the Pentagram for his job, but this has to be a contender for the top slot.

The side street he’s picking his way through slumps like rotted driftwood, sloughing inwards on itself in a slow-motion collapse of shingles and lopsided buildings. The concrete under Angel’s boots is grimy and slick with pools of oil, blood, and piss, and broken bottles litter the ground in glittering shards under the dim, flickering orange light of the few crooked streetlamps. He ducks under a sagging clothesline with a grimace. The shitty apartments here almost curve overhead with how crowded they are, blotting out the crimson sky and making Angel feel suffocated by the lack of space, but he grits his teeth and keeps moving.

Somewhere in the apartments above him, a domestic dispute trickles down through the boarded-up windows; two people railing at each other at the top of their lungs, loud and violent. Glass shatters and someone starts sobbing, faintly, before abruptly going silent.

Angel’s lower set of arms curls tighter around his midsection.

No one’s ever tried to claim that Hell is a nice place, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that he’s had it better than a lot of other poor suckers down here. Holing up at the hotel with Charlie’s ebullient cheer, Vaggie’s snappy protectiveness, Niffty and Al’s freaky bullshit and Husk’s gruff tenderness has softened Angel, making distant the memories of living in places like this himself when he was first getting his feet under him—where the constant, sordid misery is almost a living creature, where the sharp fangs at your throat are always just waiting for you to fuck up so they can tear you to shreds.

He’s only a visitor here, he reminds himself. This isn’t where he belongs. Not anymore.

Following the directions on the fancy piece of cardstock Alastor had given him, Angel takes a left and immediately has to swerve around the body of a bat sinner sprawled facedown in the middle of the street, wings crumpled and motionless. Dead or a junkie on a bender, but really, what’s the difference. Angel’s been there.

“Hey, slut,” someone coos from a doorstep as he passes by, crouched in an ungainly hunch of skinny limbs and leering eyes. They wave a fistful of bills at him. “Wanna come over here and show me a good time?”

“Fuck off,” Angel says. It’s not even a creative catcall.

The sinner spits a curse at him that he ignores. He’s a little insulted, actually, at the implication that he’d just roll over and blow any rando off the street for a quick buck. He’s a high class whore, a top dollar performer with a body made to be bought and sold only by anyone willing to pay his prices—or at least he used to be. He’s… not really much of anything, these days.

That’s the sort of negative idea Charlie would tearfully protest if he ever said it out loud to her, so he keeps it to himself, but it’s true. What is he without Angel Dust, the pornstar, the mask? What is he, really, without Val?

It’s a question he can’t answer on his own. He knows Husk would say something blunt and matter-of-fact about it, like you were someone before him and you’ll be somebody after him, and the sentiment would drive Angel up the wall more than it would comfort him. Husk understands Angel a lot better than most people, ‘cause he’s a big ole softie loser under all those thorns, but he wouldn’t understand this. Husk and Alastor ain’t alike at all. Husk was somebody people knew before he crashed and burned right into Alastor’s waiting hands, somebody who probably needed to get knocked down a few pegs, even if nobody deserves to be on a leash to make that happen. Husk has learned his damn lesson. If he ever got his soul back, he’d wouldn’t immediately go running to Al for catharsis or closure or whatever bullshit Angel’s been telling himself about why he’s here—Husk would just accept that he’s free now, whatever that means for him.

Angel knows, in his head, that he’s free. But it doesn’t feel like it.

It’s a flaw, he’s well aware, but he’s a visual learner, alright, he needs to see a thing before he believes it. It’s one thing to know that his soul contract was broken and Valentino ain’t an Overlord anymore. It’s another thing to see the proof standing right in front of him. He needs to see it.

Husk’s stupid pragmatism wouldn’t get it: this deep, wrenching feeling of being unmoored that worsens every day that he sits on his hands at the hotel and pretends like his whole damn world hasn’t been upended.

Pausing briefly under a half-shattered, naked bulb by an abandoned storefront, Angel consults the card. Not much farther to go. Anxiety squirms in his gut, but he tries to keep it contained, to prevent it from spreading to his whole body, otherwise he won’t be able to follow through.

He’s still reeling from all the shit that went down with the Vees. They’d really lost the moment they chose to make the fight physical; in a war of smear campaigns and popular opinion, no one is better at swaying the tide of public favor than Velvette, and Angel had known all along that they weren’t gonna win unless they got those three to crawl out of the woodwork. And sure enough, the instant Alastor managed to lure Vox out into the open, it was over—though it definitely didn’t feel that way in the moment, when for a while it seemed like Al might actually lose. In terms of raw strength, Vox doesn’t—didn’t—fuck around.

