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Valentino had dreams of his previous lives. At least, he used to believe they were his previous lives. Then he died and learnt there was a Hell people went to, and no one actually came back. It was disappointing that this was the version of afterlife and how souls were treated that existed, but there wasn’t anything which could be done about it.
Sure, it was frustrating that his Father’s version of souls was more accurate, but he had killed him. Would kill him again down here. Over and over. It would be fun.
Sometimes the dreams were torture. If he could fight against them, he would. He used to love them (and sometimes still did), but how could he continue to do so when they felt so real after being so fake? Sometimes he took inspiration from them, but sometimes he wanted the feelings of them out of his chest. They didn’t fit who he was now, it was fine when they were characters, they weren’t him.
“What the fuck were you doing?”
Val took a breath, then coughed out blood. Vox glared at him, as he always did when Val came back in this state.
“What? You weren’t watching?” Val grinned and licked some of his blood from his teeth. The bullet holes were nothing he wouldn’t recover from in a few days. No one would be able to tell by tomorrow, as long as he wore a full shirt with long sleeves. A few days without dresses or crop tops? Val could do without and his people would be none the wiser.
The only one who would know was Vox, standing above him and disappointed. This wasn’t the sort of disappointment Val worried too much about.
“Going to take care of me, Vox?”
“I should leave you here to wipe yourself off the floor.”
Despite his words, Vox picked him up. It hurt, and Vox did not treat him kindly as he dropped him in the tub before stripping his clothes away, but all it did was turn Val on. Not that Vox took the bait. Not that he was unaffected, because Val could see the stirring under those slacks, but Vox only knelt when he started wiping the blood away.
“This isn’t how we’re going to make our way to the top.”
Val chuckled and coughed again. “Isn’t it? I showed them who they were messing with.”
“Times have changed. You weren’t even down here for those times either. Straight up violence isn’t going to make us different than the other Overlords.”
“Is my bloodthirsty shark really telling me that bloodshed won’t make us rich?”
Vox stuck a finger into a bullet hole. Val laughed through the pain, felt as Vox wiggled the bullet inside, then scraped the projectile out. It clattered into the porcelain basin to join the blood as Vox wiped away what he pushed out.
“I’m hungry.”
“Stop saying that when you mean horny.”
Why wouldn’t Vox understand? It was the same thing. Val knew the difference, because it wasn’t the same thing when he was alive. He knew the difference. Down here? Lust was an emptiness, a hole inside that he kept shoveling pleasure inside, and only sometimes could be satiated. His body ran on it. He healed because of it. Apparently all of that made Vox uncomfortable.
Val thought Vox would have loved it, because it meant whenever Val was injured or needed more energy, he would want to fuck. Vox loved fucking him.
Regardless of Vox’s feelings, Val still got off on the removal of the bullets. After they were all removed, they were collected in a bottle as Vox tended to the rest of the wounds.
“They’re just regular bullets, mi cielo.”
“You don’t know that until I check them,” Vox sneered.
Val tugged him, and despite how Vox tried to stay outside, he eventually fell into the tub on top of him. Vox sat up immediately and continued his tending.
“You are such a mess.”
“You love my mess.”
“It’s like you’re protesting something. When you’re in charge, you don’t protest.”
They weren’t in charge yet, and it wasn’t a fact Vox could miss. “Showing my power isn’t a problem.”
Vox wiped the blood from around his mouth somehow softer than he had around any of Val’s actual wounds. “It is when you come back a shot up mess.”
“Don’t sound like you’re worried about me.”
It wasn’t as if Val didn’t know Vox was. No matter how much he tried to hide it these days. No matter how much they fought, Val pushed him away, Vox dragged him back… Vox wanted him.
Loved him? No one could love Valentino if they knew him, but what if? The thought was terrifying and Val continued to push.
But to explain how he was protesting? Not even the people he had fought, but those memories inside him which couldn’t be memories. Because people only had one life before they were condemned by a system they didn’t necessarily agree with, which no one had told them about, because if murder had always been evil, wouldn’t the heroes of history be down here too? If lust was bad, shouldn’t only the celibate go to heaven? That would have excluded the first man.
Val wanted to protest everything. He sunk his claws into Vox’s back and Vox hissed in pain before swatting him with a towel and kissing him so hard Val could no longer taste his own blood. No doubt Vox could. Perhaps that was why he had kissed him… much like he had found him on the floor in the first place. Vox always could follow a blood trail.
There would be more disappointment later. Lectures about what he could or could not do. But once Vox had told him he could do anything he wanted, so Val would continue to disappoint him regardless. Those words meant more to him than anything else.
And, despite the disappointment, Vox would never let him go.