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When Valentino awoke that morning, the bedroom was still shrouded in darkness. Curled up beneath his blankets and surrounded by a myriad of cushions and pillows, his eyes burned as he attempted to blink the exhaustion out of them. All that he got though was a dull, aching pain that punished him for his lack of sleep. The only thing he could make out with his blurry sight was Vox lying next to him, face plunged into the same darkness as the room, the only signs of life being the faint rising and falling of his chest.
Valentino didn’t bother searching the bed for his phone. He didn’t need a clock to know that whatever time it was was too early.
Before they would begin to water, he squeezed his eyes shut again and shuffled closer to Vox, nuzzling his head against his chest. The warmth of Vox’s body came to console him as Valentino wrapped his arms around him in an iron grip.
Maybe he could fall asleep again. Just because it hadn’t worked all the previous times didn’t mean it couldn’t work now. It was still early after all, and his body was begging for sleep, the cocktail of alcohol, drugs and sex from yesterday weighing on him like a blanket of steel. While he wasn’t sure how long he had slept, it couldn’t have been long.
Sighing, he squeezed his eyes shut even more than they already were and lay motionless in his bed. He didn't want to be awake. Vox's heartbeat pressed against his head in a gentle rhythm, the only sign of life in his empty room. His room? Their room? Technically it was his room, but Vox slept here more often than not, mainly because Valentino would throw a fit if he didn’t, but that was beside the point.
It was cozy, he had a warm body to touch and cuddle up to, and the blinds were shut enough to keep the faint light outside. Sleep should have come to him easily.
It didn’t.
His legs shifted beneath the long blanket, unable to find a proper position to rest in, while his fingers couldn’t keep still, curling themselves into Vox’s shirt only to let go again. It wasn’t the same when Vox didn’t wrap his arms around him and pulled him close, holding him like his own little treasure.
The sound of his heartbeat was calming, rhythmically enough to be a gentle lullaby, but not loud enough to drown out the silence that weighed down on the room. It was at these times that Valentino was reminded that there were little truly nice things in Hell – while he usually loved the fact that their tower was as well isolated as it was and he didn’t have to hear the screams and gunshots from annoying assholes who couldn’t keep their mouth shut when they were being murdered, on these mornings, it was nothing but oppressive.
Their room was silent. Only Vox’s heartbeat, nothing else. No howling wind, no footsteps from the street, no music playing from his phone, no soft murmurs from Vox lulling him into sleep. Just silence, as if he were deep in space, someplace where no sound would reach his ears.
It was unnerving. He hated silence.
Silence meant there was nothing going on around him, no other people, nothing to occupy his mind with. His entire life consisted of clubs, shootings, sex and drugs – there was always a cork somewhere to seal away the unwanted thoughts, thoughts that only came out when he had nothing else to focus on.
Like now.
Curling up a bit more he moved closer to Vox, as if that would stop the silence from clearing the remaining but already fleeting fog from his mind. Vox was always the leader, the one looking out for him, even if Valentino liked to deny it. Wouldn’t he fall asleep again before the silence could catch up to him if he just got close enough to Vox?
No.
Of course not.
Sighing quietly, he opened his eyes again, rapidly blinking to get the burn out of them. To no use, since the light of his phone immediately blinded him again after his fingers had fished it out from the tunnels between his pillows.
5:47 it said. When had he come home? At four? With all the drugs and alcohol coursing through his body, the only thing he had paid attention to was making it to bed.
Not that it mattered in the end. Whatever time it might have been, it was too early to be awake again. No wonder his eyes were burning like bitch.
Tossing his phone back into the shadows of the bed, Valentino turned to look at his sleeping lover. His face was pitch black, as it always was when he had been asleep for long enough. Valentino shuffled around until he was at the same height as Vox's screen, but the room was too dark for him to see his reflection inside. Reaching out a hand, he gently tapped his finger against it, as if Vox had a touchscreen with which Valentino could wake him. But he didn't, and thus remained fast asleep. Not that Valentino had expected anything else.
