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It’s the first of December. Velvette has made sure that the entire tower is decked out in Sinsmas decorations. Obviously she’s also the one overseeing the gigantic Sinsmas tree being put in the lobby, chopped and imported from somewhere where people would definitely miss it. Fortunately, Velvette is too rich to care.
Less fortunately, she has a passenger with her today because Valentino is directing a very important special Sinsmas shoot the entire afternoon, which is bound to get bloody because people are still unable to read the prompts right out his fucking mind, which means Velvette has to babysit.
The bundle wrapped against her chest gurgles and reaches for a bauble. Vax’s chubby baby hands are, of course, way too small to substantially grab anything but that doesn’t stop him from punching the offending bauble with all his 3-month-old might.
Suddenly, with a literal light bulb going off inside her head she realizes that it will be Val’s parasite’s first Sinsmas. Satan, he’s going to be insufferable.
“Your mami’s going to be a nightmare,” she tells the little worm, “you’re gonna have more presents than all of us combined. And you can’t even appreciate them.”
Vax blinks up at her with gigantic round eyes that fill three quarters of his screen, not understanding a word.
“Buh!” He says. It’s probably supposed to be her name, Valentino told her when his drooly tit goblin first started yelling the syllable at her a few weeks ago.
“Babies can’t pronounce V-sounds very well,” Vox had unhelpfully provided, as if that should make her more proud of the absolute butchery the little diaper-shitter was making of her name.
“Yes, Vax.” she answers anyway, booping his flat face with a finger and watching him go cross-eyed. “You're the most spoiled baby in all of hell and it’s only gonna get worse.”
She has to admit though. He is bloody cute. And surprisingly well-behaved considering the fucked-up histrionic jumble of genetics making up his tiny body.
She wonders what she will gift him.
What in the antichrist’s triple cursed name will he get the little brat for Sinsmas? Vox is low-key blowing gaskets over this conundrum ever since he caught Val cooing at Vax while simultaneously letting the goblin suck his tit. It’s like he is purposefully doing this on full display in the living room to torture Vox. As if Vox hasn’t suffered enough, listening to Val’s gigantic tantrum earlier over having to wear a bra under his Sinsmas sweater dress because otherwise his boobs would spill out.
“And your papi is going to give you something too, Vaxito, don’t you worry.” The moth dotes on the little critter while rocking him around the room. “It will probably suck, but he will get better at gift giving! He learned the hard way with me, so he isn’t going to make the same mistakes again.”
At this he turns and demonstratively gives Vox the staredown. All Vox can do is hyperfocus on Val’s exposed cleavage. And Vax having his drooly toothless gob in places that rightfully belong to Vox.
It’s okay, he tells himself while swallowing a mouthful of saliva. Vax is a baby. Babies drink milk. This is normal.
Goddamnit, he wants to drink milk from Val’s nipples too!
Val kicks him out of the tower for insinuating this in the most adult and suave way possible.
God fucking damn it.
Which is how Vox finds himself at the mall. Obsessing over the fact that he has two days until Sinsmas and no present for the tit-stealer.
What would he even gift a baby? He’s been dead for so long, the last time he interacted with one was like a hundred years ago when his crazy aunt brought hers over to the family function to gloat. Vincent’s stiff hold had instantly made the baby start bawling and that was about the last time he ever spent time in a room with an infant.
With a giant sigh he voogles stores that sell baby shit.
He finds himself in an aisle full of toys in a disgustingly colorful imp-run store. Everything looks like a herd of unicorns has projectile vomited onto it. Vax will have the garish items burn pixels into his screen and then he’ll be as blind as his mother. This won’t do.
He briefly considers a big tub of plain wooden blocks. Those could last him a couple of years and would help build fine motor control. Very useful for a child with four arms. But before Vox can decide on it, an image of Vax sticking a block into his mouth and consequently choking and dying, leading to Val putting Vox in a casket and renaming the company to “Valentin-O - Tech so good you cum untouched”, flashes past his mind’s eye and he puts the toy back.
No no no no, this won’t do either. This whole store is a rainbow-colored health hazard disguised as a child-friendly environment. Vox vacates the premises faster than Velvette does the room when she catches them fucking.