But then... well. Even Overlords aren’t immune to angelic steel straight through the heart.

They’d all politely pretended not to notice the way Alastor had knelt to touch Vox’s darkened screen with bloodied hands afterward, his smile too wide to be real and radio static shrilling faintly around him like a runaway train screaming off the tracks. They’re all still too afraid to mention it weeks later, even though he’s long since returned to his usual creepy self.

No one has the guts to ask him what he did with the spear after he yanked it out of Vox’s chest. Or with the body.

… It’s probably for the best.

Maybe, in the scant few seconds between Vox’s death and all of his contracted souls defaulting to Velvette and Val, the other Vees could’ve used the power boost to keep fighting. But when Val didn’t do anything but stare at Vox’s body in stricken, mute devastation… Velvette had quickly surrendered too. They were all fucked up, evil bastards, Angel knows that personally, but whatever they felt for each other, it must’ve been real. He’s never seen that look on Val’s face before. Never thought he could look so… small.

They’d both signed away every single soul they owned to Charlie when she commanded them to, eyes gleaming red and voice thrumming with a power that had always seemed to fit her poorly until that moment, when Angel really could believe she was the princess of Hell. And when she broke every contract in one fell swoop, it was like coming up for air after an eternity spent drowning. Like he could finally fucking breathe again. It was sheer, incredible relief.

And yet… Angel can’t shake the feeling that it can’t be over. How can he really be free when he knows Val is still out there, defeated but not gone? Not being punished for any of the bullshit he put Angel through? Maybe this makes him a vindictive asshole and maybe he won’t deserve redemption after this, but fuck, it’s been so long since Angel’s felt like his spite means anything at all.

He’s so sick of having a monster under the bed. Time to turn on the lights.

Swallowing, he stops in front of a shitty, rundown apartment that looks exactly the same as every other drug den on the block. The sagging concrete porch shifts under his weight when he tries the handle and finds it unlocked, shoving his way inside as if he belongs. The darkness within the hallway is thick and impenetrable, stinking of rot and sweat, and he finds himself flickering open his secondary eyes to see better, illuminating the space in front of him with a dim purple glow.

Third floor. The journey up the stairs gives him time to steel himself. He focuses on keeping his breathing level, letting the intermittent waves of nausea pass through him without letting himself stop to dry heave in the middle of the empty stairwell. It won’t make him feel better. Nothing will, frankly, which is why he just needs to get this over with.

He reaches the correct floor. Starting down the carpeted hall, he eyes each door as he passes, checking the numbers for the right one; the used syringes cracking under his heels aren’t a shock, and neither are the muffled moans of sinners fucking behind closed doors or so strung out they can’t tell what’s real anymore. It’s all so viscerally familiar to how he spent his first few months down here that it’s making him feel a little crazed, a little frayed around the edges, and by the time he stops in front of the door with the crooked 38B nailed to the front, he’s almost shaking with the desire to turn around and flee back down the stairs and right back to the warm, glowing safety of the hotel.

But he doesn’t.

Angel breathes. He stuffs the address card into his pocket. Thinks about Husk, probably manning the bar right now and waiting for Angel to come home. Thinks about Charlie, writing him a hundred colored apology letters. Thinks about Niffty, scrubbing the bloodstains out of his clothes with glee; Vaggie, holding his hair back in stoic silence when he was going through withdrawals; Pentious, proudly gifting Angel an honest to god raygun as a gesture of goodwill; and hell, even Alastor, always leaving leftovers in the fridge with Angel’s name on them in curling, elegant script.

No matter what happens here tonight, his family is waiting for him.

He lifts his hand to the door and knocks, quick but firm, before he can chicken out. Silence for a moment, and then—

“It’s unlocked,” calls a high, drawling voice from within, a voice that makes Angel’s heart quicken with dread.

He doesn’t think about it; he opens the door and steps inside, swiftly shutting it behind him.

The first thing that hits him is the smell. Pungent, cloying, so sweet it burns his throat on an unwary inhale and makes him cough, eyes watering and waving a hand in front of his face in an attempt to clear some of it away. He’s no stranger to Val’s smoke, but this is dense and concentrated in a way he ain’t used to, filling the apartment with a haze of drifting, lurid pink that muddles the finer details of the place, even with all of his eyes open. Small mercies: he’s well beyond tolerant of the mind-altering aspects of this damn smoke by now, so all he gets is a bit of a headrush—limbs loosening, some of his anxiety dissolving, a little spinning of the room that resolves itself after a few seconds of pressing his shirt over his nose, breathing as shallowly as possible.

Fumbling to the right, almost tripping over a heap of clothes, he manages to unlatch the casement window and push it open, letting in a hot, humid breeze. “Fuck,” he hisses, sucking in a great lungful of bitter but clean air. A lesser sinner would’ve dropped instantly.