Should he wake him up? He didn't want to be alone. Vox was supposed to touch him, talk to him, give his mind something to focus on, even if it was just the knowledge that he was the center of someone's universe.
But no. It was always the same question he asked himself during these mornings, and he always came to the same answer.
Call him hypocritical, but Valentino didn’t like it when Vox wouldn’t sleep for days just because of work. So what if his own sleep schedule was a mess? It was a fact that Vox was always doing too much, and while Valentino may not always make it easier for him, that was not the point.
The point was that Valentino wanted Vox to sleep. Vox was no fun when he was tired, and Valentino enjoyed sleeping with him. It was rare to see Vox as calm and unguarded as he was before sleep, and while Valentino certainly was not the possessive one between them, it did make him feel special knowing that this view was for his eyes alone.
But that didn’t make it better. Not waking Vox up meant that he was alone.
Alone on an early morning, surrounded by silence, with nothing to do and tired as fuck.
He turned away from Vox with a sigh, eyes darting over the rest of the room that laid before him. Small dots of light entered through the not fully shut blinds, not yet daring to fall onto the bed but reaching just far enough to create a little pattern on the floor. His miniskirt laid somewhere in between, thrown to the ground in an afterthought—or more likely, no thought at all—while the top he had been wearing earlier had somehow magically found its way over the armchair.
And right below the table in front of it laid his now half-empty pill bottle. It had fallen down after he had attempted to fish out his sleeping pills that were hidden between all his other drugs, but his hand must have slipped, sending the colorful mix to scatter through the entire room.
White, yellow, blue, red. A rainbow of sensations covering his floor as if this weren’t his bedroom at all, but some abandoned toilet in a cheap club that was now housed by addicts and other useless trash. Add some dirty syringes and the picture would be perfect.
Maybe that’s why the sight made his chest tighten like he had a bullet stuck in his skin that was yet to be removed. It shouldn’t bother him. Who cares how his room looked? He didn’t even have to clean it up. All it took to bring order back to his little kingdom was a simple ‘Kitty, pick up my pills and clean my room’, and his wish would be carried out without a word of protest.
But it was not the mess itself that was the problem, was it? The problem was the silence, the lack of stimulation leaving so much open space in his mind, leaving all these unwanted thoughts as the last thing to fill it with; and these thoughts told him that the sight before him hit too close to home.
Flicking his antennae around to stretch the sleep out of them, he untangled his legs from the blankets and left the bed. He didn’t like this room. The plush carpet on the floor swallowed the sound of his feet as he got up, not bothering to make a detour to his closet. There was no need for clothes if he didn’t even want to be awake. Wrapping his wings around his still-warm skin in a loose robe was enough.
The only other thing he put on was his glasses before he moved to the door. Reaching out a hand to the handle, he cast a longing glance back at Vox who continued to sleep as if he didn't even care that Valentino had left his side. A small frown appeared on his face.
Selfish asshole.
Yes, he wanted Vox to sleep, and he could guess how tired Vox must have been when he went to bed, but was it really too much to ask for his boyfriend to notice his absence?
With a squeak of frustration he left the room, quietly closing the door behind him. In the second that it took, the thought of leaving the door slightly ajar entered his mind, just so he wouldn’t feel completely isolated, but he had already closed it before he could have thought about it more.
And now he was truly alone.
Stretching his arms over his head as if he actually wanted to be awake, one of his lower hands came to flick on the controls for the blinds, turning them to let a bit of the early morning light in. Their lounge room stretched before him like an empty palace, devoid of any sound except the soft echoes of his feet sounding from the marble floor.
Trudging down the spiral staircase, he walked towards the sofas and...stopped. What now? His eyes darted around the room, from the posters on the wall showing a Valentino who was still soundly asleep in his mind, over to the TV that was just as black as Vox’s screen, to the glass walls showing a sleeping city.
