Chapter Text
It's now, or never.
Angel had stood rooted to the spot, repeating those same four words for the last two hours, his conviction unraveling with every slowly dragging raindrop blurring the shadows with the neons lights of the city outside the window. There was no denying the alluring draw of those lights, stretched out as far as the eye could see, blinking in patterns meant to draw the eye before ensnaring the body. Those lights had drawn Angel to Vegas with the vibrant, suffocating promise of glamor and shameless immorality. Freedom to live a life worth exploring.
He’d watched the red taillights of Valentino’s car slice through that smeared Technicolor rainbow, saw it disappear into a city he used to dream about living in and he’d told himself he was leaving. But Angel hadn’t moved a muscle beyond breathing, his breath casting temporary fogs against the glass. Every time Val left, Angel told himself he needed to do the same, but he never did.
Just the thought of leaving had his stomach twisting, violently churning until he tasted bile in his throat. His heart raced and stilled in a disjointed, chaotic rhythm. This was his home, and fuck anyone who tried to tell him otherwise. Everything he owned was here. His life was here. Angel had spent so many long hours convincing himself that there was nothing wrong with the unconventional way he lived his life. If he threw that all away, if he just left and ran, then every one of those hours of his life would have been wasted. After nearly dying last year, he’d told himself that he wasn't going to take his life for granted. Maybe this way of living didn't work for anyone else, but he was fine. Everything was okay.
Val loved him, and that was all that mattered. That thought echoed, the words distorting into mechanical mockeries of themselves that Angel had trained himself to believe in. If he didn’t believe it, if he lost that sense of something good that had fractured over time, then he’d have to see the way Val treated him the way everyone else did, and that wasn’t something Angel could do. All he had left was Val, and Val was his boyfriend. A manipulative asshole. My Lover, Angel thought, turning his head to stare at the unkempt bed he should be sleeping in. The place Val expected him to be when he got home.
The chain attached to the metal cuff around his ankle dragged softly across the gold carpet as he crossed the room to put the bed in order. Valentino’s cologne wafted up as the deep red sheets rustled and smoothed, too strong even hours after they’d lain there together. It filled Angel’s lungs, too sweet and violently familiar. That expensive scent used to drape itself over him like a fine coat, now, it burned within his throat like a collar, choking him.
Tears prickled at Angel’s eyes as he fell onto the corner of the bed, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. He hated that cologne, the way it drew him in only to smother him. Like everything else in Valentino’s penthouse it radiated with lavish promise, a declaration of wealth that used to mesmerize him. The golden fixtures and velvet curtains weren’t so brilliant anymore. They’d lost their grandeur. Nothing shined quite the same way it had a few years ago – nothing felt perfect anymore.
Blinking back the tears welling within his eyes, Angel looked down at the cold metal ring around his ankle, dull and painfully ordinary against its surroundings. Cold, unfeeling jewelry that clashed with everything around it. His mismatched, hazel eyes shifted to the grooves the chain left in the carpet, following their solitary dance around the room until they fell onto the open closet, the way they often did after he’d been alone with his thoughts for too long.
Angel stared at the black canvas backpack tucked behind the closet door, partially hidden beneath a pile of clothes Val no longer liked to see him wearing. It’d been packed for weeks, stuffed with the few articles of clothing he could roll up tightly and shove inside of it and a cashless wallet with his expired ID. He’d been manic when he’d packed it, out of his mind and stupid with thoughts of running away. On a night just like tonight, he’d watched Valentino leave to spend the night out with his not secret lover, and Angel had told himself he was leaving as he’d paced the room for hours before finally crawling beneath the sheets to cry himself to sleep.
Packing it a few weeks ago was a choice he hadn’t been ready to make. It’d been impulsive, a mistake that had been haunting him every day since. But he still hadn’t unpacked it. It was still waiting, ready as it could be. Every time he opened his eyes he made sure it was still there; every time he saw it he was filled with longing and dread. Angel still wasn’t sure that he was ready, that he actually wanted to leave at all. Even if he got out of his shackle, even if he made it out the door, where would he even go?
The only people in the city he knew were the people Valentino shared him with, and they’d bring him right back to gain Val’s favor. Angel knew that he’d let them bring him back, because this was his home and so much of him needed this life. He loved Val, despite all of his faults. So, he’d just come crawling back, he’d beg for forgiveness and Val would give it in the form of new bruises and cruel words that felt like bitter, tough love. Small, lovely trinkets to line his vanity table and intricate lacy lingerie to adorn himself in for Valentino’s amusement.
