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“Oh, baby, you like that?”
Alastor bursts into laughter.
He genuinely can’t help it—it just spills out of him like foam overflowing a glass of champagne, going and going until he’s breathless and rolling onto his side, wheezing into the bedding.
Eventually the bubbles subside, and he scrubs the helpless tears from his eyes.
“Okay,” he says, waving a hand. Static fizzles through his words as he fights not to snicker. “Alright, alright. You may continue.”
Vox stares at him from where he’s seated over Alastor’s legs, completely unimpressed.
“No, no,” Alastor says. “Truly! I’m quite done. I promise. It was a wonderful joke.”
An old applause track plays in the ambient soundscape, punctuating his congratulations.
“What,” Vox grits out, “joke?”
Alastor’s eyebrows go up. “Vox, my dear, whatever in the world do you mean? Surely you didn’t intend for me to take that… thing seriously?”
Vox’s spine jerks straight as he stiffens. “Valentino likes it!”
“Valentino,” Alastor says slowly, “is a top-class whore and also nearly twice my size. While I am certainly aware that you have plenty to compensate for, this compensation is of truly comical proportion. I’m afraid that there are limits to what even I am willing to do for the sake of personal entertainment.” He pauses for a moment, smile widening. “But I can give Angel Dust a call if you truly insist.”
Vox throws his hands into the air. “Fuck! Fine! Jesus, I didn’t realize you were such a picky little…”
His complaints trail off into a mumble as he levers himself off of Alastor and wrestles his pants the rest of the way off. The movement is somewhat hampered by the subject of Alastor’s amusement: a truly monstrous attachment for Vox’s intimate parts, a vibrantly purple beast with the circumference of a pop can, which is no shorter than the entire length of Alastor’s forearm at minimum. Oh, and it has spikes.
Vox brings his hand to the base of it, squinting at Alastor. “What if I said I didn’t bring anything else?”
“Then I would call you a fool and show you the way out.”
Vox rolls his eyes and detaches the thing. “The spikes are soft, you know. They feel nice.”
“I’m sure,” Alastor says. “Shall we try it out on you?”
Vox blanches—as much as he physically can blanch, at least, which mostly consists of a general desaturation of his entire screen—and hastens the swapping of his attachments.
The new one that he pulls out is blue and of a much more reasonable size. When he twists it into the socket, however, it clicks into place and begins to glow. Not the entire thing—just the dense core inside, which is surrounded by a more realistically-shaped semi-translucent blue jelly-like dildo. It is rather in-theme with the atmosphere of his room, actually.
“There,” he says, turning back to look at Alastor with a hand on his waist, cocking his hip as if to show off the new dick. “Better?”
Alastor’s own hand is pressed firmly against his own mouth as he nods frantically, doing nothing to hide his grin but at least suppressing another burst of delighted laughter. While he does not precisely care for Vox’s feelings, he’s aware that the other overlord has a limit to what he’s willing to tolerate, and Alastor has committed to this curiosity sufficiently that he would at least like to see it through.
“You’re an asshole and I fucking hate you,” Vox mutters, crawling up onto the bed where Alastor is lounging. “But I’m going to fuck you silly, so I guess it’s worth it.”
“I’m afraid we’ve already long since passed ‘silly,’ my good man.”
“Fuck you stupid, then.”
“You want to fuck me so bad that it makes you look stupid,” Alastor says, and barks another laugh at the expression Vox makes in response.
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck me yourself, coward.”
Vox groans and throws himself bodily onto the mattress—and, by proxy, on top of Alastor. It drives the air out of his lungs, but he doesn’t precisely need to breathe, so he just shakes with silent amusement. It does not pass under his notice that Vox seems to freeze up for a moment when he realizes that Alastor is allowing him this close, and the hesitant way he momentarily presses his hands to Alastor’s waist.
“Who the fuck taught you memes?” Vox asks, half-distracted.
“I’m rather more up to date on modern lingo than you’d expect,” Alastor says, “but if you try to tell anybody, you’re just going to look ridiculous. Now. Weren’t you trying to do something?”