What could he do? He wasn’t in the mood for anything, not really. In the end, it was a mere waiting game after all; waiting for Vox to wake up so Valentino could go back to sleep. As long as Vox was awake, watching him through his little cameras, he didn’t even need to be in the room with him. But who knew when Vox would wake up? It was his free day today, and while Vox was an early riser in theory, sleep often took revenge on him when he finally allowed it, holding him down for longer than usual.
In the end, Valentino just settled for lying on the sofa. Turning the TV on for some mindless distraction seemed like a good idea, but at this time of the day, only dumb shopping channels were running, trying to get money out of the few drunk idiots who were still awake and had money to spare. He could listen to music, but he wouldn’t be able to turn it loud enough to drown out his thoughts without waking Vox; besides, he wasn’t much in the mood for that either.
Some of his whores lived downstairs near the studio – if he called one or two of them up, he’d at least not be alone, but he dismissed the idea just as soon as it had appeared. The last thing he needed was a half-asleep bitch sitting next to him and trying to act as if they were happy to be here. Not that he cared about what they wanted, but at the moment, he wasn’t even what he himself wanted to be.
Closing his eyes again, he nestled his head on the cold cushion on the sofa, a fruitless attempt at finding relaxation as he dangled one of his legs in the air. Maybe it was the drugs, but when his breathing went very still, he could almost believe the shadows of his mind were walking around the room, as if this weren’t his place at all but somewhere else, someplace where he was simply a piece of decoration. Pretty to look at, but nothing more.
He wouldn’t call himself insecure or self-conscious or anything demeaning like that, and neither would anyone who knew him. No, he liked being him. Valentino, the Overlord of Pleasure and Sin, the moth pimp who held Hell’s sex industry in an iron grip and had every hooker and whore who thought themselves to be worth something trapped in his web of lies.
He liked being Vox’s boyfriend, having such a powerful man wrapped around his finger—even if Vox would say it was the other way around.
But on these mornings, on these quiet, lonely mornings, where there was no club to shake up and no porn to shoot, no partner to seduce and no fight to win, he was simply Valentino, the moth.
And as it turns out, he didn’t like that person very much.
Opening his eyes again, he pushed himself up from the sofa and started pacing around the room. The floor was cold under his feet, chill creeping up his legs like a vine, but he couldn’t be bothered to turn on the heating. He walked around the room, and walked, and walked and walked, dragging a long shadow of memories around with him, wrapped around his ankle like a ball and chain.
No, he didn’t like the man he had left behind. On normal days, Valentino could pretend that the moth had never even existed, the same way he made everyone else believe it had never existed, but now? When there was no person to be, no influence to make and nothing to do that would make him himself, all that remained was the empty shell of a man he had buried in the backyard of his mind. A beautiful tree had risen from the corpse, but the body remained deep in the ground.
Being Valentino meant being lifeless. Stagnant, a hull, an empty cocoon for a spirit that had long since left its prison behind. When he wasn’t a pimp, an Overlord or a boyfriend, he was powerless. Weak. Vulnerable.
An addict.
Drugs had made him feel alive, forced him to feel the beating of his heart and the blood pumping through his veins. And when it hadn’t made him feel alive, it at least made him unconscious enough not to notice when he wasn’t. Back then, it hadn’t mattered if he was sitting in some dirty bathroom at seven in the morning, high out of his mind – as long as there was life in his body, he hadn’t cared.
Leaving their lounge room, he trudged towards the kitchen. Not because he wanted to eat something, but just to keep moving. The rooms were all too big for him and his silence.
But that, too, was what it meant to be the moth. If he didn’t carve out a place for himself, if he didn’t give himself a name and made it bigger and bigger and bigger, until everyone knew who to think of when hearing the name 'Valentino' – then he didn’t belong.
Much like now, as he passed all his beloved luxury, being Valentino meant feeling like a guest. Maybe not even that. Back in the day, long before he had met Vox, this relentless pacing had been his life. Pacing through houses that didn't belong to him, owned by people who wanted and paid him to be there but didn’t actually care about his whereabouts as long as he gave them their money’s worth.