After a moment of regathering his bearings, he straightens, irritably combing his hair out of his eyes. A large amount of his trepidation had gone soft and sticky in his veins from the overwhelming dose of smoke, but some of it comes trickling back in as he assesses the apartment.

It’s a shithole, but he’d expected that. Popcorn ceiling, piles of plastic wrappers, beer bottles, discarded cigarettes and unknown stains mottle what can only be generously called a one bedroom; with bland gray walls and unremarkable dark carpet, the tiny green kitchenette off to the left is an eyesore, but Angel’s pretty sure interior decorating ain’t really the landlord’s priority in a neighborhood like this. The living room is cramped, swollen with trash but sparse in personal effects. Against the far wall is the only thing of note: a mauve, velvet-lined sofa, upon which the supine form of Valentino is lounging in a cloud of smoke.

“Finally,” Val mutters, and there’s the petulant, slurring whine Angel is familiar with. Just the sound of it makes his shoulders stiffen, pulling up to his ears, but he forces them back down. “I knew you’d be back. It’s never just a one-time payment with you greedy parásitos—”

And then he’s shoving himself upright, glowing red eyes piercing through the dim and landing on Angel—

Val freezes.

For a horrible moment, they’re just staring at each other in the shadowy gloom of the apartment, Angel in the classic hooker outfit he threw on to blend in and Val wrapped up in the crimson fur of his own wings. There’s a cigarette burning down to the nub between Val’s lax fingers, showering the grimy carpet with harmless, flaking embers.

“Angel?” Val says.

“Expectin’ someone else?” Angel bites out. Too defensive, too abrasive. Get it together, Angel.

“Oh, no one important,” Val demurs.

Between one breath and the next, his voice slides into a low, pleased register that matches the lazy smile spreading across his face, and Angel hates how intimately he recognizes the look Val’s putting on for him. The mask. Val leans forward, cradling his chin in one hand and extinguishing his cigarette with the other. Angel fights the urge to take a step back in response.

Val continues, “Just the landlord. You know how men are. Anyway, relax, baby, take a seat—” He gestures vaguely, seems to realize that there’s nowhere to sit besides the sofa he’s occupying, and then ends in a shrug. “Can I get you anything? The water from the tap might kill you a second time, but there’s vodka around here somewhere. If you want anything harder, you’re gonna have to give me a second, the last few bitches I had over rearranged all my shit.”

The airy nonchalance in Val’s tone is pissing Angel off. “I ain’t here for drugs,” he says, balling his hands into fists.

“Money, then? Amorcito, you don’t work for me anymore, remember? I don’t owe you anything.”

“Yeah, you really do.” Val peers at him blankly. Angel scowls. “Don’t play dumb, Val. It won’t work on me. You’re damn right I don’t work for you anymore, and I’ve been waiting—fuck, years to say my piece, and—and now if you know what’s good for you, you’re gonna sit there and fuckin’ listen.” He heaves a shaking breath, more anger than fear now as he vehemently repeats a mantra in the back of his head to keep himself on track: You’re free. He can’t do nothin’ to you anymore. You’re free. You’re free.

But then—all the fiery vitriol Angel’s been keeping pent up for the last four decades dissipates the moment he reaches for it. He stands there, staring down his personal nightmare, throat working as he tries to summon up the words to eviscerate Valentino for good, to really make him feel the weight and depth of Angel’s fury and pain, to exorcize this monstrous loathing inside him that festers like a blistering sore.

Nothing. Even in disgrace, Val’s presence overwhelms any room he’s in, blotting out everything else like spilled ink. It crushes all of Angel’s carefully rehearsed eloquence into glittering sand.

No, no, god dammit, this ain’t the moment to forget his fucking lines—

“I’m listening,” Val says, like a bastard, but it lacks the sardonic edge it would have coming from someone like Alastor, or Vox. It just sounds—tired. A little annoyed. Now that Angel is seeing him better, Val’s eyes are unfocused behind his glasses, his healthy antenna wisping crookedly to one side in a way Angel unfortunately recognizes.

“Are you high?” Angel blurts out, then hates himself for even asking. He doesn’t care. It shouldn’t fucking matter. But if he has to be agonizingly sober for this conversation, he kinda wants Val to be suffering too.

Val smiles in a confused, empty sort of way, blinking slowly. “I thought you weren’t here for drugs.”

“I’m not, I just—wanna make sure you’re payin’ attention and not so fucked up you can’t even see me. Forget I asked.”

“Are you going to get to the point, or should I just make this easy on both of us, hm?”