Vox produces a long, irritated whine that screeches into high-pitched feedback when he levers himself up onto his arms, staring down at Alastor. He’s looking a little wild-eyed, which, if the stiffness of the plug-and-play dick is in any way reflective of his actual biological state, can probably be explained by the unreasonable degree of arousal he seems to derive from the mere thought of getting his way with Alastor. “Fuck. You’re lucky I do want to fuck you stupid. You know, I blew off Velvette for this. Aren’t you planning on contributing? I’m naked over here and you still have all your clothes on.”
Alastor shrugs, the fabric of his coat rustling against the bedding pleasantly. They passed Valentino’s tower on the way to Vox’s personal elevator, which was a gaudy, fragrance-filled affair that made Alastor’s sensitive deer’s nose twitch, but Vox’s room is mostly cold tones and a glass wall that opens up to a large neon tank populated with glowing mechanical sharks. The bedding itself has proven quite tolerable. “I am doing this to sate a personal curiosity and for my own entertainment. Much of the appeal lies in playing front-row spectator to your hilariously degenerate brand of desperation, up to and including the knowledge that you are so frantic for this opportunity that you will abandon the other Vees for it. Ergo, I’d rather watch you do all the work.”
“That’s a lot of words to call yourself a pillow princess,” Vox mutters, and sits back to yank at one of Alastor’s boots. “At least take your damn shoes off when you’re in my bed.”
He pulls sharply enough that the entire boot comes off, the sock rolling down with it, and before Alastor can think it through, he jerks his leg up and tucks it under himself, sitting up.
Vox frowns. “What?”
“Nothing for you to worry about,” Alastor says, grin sharpening.
Vox makes to toss the boot aside and then, upon seeing Alastor’s face, gently places it to the side of the bed. Clearly gathering himself, he takes a deep breath, and releases the tension from his shoulders as he exhales.
“Alright, dear,” Vox says, just enough of a self-deprecating smile that the pun lands. “Your other foot, then, your highness.”
There’s little for Alastor to do but acquiesce, lest he make more of the negative sort of spectacle of himself than he already has. When Vox pulls that shoe off, too, he barely reacts—and Alastor’s smile twitches into a momentary grimace as he flexes his leg.
He should have guessed that Vox wouldn’t give it a second thought. The man is in a long-term relationship with a moth—but even Valentino lets Angel Dust keep his legs covered in the pornos they film. There’s something about digitigrade, inhuman legs in the place of what should be normal that hits people differently than extra parts, like antlers, wings, and tails. Alastor is, alas, not always immune to the innate oddness of feeling that such things invoke in himself. Or the way being disrobed makes him feel in general. He goes to lengths to maintain a certain appearance, and many of those lengths involve staying dressed. Still, he did commit to this. It’s not as though being naked will allow the likes of Vox a leg up.
Unfortunately, a solitary fritz of radio static is enough to catch Vox’s attention, and he peers more closely at Alastor as he slides his way up his body.
“Very cute,” Vox says. “You’ve got little hooves. Say, you got a fluffy little tail under that coat, too?”
Alastor twitches and draws his leg away, voice crackling. “Is it not your job to find out?”
Vox grins, the corner of his mouth pixelating into a greedy trail of cyan. “Oh, baby, is it.”
From there, it goes just about how Alastor expected it to. Vox does, in fact, discover the tail—but Alastor is not particularly interested in spending his time laying on his front when the whole point is to play spectator to Vox’s degeneracy, so he doesn’t allow for much of an opportunity to explore it. Vox is surprisingly interested in the black-to-gray gradient that Alastor’s limbs make, as well as putting his staticky, electric tongue onto as many parts of Alastor’s torso as he is permitted. He’s not too bad with his hands, either, considering the claws—Alastor attributes that particular skill (as well as the soft silicone caps he attaches to his claws before any inserting happens) to experience with Valentino.
