Chapter Text
Being at V Tower is not Solis’s idea of a good time. If she could get by with only setting foot in the building four times a year, she would.
Unfortunately, the limited perspective of budget reports and profit projections is exactly that, and the Vees are as crafty and cunning as they are cruel. Attending quarterly board meetings and doing nothing else would be no different than sticking her head in the sand and hoping for the best.
So, about every six weeks, she takes a self-guided stroll through the tower to see what’s going on with her own two eyes.
The Vees don’t necessarily like it. Solis certainly doesn’t. But hey, what’s Hell without a little suffering?
It could be worse. She could visit each floor and poke her head in every office and comb through all the files, nitpicking as she goes. But that would be fucking insane, and she isn’t interested in micromanaging anyway. All she wants is to know that what she’s being told about operations — and the intent of those operations — is the truth.
For example: Are the new motion capture stages being built downstairs actually mocap stages? Is Velvette focused on the upcoming, post-extermination fashion show instead of cooking up some new potion?
Content to have found the answer to both those questions is a resounding yes, Solis’s next stop is Valentino’s studio. And since she’s the only one in the elevator, the ride up is the perfect chance to look at the picture Charlie sent five minutes ago when Solis was busy popping by Velvette’s department:
An enlarged black-and-white photograph of the Happy Hotel back in its heyday, with hand-drawn rainbows above it and typed text along the bottom that reads, “Find redemption at the Happy Hotel! Now Open! Free Room & Board!”
Does Solis think redeeming sinners will work? Hell no. She’s also not interested in crushing her kid sister’s spirit.
It’s like when a five-year-old thinks they’ll grow up to be a unicorn, or a ninja, or a professional football player with no brain damage. Just because Charlie’s expecting the impossible to be possible, doesn’t mean Solis has to discourage her. She’ll move on to a more realistic dream eventually.
So when Charlie then calls, forgoing any sort of greeting in favor of asking Solis if she saw the flyer and what she thinks of it, of course Solis tells her it looks nice.
“Are you sure?” is Charlie’s follow-up. “You don’t think all the black and white is too boring?”
“No, using the photo’s a good idea. It makes it look official.”
“Yeah, I guess. I just really want these flyers to work, you know? Extermination Day’s almost here, and we don’t have any other way to tell sinners about the hotel. I called the news again, but they still haven’t–"
Charlie rambles on with things she’s told Solis before — 666 News keeps giving her the runaround, Lilith’s phone went to voicemail again, Vaggie is super supportive and the best girlfriend ever, etcetera — and Solis pulls the phone away from her ear to look at the photo again.
Using it as a reference, she conjures up a physical copy of the flyer. Then she puts the phone back against her ear and holds it in place with her shoulder long enough to fold the paper into quarters.
She slips the paper into the same pants pocket as her wallet. The elevator reaches its destination with a charismatic ding! The doors open. And Solis finally interrupts her sister as she heads down the hallway.
“Hey, Char, I’m in the middle of something right now, but–”
“Oh! It’s– I thought– You’re usually at home or something by now aren’t you? Sorry.”
“I know. But look, after I’m done, I’ll pull a few strings with the network and see if I can grease the wheels for you, what do you say?”
“Seriously!?” Charlie’s smile isn’t only audible, it’s contagious. “You would do that? For real?”
With a grin of her own Solis says, “I for real would,” because what’s the point of co-owning a company if she can’t use it for a little nepotism now and then? “I’ll call you back in a few hours.”
After a string of innumerable thank-yous from her sister, she ends the call and squirrels her phone away inside the inner pocket of her pastel green blazer.
Charlie’s right, it is starting to get late — enough so that Solis is acutely aware of how close she is to the penthouse — but that’s by design, not accident. Because the later it is, the more likely filming has wrapped for the night, and sometimes Solis just wants to enjoy the last good thing this building has to offer in peace.
In light of that, her ‘inspection’ is both quick and perfunctory. Nothing more than a single lap around the room to check that everything's as organized and spotless as usual during the off-hours. Being a smut-peddling pimp doesn’t automatically equate to having low standards, and Val’s always been of the opinion that a well-kept studio brings in the most money.
Regrettably, he has more respect for his workspace than his people. As proven by the sudden scrambling in Angel Dust’s dressing room after Solis knocks on his door.