He hadn’t cared much back then, a bed was a bed, but on the occasions where it hadn’t just been a quick fuck for money, the days where he would be allowed to stay until morning or even longer, he would pace through the unfamiliar houses just like he was doing now; with the walls closing in on him from all sides, reminding him that he was an outsider.
Second choice at best. A nice choice, certainly, but no more than that, his existence forgotten and his presence unwanted as soon as life with the man or the missus was good again. But such was the life of a seducer.
Sometimes, in moments like these when everything was quiet, he thought he could hear their voices. Talking about him, over him, in the same room as he was, pretending he wasn’t there at all, just a lifeless doll to look pretty. Eventually though, they would all call out to him, the bar owners, the pimps he had worked for, wanting him to come back, their precious little butterfly, they would make it all better again, they missed their sweet darling and-
There was a reason why he had killed them back then, but in the silence, when he was truly no one and nothing but himself, he could get the thought that they had never left at all.
Walking back to the lounge room, he passed by the picture of Vox and him on the desk. Mindlessly, he picked it up, staring into the eyes of the two men who looked back at him with unchanging expressions.
Vox.
His mind calmed for just a second, grounded by the familiar name of his lover anchoring him in himself.
Perhaps another reason he didn’t like being just Valentino. The Overlord Valentino, the pimp – he didn’t doubt that Vox loved him more than the universe, that he was obsessed with him and would tear all of Hell apart if something were to happen to the man he considered his.
But the little moth inside him wasn’t so sure. Being himself meant being a placeholder. Maybe Vox just loved the Overlord in him, the man with power. Maybe Vox just wanted someone to keep his bed warm, someone who was good to fuck and would make all his filthy dreams come true while he waited for someone else to sweep him off his feet. The right one. Someone who wasn’t him.
Maybe he wasn’t worth all the trouble, all the unnecessary words he spoke and demands he made when Vox just wanted someone pretty to look at who conveniently could also rake in cash.
It wasn’t true, and he knew it. He knew Vox loved him.
Vox, who had made him glasses for his strange eyes without Valentino even having to ask, just because Vox wanted him to be able to see and not hurt his eyes with all the bright lights.
Vox, who always came back, no matter how often they hit rock bottom in their relationship, bringing him flowers and gifts, kissing him gently like he actually was in this whole mess for Valentino himself and not for what he could give him.
Vox, who came and picked him up from clubs when it got too late and Valentino was too wasted to come back home, because Vox was always watching him, taking care of him. He had killed the little moth who cured his hangovers in filthy bathrooms. Valentino was now the demon who woke up from his excesses in the softest bed Hell could offer, next to the man who looked at him like he was his first choice.
Valentino was a king—except when he was alone.
From the lounge he headed to the bathroom, and from there to the hallway leading to the elevator. He paced through the small indoor garden they had, through Vox’s spare office, and back to the lounge. Again and again and again, not always in the same pattern, but always moving, never finding any rest. He had long since stopped his attempts to suppress the millions of thoughts rushing through his head in these moments.
Work, relationships, love, sex, drugs, life, there was always something the little moth could work himself into a tizzy about, always another tiny detail that the normal Valentino wouldn’t give a flying fuck about because it wasn’t fucking relevant. But every worry Valentino ditched became two that the moth would agonize about. With every step another thought came in, replacing the former one, until he was so far up in his head that he couldn’t even tell what time it was anymore despite having passed a clock at least a hundred times by now.
But it couldn’t have been long. The fast pace of his mind always made it seem like time went by quicker than it actually did.
In the end, it was a faint noise that broke through the silence and his thoughts, just as he was about to reach for the handle of the bathroom door.
“Tino.”
His antennae perked up like a bunch of bunny ears, instinctively wanting to add a scent to the voice to give it more presence. Vox. The mere idea that he could be awake made Valentino’s heartbeat flutter, all the thoughts about wanting Vox to sleep long forgotten.
His voice cast a spell on him, banishing the silence that plagued his mind. He forced the little moth that he was when he was nothing away and turned him into something again.
Vox’s boyfriend. His sweetheart, his darling.
