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Vox makes a punched-out, hurt noise when he lands on the Vee Tower floor. The sound is not intentional—he’s just sore, probably on account of Valentino having ripped his head off before he capped it all off by tossing him into the tower after Shok.wav, not to mention all of the previous ripping that had already been going on with his insides courtesy of that smug red prick—
Val usually laughs at him, when he hears Vox yelp. Or hurries to him, a sexy pout on his lips.
Valentino does neither of those things now, and instead stalks past, heels clicking sharply on the marble flooring. Vox had picked out that marble. The way Valentino’s heels sound clicking on it were not a top priority, but he does admit it was a consideration. Nothing sexier than a nice, sharp click—
Except when he’s walking past Vox.
“Heyyy,” Vox calls, sort of muffled from where his casing has skittered across the floor and bumped into a corner. Shok.wav is snuffling at him—the demon shark version of snuffling, which is investigating Vox’s ambient electronic field with his electroception, which is cooler and more adorable than actual snuffling.
Val doesn’t turn around.
“I said,” Vox repeats, “heyyy—Val! C’mon! That hurt! Pick me back up!”
“Pick yourself back up! I said I’m not talking to you right now!”
“Sure sounds like you’re talking to me,” Vox gripes, and manages to wriggle himself upright. Ow. His lack of a neck hurts. He’s swapped heads before but the process is typically a lot less violent.
“Well, I’m not!” Val whirls around with a dramatic flap of his wings, and crosses all four arms, cocking a hip. Notably, he does not leave.
“Uh, am I interruptin’ somethin’?”
“Oh, great,” Vox mutters, and looks over to the door. It’s Angel Dust, mascara in a state best described as the ‘post gang-bang special,’ sidling into Vee Tower. Velvette is leaning against the entryway, too, watching silently. She’s not even looking at her phone, which worries Vox more than anything. Maybe it broke. He can buy her a new one.
“Angie!” Val exclaims, turning on a dime. He’s up in Angel Dust’s space immediately, fussing his hands through Angel’s fucked up hair and squishing his face this way and that as he rubs away the smeared eyeliner and mascara. He tugs him across the room. “Oh, you’re a mess, baby, forget about stupid old Vox and let’s go get you cleaned up.”
Vox can’t take it anymore. “So, what, then?” he snaps. “Suddenly you care more about that whore than one of your partners? After all those dramatics earlier?”
There’s an angry squeak as Val halts, and Angel flinches.
“Angie, sweetie,” Valentino says through gritted, grinning teeth. “How about you go upstairs and clean yourself up, hm? Daddy will be up later.”
“Sure, Mista Valentino,” Angel manages, and he’s out of the room so quickly the door clicks shut on the last syllable of Valentino’s name.
Valentino turns around. Velvette gets there first.
“What the fuck,” she says, stomping forward, “is wrong with you, Vee?!”
“What’s wrong with you?!” he demands right back. “If it weren’t for you two, we’d be drinking margaritas up in Heaven right now!”
“Oh, sure,” she says, rolling her eyes so hard he’s shocked they don’t pop right out of her doll head. “And would that be before or after you killed us all with that nuke?!”
“That’s not—I wasn’t gonna—”
“Weren’t you?” she asks, taking another step forward. She looms over him like this, and she’s not tall, fuck, Val tucked her under his arm earlier, but Vox has never felt so small in front of her. “Because I thought you said, what was it? Fuck hell? Fuck all of us? Fuck Val, and fuck me, and fuck—poor fucking Shok.wav—” She flings an arm out to gesture at the shark, who perks up at his name. “—just because you had a shitty breakup seventy years ago and never got over it! So you decided to let that fucker win once and for all and fucking kill yourself!”
“Vel, shut up,” Val says, voice cracking.
It’s burning again. Behind Vox’s eyes. It’s the same one that washed over him as he stood atop the Might of Lilith. A cold certainty, a distancing. Like he’s watching the world through a tunnel. That ravenous, wailing creature that’s been gnawing on the inside of his ribcage like a prisoner at their cell bars, realizing that it will never, ever be fed, and giving up. Laying down. Curling up.
Leaving nothing behind except the utter certainty that he is going to die anyway, so why not take everyone else down with him?
Hands alight on his face, soft and familiar. One pair to pick him up, the other to cup his screen, brushing away at the glass. Val still has a smear of mascara on one thumb, but it washes away quickly, because—
“You’re crying again,” Valentino says softly.
Vox sniffs thickly, vocals shuddering. “So what? Just throw me away, then. I don’t care.”
“We’re not throwing you away, dumbass,” Velvette says, tired. She was angry, so angry—or so it felt. Maybe not as angry as Vox thought, because she’s sniffing, too, dragging her arm across her eyes. “Fuck. C’mere. And stop taking your pissy feelings out on Val. You’ve been such a dick.”
“Such a dick,” Valentino agrees, voice raw, and pulls Vox into a hug.
The cradle of Val’s arms is soft, more so when Velvette wriggles her way in and they all end up wrapped in tattered wings. They’re all sniffling, the three of them, an absolutely ridiculous show. Even Shok.wav clacks his jaws at them, skittering around the room in a distressed circle that mostly just leads to him accidentally smacking his tail into the walls. He settles, though, tucking the tip of his nose underneath Val’s good wing.
Vox’s mouth wavers, a thin, flat line, as he stares blankly into the red of Val’s wing. The cold feeling is still there. But not the distant one. Not the one that’s certain of all the wrong things.
“I’m sorry,” Vox barely mumbles, half-muffled.
“It’s okay,” Valentino says immediately.
Velvette smacks him. “Don’t give in so fuckin’ fast, you pathetic cunt!”
And Vox just buries his face in Val’s soft, fluffy ruff and lets himself cry.