Two hours later has him steaming from the back of his head like the coffee in front of him. He’s been through every children’s section in the entire mall without success. Any toy that has piqued his interest Vax already has, courtesy of Val suffering from some form of episode and buying an entire store’s worth of trash in the span of nine months. Clothes are a no go, Velvette would burn anything that would pass Vox’s approval because his fashion sense is, quote “worse than a cannibal’s taste in snacks” unquote. Candy is out of the question because Vax is still exclusively living off moth milk and also regularly chokes on his own spit.
He hates to admit it but Vox hasn’t risen to his position through his boundless creativity.
Forlornly sipping his coffee he decides to check Sinstagram. Only to be bombarded by the top post being a reel of Val, dressed in a nude organza gown that shows off every perfect curve of his body, serenely pulling a tray of flawlessly rolled, mouth-wateringly moist looking enchiladas out of the oven, while explaining how he made them from scratch for his family to enjoy. The voice-over is way too sensual for the setting. Why is he dressed like he’s going to a fancy black-tie event?
Well, Vox knows the answer. Velvette has him on that kind of housewife content that both shows off her avant garde luxury brand and sells Val as a perfect wife to a hard-working husband and mother of a pampered child.
Yeah right, that hard-working husband who is currently emptying the dregs of his overpriced mall coffee with his hands empty because he has no idea how to treat said child. At this point he can just prepare for his company to be taken from him and comping with Ozzie in the future.
The sigh that leaves him this time feels heavy enough to smash concrete. Maybe he should just leave tomorrow-Vox to despair over the topic and get his today-ass back to the tower before the company starts burning down in his prolonged absence.
Maybe he can even get Val to sloppily suck his dick later under the guise of needing that post-nut-ingenuity. It wouldn’t be the first time he got a marvelous idea out of an orgasm.
Leaving the crowded mall café he starts his trek back towards the exit, already texting a driver to come pick him up in five. But that is when the glowing store front of the mall’s pet shop stops him in his tracks. He swivels to stare at the aquariums filling half of the display, casting wavy blue shimmers over the walkway. At the creatures tumbling and turning in their glass prisons, waiting for someone to take them home with them.
This. This is perfect.
Velvette is taking Vax to work again because apparently the baby has a naughty bone in his body and kept Val up all night being unhappy with all the things infants can be unhappy about. No amount of rocking, feeding and singing (or whatever the hell he usually does to calm his brat down) seemed to have helped, which is why when Val showed up this morning looking like death-warmed-over, Velvette had stolen Vax and kicked the moth straight back to bed.
What is happening to her, acting like a good aunt even though she was the one insisting that she didn’t want any part of her business partners’ family roleplay? And why is it that she feels so appreciated simply by being able to just take the baby without being attacked or handed a mile-long list of instructions?
Happy with having wrought his mischief, Vax has gone back to being an absolute angel for her, quietly napping in his sling while Velvette is finishing up edits on the reveal of her New Year’s drop. It’s nice that it’s quiet today, the models all relegated to make their respective social media feeds look less like trash. Velvette simply needs to be an ominous presence to remind them not to scroll and waste her time.
The annual V-Tower Sinsmas party will be anything but quiet. She frowns at nothing. Who's going to look after Vax, when the entire tower is getting drunk in the lobby?
Wait a bloody second, why does she even care about Val’s pet labubu? She looks down into the sling and finds the tablet child peeking at her with his giant innocent stare. The instant they make eye contact he gives her a smile and a happy noise.
Fuck.
She pulls up the group chat.
QueenBitch: Who tf is babysitting Vax tomorrow?
Whiteman: idk, Kitty? I’m sure he can sleep on his own for a few hours.
ASS: I was htinkgnin that Id just stay upstairs
QueenBitch: you are NOT staying in when there’s a party, come on!
ASS: Bitch, I’m not gonna leave Vac alone
ASS: *Vax
Whiteman: Velvette is right, it won’t be the same without you.
QueenBitch: Who are you and what have you done to Valentino?
ASS: fuck you, i do what i want
Whiteman: Val, you have to at least make an appearance, we have to represent as a team in front of the employees!
ASS: what about I projectz a pic of my giant fucking dick, thats enoghh appearance isnt it
Velvette can already see the tantrum happening before her mind's eye when she briefly puts her phone face down on the desk and rolls her eyes so hard they almost pop out of her head. She might be the only braincell of the Vees but even she can’t take another Sinsmas breakup. Last year was such a pr disaster that it took her three entire days to scrub the internet of the footage. So she makes a split second decision.
QueenBitch: What if we all just spend Sinsmas eve together then? Upstairs. Order smth nice.