Something thuds to the floor. Fat Nuggets squeals. Angel swears.
“It’s just me,” Solis calls, if only to give him some peace of mind. Angel is the one thing she looks forward to on her self-imposed walkthroughs. She’d rather eat her shoes than let him panic thinking Valentino’s waiting for him.
Whatever’s going on inside loses its freneticism and soon enough, Angel opens the door with his robe wrapped snugly around him and a baby-pink chair toppled onto its side off by the bed, haloed by an assortment of drug and sex paraphernalia.
Solis doesn’t care how modest or inebriated he chooses to be. Never has. Never will. The purple-black mottling his left cheekbone, though?
That makes the muscles in her back twitch.
The bruise is obviously fresh to show through Angel’s fur so vividly. Its deep plum color is a hideous contrast to his naturally soft pink and crisp white, and when he hisses a wince while trying to rub some of the drug-induced fog from his eyes, Solis subtly rolls her shoulders.
“If ya lookin’ f’Val,” Angel slurs beyond his usual accent, giving up on touching his face altogether, “‘M pretty sure he wen’ out t’a club or somethin’.”
“Fuck him. I came up here looking for you.”
The spider perks right up.
“Well ya foun’ me!” he announces with newfound pep. Before Solis can ask him how he’s been, he beats her to the punch. “An’ look. I still got all m’limbs an’ everythin’.”
Angel opens his robe just low enough to withdraw and show off his third set of arms. Stretching out all six, he spins once — making himself dizzy, according to the ensuing head-bobble — then retracts the lowest pair and wraps himself back up.
All Solis can bring herself to do is watch and hum her acknowledgment that, yes, appendages one through eight are, in fact, accounted for.
‘Has all his limbs.’ What a low fucking bar.
As far as she’s aware, Angel’s never been without any of them. Sure, Valentino’s the type of scumbag who’ll happily subject his contractees to all sorts of heinous shit for both a dollar and his own sick pleasure, but he’s not in the habit of dismembering his top earners; the recovery time would screw with his shooting schedule and his bottom line.
Not to mention the terrible publicity of having Pride’s most famous porn star(s) moonlighting as amputees.
Which, if Val doesn’t care much about, Vox certainly does. And he’s the one who pitched Valentino to Solis in the first place, back when they started this joint enterprise. Granted, that was long before the other shoe dropped and she realized she’d tied herself to a backstabbing–
“If Val’s out does that mean you’re staying in tonight?”
“Damn fuckin’ righ’ it does,” Angel tells her straight out.
Solis can’t help but smile, Authentic Angel is by far her favorite version of him.
Without a second thought, she pulls out her wallet, flicks it open, thumbs out five hundred-dollar bills, and casually offers them up. As if half a grand is the same as the iced coffees, sweet treats, and department store gift cards she’s slipped him since he moved into the tower.
To Solis, it is all the same. Five hundred bucks isn’t a drop in her bucket. It’s quite literally not even one thousandth of a drop. For Angel, it may as well be the bucket. Between his drug habit and the inexplicable rent Valentino has started taking out of his paycheck, he’s fucking broke. So it’s no surprise he accepts it.
(If Val finds out, well, Solis is confident he wouldn’t do anything more than take a cut of it. Her soft spot for Angel isn’t much of a secret, and she’s been careful not to step on Valentino’s toes over the years.)
“Oh,” Angel coos, playful and conspiratory, “now what’d li’l ol’ me do t’deserve somethin’ so nice?"
Solis doesn’t fault anyone for their lasciviousness. Without it, mankind wouldn’t have been able to ‘go forth and multiply’ as effectively as they did. But sins of the flesh aren’t her vice, and in all the years they’ve known each other, she’s never once laid a lecherous hand on Angel or looked at him with a genuinely lustful eye. Nor has she ever felt compelled to.
Whether he continues to flirt with her because of this or in spite of it, she doesn’t know. However, he does flirt with her. Clearly. He’s doing it right now, mild as it may be. And Solis has no problem volleying it back.
With a golden-eyed wink she says, “Call it a bonus for giving me something pretty to look at during the quarterlies.”