Val shifts forward and rises to his feet, and for the first time Angel registers that the loose folds of his wings hadn’t been draped over him for comfort, or the aesthetic.

The sweeping, elegant appendages have been mutilated—both wings hang in useless tatters from his back, delicate scales shredded like tissue paper. The hind wings are completely gone, torn straight from his shoulders, and the forewings end just above his waist in lacerated strips.

Angel can’t help the gasp that escapes him, hands flying up to cover his mouth. Bile burns in the back of his throat that he barely manages to keep down, holding his breath until the urge to vomit passes.

What the fuck what the fuck—

But he has no time to fucking react to any of that horrifying bullshit because all of a sudden Val is looming over him, crowding him, having crossed the tiny-ass apartment in three strides to stand in front of Angel—and even though Angel knows his soul is his own, there’s no contract sanctifying the violence between them, that’s never stopped any sinner from murdering another in cold blood before, and Val has always been so much bigger than him in every way that would’ve mattered, and—and he’s supposed to be stronger than this, why does he always fucking freeze up when Val—

When Val flips the script on him, apparently, because instead of grabbing Angel or slapping him or doing any of the normal shit he’s come to expect, Val sinks to his knees.

“Come here, baby,” Val croons, reaching up and clutching at Angel’s hips.

Angel stiffens, panic squeezing his lungs, and finally finds the wherewithal to stagger backwards when Val’s nimble fingers start to slip under the waistband of his shorts. He backpedals, yanking himself out of Val’s hands; Val’s sly, seductive expression dims briefly, his antennae wilting, but he shuffles on his knees and goes to grab Angel again, undeterred even as Angel takes another frantic step back, choking out, “No—”

“Angel, corazón,” Val says, as Angel’s back hits the wall. “This isn’t the first time I’ve groveled on my knees for a vengeful man. That’s what you want, no? Revenge? You don’t have to say it, Angie, I know words have never really been your strong suit. Let’s talk in a language we both understand.”

Val laughs, but it’s a hollow sound. His hands are on Angel again, insistently petting over the exposed fur of his midriff, deceptively gentle. Angel can’t breathe.

“Let me make it good for you, baby,” Val murmurs. “I’ll be good for you.”

From anyone else, Angel might’ve called it begging. But this is Val, and Val never begs—he just kneels and smiles, maddening in its lack of cruelty, drugged up to the gills with his wings in ribbons, telling Angel what to want and how to feel, as fucking always.

Val starts to tug at his belt buckle.

Abruptly, Angel is done.

He swings one knee up and plants his heel squarely in the middle of Val’s chest, kicking him backwards and sending him sprawling. Coordination wrecked by whatever cocktail of substances he’s on, Val fails to catch himself and lands in a crumpled heap.

“Don’t,” Angel hisses, chest heaving, “touch me. You don’t get to fuckin’ call the shots here.”

Val sniffs, levering himself up on one elbow to glare at Angel from the floor. His torn wings twitch, useless, attempting to flare but managing only a weak flutter. And before he can get up, Angel pulls out a pistol and levels it at Val’s head, bracing his thumb on the hammer but not cocking it just yet. The angelic steel tip glints dully in the low light. He can really kill Val tonight. Right here, right now, he can put an end to it all. Part of him has been dreaming about doing it for years. About not hesitating. About finally, finally feeling safe, knowing that Val is somewhere beyond even Hell—somewhere he’ll never touch Angel again.

But another part of him whispers wait, and it sounds an awful lot like Charlie.

“Stay right there,” Angel says. Whatever he’s gonna do with his upper hand, he knows he needs to figure it out fast. “I’m not playin’ around, Val.”

“Of course not,” Val mutters, running a hand over his head and smoothing down his antennae. He doesn’t try to stand up, but he does adjust so that he’s lounging more than lying, leaning back on his elbows and regarding Angel with disconcerting apathy, completely at odds with the sarcastic purr spilling from his mouth. “You mean business.”

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waitin’ for this?” Angel demands, taking a step towards Val and hating himself for wanting Val to flinch, to cower—to act like he’s taking Angel seriously instead of this blasé shit, like Angel isn’t weighing his life in his hands right now. “For you to finally realize that I ain’t your little fuckdoll anymore, and I ain’t your pet? That I don’t gotta come when you call and I don’t gotta put up with your bullshit, in or out of the studio, and you don’t get to act like you’re in control here when you’re not. And you’ve always—always been fuckin’ nothing on your own, you and me both know partnerin’ with Vox is the only reason you didn’t get wiped out in the nineties.”

Finally, this is what gets Val to react: he starts to shove himself upright, baring his teeth in a dangerous snarl, but Angel cocks the gun and holds his ground, making Val freeze.