The absolutely atrocious dirty talk, he attributes to inherent personal flaws and watching too much porn, along with the way Vox keeps looming over him like the act of fucking him asserts some sort of dominance. And he’s obsessed with the way his hands wrap around Alastor’s waist. By the time that gaudy blue attachment makes its way into any part of Alastor’s body, Vox is practically sparking in excitement.
“Bambi,” he says as Alastor finds a smidgeon of magnanimity somewhere very deep down in himself to not outright snort at the pet name, “I’m gonna give it to you so hard you’re gonna forget your own name.”
“Do you source your lines from all of Valentino’s works, or just from the lowest-rated dregs? I feel as though I should be offering the man royalties by this point.”
Vox snarls and hitches Alastor’s leg over his shoulder—definitely a move that he learned from a porno, because Alastor is not actually an adult film star and his semi-digitigrade leg cannot comfortably stretch that high. Vox fumbles when he meets resistance, Alastor’s thigh twinging in the process, and ends up hooking it around his waist instead.
Credit where credit is due: somehow, he keeps on fucking him the entire time.
Alastor supposes that it’s doing something for him, physically. He’s hard, at least, not that that is particularly difficult to achieve, the male body being what it is. He’s more interested in Vox’s expressions, though, and when he falls silent for a few moments, Alastor finds himself opening his own mouth to goad him.
“Oh,” he tries, breathy and pitched the way that Angel Dust affects so frequently, “Daddy…”
Vox chokes, bug-eyed, and his hips kick forward so hard that Alastor’s antlers bang into the headboard. “Oh, fuck,” he whimpers. “You like that, baby? Daddy’s got you, daddy’s gonna fuck you so good—”
Alastor starts laughing again.
Even more hilariously, this does not stop Vox. He buries his face in Alastor’s throat as he makes a high-pitched groan that perfectly and delightfully mixes deep dismay and the utterly unhindered arousal that has his hips rabbiting enough that Alastor’s antlers are taking somewhat of a beating.
(Or, well. Truthfully, his antlers are fine. Vox’s headboard, on the other hand… well, it’s not like Alastor cares.)
“What’s the matter, Vox?” Alastor asks, gleeful. “Is the big, strong daddy—”
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Vox cries out desperately, and reaches down for Alastor’s dick.
“Oh, dear!”
Surprise, surprise: that actually feels quite nice. Vox has a way with his hands, and Alastor lets his head fall back, humming with faint pleasure. When his eyes slit open again, Vox is staring down at him, his expression some desperately awkward cross of intent and plaintive, and his hips have slowed from that self-serving rabbit-quick pace to something smoother and deeper. A moment later, there’s a click, and Vox’s dick starts vibrating, which feels even nicer.
“Oh, dear,” Alastor repeats. “You really are trying, aren’t you?”
“I don’t have to try—”
“How genuinely adorable of you! Tell me, what are you hoping to get out of this endeavor?” Alastor inquires. To be perfectly honest, he has no idea how to make himself into more of a sexually appealing creature. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to matter. He stretches his arms over his head, and that’s enough for Vox’s eyes to rake over his torso, the man’s teeth making their way into his lower lip. One of his hands squeezes over Alastor’s hip, thumb pressing into the divot of it like he’s trying to leave a mark.
“I still recall my own name quite well,” Alastor continues. “But I can pretend a little more, if you’d like to feel like a big man. …Not quite well enough to lose the inch I have on you, unfortunately. I’m afraid this body only gets bigger.”
“Baby,” Vox finally snaps, “I’ll show you bigger.”
“You really do like saying that, don’t you?” Alastor muses. “Very well. How about this?”
The radio crackles to life around them, a special recording that was pay-per-view to the public for all of twenty-seven minutes before it became something that only Alastor possesses. He would never allow it to make it to live air, nevermind video, but when Vox hears it, his eyes go wide and light up with anger—and recognition.
Hilarious. Absolutely, genuinely hilarious.
Vox comes just like that, whimpering like a dog to the tinny audio of “Angel Dust: The Radio Demon Special! (In No Way Affiliated With The Actual Radio Demon, Please Do Not Come After Us)” and Alastor’s uncontrollable laughter.