Angel’s responding laugh isn’t some polite giggle or air headed titter. It’s real. Genuine. Solis chuckles too, while she repockets her bifold and thumbs the folded-up paper pressed snugly against it. They both know Val hasn’t brought Angel along to a board meeting in the past three quarters.
“Only you’d c’mere aft’a hours t’gimme money f’no reason,” Angel tells her, smiling and mirthful in the wake of his laughter. “This’s kinda a lot, though. Ya sure ya don’wanna dance’r somethin’?”
“I’m sure.” Setting aside the fact she stopped soliciting dances from Angel when he moved into the tower — and that back when she still did, they were little more than an excuse to slip him wads of cash like this one — he’s clearly a bit too high to be doing any type of acrobatic-adjacent activities, pole-related or otherwise.
Not to mention that Solis isn’t about to encourage him to work after Valentino miraculously gave him the night off. So what if Angel is offering? He lives at his job. He deserves all the down-time he can get and then some. “But there is something I want to talk to you about.”
Angel stashes the money out of sight, seemingly somewhere on his person despite being dressed in only a pocketless robe. Probably with his tertiary arms, if Solis had to hazard a guess.
“If this’s about Fat Nuggets shittin’ in th’ eleveta’ las’ week–”
“It’s not.” Solis wasn’t even aware that had happened, and she can’t truly say she cares, either. That’s what they have an in-house custodian crew for. Well, not for pig shit specifically, but it certainly fits the bill. Getting back on track, she asks, “Do you remember when you threatened to move out?”
Which was right before Valentino stopped using Angel as conference room arm candy and began charging him rent, come to think of it.
For a split second, Angel’s face betrays him. Tattling that the memory is a poor one until he quickly plasters on a practiced, lazy smile. As good an actor as he is, though, he can’t hide how the rush of fear sobers him up a little.
“Aw, don’t worry,” he drawls with notably improved enunciation. “I was just kiddin’. You know I ain’t going nowhere.”
Finally sliding the Happy Hotel flyer out of her pocket, Solis unfolds it and hands it to him.
“But you could.”
She doesn’t blame Angel for frowning at the paper as he reads it. Any idiot with eyes can see he’s already learned the hard way that if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably absolutely is.
Justifiably suspicious, he squints at her and asks, “What the fuck is happenin’ right now?”
Fair question, considering she is without a doubt crossing some sort of unspoken, undefined, unofficially established yet no less present boundary by demonstrating this level of interest in Angel’s personal life.
Too bad she isn’t willing to shelve the point of this conversation to discuss that.
“It’s a place for people who want to turn their lives around.”
“Like a halfway house or somethin’?” sneers Angel. “No thanks.” He tries to give the flyer back and Solis refuses to take it by slipping both hands in her pockets.
“Like a place that’s the fuck out of this tower,” she amends. “Look, all I’m saying is, if you want to leave, Ange, this is somewhere you can go. Okay?”
With one primary hand holding the flyer and both his secondaries folded in front of him, Angel brings his remaining free hand up to his mouth, pinching the tip of his thumb between his teeth while reading the paper again.
Solis, ever the proponent of free will, doesn’t push the issue any further. Instead she gives Angel the space he needs to make up his mind — or drug himself into a stupor and wipe their entire interaction from his memory, as is his right.
After wishing him a goodnight, she heads back through the studio and walks down the hall. She presses the call button for the elevator, finding it blessedly empty again when it arrives, and once she selects the ground floor, she fishes her phone from her blazer and texts her driver. Then she spends the remainder of the long ride down staring at Vox’s contact information.
There’s no picture or fun moniker. Only a white ‘V’ inside a blue circle and a phone number labeled with his name.
The phone itself is from Greed. Pricey as it was, it's worth every penny. Mammon's wards and enchantments are more than enough to prevent Vox from worming his way into the software, which is why Solis bought it in the first place. Mostly, anyway. Nowadays, she can admit to herself she’d switched brands out of spite, too. Not that it had been at all satisfying when Vox noticed. All they’d done was argue…again? Still? Whichever.
She doesn’t press ‘dial’ until halfway across the lobby. The line rings and rings. Long enough for her to reach the sidewalk and get in the back of the oversized SUV parked at the curb.
Her driver’s “Where to, Boss?” and Vox’s disgruntled “Hello?” occur simultaneously, making her pinch the bridge of her nose and mutter to herself.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Je– Wha–?” Vox stammers. “You called me.”
