It's so, so exquisite Anon... To be frank, it's very hard not to interpret their relationship without so many ryona elements. Humm.. It's so hard to condense everything... The fact that Epel feels general terror towards Vil is so telling. He's so terrified of him, completely submissive to Vil's whims and fancies.

The hints we get here and there of Vil finding it amusing to treat Epel this way... It's great... One of the reasons I think their relationship would be a fan favorite to old school dark yaoi enjoyers, Vilpel as a whole gives me the same ahhh... unclean feel that Kaze to Ki gives me. Vil is so manipulative and obviously holds powers over men. Even though canonly he loves and cherishes his boys and would never hurt them, I can see the appeal to keep him a bitchy, obsessive, egotistical, femme fatale type.

It's way too easy to enjoy grimdark AUs with Pomefiore, especially because of Vil. A lot of my favorite AUs are of him just being an insane, obsessive sociopath. Reducing Epel to just being his doll.