ASS: you would do gtaht? O.O
Whiteman: Burgers and Wine
ASS: stfu Im cookign
QueenBitch: The employees can still have their party for morale. Idk Ethan can host it, isn’t he good with organizing shit?
Whiteman: They better not burn anything
QueenBitch: Like how you manage to burn bloody water??
ASS: sdkjrtharuhvdjgfn
She can’t believe that she, Velvette, self-declared party queen and hotspot connoisseur, is suggesting a quiet night in. She also can’t believe that the other two agreed in less than a minute.
She shows Vax the chat.
“Look what you’re doing to us,” she tuts at him, grinning at how he tries to swipe at the screen with all four of his hands.
Then she looks up to see all the heads in the room staring at her. The instant rage that fills her is so intense it makes her hair float as if she were an anime character.
“Did I tell you to take a fucking break? How about I break your fucking necks as a Sinsmas gift, you lazy whales?!”
Sinsmas morning starts with Valentino in a frilly red and green apron with Vax on his hip declaring that they will all be making cookies. As a fun family activity.
“All” including Vox and Velvette who have barely woken up enough to remember who and where they are.
“Why can’t we just order cookies?” Vox asks, blearily accepting the pink stocking-shaped mug of steaming coffee Val puts in his hands.
“Why are you naked?” Velvette yawns over her own mug, tree-shaped and hideously green.
“Pa!” Vax says. “Buh!”
Valentino only deigns to answer one of the questions thrown at him.
“I am clearly wearing something, babydoll, you need to get your eyes checked.” He turns around and busies himself by grabbing the food processor from the top-shelf, giving everyone a perfect view of his ass cheeks.
Vox catches himself ogling and turns away quickly because it’s too early to have an erection.
“You’ve been watching too much trad wife content.” Velvette nags, but moves to retrieve the flour from the cabinet anyway.
“Bitch, I am the trad wife content,” Valentino bites back, but he’s smiling at her. Vox pretends to know what the hell they’re talking about.
“Voxxy, you can mix the flour, eggs, and sugar.”
He puts his mug down and rolls his sleeves up, feeling generous today.
“Sure, babe, where’s the recipe?”
Val frowns at him.
“When have you ever seen me use a recipe?” He looks judgmental. Even Vax smushed into his hip, stares up at his mother and then dares to copy the judgment at Vox. “Just mix it until the dough is even!”
“I-…” Vox starts, watching Vax’s eyebrows pull together in his best mami impression.
How is he being judged by a fucking baby.
Val pinches the space between his eyes. “Okay, I’m sorry that you’ve apparently never made cookie dough in your entire life. You hold Vax, I make it.”
And this is how Vox finds himself with his arms full of baby. Damn, the crotch goblin must have been fed so well because he swears he wasn’t this heavy the last time he held him.
“Papa!” Vax babbles and then immediately pulls the corner of Vox’s pajamas into his mouth. Yuck. Still, he can’t help but smile at the little bundle of warmth in his arms. He can admit that he’s a little cute. He’s got great genetics after all.
Now that he has the time to actually take a good look at… his son, Vox starts to discover details he’s never noticed before. Like the way the kid’s crooked antennae sway the same way Val’s do when he’s tasting the air for whatever moth demons can smell that way. Vox bops a heart-shaped topper with a claw and a spark transfers.
Vax freezes with a hiccup and Vox briefly feels his heart falling out and through the floor, because if his talent of making babies cry extends to his own kid, Valentin-O will be the first announcement of Sinsmas Day. But his worry is unfounded because the next moment, Vax is giggling and trying to grab Vox’s claw with all of his nubby armsies. Little currents of electricity fly between them, electric blue from Vox and lightning purple from Vax, clashing between them and creating rainbow sparks.
Shit, his son has inherited his electric powers. Vox can teach his son how to use his powers once he grows up enough to understand instructions.
The sound of a phone camera going off breaks him out of his Eureka moment.
“Vel!” He almost yells, careful not to scare Vax. “Delete that!”
“No way in hell, Vee,” Velvette laughs, pocketing her phone and innocently going back to sprinkling flour on the kitchen island.
Vox’s face does an interesting sequence of going through different stages of panic, making Vax laugh and wriggle at his despair. Velvette gives him a look that is awfully fond, so foreign on her perpetually scheming face that Vox wonders if they’ve entered an event of mass psychosis.