“Come back to bed,” Vox called quietly, his voice still raspy, laced with sleep and tiredness. It wasn’t a request, but it wasn’t an order either. It was a task. A thread of trust between them, a thread that Vox could pull on for Valentino to follow when he was too deep in the dark, muddy waters of his mind to get out on his own.
Something easy to focus on, something to do that made Valentino himself again.
He followed Vox's voice like a siren call, stepping up the spiral staircase again, too tired to fly. His feet tapped against the marble as if he weighed nothing, and before he knew it, he stood in front of the bedroom door again.
The bedroom was still dark as he stepped in, opening the door just enough to fit through before soundlessly closing it behind him. The blinds still blocked out the majority of the early sunrise, but now the room was faintly lightened by another light source on the bed–Vox’s screen was on again, alive, filled with the pretty blue hues that Valentino couldn’t get enough of. Vox had his eyes closed, but Valentino could still feel that he was awake, and not just because Vox had just called him. It was a feeling, a deep familiarity with his lover’s body.
Just seeing Vox in front of him, being back with him in this safe nest, dispelled the restless thoughts inside his brain, shut out firmly and left in the lounge room where Vox would later banish them fully, just by filling the place with life.
As soon as Valentino made his way to the bed, stepping around the pills that still lay dumped on the floor, Vox opened his eyes a slit to look at him, blinking a few times to cast away the sleep. It didn’t do much; for someone with a screen for a face, Vox’s eyes could show exhaustion very well. Who knew when he had gone to bed before Valentino came home?
Pulling his hand out from under the blanket, Vox lazily patted the empty space beside him. “C’mere, baby.”
And Valentino did. He knew how to seductively climb on a bed and fold his wings behind his back to reveal his body, but this was not the time to use his skills. No, with the way he slid under the blankets and immediately pressed his body against Vox’s, one might think they were two magnets, two magnetic puzzle pieces made to fit together.
Wrapping all four of his arms around him, Valentino pulled them together as close as possible, as if he wanted them to melt together. He did not protest when Vox’s hand came to slip in between them, slipping his glasses off and putting them on the nightstand. As soon as Vox’s hand was free again, it sneaked behind his back, parting his wings to reach his back. A shiver ran through Valentino’s body when Vox’s warm hand touched his skin, those sharp claws gently tracing over it in small patterns.
Nuzzling his head against Vox’s chest, the calm rhythm of his heartbeat pressed against Valentino again, still quiet and unhurried, but with a feeling of life that had been missing back when Vox had been asleep.
“What was my princess doing out there all alone, hm?” Vox murmured, brushing back Valentino’s antennae like a pair of ears, the soft, feathery tips gliding through his hand like silk. Valentino didn’t answer, only letting out an unhappy squeak as he pressed his head closer against Vox. Luckily, Vox understood him without any words and simply continued to touch wherever his hand could reach.
It was rare for Valentino to notice how much he needed to be touched to feel calm, considering there was always someone near to fulfill his needs when they arose. But in moments like these even he could tell how quickly he began to wither without it. But that’s why Vox was there, wasn’t he? Because Vox’s touches felt better than those of all his useless whores; because Vox could read his body like a map, always knowing exactly what to do to make him feel good.
And it was all so much better when Vox was awake, when he responded to him and Valentino wasn’t cuddling with what might as well be a corpse.
One of Vox’s feet reached out to trace Valentino’s leg, only to immediately jerk back as if he had kicked him.
“Fuck Val, why are you so cold?”
The warmth of the bed had not yet thawed the icy cold in his legs that had seeped into his feet earlier and had raked up his legs. Valentino almost didn’t answer again, but in the end found some energy inside him to string together a mumbled sentence after all. “I’m not cold. I’m hot.”
Always the protector, Vox hooked his leg back over Valentino’s until their bodies were fully entangled like a ball of yarn. Just the way Valentino liked it. While he never failed to make fun of Vox's old-man mindset, as long as it was focused on Vox spoiling him and treating him like a prince, he didn’t mind. Being the only thing on Vox’s mind was what he thrived on, seeing Vox reduce his world to the simplest of tasks to fulfill his self-imposed role.