Angel nudged the bag further into the closet with his foot, feeling the drag of the chain. There wasn’t enough of anything in that bag to survive on. Hell, a few hours on the streets and the bag itself might be taken from him. So he was safer here, as long as he behaved things would be fine. He could behave, when he wanted to. Even when those versions of himself made his own skin crawl, he could be everything that Val wanted him to be.
Leaving would be stupid, there was nowhere else for him to go, he reminded himself, hearing Valentino’s voice instead of his own.
Cherri moved around so often; rehab, eviction or jail, and even if he managed to find her Angel wasn’t sure she’d want anything to do with him. Not after Val had forced him to tell her to fuck off and mind her own business because she wanted Angel to leave. She’d been worried, maybe overstepped a little, but Val had taken it badly when he overheard them. After three months Angel could still feel Valentino’s hand around his throat and hear the angry concern in Cherri’s voice.
That night had resulted in Valentino taking the phone out of the bedroom and locking Angel inside of it. So no one could try to convince him to leave. So that he couldn’t decide that he wanted out and call for help. There were no more shifts at the Peep show, no more nights out on the town.
“Valentino loves me,” Angel murmured, as if saying it would make it true in all of the ways he needed it to be. And Val did, Val loved every part of him, the beautiful and the unwanted. No one else accepted him for who he was, no one else had ever loved him in the ways he wanted to be while asking so little back from him. Plenty of people had taken from him, but no one gave the way Valentino did.
“He takes care of me.” Angel scolded himself, a bitter grin twisting along his face. Valentino liked to remind him that everything he did was for Angel’s protection. And maybe that was true. Angel was using far less with Valentino in control of his supply. Hell, he was damn near clean right now. The people he was shared with were carefully selected, it wasn’t like turning tricks on the corner. So, life was good, everything was okay, he was just in the mood to complain.
Holding himself tightly against a pang of loneliness, Angel paced around the room trying to convince himself that staying was best. “Valentino wants me. No one else does.” The words echoed in Angel’s mind, replaying alongside the memories of how Val found him: starved, desperate, strung out. Valentino gave him a life. Valentino gave him purpose. Valentino gave him this room to keep him close. A pretty, comfortable prison that he’d eventually be allowed outside of again once he could be trusted to keep coming back to it.
The clock clicked over. 1:00am.
It’s now or never.
Seated at the small vanity in the corner, Angel murmured those words softly, a gentle chorus to steady his trembling hands while he applied makeup to fair, olive skin paled by the sun's absence. If he wasn't sleeping, then he needed to look presentable when Valentino got home. His scattered freckles and all of the bruises needed to disappear because Val preferred him flawless.
A black eye, a greenish-yellow blotch on his jaw. “I shouldn’t mouth off so much.”
The faint ring of purple fingerprints circling his wrists. “He's under too much stress; I need to stop adding to it.”
“I’m safer here.” Angel continued to rationalize, temporarily erasing all of it with methodical precision.
Beneath his clothes he hid the welted bruises across his back, the ones he’d earned a few nights ago when he’d tried to tell Val no –that was just something he needed to learn to stop doing. With a hiss, he poked at the bruises on his thighs from having them pried apart. All carefully hidden just the way Val wanted because Val hated being reminded that he wasn’t always in control. Angel knew how to hide them all and how to convince himself that they exist because he deserved them.
And it wasn’t like he’d never asked for some of that pain.
There’d been days he wanted to play rough, enjoyed the tempered sting of a well-placed slap or forceful drag of teeth across his skin. Sometimes he asked to be disciplined, because he didn’t know when to shut his mouth or reel his temper back. Maybe he didn’t always like it, but that was the point of discipline. It was given when he needed it, not only when he wanted it. And Valentino always obliged, he was always there with danger in those beautiful, dark eyes, a warning tone and a firm hand. Those same hands that bruised him also held him, cherished him to the point of worship and made him feel like something beautiful. So how could he even think about leaving after all that Val gave to him?
Angel’s gaze fell back to the shackle that had been locked around his ankle for the last three months.