Power thrills down Angel’s spine. He grins without humor, looking down the barrel into Val’s furious red eyes. “Try me, bitch.”

“Angel,” Val says lowly, spreading his hands in a pantomime of surrender. His smile doesn’t match his body language; bitter and raw like something rotting in the sun, torn open by scavengers.

Angel ignores it. “Every time,” he says, trembling with the white-hot surge of anger that thrums through him. It feels good, it feels right, and he’s not a vengeful person, he isn’t, he isn’t, but Val has always brought out the worst in him, from day one. “Every time you threw me away like addict trash and then went and fucked him. Every time he looked at me like I was lower than dirt—like he’d leave me outside during an extermination if he knew he could get away with it—well, he’s dead. He’s dead and his whole fuckin’ empire is up in flames and I’m still here.” He inhales, taking another step so that he’s towering over Val now, the muzzle of the gun hovering mere inches from Val’s forehead. “I’m still here, motherfucker. Who’s lower than dirt now?”

Silence. Val says nothing, hands clawing gouges into the carpet.

“You ain’t even worth the bullet,” Angel mutters. He carefully decocks the pistol.

He doesn’t actually want to kill Val, no matter how good this feels in the moment. He’s trying to be better. He knows what Val did to the guy who owned his soul before he met Angel, and he has no interest in starting that cycle all over again; this, by itself, is almost enough.

“Well, don’t back down now,” Val sneers, climbing up onto his knees again. He sways, lurching forward, and catches himself on one hand, folded in a half-crouch at Angel’s feet.

“Are you askin’ me to kill you?”

“You can’t tell me you haven’t considered it.” Val finally struggles all the way upright, settling back on his haunches for stability and leaning on his hands. His shredded wings trail across the disgusting carpet. He levels Angel with a dizzy smile. “It’ll feel good. I know it will. It felt good when I did it. I’ll even make it easy for you.” He tilts his head up, almost a supplication, and tucks one hand under his chin, framing his face as an easy target. And just like that, Angel feels sick again, grip tightening on his gun. “See, amor? I’m practically gagging for it.”

And Angel—

Look. He knows what suicidal ideation looks like when he sees it. But this is the last fucking place he ever expected to find it, and it cuts at a place inside him he hadn’t realized existed; something twists behind his ribcage, a gutting pain like a sickle carving through flesh.

He clenches his jaw, feeling slightly hysterical. “Fuck you. You don’t get to use me to kill yourself.”

“There’s some karmic justice to the idea, you have to admit. Or, instead… you could use me.” Eyes half-lidded, Val lets his jaw slacken, tongue wetting his bottom lip as his gaze drifts pointedly downward. Angel hesitates for only a moment but Val instantly seizes on it, spine unfurling like a fern frond with newfound confidence. He slides forward, top pair of hands creeping up to curl lightly around the backs of Angel’s knees—his voice gentles, enticing. “Come on, papi, why don’t you show me who’s in charge? Put me in my place. You know I deserve it. It’s been too long since someone reminded me what I’m really good for.”

Angel shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. He knows what this is because it’s the same shitty routine every time, because Val’s a creative powerhouse behind a camera but he’s painfully unoriginal in his relationships—because this is exactly how Angel has learned to appease Val over the last four decades, and he learned from the best.

It’s a bad idea. The worst idea, actually, the thing he swore to himself he wouldn’t let happen. He has a long history of letting Val worm his way into forgiveness with sex, it’s a weakness he’s well aware of. But it’s never been like this before. Angel has never been the one in control.

Isn’t this something Charlie’s always advocating for, anyway? Taking back his autonomy? Exercising his agency?

Finally getting to be the one doing the hurting instead of the one getting hurt—

This is different. It’s always been different, with Val.

And he’s not immune to the heady rush of satisfaction that curls through him when he unbuckles his belt with numb fingers, sliding it out and coiling it around his free hand. Val’s eyes blurrily latch onto it.

“I call the shots,” Angel says, and the hard, mean sound of his own voice startles him for a moment. He doesn’t… he doesn’t want to be this kind of person, but if anyone deserves it… “Don’t touch me, and don’t touch yourself.”

“Whatever you say,” Val purrs, retracting his hands and settling them in his lap.

Not harmless, but docile, at least for the moment. Angel isn’t stupid enough to think that Val would be doing this if he was in his right mind. Whatever drugged stupor he’s been wallowing in since the defeat of the Vees has blunted his sharper edges, making him pliant and sluggish as Angel briefly bends down to loop the thin, sleek leather of his belt around Val’s neck, pulling it taut. Val leans up on his knees, following the tension, but Angel tightens the slack bit by bit until Val gags, struggling for air—but his hands stay in his lap, even as they curl, biting into the bare flesh of his thighs. Angel holds it like that for a moment, then loosens it again, allowing Val to inhale raggedly.

