Chapter Text
Now, this was what one hell of an afterparty looked like!
Music loud enough to lose a considerable percent of your hearing to, booze and drugs strong enough not to remember much after tonight, their own faces grinning enigmatically back at the Vees from the latest edition of The Ninth Circle, Hell’s most coveted lifestyle magazine.
Favourite Unholy Trinity — The Vees officially most sought-after overlords in Pride!
It certainly wasn’t the first time they had stolen the spotlight with what they did best, be it with a bestseller portion, ground-breaking new technology or blockbuster porn — it didn’t matter much in the grand scheme who’d contributed a particular achievement. That was the convenient thing about their unusual alliance. Sometimes you didn’t have to do shit to earn a fucking party in your collective name.
But The Ninth Circle? That was a whole other story. Not Valentino, not Velvette — Satan, not even Vox himself, the control freak — had seen this coming. They were accustomed to getting their way one way or another, albeit that typically entailed at least a smidge of blackmail, an itty-bitty bit of violence, or, as a last resort, a data leak hitting the exact right people at the exact right time. There was no person in Hell in their right mind that wasn’t apprehensive of data leaks. Nasty shit, those.
To have been voted most popular out of free will had been quite a boost to their ego, to put it mildly. Velvette had decreed a celebration was in order to milk every ounce of media attention right from the announcement of their win, and picked out their schedule, their outfits, which champagne to toast with at the reception, whom to thank in which order, which camera to smile at, up to what venue would host the afterparty.
That was how the three of them had ridden their celebratory high right into the Eros, one of, if not the most luxurious venue under Valentino’s wings. It embodied everything he valued in a good party: tacky interior ranging from crystal chandeliers to velvety cushions, a guestlist more exclusive than to heaven’s pearly gates, handpicked designer drugs that made even the strongest sinners lightheaded in no time.
At well after midnight, the Eros was filled to the brim with the heady fragrance of a good time, consisting of ungodly amounts of alcohol, sweat and drugs. The only thing missing was a certain carnal pleasure inherent to Val’s field of work, which was why he’d let two of his ogling simps tag along when he and the other Vees had retreated to their private lounge.
In the spherical lounge with its low-set sofas overlooking the push and press of the crowd on the dance floor beneath them, the otherwise ear-blasting disco music muffled considerably thanks to the soundproofing, with a pert ass to play with in his two right hands and a set of petite tits in his left hands to squeeze as he liked … Val hummed. He was used to celebrations with a bit of pizzazz, and so far, the night hadn’t disappointed.
The two faces cradling into his neck were pretty enough, little huffs encouraging Val to grip them harder. Dario and Avery must’ve been at least cousins, if not brother and sister judging by the similar pair of butterfly wings on their naked backs. The wings moved in languid shivers that drew Val’s eyes to the bright-pink pattern on them. They were not entirely unlike his own pair, if so much more fragile than the thick fur of his moth wings. He raked his hands over their wings, drawing a thrilled moan out of both of them, and found he quite enjoyed breaking fragile things.
The practical side of the amount of wings currently on display in the room was the relative privacy from his fellow colleagues. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t enjoy having an audience, but he well knew Velvette wouldn’t hesitate to literally roast his balls if she had to ever see them in person.
And Vox? Vox was a different kind of difficult. Val lost focus of the two assistants eagerly sashaying on his thighs for a moment.
The TV demon sat on the front-facing couch to Valentino’s left hunched over a tablet. Val could only see the engraved Vee logo on its case from his vantage point, but he knew Vox had to be crunching numbers as a characteristic worry line was etched between his darting eyes.
It beat Val how the maniac could be dressed to the nines surrounded by the best society Hell had to offer at the nicest location money could buy down here, and still be so utterly unfun.
It was a shame, really, because he looked so fuckable in tonight’s attire. A dark-blue suit instead of his usual pinstripe one, maroon shirt open one single button at the throat and matching the exact shade of Velvette’s elaborate dress and Val’s own gold-rimmed suit. The tease had even foregone his iconic red bowtie and instead opted for a loosely-tied tie.
In comparison to Valentino’s own slutty interpretation of how to wear a suit right — the answer was with a completely open suit jacket, no shirt underneath, the golden chain between his nipples compensating for the lack of any kind of tie — Vox was positively underdressed. But there was something to the way he was sitting there, bony legs spread illegally wide in a deeply ingrained display of dominance, a stretch of blueish-grey skin visible at his normally shirt-covered neck, teeth snapped shut around a cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth. He reminded Val of a business shark ready to ruthlessly stomp his competitors, a cartel lord overseeing his growing empire with detached interest, and Val had seen and made enough porn to know that competence kinks deserved their very own category.