“It’s for your own good, amorcito.” Valentino had told him as he fit the heavy shackle around his ankle, lovingly caressing his long slender legs. “You know you’re better off here with me.” They’d laughed together as Angel helped him thread the padlock into place. He’d been excited when it clicked shut, treating it like another game. A new role play to enjoy together. It’d been fun at first, sexy even, when Angel thought it’d be removed in the morning. He’d laughed and played along, dancing around the room while the chain dragged grooves into the carpet.
It wasn’t funny anymore. Angel dropped down onto his knees, tracing his fingers along every link, following the smooth, cold metal back to the end of the chain wrapped and padlocked to the underside of the bed they shared. This time, he didn’t laugh as the chain pulled taunt, secure and heavy.
“Do you know what they’d do to someone like you out there?” Val had asked, mocking him the last time Angel had demanded to be freed. “You’d never survive without me, baby.” And Val’s voice had been so deceptively sweet as he’d held Angel’s cheek in one hand while testing the chain’s strength with the other. So full of venomous concern that just the tone of Valentino’s voice had felt like sugared poison.
And maybe Val was right about that, too. Angel hadn’t been out on his own more than a handful of times over the last few years, and even then, he was usually with Cherri. Judgmental stares or lustful gazes were hardly a threat when someone had his back, but if he left now, he’d be alone and desperate. Angel knew what people were like, he’d been on the other side of groping hands and angry fists plenty of times. Before all of the drugs, he’d always been able to hold his own in a fight, his body had been stronger. Now, looking down at himself, half dressed and too thin, he wasn’t as confident. At least here, he was willing, and even when he wasn’t in the mood, at least it was Val and not a stranger. So it was better here, even if lately it’d felt less like Heaven and more like Hell. A hell of his own lovestruck making. A hell filled with satin sheets and gilded chains.
Angel glanced at the packed bag again, wondering how many more days would pass before Val finally noticed it. He looked down at the everlasting marks and bruising around his ankle, to the bed that made him feel less than human more often than it offered comfort, and his mind screamed the words Its now or never.
Hands pressed against his ears as if that could shut his own mind up, Angel tried not to hear the thunderous echoes of his panicked thoughts. Every step as he paced around the room he’d been confined to was slowed by the drag of the chain, the soft clink of metal links and shuffle of his socks against the plush gold carpet. Leave now, or you’re never getting out. His heart beat out in Morse code, driving the words into his chest until his breath became ragged.
If he stayed, maybe things would be okay for a while longer. Maybe Val would unlock that chain and things could be the way they were before. If he kept lying to himself, then maybe Angel wouldn’t have to see himself slowly dying every time he looked in the mirror. Leaving wasn't an option; Val would hunt him down. Val might actually kill him. Angel told himself that Valentino loved him, and then, looking at the bag in the closet, shivering as cold metal brushed against his skin, he admitted to himself that Valentino owned him.
All thought ceased as he stumbled into the bathroom, hands shaking as they yanked open the top cabinet drawer, clawing through the clutter for the ridiculously ornate nail file. The handle, encrusted with rhinestones, lined in faux gold, felt too heavy in his hand. He opened his fingers, indecisively trailing his gaze over the nail file, biting his lower lip until he tasted blood. It was beautiful, the same way everything else in the penthouse was: lavish, artificial and gaudy. Just like Val.
Wiggling the file in the lock, Angel’s hand stilled. Warning bells rang within his ears, his heart ached. Because once upon a time Valentino had looked at him so tenderly, watching him do his nails with that same file. There had been nights when Val would help him pick a color or paint them for him with the same attention he gave to the paintings he used to create. Valentino used to look at him with such adoration, and maybe he could win Val back over if he stayed. maybe things could be the way they used to. All he had to do was stop trying to leave and then maybe everything would be fine.
Angel repeated those same reasonings, stilling himself with empty hopes draped in bittersweet lies. Wood groaned against the subtle rattle of the chain pulling against it. Outside traffic passed loudly, far away voices laughed. They shouted. Get out! His heart pounded against his chest, shattering every excuse he was trying to stack around it.
If he did this there was no turning back. Every car he heard outside the window sounded like Val coming home. Beyond the room, life erupted, chaotically wonderful. Excitedly terrifying. He couldn't breathe, his hands shook, fingertips went numb. Even if he got free, even if he made it to the front door without getting caught, then what? Angel looked at the bed, at the posts where he’d been tied down and left begging a hundred times before. His gaze shifted to the damn dog cage in the corner where he’d been locked up for disobeying. If Val caught him trying to leave, those restraints were his entire future, if Valentino didn't kill him instead.