“Smiles,” Angel Dust says, “why’re you… doin’ that?”
Alastor’s eyebrows shoot up and Angel Dust twitches—but, no, the radio demon simply looks surprised rather than annoyed at the innuendo. Angel has long since stopped poking fun at how much most of the underworld would probably love to see Alastor between the sheets—in no small part because he remembers what happened to that Radio Demon Special that he filmed, which was an absolute waste of prime acting talent and also Angel’s very few opportunities to actually contribute to the writing and characterization that makes it into his scripts, seeing as he was one of the only people who actually knows Alastor in person.
And also because, y’know. After a certain point it stops feeling like a joke and starts feeling a little like sexual harassment, and he ain’t like that unless you bother him first. Also, he’s like 50% sure that Alastor doesn’t even have a working dick. At least, he was before today.
“Doing what, my dear fellow?” Alastor asks, leaning his elbows onto the table they’re sharing. They’re on the balcony overlooking the front of the hotel, where Alastor typically takes his morning coffee—a fact that Angel Dust only learned recently, as he doesn’t usually roll out of bed before 1pm. Unfortunately, his recent “promotion” to sixteen-hour workdays means that he has to be at the studio by 1pm, so here he is: bleary-eyed, sore, fucking exhausted (emphasis on the fucking), and simultaneously dreading and hoping that Val’s plans for today involve him looking wrecked as hell, because there is no way he’s going to have time to get his hair under control before he has to be on set.
Angel blinks at him, trying to kickstart his brain enough to figure out if Alastor is playing dumb or if he’s actually just dumb.
“That,” Angel says, and gestures a claw at the surprisingly high-tech portable tablet screen propped up on the table between them. The audio is playing Vox’s telltale bullet-quick narration of the day’s news announcements, which largely consist of VoxTek’s newest product launches. Currently, he’s introducing a collaboration between VoxTek and Carmilla Carmine for home defense systems guaranteed to protect the user against the incoming angel extermination—as well as nosy neighbors!
Alastor blinks right back at him, the smile unshifting on his face. Right as Vox is about to unveil the collab, the audio swaps to a crappy, edited clip of Alastor’s voice from that deliberately shitty first commercial that Alastor made for the hotel, timed perfectly to the flashing display of the shiny new weapons systems.
“Do you like blood, violence, and depravity of a sexual nature? Of course you do! That’s why you’re in hell! Well, what would you say if I told you—this—had none of that? Here we offer fun things such as somewhat functional—pest control! Wow! Founded five days ago by a—misguided—delusional—daddy! Come place your fate in—inexperienced hands! Your last desperate attempt at salvation starts here!”
Alastor’s smile is as perky as Angel has ever seen it. “I didn’t even have to bother making a new recording! I think the incompetent editing lends it a nice touch, don’t you?”
Angel nearly snorts his coffee, and covers the motion by reaching over to pour another finger of Bailey’s into it. “Alright, alright, it’s funny. Dollface, you’re like a kid pullin’ his crush’s pigtails on the playground, ain’tcha? Y’know, if that’s what you’re into, Val’s definitely gotten Vox into a schoolgirl skirt before—”
The audio screeches out entirely, and Vox’s silent image on screen practically fritzes out in rage as he stalks toward the camera, clearly yelling at someone off-screen that Angel vaguely suspects is the sound guy. A moment later, the screen goes black and loops to pre-recorded commercials.
“I’m afraid you’ve got me all wrong, my dear!” Alastor declares, the radio static kicking up a notch as a cheerful jingle plays. “I am ‘doing this,’ as you so quaintly phrased it, for entertainment!”
“Uh-huh,” Angel says, eyeballing the faint occult symbols drifting through the air. One wafts near his head and he waves it off with a secondary hand, cupping his two primary ones around his mug. “So you’re not doin’ ‘im?”
Alastor’s smile freezes for just long enough.
“Hah!” Angel says, pointing at him. “I knew it! You’ve been waaay too peppy since yesterday! And Val ain’t been bitchin’ ‘bout Vox, either, even though he always does when Vox is on crunch time for a new launch, and—eugh, I know way too much about my boss’s relationship drama.”
