On Vox and Angel post-season 2
I've been coping really hard since season 2 as someone who always thought platonic staticdust was a really interesting concept, so here is me venting about how i wish it could happen even though i don't think canon's actually gonna explore that.
Its 2026 and i am in my cringe era, fight me.
I think that Vox and Angel are both in this very interesting place where they'll both be at their lowest point possible ever and will also both be occupying the same place, AKA V tower.
They probably won't be seeing each other a lot, and when they will, it'll probably be because of Val, which is just gonna build up more resentment on either side.
Now, i am of the belief that the "I believe anyone can be redeemed" was clear foreshadowing for a Vox redemption arc, but that it won't be possible without Vox being confronted with all the awful shit he did, and i think the first step has to be his jealousy of Angel.
Now, we know season 3 is gonna have Val be the head of the Vees. We also know that Angel is going to be fully back into his hold, which means we'll be seeing a lot of angst on his side, from drug relapses to emotional and physical abuse, and that's going to be very, very bad for his mental state.
Things aren't much better on Vox's side. He lost everything he's built up and fought for in season 2, all to get the attention of a man he's been obsessed with for seventy years. He's ruined his reputation, he's ruined his relationship with the vees, and he's ruined his own mental health, but most importantly, he's ruined his relationship with Val.
He's not quite been cast out of V tower for good, but he's definitely on thin ice. I think there's going to be a re-categorisation of the type of person he is to Val, in that Val may love both Vox and Angel, Vox was someone he loved like a partner, while Angel was something he loved like a pet. It's why he was capable of having a genuine, "healthy" (or at least, healthier) relationship with Vox and Vel while still being the kind of monster that we know he is with Angel. But now, with Vox being just a head, relegated to behind-the-scenes stuff... I don't think he'll be treated as badly as Angel is, but there's def gonna be a lot of resentment and anger poured into him.
What I'm saying is, Val is going to be spending all of his time with Angel at his side, and with Vox's lack of bodily autonomy, they're probably going to be stuck together a looot.
They'll def hate it. Vox is gonna pull at every single insecurity Angel has, Angel's going to be relapsing a lot, which means he'll probably be the worst we've seen him and will probably absolutely rise to a lot of Vox's bait. Until he realizes that that's exactly what Vox wants.
A suicidal iPad and a drug-addicted spider are stuck in a room together. The iPad tells the spider where his angelic steel is, because if the roles were reversed, he's absolutely take the opportunity to end him. But the spider's a better person than the iPad, and instead of bringing on the punchline like he's supposed to, he just takes another sip of whatever bottle he's been draining and fills the room with silence. This is the worst joke either of them have ever heard.
After that, Vox stops being scary and just becomes sad. A terrible person who got exactly what he deserved, but who is somehow, against all odds, the only person Angel can actually speak to without getting the crap beaten out of him for it. Not cause he wouldn't, Vox is a sadist, he probably would love to, but a lack of a body makes that pretty hard. Humans are naturally social creatures, and neither of these two have particularly high standards at this point.
Time passes, and they... somehow... get closer. When Angel gets drunk, he always pours an extra glass out with a straw for Vox. when he comes back limping from a shoot, instead of making fun of him like he used to, he just tells him where the painkillers are and looks down in regret.
one time, while Vox is alone in the room, he gets a text from Angel saying that he's bored, and they just start playing smash or pass with a random fish generator. they both would smash a mandarin fish.
Another, they start talking about their lives before hell. Turns out, they both grew up in very conservative households. While Angel had been stuck under the pressure of his family's mob ties and catholic guilt, Vox had grown up in Mormonism, and all the shitty, cult-like things that implied. The alcohol might have loosened up Vox's defenses, because he'd confessed he was always jealous of how free Angel was when it came to his sexuality, for being so out and proud, when Vox had pretty much gotten the queerness beaten out of him. They'd tried that with Angel, too, of course, but Vox guessed he was just the tougher one out of the two of them.
Turns out, Vox can actually be very funny. Angel hates it, he hates that the man who ruined the one fragile escape he had from Val's abuse can make him laugh so much. They're not even mean jokes, those don't make him laugh, it's the absurd ones that do.
One time, they were both sitting in complete silence, both too tired from having gone through another miserable day, and Vox, unprompted, looked at Angel directly in the eyes and said “If I had met Ronald Reagan when I was alive, I probably could have fucked him good enough to prevent the AIDS crisis.”
Maybe it was the high, but that made Angel laugh harder than he probably had his entire afterlife.
Angel, meanwhile, is kind. Kinder that Vox has ever deserved. He's sweet, he's patient. Sometimes, he just gets tired, and grabs Vox and holds him like a kid's favourite toy. And God, Vox should not get as much comfort from it as he does.
After especially big fight with Val, one that ended with Vox's screen shattered on the floor, Angel sneaked the both of them away to his old office, and did the best he could to replace the screen. When he's done fixing him, Vox just asks why he didn't just step on him and end it there, and Angel just shrugs.
they might both be nasty, broken people that hate each other's guts, but at least they're broken together, and that's better than nothing.