Angel swallows.

Be the bigger person, Charlie would say, eyes shining with naivete. When someone hurts us, we always have the choice to forgive them instead of hurting them back.

He’s never claimed to be a saint. One thing Val and Husk have in common, though he hates to compare them, even in his mind:

They’ve always seen Angel exactly for what he is.

He uses his bottom pair of hands to shove his shorts off, underwear and all falling down to his ankles, and then he steps out of them, kicks them aside, and shuffles back to lean against the wall, intentionally this time. Heat pools at the base of his spine; remnants of Val’s smoke still lingering in the air, probably, nothing to do with the insanely satisfying feeling that sings through him when he tugs on the belt, forcing Val to crawl forward as he reels him in.

“Classic,” Val says as he settles back on his haunches, arching his spine and fluttering his lashes in a way that Angel used to find effortlessly attractive, but that he knows now is just more of the same. An act. A really fucking good one, but the illusion’s been shattered. Spend enough time backstage and the magic goes out of everything. “I really should have cast you as a dom more often, angelito—”

Angel yanks on the belt, cutting Val off with a sputtering cough. “Shut the fuck up. I ain’t here to roleplay with you. This is for me, got it?”

“... Crystal, baby.” Val’s voice comes out slightly hoarse, and for a second there’s a flicker of guilt behind Angel’s sternum—but it dies a moment later when Val grins, running his tongue over his teeth. “I love a man who takes what he wants.”

“Did that line work on Vox?”

It’s not nearly as gratifying as Angel had hoped to see Val’s grin falter. Something frail and tender cracks behind Val’s eyes, his antennae quivering like they want to fold down but he’s holding them up through sheer force of will; Angel knows that struggle from watching Husk, and then instantly hates himself for bringing Husk’s memory into this apartment again, feeling like he’s dirtying the purity of the hotel by daring to compare anything in it to Valentino.

Val sniffs. He manages to dredge up something like a smirk, but it’s little more than a lukewarm echo. “Sometimes.”

“Well, it ain’t gonna work on me.” Angel taps the side of the pistol, considering, and then brings the muzzle down to rest against Val’s closed mouth, keeping his finger off the trigger just in case. Val’s eyes nearly cross trying to look down at the gun, but Angel snaps with his free hand, dragging Val’s attention back up to him. “This ringin’ any bells?”

Val shakes his head. Angel presses the gun harder against Val’s lips until Val relents, parting them, letting Angel slide the barrel into his mouth.

This is fucked. This is so fucked. Val’s tongue curls around the gun, lax and accepting in a way that’s as downright infuriating as it is sickening; Angel shallowly thrusts the barrel in and out, ignoring the way his heart has suddenly started to pound wildly in his chest.

“You made me do this,” Angel says, willing his voice to stay steady. “Two years ago. Said gunplay was gettin’ more views, so you wrote a script that had me deepthroating moneyshot to get out of a mugging. ‘Cept you promised the gun wouldn’t be loaded—and when Rocky shot his foot off a few hours later, you said you forgot.”

Val’s teeth click lightly against the cold steel as Angel angles the gun deeper, chasing after Val’s nonexistent gag reflex. He pulls on the belt just to see Val’s throat convulse, moaning faintly around the barrel. Val is obviously hard under his skirt, because whatever depraved sickness lives at the core of him, that he gets off on shit like this, well—Angel has it too.

“You were always ‘forgetting’ shit like that,” Angel continues, eyes narrowed. “Didn’t matter what it was. An’ you’d always be sorry after, but you’d never change, because ya can’t. No point in changin’ for some cracked out whore that you own at the end of the day anyway.”

He thrusts the pistol in harder, forcing Val’s jaw wider; pink saliva pools around the barrel, dripping down Val’s chin and staining the carpet. Angel hauls him up by the belt, splaying him on his knees and bending his head backwards to fuck his throat, and Val takes it with a passivity that only stokes the arousal thrilling through Angel, balancing on the knife’s edge of twinned self-loathing and spite.

“The worst part is, you were always better when you were with him.”

Val makes a thin, stifled sound.

Angel growls, tightening the leash until Val’s breathing is little more than a strained wheeze. “What the fuck was it about him? That you could be sweet to him and not to me? You’d make me cockwarm you under the desk while you sat on the phone with him and flirted like some fuckin’ schoolgirl—then you’d go off and have a whole romantic dinner with him while I overdosed on your bathroom floor. Was it—” He laughs, high and hysterical. “Was it just ‘cause I was dumb enough to fall for the con? Did you only love him because you couldn’t trick him into loving you back?”