“I could have simply gone and murdered a sinner or ten!”
“Nah, people’re usually screamin’ in the streets for a bit when you do that, even though you ain’t been broadcastin’ the small fry,” Angel says. “And I’m an early bird now, I’d’ve noticed for sure if someone attacked the hotel again!”
“You seem to be reading a lot into this, Angel Dust,” Alastor says, tilting his head curiously. “One wonders what makes you so invested!”
“Oh, well…” Angel hunches in a little, sipping at the warm, boozy coffee to excuse the way his face warms. “You’re a grade-A weirdo, Al, and you do all kinds a’stuff for the jollies or whatever, but the last time you did something, to quote, ‘for the entertainment’... that was, like, helpin’ Charlie with the hotel, right?”
Alastor stares at him, frowning slightly in confusion.
“And I like the hotel,” Angel Dust mumbles, shrugging. “Ya did a good job. And you probably got some real fucked up reasons behind that creepy smile a’yours, but that don’t change the fact that this place’s actually pretty nice considering it’s, like, the lamest joint in the Pride Ring. Besides!”
He points a finger at Alastor again. “You’re like an enigma wrapped in a mystery! You can’t blame me for jumpin’ on the first sign that you’re as red-blooded as the rest of us!”
“The day you see me bleed is the day all of hell bleeds with me,” Alastor says, as if that’s a normal thing for someone to just come out with.
“Right, sure. Anyway, whaddaya even see in Vox?” Angel asks, crossing his lower arms as he gestures with his mug. “He’s so, uh…”
“Pathetic!” Alastor declares, ears perking up in delight.
“What.”
“What, what?” Alastor’s smile widens. “He has a unique gravitas that can only be described as one of degenerate desperation! Now, now—I’m very well aware that hell does not lack for the desperate and the degenerate—”
“Ya got that right,” Angel mutters, and the corners of Alastor’s eyes quirk up with enough amusement that he doesn’t even bite off Angel’s head for interrupting.
“—but so few of them manage to be so despite wielding such a great-but-certainly-no-greater-than-mine deal of power! Why, just listen to him!”
The tablet screen doesn’t flicker back to life, but the speakers do, and with them comes the sound of Vox’s raised voice frantically shouting, interspersed with more exasperated, accented tones. Velvette has apparently made it to the scene, and when her voice spikes, Vox’s own tones turn smooth and conciliatory before jumping rapidly in pitch as something crashes loudly in the background.
Alastor sighs dreamily, placing his coffee cup in its saucer and leaning his chin against interwoven fingers. “Like dropping a match into an ant hill.”
Angel Dust eyes the way Alastor’s eyes have gone lidded, the fluffy fawn ears that usually stand at attention relaxing into a softer, pleased posture.
“Riiiight,” Angel says. “Smiles, you’re lucky voyeurism is half a’my actual job. You sure you don’t just got a secondhand humiliation kink or somethin’?”
He’s actually kind of sad to see the ears shoot up again. They look really soft when Alastor lets them relax.
“Pardon me, my dear?”
“All I’m sayin’ is,” Angel says, holding his secondary hands out with his palms up, protesting innocence, “there ain’t a sinner in hell that’s started out doin’ somethin’ like this for the meme that didn’t end up embarrassingly invested. If I were you, I’d do some real soul-searchin’ and just own what you like, y’know?”
Alastor’s eyes narrow. Angel glances at his watch-less wrist and decides that this is the perfect moment to make his exit.
“Anyway, babe, good talk, enjoy ya’ coffee!” he says, sliding out of his seat. “I’m off, you know how it is, busy shift ahead a’me—later, ‘gator!”
Alastor’s eyes bore into him as the world flickers for a long, tense moment—and Angel can practically feel the moment he decides to let it go, leaning back into his seat with a relaxed smile.
“Certainly, chum!” Faint, cheerful music starts playing in the background. “Enjoy your day!”
Angel flees.