‘Keep moth safe. Keep moth warm. Protect moth from danger.’
But Vox didn’t need to know that.
Chuckling quietly, Vox’s free hand came to card through his fur, soothing him further. “Your counters are shit when you’re tired, love,” he whispered.
Normally he would be petty enough to snap back at that statement with an insult, but at the moment, his mind was fully reduced to a soft, white cloud. Vox’s voice and his presence were a spell that magicked all the bad thoughts he didn’t want to have far, far away, to the point it felt silly to have worried about such things in the first place.
Not that he was thinking much at all when Vox was there now, talking to him, making noise for Valentino to focus on instead. “’m not tired...”
“No?”
Before Valentino could react, Vox hooked one of his fingers under his chin to gently force him to stop hiding in Vox’s shirt and look at him. Even when he was tired Vox’s eyes were still as perceptive as ever, and if Valentino were anyone else, he might have felt exposed at being perceived so intently.
The tip of a claw came to stroke over the skin around his eyes. “And when did you come to bed last night?”
He wanted to shrug, but the movement seemed way too exhausting for his sluggish body, so he just closed his eyes instead. Over all the thoughts and spirals and pacing he had almost forgotten that he actually was really fucking tired. “Dunno,” he murmured, leaning into Vox’s touch. “Four. Five.”
The brief second of silence when Vox probably checked his internal clock was enough for Valentino to notice just how tired he actually was. Now that his eyes were closed, they seemed to be glued shut, steel weighing them down for him to never open them again. His legs were trembling from the lingering exhaustion of a whole night of clubbing and dancing in heels combined with his restless skittering through the penthouse earlier.
Whatever time it was now, five, six, seven – although Valentino highly doubted that -, Vox didn’t seem interested in telling him, but Valentino didn’t need to have his eyes open to know that Vox was not happy. Hypocrite.
Vox didn’t say anything though and continued carding through his fur. “Did you take your pills?”
While Valentino hummed in agreement, he wasn't even sure anymore at this point. Maybe he had taken them after the bottle had fallen to the ground, maybe he hadn't. Maybe he had mixed them up in the dark and had taken some other drug. It didn't matter, what mattered was that it had not helped him sleep.
Vox let out a quiet sigh. “Could’ve just woken me up, you know?”
Sometimes – rarely –, when such mornings occurred, he did. When all else failed, when he was short of destroying the entire tower out of frustration and restlessness, he would go and wake Vox so he would calm him down. But most of the time, he didn’t.
“No,” he just said, too tired to come up with a response that both felt like Valentino and hid the fact that he just wanted Vox to get a full night's rest sometimes. Not that Vox didn’t know that already, the prick always knew everything, but Valentino didn’t have to remind him.
A hand came back to caress his cheek, and against the wishes of his body, Valentino’s eyes fluttered back open. He was tired, but he wanted more of Vox, more senses stimulated, more of his presence around him. And the light of his screen, even when it was dimmed, was just so pretty and calming.
“So many thoughts in that pretty little head, hm?” Vox murmured.
Valentino had never told him about what kept him up in the morning, but he had no doubt that Vox had known ever since he had first found Valentino pacing through the rooms like a prisoner. Vox always knew what was wrong with him. An involuntary sound escaped him, a combination of a hum and a whimper, the same sound he made when he was sick and weak and generally displeased with the world.
“Are you calling me dumb?” There was none of his usual bite in his voice, only a faint hint of the usual temperament that never quite left him.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, I’m saying you’re too tired to think, sweetheart.” Moving his hand from Valentino's face, it came to rest on the back of his head instead, letting him hide in his shirt again. Valentino didn't resist. He was sure there was some underlying insult in what Vox had just said, but he really was too tired to think.
“Wanna sleep?” Vox asked.
Another weak hum of agreement. For a brief second, Valentino thought about asking Vox to stay awake until he fell asleep – hold him, keep him company, protect him from his own thoughts. The idea quickly got ditched again though; there were only so many blows his pride could take, even with Vox.