“I’m keeping that one for myself, don’t worry.” She says. “Come, give Vax to me and you can go help Val cut out the cookies.”
Vox deflates. Hates that he almost reluctantly hands off Vax to Velvette, before joining Val back at the counter. The moth greets him with a smile and a hip bump, booping him on the screen with a flour-covered finger.
“Had some bonding time, cariño?” Val asks, voice and body language soft.
Vox wraps an arm around Val’s waist and pulls him in for a kiss. He tastes like eggnog and cookie dough, the sweetest snack only Vox can have.
“For our kid, always.” He tells him. “Now tell me how I can get my hands dirty.”
Honestly, cutting cookies from the platters of dough they’ve rolled out all over the kitchen island is kind of soothing, in a “I can turn my brain off and let my hands do the work” kind of way. It’s been a long time since Vox could just do recreational things without deadlines and meetings hanging in the back of his head. But today is Sinsmas and the entire company is on a mandatory break until after New Years. No pesky meetings. No impotent employees ruining the day. No fires to put out upstairs because he can just fuck Val into the mattress until he forgets what he was mad about.
Vox might even feel relaxed. He keeps forgetting that he’s capable of that.
Velvette approaches, phone in one hand, Vax in the other, quietly filming them sliding cookies onto a ready tray. The baby reaches out with two of his stubby arms, trying to stick its fingers into the dough and whining pitifully when he’s being moved out of the impact zone.
“Oh no no, mijo, you can’t have that yet!” Val admonishes the fussy infant, taking him back from Velvette into his less flour-covered arms. “Mami just fed you and we don’t want you to get a tummy ache. It’s Sinsmas! Everybody should be happy.”
Seamlessly transitioning, Velvette continues cutting the cookies with Vox and all too soon, two trays are in the oven and two more waiting to be baked. While they wait for the first batch to finish, Vox starts putting the used dishes and utensils into the dish washer and leaves the bigger bowls to soak.
Val has moved to the couch and when Vox finishes up the last bowl he strolls over and finds him fast asleep with Vax napping on his chest. Two of his tiny fists are buried in Val’s ruff. Their antennae twitch minutely, almost synchronized, as if in dreams.
Vox feels a warmth grow inside of him, like he’s about to have a system crash but it’s not a bad feeling. He waves Velvette over and she silently squeals and takes a million pictures, careful not to wake them up.
He can’t wait for tonight.
Val wakes up feeling comfortably warm all over. He drifts in that post-nap haziness for a while, too cozy to move or open his eyes, until something tugs at his ruff and a whiny gurgle reminds him that Vax is getting restless. He’s about to reluctantly sit up and figure out how to get him more comfortable, when a pair of dainty arms pick his baby up from his chest and push him back into the couch.
“Shh, go rest some more, I got ‘im.”
Velvette. His darling, his angel.
“Thanks, babydoll.”
“Shut up, bitch”
He can hear the smile in her voice and the muted taps of her fuzzy socks on the floor as she pads away. With a happy squeak he burrows deeper into the heated blanket that someone has covered him in, rolling onto his side and drifting back off into not-quite-dreamland, somewhere where no conscious thought can ruin his mood.
A few hours later has him waking up more rested than he’s been in at least a year. He rolls off the couch and finds himself snapped into his Sinsmas dress. Velvette you brilliant bitch. Stretching to rid the gooey feeling from his limbs and then looking around for the other Vees, he finds them sitting on the rug next to their personal Sinsmas tree, less imposing than the one in the tower lobby downstairs, but still tall enough that Val had to stand on his tippy toes to slide the heart-shaped topper onto its peak.
“I see you’ve been busy,” he comments softly, settling on his knees next to Vox, who is dangling one of Vax’s crinkly blankets over the baby and snorting at his clumsy attempts to catch a corner to stuff in his mouth.
Velvette hands him a flute of champagne and he quickly poses against the backdrop of the tree and the giant pile of presents around them so she can snap a pic and make all of hell jealous.
“We made Ethan, Travis and Melissa come up from the employee party and help us move all the packages.” Vox mutters, concentrating on not letting Vax chew up the entire blanket. “They get free booze and lodgings, the least they can do is help us move some boxes.”
Val takes a sip of his champagne, approving of the taste - expensive -, perfectly content with just watching Vox and Vax playing on the rug. Until Velvette clears her throat.