“Ugh,” he mutters to himself on the way up to his room. “Fuckin’ overlords ‘n the sticks up their collective asses. What I get for tryna help, huh?”
Whatever. Speaking of overlords: he has to get dressed for Valentino.
Alastor… takes Angel’s advice.
Or at least he tries.
Despite the little spider’s ridiculous demeanor, Alastor is not blind to it when someone is genuinely attempting to reach out with an olive branch. And unlike Husker, Angel manages to do it in a way that isn’t entirely disrespectful.
Or at least no more disrespectful than he is to anybody else in his acquaintance, which allows for some leeway given Angel Dust’s typical baseline.
Regardless, Alastor must admit that he derived a particular enjoyment from his time with Vox, and the thought of a repeat performance is not as undesirable as Vox’s actual performance would have led him to believe. Best of all is the reaction of Vox himself, who clearly and audibly drops his entire phone on the ground when the speakerphone crackles to life with Alastor’s voice.
The joy of not owning a cellular phone: the contact only goes one way.
This time, it is Vox that finds himself in Alastor’s domain. Not in the actual radio tower, of course: Alastor isn’t planning on broadcasting Vox’s bloody murder tonight. No, Alastor keeps a tidy set of rooms on the top floor of the hotel, which have several convenient points of access that don’t involve Charlie, Vaggie, Angel Dust, and Husk actually seeing Vox of all people approaching the hotel.
(Technically it is only a singular room, but that’s nothing a bit of reality-bending can’t fix! And there is nothing like the ambiance of the outdoors for a nice dinner atmosphere!)
Alastor does not begrudge Angel Dust’s role as an exhibitionist by trade—after all, he certainly enjoys a good broadcast—but there are some things that are not meant for the public’s purview.
Case in point: Vox’s shivering, static-filled excitability when Alastor actually deigns to undress this time is—yes, yes, entertaining. But also, if Alastor indulges in being honest with himself, also somewhat darling.
“Fuck,” Vox says, frazzled. “You’re seriously a sadist, if you actually wanna give this another shot.”
Alastor laughs and flounces backward onto the bed. “Naturally, my dear! But where’s the fun in being straightforward about it? You tried so miserably hard last time, I thought it would be fun to give you the opportunity for a repeat performance!”
Vox eyes him carefully, following him onto the covers. “And what do I get out of it, huh?”
Alastor’s smile gleams. “The realization of all the pathetic little dreams that have haunted your every waking hour since our last encounter, of course!”
Vox snorts. “Yeah, for that you’d have to actually let me…”
He trails off, contemplating. Alastor keeps smiling, his expression a frozen rictus.
“...You seriously want me to actually dom you?” Vox asks, brows rising. He trails a hand up Alastor’s calf, and Alastor magnanimously does not kick him in the face with a hoof. “No shit?”
“I’d like to see you try,” Alastor intones, crinkling his nose, and watches the realization trail across Vox’s face as he cottons on that the response isn’t a no—it’s an ‘if you can.’
(Specifically, an ‘if you can manage it without making me cringe out of my skin for actually taking you seriously,’ but Alastor has not yet achieved that level of communication proficiency with his expressions.)
Vox’s face is a dawning sun of glee.
Over the course of the next twenty minutes, Alastor achieves a couple of epiphanies. The first is that deliberately removing the layers of irony previously hanging between himself and the very concept of a sexual encounter—let alone one with Vox—in favor of actually taking him seriously is—well, still fairly silly. But Vox’s pitiful desperation in one light looks like genuine earnestness in another, and Alastor is surprised to find himself rather flattered by the sincere diligence that Vox puts into not only pleasing Alastor, but the firm director’s persona that must echo the manipulations that keep all of VoxTek running as it does.
The second epiphany that there is something deeply pleasant about shifting from putting on a performance where he forces somebody else to put in the work, to allowing Vox to take the lead. There truly is something to be said for, as they say, loosening up.
