Chapter Text
The TV was yelling at him again.
Angel Dust was pretty sure it had been for a while now. But when he tried to check the time there were three or…maybe five?... screens on his cellphone and none of them would stay still or in focus, so who knew?
“I know you’re awake, you stupid bitch!”
It was starting to make his head hurt, though.
“Shut up,” Angel told it. At least that’s what he thought he’d said. Whatever he’d been taking the last few hours (or had it been days?) had made him feel both numb and kinda floaty, something that didn’t exactly lend itself to thinking.
“Angel!”
“Shhh,” he told the TV. “Tryinna....” What had he been trying to do again? “Sleep.” At least he was in bed, right? So that probably tracked. “Sleep, yeah,” he concluded.
“Do I look like I care?”
“’unno. Haveta see whatcha look like.” For some reason, that made him giggle.
“You— Do you think this is fucking funny?”
“Yeah?” Angel laughed harder. “Cuz I’m dreamin’ alla this and you’re a—you’re a talking TV and—”
“No shit! I hadn’t noticed.”
The mattress dipped as he rolled onto his side, sending a pile of pill bottles, plastic bags, and at least one credit card crashing against him. Muttering, he brushed them aside and flopped onto his stomach before turning his head to find the source of the racket. The wallpaper was pink, the carpet was a lighter pink, and the puffy satin duvet beneath him was a darker pink than either of them, so he was definitely in his bedroom. The door to his walk-in closet was wide open. There were two or three of everything in it, dresses and boas and jackets and wigs…. He should do something about that. He should—
“You’re looking the wrong way, dumbass!”
Oh. The TV was screaming at him from another direction—the foot of the bed.
“Probably the dresser,” Angel told himself. That’s where the TV in his room normally was, so…. Maybe he’d left it on or something? He did that a lot; the background noise helped when he was feeling like shit, which was most of the time.
“Angel! Use the one braincell you have in that empty head of yours and look at me, goddamnit!”
Wait….
Didn’t he know a talking TV?
Pill bottles clattered to the floor and jabbed him in his arms and legs as he rolled over onto his back again. “Oops!” He landed on his ass before falling onto the pile of pillows behind him. “Oops,” he laughed.
“Angel!”
“Okay, okay. Jeeze, you’re loud.” Angel shoved away more of the detritus on the mattress and crab-walked up onto two sets of palms. Squinting, he peered at the dresser.
A blue screen with red eyes glared back at him. Its mouth was a flat line of annoyance that turned into a toothy turquoise sneer as Angel pushed himself back up onto his ass.
“Vox?” He blinked; blinked again. “The…fuck are you doin’ here?”
“Finally!” Vox’s scowl took up at least two-thirds of his face.
Angel blinked several more times and rubbed his eyes. Because why was Vox’s head on his dresser next to the normal TV?
More importantly, where was the rest of him?
“Damn.” Angel squeezed his eyes shut as he pinched his temples. “How much shit did I do last night?”
“Oh, the usual: more than enough to kill an army.” He could practically hear the eyeroll in Vox’s voice. “Now pay attention!”
“Kinda hard to do when you’re shoutin’ like that,” Angel informed him, pinching harder. Because it felt like an army had marched over him before backing up and doing it a second time. “Fuuuuck, my head.”
“Look, just—” Vox’s voice was quieter now, but Angel could still hear that sneer curling through it like a cobra. “Look at me and listen. Can you do that?”
Angel opened his eyes and moved to lift his head but stopped midmotion. Fear slammed into him like the wall of heat that raced before a five-alarm fire.
Cables constricting, yanking him up as he thrashed.
An enormous, swirling red eye.
A poisonous, cruel laugh as he fell into its gaze.
“You stubborn fucking whore. More trouble than you’re worth.”
Danger. His body knew it even though his memory was as hazy, and Angel always trusted his body.
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think I’m gonna do that, Vox. Sorry.”
Vox gasped in indignation. Probably because he’d never heard the word no before, Angel figured. “You damn little—” A familiar tinny whir echoed through the room, making Angel’s muscles tense. Before his heart had a chance to speed up, however, the noise cut out in a pop followed by a fizzle of electricity.
“The fuck?” Vox growled. The whir started again and choked off just as quickly. “Come on.” Another whir, another snap, like an empty lighter being flicked, and flicked, and flicked.
No. No way. There’s no way he’s….
“Come on,” Vox snarled. Whir snap snap click. Whir snap snap snap snap click. “Son of a—” Whir snap snap snap snap snap— “Come. On!”
Angel flinched as his shoulders began trembling. They did that whenever Vox would summon him for a “debriefing” about the hotel and its occupants—debriefings that usually ended in a few slaps if Angel was lucky, and being shaken, shocked, choked, and hurled to the floor if he wasn’t. He remembered it all now, every single time Vox had hypnotized him. He should have been terrified.
Instead, his shoulders were shaking with laughter. Because those noises and Vox’s increasing aggravation could only mean one thing.
“Aw, what’s the matter, Voxxy? Can’t get it up?” he asked as he raised his head.
Vox’s screen glitched. “Fuck you,” he spat as he widened his left eye, just like he always did when he was about to sink his claws into someone’s mind. The spiral that pulsed through it lasted only a second before fizzling out like a damaged sparkler. “Ow! Fuck!”
Yep.