“Presents, boys. I’m not waiting here all evening until you get your shit together.” She kicks Vox in the thigh, making him yelp. Vax uses the moment to spit his drooly blanket into the tv demon’s face with astounding precision.
Right. Val hides a smile into his glass and then drains it. Kitty zooms over to take the empty flute away and instantly hand him a full one.
“Here, I’ll start,” says Velvette. “Val, this is for you.”
She hands him an envelope. Dark red and heavy like the paper was more expensive than some people’s rent.
“Analog, Vel? Really?” Val grins at her, picking up the subtle scent of perfume wafting off the envelope. “Did you run out of storage?”
She rolls her eyes.
“Just open it, slut.”
Deciding to not tease her more, he slits the paper at the top with a nail and pulls out two tickets to an underground pole competition in the Kaiju District.
“Oh,” he says, turning the tickets over in wonder. January 20th, an off day. “You remembered!”
Velvette huffs. “Course I did, idiot. You’ve been complaining about not seeing quality performances for ages.”
“That’s because I don’t get paid for screening actual sports. People don’t care how sloppy a whore’s technique is, as long as it's sexy!”
Honestly, Val could rage about this all day, but thinking about how Vel saved the website he showed her almost a year ago ago while they were both high and dancing at a club, it makes him feel all gooey inside. He pulls her into a four-armed hug before she can flee from his affection.
“Thank you thank you thank youuu!”
“Alright, get off me, you big insect!”
Too late, Val is not letting her go. She twists and flails for a few seconds more before just letting him rub himself all over her head and ruining her hair. That’s true love, Valentino patented. Resigned to her fate, Velvette uses her powers instead, to float a box over to Vox, who has just finished wiping his face with screen cleaner.
“For you, old man.”
No matter how much he tries to play it cool, Vox can never hide the excitement in his face when someone manages to hit one of his hyperfixations just right. So when he pulls the dark blue crocs full of shark jibbits out of the box, his smile takes over three quarters of his face.
“Oh! Oh! Is this Shok.Wav? And-... and is this Volt?” He points at the little jibbits like a boy showing off his sticker collection.
“Custom-made.” Velvette nods. She is promptly removed from Val’s grasp to be hugged by Vox instead. Their favorite doll.
“Now you gotta open one from me.” Val interjects, handing her a box of her own. She rips the paper unceremoniously while still sitting in Vox’s lap, pops the lid off and lifts out a patent leather strap topped with…
Val isn’t sure if the blush on her face is due to being flustered or enraged. He would be happy with both honestly.
“Is that….?” She turns the strap around, holding it up into the light, which accentuates that it’s about the same size as her forearm.
“This is what I imagine your dick would look like,” Val says, smugly patting himself on the back for getting the exact shade of her skin right. Genius, if you ask him. “Look, it even has exchangeable vibrator/satisfyer ports for your clit.”
“Well…” Velvette says, quickly packing the gift away and shaking the blush off her face. Oh she is so going to use this on her next girlfriend of the week. Or have her use it on her. Val is looking forward to the pillow talk. He gives her a wink, happy to have caught her off guard. Oh fuck and is that a blush on Vox’s fucking face too? Pervy motherfucker. Maybe Val needs to borrow Velvette’s dick sometime to give Vox a very thorough prostate massage. He does love moving up sizes.
Val luxuriates in Vox’s kinky misery even more when the man pulls a set of cow print bikinis from a box and instantly drops them back inside. Velvette groans while Val’s grin almost splits his face.
“We will talk about this later.” Vox says, voice only slightly distorted.
Oh, they will. They definitely will.
They go in circles like this. Val gets a new Satanic dragon leather handbag from Vox, red like freshly spilled blood. Velvette receives matching boots, probably carved from the same dragon.
Val gifts the others hand-pottered mugs, a round and pink glazed one for Vel and a square and blue glazed one for Vox. Val’s logo is engraved at the bottom, so that nobody ever forgets who their boss daddy is.
He receives a new bottle of expensive foundation from Velvette, as well as a refill of his favorite perfume that can only be sourced from up top. She must have pulled a lot of strings for this, he can appreciate that.
Vox, throwing money around like dogs piss to mark their territory, reveals to Velvette that he’s been rebuilding a storage facility into a production center so that her fast-fashion lines can be even more fast-paced.
And he also finished building that island Val requested and is naming it the Valdives because he is cheesy and old and thinks it’s funny. Val pretends that naming an island after him doesn’t get him wet. God he wants to kiss this man stupid and then maybe let him make love to him all night. And maybe even-...