At least they’re already on the same page: annoyed.
“I know, just– Hold on.” Momentarily covering the receiver with her hand, she says “Wrath, Kline thank you,” because there is absolutely no way she’ll enjoy being in the townhouse tonight.
The hellhound in the driver’s seat nods and merges into traffic. Solis resumes her call, and cutting to the chase by telling Vox, “I need a one-off promo seg on triple-six for Charlie. She has a pet project she wants to talk about.”
“Charlie,” Vox flatly repeats. “As in, your sister slash Lucifer’s daughter slash Princess of Hell. That Charlie?”
“Is there a different Charlie I would be talking about?”
“I don’t know! Then call the GM or something. What the fuck do you need me for?”
“Apparently ‘Morningstar’ doesn’t have a lot of pull with that department–”
“Bullshit.”
Vox isn’t wrong to call her out; the royal name always holds power. But effectively wielding that power tends to require a level of assertiveness which, frankly, Charlie doesn’t seem to possess. Luckily, Solis has more than enough for the both of them.
Unlucky for Vox, it would do Charlie some good to at least look like she has friends within the Pentagram’s upper echelons.
“–So either I make use of my professional standing instead," Solis bowls over his interruption, “or you can take care of it.”
The line goes quiet while she gives Vox a chance to read between the lines. When it boils down to it, the Media Overlord is many things; one of which is a selfish, conniving, asshole. However what he is not, is stupid. Solis is confident he’ll come to the right conclusion.
Because when they first got into business together, he wanted the power and prestige of a conglomerative empire, and she was more than happy to provide capital in exchange for a cut of the profits and an extremely limited say in operations. If word gets around that ‘Lucifer’s Champion’ — ugh — is a major shareholder of VoxTek Enterprises, it’ll only be a matter of time before the public sees Vox (and the Vees in general) as little else than a puppeted figurehead.
Sure, all of VoxTek’s underlings sign NDAs, including everyone on the 666 team, but Vox has put a lot of blood sweat and tears into curating the Vees image. And as the saying goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry. God forbid some zit-faced pizza delivery boy overhears something he shouldn’t while dropping off dinner for the news crew, right?
The light at the intersection ahead of them turns red. Kline slows the SUV to a stop as they approach it. Solis looks out her window.
A dark back seat paired with a glowing phone screen makes her opaline freckles cast shimmering reflections of themselves in the tinted glass, overlaying Pentagram City’s dimmed nightscape with twinkling, multihued specks — A parody of the stars Hell’s so terribly devoid of.
Beginning to grow impatient, Solis prompts, “Well?”
“Yeah,” sighs Vox. “Shit, okay. Is there a specific TRT she’s looking for or something?"
“No, any slot in the next fourteen days is fine.”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind? Extermination Day is two and a half weeks away. The cycle’s slammed!”
“Yup,” Solis agrees, popping the ‘p’.
“So is that flexible, or…?”
“Depends on what you come up with.”
“Fuck you, fine. Let me pull up the monthly.”
Solis doesn’t keep track of how long it takes. There’s a lot of back and forth; Vox puts her on hold several times. The more it drags on, the more monotonous it begins to feel, and it isn’t until well after Kline has dropped her off at her manor in Wrath and she’s dismissed him for the night that a compromise is reached.
At which point Solis takes forty-five minutes to herself before calling Charlie with the good news:
666 News’s schedule is jam-packed, but if a time slot opens up in the immediate aftermath of Extermination Day, it’s hers. The general manager will be in touch to iron out the details.
Charlie’s beyond grateful. She’s incandescently excited and Solis doesn’t ruin the moment by mentioning Angel Dust or the flyer she gave him. She doesn’t think it would kill the mood or anything, and it isn’t a reflection of Angel himself. Charlie simply isn’t much of a realist. Solis doesn’t want to tell her he might be interested in staying at the hotel only for her to get her hopes up and then spiral if-slash-when he never shows up.
Solis’s decision to keep it to herself has her smiling all the wider at the picture Charlie sends three days later. Whether it’s due to the flyer Solis gave him, Charlie’s canvassing, or a bit of both, there’s Angel in the backseat of the royal limo, captioned, “🌈 The first one! ♥️”