“But don’t worry about it,” Angel said as he scooted toward the end of the bed. “Lotsa people have that problem—some more than others, though. If what Val told me was right.” Not that Val had ever actually complained about that part of his sex life with Vox, but screw it, Angel was too fucked up on whatever he’d taken to care right now. Plus, it was a funny insult to throw at stuck-up, sadistic pricks like Vox, and the way it twisted up Vox’s mouth was even funnier. “Anyway, where’s your body?”
“None of your business!” Vox barked. But he sounded strained, tired almost. Now wasn’t that a thought? Until now, Angel had assumed Vox only had three settings when he wasn’t making someone’s life miserable: smug, pissy, and smugly pissy. He didn’t seem the type of guy who really did low energy.
Not having a body probably did that to a person, though. Seriously, how fucking high am I right now to be seeing this?
“All right, all right, no need to be a bitch about it,” Angel groused, rubbing at his eyes again. “Anyway, why’d you wake me up? Not that I’m actually awake or nothin’, as we both know, but I wanna hear this.”
“Fucking hopeless,” Vox muttered, rolling his eyes so far back in his head that his pupils vanished for a second. “Get your phone so I can call Ethan—”
“Who the hell’s Ethan?”
Vox gritted his teeth. “My. Assistant.”
“Okay, and I should do this for you”—Angel spun his hands through the air— “why, exactly?”
“Because you’re going to regret it if you don’t.”
“Uh-huh.” Angel yawned. “Sure. I’ll get right on that,” he said as he pushed himself toward the end of the bed.
“What are you doing?” How it was possible for a TV to straighten itself up in indignation, Angel had no idea. “Your phone is over there. On the nightstand!” he barked, tilting his screen toward it.
“Yep.” It took a few attempts to push up onto his feet (Where were his boots again? Hell if he knew.), but when his legs had stopped shaking, he wobbled toward the dresser and grasped Vox’s head by the sides. Ignoring Vox’s squawk of indignation, Angel lifted it up and turned it around.
“Do ya have, like a—like a Mute button or a switch or somethin’?”
“What.”
“Cuz you’re fuckin’ annoyin’ and Baxter found it, so you gotta have one.” Angel frowned at the casing as he examined the line of three blue glowy dots there. “Is it this?”
“Watch it!” Vox snarled as Angel jabbed a fingernail against the one at the top. But that didn’t shut him up and neither did poking the other two. Made sense, though; they felt more like holes. Heh.
“What the hell are you laughing at?” Vox said as Angel burst into another fit of giggles.
“You got—you got three hole—” Angel sputtered. “Oh shit. I was in a porno like this once. I think.” He ran a fingertip across the one in the middle again and yelped as electricity sparked up his arm. He fumbled the TV before stabilizing it with his lower pair of hands. “Hey! Ya want me to drop ya?”
“If it makes you stop poking me, it’d be worth it.” The sneer in Vox’s voice was all echo-y, like it got when he felt particularly smarmy and self-important.
Right. Fuck this.
“Ohh. That’s real tough talk for a disembodied head…uh, screen,” Angel said as he walked toward the closet.
“What are you— Where are you taking me?”
“Someplace so I can get some peace and quiet,” Angel informed him. There were several candidates for that spot in here. One of the shoe racks? There were enough pairs on all of them to create a buffer against his caterwauling but moving them around would be more work than Angel wanted to do right now, even in a dream. The rows of mannikin heads on the shelves above the clothes posed the same issue, with the added problem of Vox falling to the floor if he wiggled around too much, sending the expensive wigs along with him. Maybe under one the enormous pile of dirty clothes? Ugh. Gross. I really oughtta get Val to send Kitty down here to take care of those and— Oh.
His gaze travelled up the lingerie cabinet right behind it.
“Oh. Yeah.” Angel grinned as he walked toward it. “Now that’s a perfect place for ya.”
“You can’t be serious,” Vox said as Angel yanked open the top drawer.
“Yeah, I am.” The drawers in this cabinet were deep and this one was crammed to the brim with panties, bras, and camisoles—all the things that didn’t require hangers. Ignoring Vox’s splutterings, Angel dug through them with his lower pair of hands until he’d carved out a space big enough to cradle the burden he was holding.
“Hey!” Vox shouted as Angel lowered him into it. “You can’t do this to me!”
Angel was too fucked up on whatever he’d taken to care about the rage and anguish in Vox’s voice; he was not, however, too fucked up to relish it.
“Yeah, I can,” Angel said as he picked up a pair of pink lacy panties. “I can, I will, and Vox?” He looked right into Vox’s broken left eye and smiled until his mouth hurt. “I’m gonna enjoy every moment of it.”
Vox glared at him. “You—”
Angel shoved the panties into his mouth as hard as he could, only stopping when Vox gagged.
“Now, if ya don’t mind, I’m gonna go back to sleep.” Angel stretched his upper arms over his head and yawned. “Got a shoot way too early this morning to put up with your bullshit.”
“Nghh,” Vox objected before Angel sent an avalanche of underwear onto his face.
“Have a good night, Voxxy.” Angel slammed the drawer shut hard enough to make the entire cabinet rattle. “Sweet dreams!”
The closet door muted Vox’s muffled protests as Angel pulled it shut.
“Finally,” he said as he shoved the last of the pill bottles off the bed. “Much better than a Mute button.”
As he settled back onto the mattress, Angel smiled. As drug-induced dreams went, this was a pretty damn good one. Too bad it wouldn’t be real when he woke up. Sure, he hadn’t seen Vox around these days, but there was no way his head would be in Angel’s bedroom barking out orders like he was still in charge of anything.
No way at all.