“Mama!” Vax babbles at him, a welcome distraction, and Val scoops him up, making him squeal when he is lifted into the air and swung around like an airplane.
“My mijo is the cutest baby in the entire world. I love him so so much.” He tells him before settling him onto his lap. Vax still can’t sit very well on his own, so Val has to support him with his thighs, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to grab some discarded wrapping paper that is in tantalizing proximity to his curious hands.
“Do you want your presents?” Val asks him. “Does my Vaxito want to know what his family is giving him for Sinsmas?”
Vax gurgles something that Val generously interprets as a yes. They haven’t unpacked everything for themselves yet, but the pile set aside for Vax easily towers towards the ceiling. Half of them might be the mandatory presents Val has forced the employees to get via contractual changes. He hopes at least ten are from Vox. The man sucks at being affectionate, stick up his ass as resilient as a mythical metal hardened over the pits of Wrath, but he mostly makes up for it by being a willing paypig.
“Alright bitches,” he tells the circle. “Hand over your tributes to the cutest Vee. I’ll go first.”
He plucks a box from the convenient pile closest to him, pink and sparkly like all good presents should be. He sets it in front of Vax and slides off the top, letting him reach inside and explore his new…
“Val, is that a gun?!”
“Yes! It’s a miniature moneyshot.” Val grins at Vox, proud of how true to detail he had the manufacturer model it. “Look, I even bedazzled his name on it!”
Vax sticks the barrel into his mouth. Velvette and Vox jump to their feet, ready to rip the weapon from his clumsy grip, but Val holds them back.
“Relax!” He says, pulling the trigger a few times to show that nothing is happening. “It’s not loaded. As if I would hand my baby a loaded gun. And look, he likes it!”
“He puts everything in his mouth.” Says Vox. But he does sit back down.
“So do I and I always turn out fine,” Val huffs.
Vox just sighs and rubs the corner of his screen without arguing further. It’s the right decision because he would lose this discussion regardless of what he’d say.
Velvette takes a picture of Vax chewing on his new gun, before crawling over to the gift pile and collecting a bunch of them from the small mountain.
“I’ll go second.” She declares, sitting back down in front of Vax and offering him the end of a green silk ribbon bow tied to the first box. Immediately distracted from using his gun as a pacifier, another of Vax’s little fist closes around the ribbon and pulls, neatly unravelling the bow.
Val takes over unpacking the rest of the present because that’s what a good mami does, pulling out a little costume on a sparkly hanger.
“Is that a Vox cosplay?” He holds the blue bundle of fabric up against the ceiling light, marvelling at how seeing it makes his heart clench. Like it can’t deal with how cute it looks, how utterly adorable Vax would look, dressed up like his papi.
“Oh my god, Vel, that is the cutest shit I’ve ever seen, how did you make these so small?”
He checks the seams, tiny and perfect, typical for Velvette’s craftsmanship. Rubbing them makes all these happy hormones release into his bloodstream. Like all his love for Vox and Vel and his baby is hitting him all at once and he’s set on fire from the high. Nice, good fire.
Fuck, he wants another baby. Is this the baby fever his relatives were talking about, back when he was still alive?
He shakes his head to lose the thought. No. More babies is a horrible idea and it would be unfair to Vax to not have all of his mami’s attention a hundred percent of the time. And Vox is bad enough at being a dad to one kid, who knows in what creative ways he could implode if you added another.
Maybe in a few years, though?
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, Val is insane. He’s lacking sleep, that’s what’s happening.
Thankfully Velvette doesn’t notice his little internal crisis, too busy preening about the praise.
“Please, how could I call myself the Queen Bitch if I couldn’t even sew a few baby costumes?”
That has Val hooked again.
“Did you just say there’s more?”
Velvette hands him the next box. Val has to stop himself from ripping into it like a savage. One after another, more costumes emerge. A fluffy sheep suit. A miniature pimp coat, with the right wing markings and all. A witch dress complete with a hat and a tiny cauldron. And of course, a shark onesie that makes Vox’s eyes sparkle more than Vax’s do, mainly because Vax is too young to understand how tooth-achingly sweet he is.
“Fuck me, Vel, he needs to try all of these on.”
The baby is more occupied by chewing on the ribbon, because who doesn’t enjoy a good oral fixation, but that doesn’t matter because Vel just snaps him into the first costume, making him jump and say “ah”.