Angel loosens his grip on the belt, letting Val suck in greedy gulps of air as he slides the gun out, dripping with spit, and tosses it aside. Val shudders, hacking a wet-sounding cough, and finally Angel reaches down to press a hand between his legs, groaning as he coaxes his dick from its sheath.

“Vox isn’t—” Val starts, then stops, panting; pink saliva seeps from his mouth, spilling over. “He wasn’t… we… we had something special.”

“Not special enough to keep you from breaking his screen.”

“He never let me get away with that.”

“So what? I didn’t fight you hard enough? That’s why you thought it was fine to treat me like gutter trash?”

“Well, Angie... like recognizes like.” Val leers, grinning, until Angel bends down and grabs him by the chin. He hauls him closer, pressing his fingers into the divots of his cheeks and forcing his jaw open, tongue lolling out; that’s a trick Val taught him, years and years ago, the first time he tried to refuse a kiss.

“We ain’t the same,” Angel says sharply. “You wanna know the difference between you an’ me? Right now, I’ve got friends and a partner waitin’ up for me. They might be a buncha losers, but they love me—not just for what I am, but what I can be.” He doesn’t even have to fake the pity that seeps into his voice. “Vox never gave a fuck about anythin’ but the money you made him.”

Val’s thighs are smeared with blood from how hard he’s digging his nails into his flesh. His bottom two hands wring together, loosely hugging himself, while the top two claw deep grooves in his skin, and still he obeys Angel’s first order and doesn’t touch himself—and fuck, if that doesn’t drive Angel crazy, to have Val totally at his mercy like this of his own volition, no contracts in sight.

Angel feels he can probably be forgiven the lapse in self control.

He wraps his free hand around both of Val’s antennae, drags him forward, and maneuvers him down onto Angel’s cock.

Warm, slick heat envelopes him, pulling a gasp from his throat. It’s good. It’s really fucking good, because of course it is; Val is a master of oral sex first and everything else second, and he proves it as his tongue curls around Angel’s dick, providing the perfect mix of firm pressure and tantalizing stimulation. Angel doesn’t let him set the pace, instead gripping his antennae and the underside of his jaw to hold him still while Angel fucks into his mouth.

And god, Angel knows this makes him a bad person. He’s being too selfish, too rough; Val doesn’t have a gag reflex anymore, neither of them do, but Angel can feel himself hitting the back of Val’s throat with every violent thrust, punching little muffled noises halfway between protest and pleasure out of him as his eyes, blurry and distant, gleam with involuntary tears.

How many times has Val made Angel cry? How many times has he told Angel how pretty he looks when he’s wrecked and sobbing, eyeliner running in muddy streaks with sweat and come and who knows what else?

I can’t, Val, I can’t do any more, please—

Don’t be so sensitive, Angel. It’s only a gangbang, you could do this in your sleep. So let’s try this again, without the bitching this time: you’re going to take as many cocks as I tell you in as many places as I decide, aren’t you?

… Yes, Val.

Good boy. You’re so beautiful when you’re ruined—I just want everyone else to see what I see.

“Fuck,” Angel sighs, molten pleasure skittering up his spine as Val’s tongue constricts around his cock. “Yeah, oh, just like that.”

Val gives a pained whine when Angel pulls a little too hard on his antennae, tears slipping down his face—but all Angel can think about is every video, photograph, and audio recording downloaded on thousands of sinner’s phones of Angel whining and shaking as his costars yank on his fluff, or tug on his hair so roughly that he’s left picking out the torn roots in the shower later—crying silently in his bedroom after work while he tries to comb mats and knots out of his fur, mangled and flattened from wearing too-tight leather for almost twenty hours straight—

Hey, amorcito, I didn’t mean to yell, but you know how crazy you make me—

Ugly, seething anger burns in his chest.

“I fuckin’ hate you,” Angel snarls, snapping his hips and driving himself deeper down Val’s throat. His nails scratch into the soft, overwarm skin beneath Val’s jaw; he moves both of his lower hands to tangle in the fur around Val’s neck instead, less petting and more raking through in harsh, unsympathetic strokes. “I gave you everything, ‘cause you asked me to and I loved you—you were everything to me, Val, and I was never anything but a toy to you. Fuck you. You manipulative, abusive, lying piece of shit, fuck you.”

He moans, pleasure shuddering through him with every wet, hot pass of Val’s addictive tongue. Val’s eyes are glassy, unfocused; Angel tugs on his antennae again just to make him flinch, wide gaze darting back up to Angel’s face.