Vox seemed to feel the lingering gaze on him and looked up. His red eyes met Val’s for a beat before they roamed over the two strippers still giving their all to garner Val’s attention, and disdain masked whatever expression had been there in the first place.
Val grinned back at him as a matter of principle. He gave the butterfly demoness on his lap a resounding slap on one ass cheek, eliciting a lustful squeal from her and the most perfect eyerolling from Vox, who in turn took up his tablet once more with a scowl.
This game held its appeal for a few minutes until Valentino slowly realised his ebbing arousal. He was still somewhat hard in his trousers, even if that wasn’t a circumstance worth calling out with him, but having a murderous overload in the background had him lose his appetite for pinning butterfly wings into positions they didn’t belong. As much as he was known to live out his frustrations out on whatever assistant had the misfortune of being physically closest to him in the heat of the moment, he took a deep breath to restrain himself with these two. Better keep the pretty dolls intact for another playdate.
Val stopped twiddling Avery’s every possible button and instead picked her up firmly by the hips to move her away to a spot next to him. When met with his — sister’s? Cousin’s? Who really knew? — sudden tear-stained outburst and her fruitless attempts to crawl back into Valentino’s lap, Dario took that as a sign to desperately hold onto Val’s front and redouble his efforts of sucking a dark mark onto the lilac skin of his neck. Val’s aphrodisiac saliva always made them distressed if they only so much as thought about being separated from him. What a nuisance that could be when it turned the little whores into cry-babies of this scale.
He needed a smoke. Badly. But it turned out that was the final straw that had been dangling in front of his nose the whole time.
His suspicions about Vox’s foul mood turned into knowing when he whipped out his cigarette holder without getting any reaction whatsoever. He held it out like an idiot for several seconds before his pupilless eyes shot over to Vox. This was always his unspoken cue to send a wayward electrical spark to light it. Yet he was making an effort to not look up from the tablet he had brought with him. Sulking little shit.
Valentino resorted to a lighter but having to search his trouser pockets for one was enough to sour his mood completely. Since when did he have to light his cigarettes himself? In his own fucking club of all the places! He shooed Dario from his lap as well and sat up forward to lean onto his knees with all four of his arms. ”We having a problem?”
Velvette shortly deigned to look up from her phone, unlike Vox, from where she was lounging on her back opposite of Val’s couch. She examined the situation, deemed their petty banter unworthy of her time, let her head fall back into the cushion of her flowing, curly ponytail. Thanks for the support, bitch.
“Why would we?” Vox returned without hesitation.
“Why would we indeed.” Valentino shouldn't ground his teeth like this. It wasn't good for his gold fang. “So, any reason in particular you're eyeing my assistants as if you're preparing to tear them piecemeal, hm?”
“Assistants,” Vox scoffed. “The only shit they assist you with is your fucking unsatiable libido.”
“Among others,” Val allowed, even though tending to his libido was pretty much 95% of their job specification. But that was the porn industry, baby. People didn’t blink twice before handing over their souls and their bodies. He grimaced. “Poor Ethan could never.”
Any retort Vox might have come up with got lost in Velvette's hacking laugh. Her nails were continuing to click loudly on her phone, but she was nothing if not the queen of multitasking. “Give the bloke some room to breathe. If he's not pulling his weight by putting up with V on a daily basis, I don't know either.”
Val joined in on her laughing. “He could use a raise. Or maybe some dick for a change.”
“Ethan's my assistant, so fuck off.” Vox didn't make the effort to flip any of them off, but the sentiment was the same as he flipped the page on his tablet with much more force than strictly needed.
Val watched the TV overlord over the curved rim of his tinted heart glasses. It was fun to sometimes reduce Vox from sharp image to blurry outlines, like Val’s shit vision gave him the super power to tune out of Vox’s bullshit at will. “Mmmh, sure. Maybe you're the one in need of some dick, papito, hm?”
Vox's eyes shot up to meet his instantaneously, static simmering heavily in his voice. “Would you shut up already?”
“You know how to make me.”
Vox was glaring daggers. “Live out your sex delusions with one of your whores.”
“Only these aren't my sex delusions, are they?”
There was a spike of something in the air, perceptible only to Val thanks to his heightened senses. When his good antenna picked up on it, it ruffled his feathers like a static charge. It was so easy to dismiss it as such.
But knowing Vox for — what, 50 years? — let Val smirk. That was exactly the self-assurance he'd needed to steer this mess into a more fulfilling direction.
Vox was aroused, simple as that. And being a sore loser about it, too.
“Fucking shut up,” Vox muttered with just as much heat as before, though it didn't escape Val that he kept his eyes purposefully trained on his tablet this time.