Valentino straight up has a heart attack from the cuteness and dies, except that he also stays alive and immediately arranges Vax on the rug to take a million pictures. Velvette joins him and for the next twenty minutes all they do is flood their camera rolls and Sinstagram stories with Vax dressed up as his family members, moneyshot and all.
They let him stay in the shark onesie simply because it’s the last of the costumes and because Vax seems the most comfortable in the fuzzy blue fabric, wriggling and giggling when Vel tickles his belly. Taking right after his dad, Val muses.
“Look at him, Vox! Isn’t he the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?” He scoops Vax up to present him to the tv demon and he kicks his little feet, making the plush shark tail at his bum swing from side to side.
“Papa!” Vax says.
Something in Vox’s expression melts, pixels somehow turning soft, if that’s even possible. He takes Vax and, a little awkwardly, supports the baby with an arm under his butt, so it can hang over his shoulder and babble in delight. He then rises and beckons the other Vees to come with him.
“My turn. My present for the little man is up in my room.”
Oh that sounds ominous. And intriguing. Usually when Val follows Vox to check out a “surprise in his room” it ends in marathon sex. But Val doubts this is what Vox is planning tonight, even though it would be hilarious.
The closer they get down the hallway, the giddier Vox seems to get. Ay, dios mio, are those the sounds of claws defiling a door? Does Val even want to know?
The decision is taken from him when Vox promptly rips open the abused wood to his bedroom.
Out bounds the ugliest creature Val has ever seen, circling Vox and sniffing all of their legs before trying to jump Velvette’s legs. It’s light blue and kinda wet looking, with a head reminiscent of when someone crushes heads in cartoons for comic relief. And it pants and makes whiny noises like a dog.
“You got him a landshark?” Val squints at the thing, crossing his arms.
“I know right?” Vox exclaims, buzzing in place like a vibrator superglued to the floor.
“Vox, that’s more a present to yourself than for Vax.” Velvette righteously points out, trying to stop it from snapping at her skirt. She’s not wrong. Val wonders often why he loves that man.
“No, but!” Vox starts, wanting to throw his hands up but aborting the motion at the last second to not dislodge Vax, who is observing the shark puppy with curious eyes. While they’re making their way back to the living room, the creature trots after them, clumsy walk pitter-pattering against the tiled floor and tail wagging in excitement.
“Listen, Vark is still a puppy, so he can like, grow up together with Vax and they can develop a special bond and be best friends and-...”
Val puts a finger over his mouth.
“Let me stop you right there,” he says. “You named the thing Vark?”
“Yes! It fits perfectly with Volt and Venom and Vanadium.”
“And Shok.Wav?” Velvette interjects. She’s the first to sit back down on the rug and Vark waddles over to plop himself in her lap. She looks slightly disgusted at first, definitely courtesy of the cold and slippery texture that the skin of landsharks develop outside of water, but then she gets over herself and awkwardly pets the thing’s head. It starts purring like a jet engine.
What a weird creature.
Just like us, Val thinks and suddenly, the idea of Vax having a pet sibling doesn’t seem as Vox-catering anymore. He returns his baby to his arms, missing the reassuring weight of him against his chest. Vax is getting sleepy, nuzzling against Val’s fluff in a way that tells how exhausting playing with all these new things was. He’s going to have to put him to bed soon.
“Shok.Wav was named by Baxter and I have deducted his mistakes from his payroll,” Vox sniffs, even though it’s obvious that he adores the name despite its lack of a capital V.
It’s funny because Vox literally is the only one who even cares about the whole name thing. And Val would be throwing stones from inside a glass house. Their baby is called Vax, for fucks sake.
(And he loves him and his family with all of his being.)
To distract himself from dying from nice feelings again Val claps his hands together and decides to move the evening along.
“So, who wants some of my extra special Sinsmas empanadas?”
He is met by enthusiastic scrambling as the other two and Vark depart for the kitchen, no doubt starving to sample his menu.
With a mushy glow in his heart he realizes that he’s going to die of emotions anyway, and his family is going to be the cause. The fact that he gets to be here and feel like this is enough to make him weak in the knees.
“I love them so much, mijo.” He tells Vax, before following Velvette and Vox, even though the baby is definitely asleep by now and couldn’t understand even if he weren’t. It’s okay.
He will get it when he’s grown up a little more. And Valentino will always have enough love to share.