The blunt reality of those thoughts forced Angel’s hands to keep fighting with the lock. The metal ring scraped against his ankle, a dull, cold sting against skin that had long since started to faintly scar from the constant agitation. Val would never let him go. If Val really thought he’d lost control, when all the restraints weren’t enough… Angel swallowed hard, not wanting to believe the truth, suddenly more terrified than he’d ever been at just how dangerous the situation he’d been deluding himself about was.
The padlock clicked, springing loose and for the first time in three months Angel felt fresh air against the skin of his ankle. Red, clammy skin adorned in tiny scratches and rough patches gleamed dully in the low light of the room. Shivering, nervously determined, he forced himself onto his feet and stumbled. The lack of weighted resistance didn’t feel right; movement was too silent without the soft breaths of the chain sliding over the carpet.
"It’s now or never," he told himself, because he was already on the verge of shackling himself back to that room. One more glance outside the window with its perfect view of the Vegas strip. Another look down, just to confirm Valentino’s car wasn't already parked along the street. Fresh tears filled his hazel eyes, warm and uninvited while his feet stumbled towards the closet. His hands moved on their own, sliding through the sleeves of his jacket before closing tightly around the handle of the backpack.
“He’s gonna find me. I’m just making everything worse.” Angel murmured, still walking towards the bedroom door, stopping at a threshold he hasn’t been allowed to cross. “I don’t wanna die here.” He told himself, nearly crumbling to his knees as he took the first step out into the rest of the suite.
Every step forward felt like a blind gamble for his life. To his left, the large violet chaise where they used to cuddle, at his right, the modernized kitchen where he used to sing and cook his nonna’s recipes for a man who never seemed to appreciate the love in a home cooked meal. Too many memories clung to Angel’s shadow, their wispy, clawed hands digging into his mind, trying to pull him back.
One of Valentino’s striped ties was flung carelessly across the coffee table, a tie that had been used to bind his wrists or shut him up on more than one occasion. Beside it, a bottle of wine, the kind they used to share on passionate nights when they couldn’t keep their hands or mouths off of one another.
Turn around. A voice that wasn’t his own whispered in the same saccharine tone that Val often used before becoming violent. Sickly sweet, overfilling with threatening promise.
“No,” Angel argued weakly, tears soaking his cheeks. “Not this time.” He’d already removed the chain, his bag was packed and slung over his shoulder. It had to be now, because there would never be another chance.
Leaving all of the memories behind him, Angel kept pushing himself forward. Slipping into his boots he winced at the way the leather irritated the skin around his ankle. Wearing shoes again felt awkward, like something taboo. Exhilarating. His hand hovered over the doorknob, throat impossibly dry and chest tight. “I can do this, its just a fuckin’ door.”
But it wasn’t simply a door. Nothing about anything he was doing right now was as simple as it should be. There was nothing easy about leaving everything behind while knowing that he’d be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. Angel’s heart ached, sinking deeper into the pit of his stomach, trying to float through bile on good memories that had soured. Maybe he was fucked up, because he loved Val despite all of the reasons he was trying to leave. Maybe dying slowly in the penthouse wasn’t as bad as he was making it out to be.
Go! Angel’s mind screamed with an urgency that kept him still. Just go or he’s going to come home and find you outside of the bedroom. Swallowing hard, Angel turned the knob, hesitating again to listen for signs of life outside the suite. Clutching the strap of his bag tight enough to break his fingers, Angel stepped into the long hall, closing the door behind him.
The hallway felt eternal, like walking in place. Frozen to the spot, Angel waited with baited breaths for the elevator to open. He was just as tense when it stopped in the lobby, so sure that Valentino would be on the other side of the doors when it opened. One last time he looked back, still debating returning to his gilded cage and all of the comforts his compliance offered. And then, thoughtless and broken, he pushed himself outside of the ornate glass doors.
Stepping out onto the Vegas strip hit Angel like a turbulent tidal wave. Humid air surrounded him, pulling him down beneath crashing waters until he was gasping for breath. Neon lights bathed him in artificial joy, pulling him further out to sea as his ship rocked violently behind him. Still holding onto his bag like a lifeline, Angel sank into the crowds moving along the streets, the glow of the city a beacon dancing across his eyes.