“You wanna hear my two cents?” Val said, knowing perfectly well that Vox, in fact, didn't want to hear them. “You came here with a little victory fuck in mind and now you're throwing a tantrum because my hands are busy with someone else.”
Vox's screen flashed in a bright glitch for a hot second, his face reappearing with tightly wrung eyebrows and pinprick eyes. “I'm not —“
“Ooooh, but you are. And it flusters you. How much it turns you on.”
“The actual fuck!” The faux-leather of the low chaise-longue opposite of Val creaked loudly as Velvette sat up, her phone sitting forlornly in her hand for once. “I'm busy blogging one second and you two shitheads start to talk dirty straight into my face. Do I look like I'm into voyeurism?”
“Sorry, babydoll.” Val gazed at her sidelong as she gathered her very expansive and equally expensive skirts. “Just another day of dragging Voxxy out of the closet, y’know?”
“I'm not — He's not —“ Vox's frame sparked electricity as he gathered himself. “Fucking goddammit, I'm not in the closet!”
Velvette picked up her phone with an iron grip. “I don't care what closet you're in and especially not what the fuck it is you do in there.” She waved her phone with a cocked eyebrow towards Vox. “As long as it's not bad publicity. Because I will kick your ass if it's bad publicity.”
“Now, wait, Vel, you can’t —“ Sweet how Vox tried to cling to her like a lifeline.
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, V,” Vel interrupted with a healthy dose of condescension. “Besides, I’ve to check up on Mel. Security apparently doesn’t have enough braincells to realise she’s with me. They won’t let her backstage.” She shot a glance first at Vox, who was still trying to get a word in, and then at Val and his shit-eating grin. “Gives you a few minutes to dick each other down, or whatever.” She stopped a second time at the double doors to their private cubicle, looking back over her shoulder. “Just don’t get gross all over each other’s suits. I made those myself and the stitching was a pain in the ass.”
An imp concierge opened the doors to let her out when Velvette properly approached. In the maybe ten seconds they stood open, the disrupted soundproofing let their lounge be drowned in a heavy, fast-paced beat with electric guitar riffs that filled Val with a content buzz. He didn’t go to a club to have all his senses intact and talk numbers (unlike a certain stuck-up partner of his).
The doors closed once more and dipped the cubicle back into tense silence, or at least into the club-equivalent of silence, meaning the music was back down to a distant source of undecipherable noise. Oh, and of course Dario and Avery were still perched right next to him, both whimpering piteously, but also absolutely ready to pounce at him with tongue and teeth if he gave them his go.
Val groaned in despair. “Fuuuck, I’m too sober for this shit.”
“You’re a fucking prick,” Vox interjected, but Val disregarded him.
“And you’re far too sober, too.” Valentino scooted to the edge of his seat to reach for a little box on the table in the middle of the sofa group. Maybe some hash? Nope, no luck. Instead, colourful pills shaped like skulls rustled inside. Well, molly was fine as well. He popped a good few of the pills into his mouth, relishing the prickly feeling on his tongue, and positioned the box in a way that let its contents stare Vox in the face.
Of course, the other demon wouldn’t do him the favour of just getting high and over himself. It was always the same façade with Vox, internalised homophobia and put-on toxic masculinity waging war in the face of his apparent desires — the 50s sent their regards. It was always a drawn-out process to get him out from under his stone, kicking and screaming if need be, and show him how much pleasure Hell had in store for him. The process itself was just as pleasurable, though, and Valentino was a very patient man if the reward was so worthwhile.
Vox pointedly ignored the drugs laid out on the table before him and crossed his arms before him. He didn’t have the air of someone in the mood for anything that might even vaguely pique Valentino’s interest, which would normally throw him off his trail.
Buuut Vox was a free man. The fact that he stayed right where he was, plastered to his seat instead of leaving in a huff, spoke volumes.
Patience was the key. And of course alcohol to ease the way.
Val leant back and summoned his personal fizzaroli bot with a finger from where it was waiting in standby. “Kitty, an iced whiskey for the manly man here. And something to take the edge off for me.” The bot immediately started to whir some hidden components in its chest, up to the task thanks to its built-in minibar.
“Keep shitting on me,” the extremely laid-back masculine specimen to his left threatened all the while, “and you’ll find out just who’s in charge of things!”
“Mmh, sure.”
“I mean it!”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Val eyed Vox’s balled, crackling fists, the snarl on his face, the barely suppressed glitching of his screen — in short: his non-existent composure and the anger management of a five-year-old. “Sooo?”
“So what?”
“Call the shots then, papito. What are you up for?”
“Firstly, the appropriate respect.” Vox pointed one cyan claw at Valentino, his other hand embedding itself up to the knuckles of his razor-sharp digits in the upholstery of the couch. “Every single calculation behind our success is mine. I’m plugged into our security network as we speak, with every camera and TV as my eyes and ears. I control every damn channel on the Pride TV network. Electricity flows only if I allow it.”
