Part 42
What Alastor and the others asked Alex and Angel to do wasn't wrong. It was a kindness, really. No one would dare shed a tear for an overlord like Valentino being killed; it was expected of them. Horrible monsters all, each with millions of souls in their collections, each one under contract, begging every day for either release or for the one who owned their soul to be killed. Preferably violently.
Alex was sitting on the edge of the bed he and Angel had been given, staring off into the blackness of the room. He was so close to the spider that he might as well have been a million miles away.
Sex had not been successful between the two, and Alex didn't press, but a wave of relief had washed over the arachnid.
He hadn't expected the shock of fear to flood his body.
While Alex sat at the foot of the bed, Angel faced the wall on his side. He wanted to say something but didn't know what would make things easier. He swallowed the lump in his throat, wishing he had something to drink. That ice water seemed really appealing right now, the lump feeling so large that it felt sharp.
He leaned up in bed and reached out, touching Alex in the darkness and taking his arm, pulling him towards him. The lizard got the idea and crawled his way up beside him. The spider pressed his forehead to Alex's, "When I first got here, I signed with Val pretty quickly. I was young, stupid, and thought I knew better. I've been with him for decades. Since I came here..." he closed his eyes tight, trying hard to push down the swell of emotions that bubbled up, "I've seen and done such...horrible things." The room's darkness lit up a little, with the wrappings around Alex's arms beginning to glow, piercing the night. "I need to give you the best edge I can in this, Alex. So, know that if you fail tomorrow, I will be in another film. I will take more pills. I will take more powder. And things will return to exactly what they were before you came down here. And it will probably be worse."
Alex took the moment to reach up and caress Angel's cheek, placing their foreheads together, the sutures falling back to his arm. " Don't talk like that. We aren't doing that, Angel."
"You ain't listenin', Alex!" Angel pushed away from the embrace a bit to get space between them, to lean back; the slight gleam in his eyes was visible even in the dark, a glimmer of anger or a reflection of the dim glow in the other arm as it sat beside him, "the time to play nice and pretend that I have any autonomy to escape this hell of mine ends. Maybe, somehow, you will succeed tomorrow." He almost choked a little as his throat tightened, "And maybe, if that works, then we can figure out what to do after that, but...I know that these things," he lifted the lizard's arms, looking at the glowing wrappings, "work when you think about protectin' me. Please focus on me. If you focus on me, then they will always work. I-" He held him tighter, "I just got you, and we haven't been able to exhale yet. And I really...really want to exhale. I...I fuckin' paid my debt. I want to stop. I don't want to go on set again for one more moment." He curled in his upper arms, pressing his hands together against Alex's chest, "If you can focus on doing what needs to be done and survive tomorrow," Angel brought his knees closer and curled into Alex's chest, pressing their faces close, "please focus on me. Survive and," he glanced up into his lover's eyes, his arms wrapping tight and pulled the other close and nuzzled under his chin, "please focus on protecting me."
They lay in each other's arms in silence for a long time before Alex responded, "Emily said if I had any chance of killing Valentino, then I needed to be able to forgive him. For what he did to me." The sutures unfurled from his wrists, coiling around the spider's arms and torso, embracing him, "because they can't react out of anger. I was so fucking angry with him for what he did to you, does to you, and I walked into a fight out of anger and disappointment and fear with an overlord. I made a bad situation so much worse." He curled into Angel's shoulder a little, "I think I've got it figured out."
The spider closed his eyes, pulling closer, "Well, ya' wanna talk about it?" He felt the lizard smile into his arm, "I think I understand Valentino better now. I don't think I could be mad at him anymore, even if I wanted to." Angel felt the lizard's tail run along his leg, "Tell me you love me, Angel, and I'll walk into that studio with my head held high." Angel reached his top set of arms up to press one hand against Alex's neck and chest, "Ya' big lizard man..." the other wrapped around his shoulders and neck, the bottom set crossing over his chest, pulling tight, "I love you, Alexander."
"Ah fuck, don't do that." A grin crossed his lips, and he chuckled a bit. It was warm. Soft. Welcomed. "Don't do that. No one does that..." his fingers went up the front of Angel's tuft, stroking along his collarbone before he ran the back of a claw along his neck and jawline. "Is your name really Angel Dust?"
No one else in all of the circles of Hell had the honor of saying his real name, "Nope, it was a title." He leaned back a little, rolling onto his back to have the other climb on top of him, a hand reaching out to gently wrap around the lizard's shoulders, his legs wrapping around his warm, scaled hips. "What's your name, Angie?" His thumb ran across Alex's cheek. "Ey, if ya' know, don't tell anyone," Alex leaned forward, placing the side of his face in the crook of his arachnid's neck, "You're my Angel. That's all you'll ever be to me."
And to be told something like that is all a person can ever truly hope for—someone who cares for them enough to actually treat them like a person and not some kind of prop. Angel pulled the other tight, holding his head in a loving embrace. "Anthony." Alex moved his head from Angel's shoulder, lifting his body to stare at him in the eyes for a moment. The smile they both had was different than anything the two had ever experienced in their lives. It was perfect.
They intertwined limbs as lovers often do, but this time, there was a certain tenderness that had been missing, perhaps out of fear before, or that it could only ever really be expected of sex with another. Now, it felt real, like what a relationship should be like. It was sweet and slow, nothing they ever experienced before. Their fur and scales pressed to one another, the sounds and motions were almost identical, and when they climaxed, something was different between the two: an intimate connection. They collapsed in a panting embrace on top of one another, kissing and nuzzling and making any noise at all to say without words the things they were thinking to one another, like lovers.
They didn't sleep, laying naked in bed together, save for Angel refusing to take his boots off. The sutures acted like a night light between the two, acting like a flashlight like two kids under the covers exchanging secrets as they talked; really talked. They would chuckle occasionally, Alex running the tip of his tongue on the ends of his broken fangs, the one eye that would always hurt a little, feeling better already, the pain of the fresh bruises and cuts beginning to fade.
Angel seemed much the same way; bruises turned into minor blemishes, and cuts healed quickly. Things just worked differently in hell.
As the window above their bed began to light up and the outside hell began to wake, they still talked, kissed, and touched each other right up until there was a knock at the bedroom door. But even then, for those few moments, those moments where they ignored the knock and kept talking, joking, and playing, they were untouchable, and Angel and Alex both felt the happiest they had been in years.