Maybe another time. The fact that Vox didn’t have to work today and would likely sleep in with him was reassurance enough for now. And even if he did get up earlier, as long as Vox wasn’t asleep, it was alright. As long as Vox was watching him through the cameras on the ceiling and Valentino was always somewhere on his mind, it was alright.
Vox pulled the blankets tighter around them until they were wrapped in a cocoon of pillows, blankets and limbs, and while Valentino may not have been a caterpillar before becoming a moth, the warmth, darkness and tight space didn’t fail to make him feel safe.
“Good night,” Vox murmured, sounding rather tired now that his moth had been calmed, to which Valentino only nuzzled closer against him. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t like the idea of Vox going to sleep again. He was supposed to talk to him more. Usually, Vox’s presence was enough to keep the unwanted thoughts away from his head, but now that it was silent again….what if it wasn’t?
Vox’s heartbeat pressed against his head, but that wasn’t much noise. He needed stimulation, more, more, more. The warmth was good, the touch, the way Vox held him like the key to a treasure he had to protect. Something that was his.
Sight was something he had long since ditched as a reliable sense. He wasn't blind, but his eyes did not give him enough sensory input to fully satisfy him, so the darkness behind his eyes was fine for now. His antennae made up for that, catching faint scents – nothing that was uniquely Valentino and nothing that was uniquely Vox, but something that was them. Cherry-scented electricity.
But as long as Vox wasn’t talking to him, nothing could satisfy his craving for sound. Valentino shifted in Vox’s arms, trying to make up for the lack of voice by getting closer to Vox, but there was no way he could get any closer to him without them melting together. Another squeak of displeasure escaped him, his frustration only amplified by how good he was feeling except for this little thing, and the more glaring fact that he was way too tired to fight against sleep for something that seemed so unimportant.
Vox’s hand moved a bit from where it rested on his back, gently stroking over his skin as if he were an animal in need of calming. But before Valentino could let out any other unwanted noises, Vox’s hand stilled for a moment as if was thinking about something.
When his gentle touches resumed after a few seconds, there was something else. A faint, muffled noise, as if Valentino were listening to a conversation outside the room.
The noise clearly came from Vox’s internal speakers though, and when Valentino listened more closely, the inaudible noises transformed into words and sentences, a quiet jingle like the ones played at the beginning of TV shows.
It was the short opening melody of Vox-2-Nite, Vox’s little passion project – or rather his excuse to talk shit about people and things he didn’t like with the added bonus of getting his viewers to also shit on these things.
Valentino had to resist a quiet sigh of relief when he heard Vox’s smooth voice starting the show, exchanging some pleasantries with the audience and introducing this week’s topic he would talk about.
At this point, Valentino couldn't have cared less what this particular episode was about—before he knew it, the shadows looming above his mind threatening to take his peace away from him were cast away, out of his mind, out of their tower, back to the darkness where they belonged. In his exhaustion, following Vox’s words was like counting sheep, a lullaby for those too old to be sung songs anymore. A protective bubble shielding him from all the memories he didn’t like.
This episode though, he knew very well—it was the one he and Vox had filmed together. Valentino had demanded, or as Vox had later put it, whined and begged his way into getting to join Vox in his show to talk about the grand opening of his newest strip club (the largest in the Pride Ring, thank you very much). This had eventually spiraled into a long talk about the entertainment and sex industry in Hell as a whole, at least in a way they thought was appropriate for the dumb masses.
The content was familiar enough to follow without getting all too distracted, with his and Vox’s voices being too smooth and calming to not fall asleep to them. Warm, rich, and soothing. A reminder of what they were and could be when they weren’t fighting. Maybe it was the drugs lingering in his bloodstream, but at this moment, so short of passing out into the sleep he so desperately craved, his heart was overcome with the feeling of having arrived somewhere. Someplace to call home.
His breathing began to even the more he drifted off into sleep, his senses full of the things he loved. No matter how early in the morning it was, Vox’s call always reached far enough into the darkness of his mind to guide him out again.