Angel bares his teeth in a mean grin that he doesn’t feel. He feels—hell, he feels almost high on this, on Val’s drugged submission and on his own cruelty, all his worst impulses that he used to vent by throwing himself into turf wars with reckless abandon because he couldn’t take any of it out on the one person he wanted to make suffer. And now he’s finally doing it, he’s finally free and he will never be the helpless one between them ever again—

So why does it all still feel so fucking bad?

“Dammit,” Angel chokes, voice cracking. Misery rises in the back of his throat, but then Val is swallowing around his cock, making his fingers spasm in Val’s ruff as bright, heady sparks of pleasure threaten to overwhelm him, the conflicting miasma of emotions doing nothing to deter the way everything in him is starting to tense up, building to a peak. “Dammit, Val. You just had to go an’ fuckin’ ruin us.”

Angel’s hips stutter, losing their rhythm. He thrusts into Val’s mouth once, twice—then he wraps a hand around the base of his cock and jerks Val’s head back at the same time, pulling out just in time to come all over Val’s face. Angel shudders, gasping as he works himself through it, white stripes painting Val’s bruised jaw and dripping into his panting mouth; it’s humiliating, it’s dirty, it’s satisfying and cruel and hot and awful, and by the time Angel releases Val and takes a few hard steps back, putting distance between them, he’s trembling with both sadistic glee and deep, welling shame.

Angel gulps down a few shaking inhales, steadying himself on the windowsill. Val has collapsed onto his hands and knees, his tattered wings curling slightly around himself in a facsimile of a hug, and he reaches up with a careful hand to smooth down his abused antennae, hissing under his breath.

Fuck. Fuck.

“Angel,” Val rasps, thumbing absently at a streak of come on his cheek. His expression is doing something Angel has never seen before—a sort of hopeless, empty grief mixed with desperate arousal as his lower two hands draw up towards the hem of his skirt, where he hasn’t touched himself since Angel first gave the command. “Can I—please, cariño—”

“Yeah,” Angel says, because what else can he say?

Val finishes himself off just like that: on the floor, Angel’s belt trailing from his neck like a dropped leash, Angel’s come dripping off his face and onto the carpet. When he’s done, he fumbles to the side and swipes up a discarded shirt, which he uses to clean himself up; Angel just watches, stomach churning, paralyzed. After this, Val staggers to his feet and unclasps Angel’s belt, letting it fall to the floor and revealing the ring of darkening bruises collaring his throat. He turns and gropes along the coffee table, scooping up his cigarette box, going through the motions like Angel’s seen him do a million times before: tapping the box shut, tucking the filter between his lips, flicking open a shiny golden lighter.

He clicks the lighter. Again. And again.

Click. Click. Click.

Val’s face contorts. He snaps the lighter shut and hurls it across the room. It smacks into the far wall, hitting the carpet with a soft thump. Angel barely manages not to flinch.

For a long time, Val looks at his unlit cigarette in silence.

And then, finally, he tips his head back to gaze sightlessly at the ash-stained ceiling. He smiles. It’s not a very happy smile.

“Vox loved me,” Val says. Angel stares at him. “He did. But we always knew it’d end like this, Vox and I. Bloody. All up in flames. Only seems right, no?”

Angel bends down, picks up his discarded shorts. He starts to tug them back on. “Yeah. Mutually assured destruction.”

“Vox never could appreciate poetic symmetry.”

Not like you goes unsaid.

“What are you gonna do, after this?” Angel asks, not even sure why he’s asking.

“Ah, I haven’t decided. Perhaps I’ll go for a walk during the next extermination.” Val’s smile curdles at the edges, sickly. “I hear it’s beautiful in the city this time of year.”

“So that’s it? After everything—you’re just gonna throw in the towel and give up? How’s that fair?”

“Mi amor, who said anything about fair?”

Angel clenches his jaw.

There’s a beat of quiet. Angel gathers his things: cinching his belt, tucking away his blessing-tipped pistol, straightening out his ruffled outfit. Val doesn’t move. When Angel finishes putting himself in order, he goes for the door, suddenly desperate to be out of here, to be back within the mellow, welcoming arms of the hotel and away from this depressing shithole, only to stop in his tracks when Val calls, “Angel, wait—”

He pauses, hand wrapped around the door knob. “What?” he asks tersely, without turning around.

“The Radio Demon.” Val’s tone is unreadable. “What did he do with the body?”

Angel doesn’t ask for clarification. He doesn’t need it.

“I don’t know. He’s been kinda tetchy about us questionin’ him. But, um… he hasn’t gone huntin’ since the battle. So.”

Val is silent.

“Sorry,” Angel mutters, and then he pushes through the door and slams it shut behind him, the fetid darkness of the hallway swallowing him whole.