“Haughty, haughty.” Val took a drag of his cigarette, inhaling the red smoke deeply before exhaling it through his nostrils. “Your point being …?”
“My point is you shouldn’t underestimate me. For your own good.”
Val had no delusions about what Vox was capable of. Didn’t have and never had. Where Val was a master of the subtle arts, seduction, desire, inner turmoil, Vox was raw power. The lion's share of the Pentagram’s entertainment sector ran according to his whims, and Val only came out of their fuck sessions unscathed because Vox allowed him to.
And wasn’t that the exciting part? Dancing with death and coming out on top, even more so when the latter part could be taken so literally.
The little tirade had the side-effect of having charged up Vox. The air was prickling with electricity and blue bolts of lightning danced over his body. Whether Vox did that subconsciously or consciously for theatrical effect, Val couldn’t say for sure. Only that Vox’s personal tablet, laying discarded right next to him, stuttered and finally winked out with the biting smell of burned plastic and rubber.
Val puffed out several heart-shaped clouds of red cigarette smoke, smiling at Vox as he did so. “Noted.”
“Good.” With his display of power out of the way, Vox rigid posture settled back into his seat and the electricity coursing through him eased back down to a non-life-threatening level. Kitty wheeled over to him and offered his drink on a tray, which he accepted to Val’s relief without further token resistance, but not before stumping out his cigar on said tray.
The ice cubes in Vox’s whiskey clinked audibly against the glass as he took a hearty swig. His eyes darted again to the two strippers, less crying than shivering and disoriented by now, so Val lost no more time to dismiss them with a definite shooing notion of two of his hands.
They left in a hurry, the doors closed once more, and they were finally alone.
Val leaned back on his chaise-longue now too, swirling around the strawberry martini Kitty had prepared for him in an ornate cocktail glass. He crossed his legs, so seldom clad in long unrevealing trousers like this, though Vox glanced over nonetheless and watched the movement intently. “Now, we’ve got that out of the way, tell me about those dirty fantasies of yours, mi amor.”
Establishing the groundwork before letting loose was an integral part to any and all proceedings involving Vox, and Val could live with that. The drawn-out sessions of convincing and bargaining were tiresome most of the time, and sometimes a little aggravating. But Vox had a breaking point, and Val the personal mission to uncover and abuse it as frequently as possible.
Yet, he braced himself for the impact when he saw Vox’s facial expression. Proud and business-like quirk to his digital lips, like he was about to say something incredibly clever. Whatever would come out of this mouth would fall as flat as his face, so much was for sure.
“You'll give me head.” Those few words were enough for Vox’s shark grin to come out to play again, and for his arousal to waft noticeably to the forefront between the sweet and biting smells of their beverages.
For fuck’s sake, this could be straight out of an episode of Valentino’s latest reality TV show, Dick-on-demand. Who wrote those shitty scripts, anyway? He crossed his upper set of arms, placing the lower one exaggeratedly on his hips. “Ah. And since when do I look like a vending machine for blowjobs to you?”
The remark made Vox smile more grimly. “Isn't that what you're here for? What this fucking club is all about? Sex?”
Val played with the thought of throwing in quite an extraordinary number of the sugary, little pills waiting for him on the table like a forbidden fruit. Maybe swish them around in his mouth with a swig of his martini until they did funny things to his head.
Unbearable. Vox could be so fucking dense if he clung to his business persona long enough. Val took a deep breath. He’d just have to push through. This had better be worth it.
“Can you hear the lustful moaning and screaming?” Val asked with an angel’s patience.
Vox didn’t take the hint, too preoccupied with checking his fried tablet. “The fuck am I supposed to hear over this EDM shit you call music?”
“Exactly. You'd think our glorious CEO would know the difference between a club for getting high and one for getting laid.” At that, Vox mismatched eyes got even narrower. Val donned a beatific smile. “Besides, you could've just said if you needed dick this fine evening.”
“I don't need shit,” Vox groused and loudly set the tablet back down. “Especially not from you.”
“Don’t call it that then if you’re too prissy. But it is fun, no?” Val took careful measure not to lay it on too thick. Just enough to keep Vox’s eyes glued to him as he flaunted his body and added an irresistible purr to his voice. Let him know what he could have. “To let loose and fuck around together. Sex is my vocation for a reason.”
“Mmh, I’m aware of that,” Vox said, sounding mollified for once.
Val played with the glass in his hand. “I’ve got a proposition for you. A deal, if you like. Quid pro quo, right?”
“Out with it, Val.”
Gladly. Val put a calculated grin on, teeth glinting sharply. “You’ll blow me first.”