Vox likes pulling his hair, and his obsession with grabbing Alastor’s waist turns out to be a general appreciation for manhandling Alastor as a whole. He’s clearly still vaguely awed by Alastor’s permissiveness, and Alastor finds himself—
Well. Awe is the wrong term for him. But it is so very new, to allow someone these machinations. Why, he doesn’t remember the last time somebody so much as attempted to put such a rough hand on him at all! At least not anybody that kept the hand. Or their life.
Still, it’s not exactly the degree of titillation that Angel Dust’s words promised, and Alastor finds himself uncomfortably disappointed when Vox scrapes his teeth along Alastor’s jawline and all Alastor feels is a vague sense of well, I suppose that was alright.
And then Vox grabs Alastor’s jaw and gets up in his face. His hypnotic eye pulses, pupil dilating as a spiral swirls through the red sclera. Claws dig into Alastor’s cheek, and Vox’s voice pops mechanically as Alastor—
Freezes.
Here’s the thing: Alastor does not typically bother making eye contact with Vox. It’s entertaining, of course: Vox chases his attention like a dog chases its own tail, and withholding even the dignity of eye contact is yet another amusement on the large pile of reasons Alastor finds Vox so piteously hilarious.
Lesser sinners that desperately avoid catching Vox’s eye do so because they think it will stop him from exerting control over them. A sad and erroneous attempt at regaining control: the man has partial ownership of nearly every screen, phone, and shop front in Pentagram City, for the little good it does him any time Alastor decides to go live on air. Avoiding eye contact is hardly going to help when they’re already brainwashed by the tantalizing bait of TV capitalism. So: Vox rightfully assumes that Alastor refusing to look him in the eye is a condescension.
He is… mostly correct.
What he hasn’t noticed is that Alastor more or less avoids eye contact with everybody, unless he’s had a moment to prepare himself for it. There’s no beating the ticking radio dial of a glare for some easy intimidation, but as much as Alastor is the radio demon, he’s also—a fucking deer. Antlers, ears, hooves, tail, and, worst of all—the goddamned instincts that tell his animalistic hindbrain that he’s been pinned by the gaze of a predator.
His breath catches. The cold, dead thing in his chest that pretends to be a heart kicks up a notch. And his spine goes rigid, utterly petrified under the shark-toothed gaze of a carnivore.
Vox blinks first.
“Uh… Alastor?”
There is a long pause as Alastor tries to remember how to breathe.
“... Ohhh, shit.”
The claws on Alastor’s jaw squeeze just a moment—and that’s enough to make him blink, breaking eye contact.
The frozen rictus of his smile very quickly turns into a snarl, even as Vox drops his hand, laughing into Alastor’s face. The air pops with static.
“Wait, wait,” Vox says, his laughter taking on a disbelieving tone—like he doesn’t know what other noise to make. “Don’t tell me that saying—like a deer in headligh—hrk!”
Alastor couldn’t stop smiling if he tried. He’s left most of his face behind entirely, form dissolving into a mechanical mask of screeching radio frequencies as he lunges up at Vox, antlers tearing through the canopy of the bed as his true form rips into reality, suddenly three sizes larger than Vox and still growing.
Vox doesn’t waste time poking fun. He fizzles into static, a bolt of frantic electricity that jumps to the nearest route of escape—the lights—before Alastor plucks him out of the air. What he pins to the ground, like a cat stepping on a mouse’s tail, is Vox himself, gasping as the force drives the air out of him.
“You rat,” Alastor snarls. “I am g̷o̵i̷n̶g̸ ̴t̸o̵ e̵a̸t̶ ̷y̶o̶u̷ ̵w̸h̶o̸l̷e̷ a̷̖͠ñ̵̡͇d̴͎̆̑ ̵̱̚M̵̘̉A̶͔̿I̶̩̊L̷̳͝ ̶͕̎Y̶̛̤O̸̢̐Ǔ̶͙R̶̹̕ ̵̙̂B̴̝̑O̴͆͜Ṉ̷̾Ē̶͙S̴̲͐ ̵̰̏T̸͇͝O̴͍̿ ̸̨͕̹̫̾̅̀͘͠Y̸̜̦̼̩̎͋͛̈͜O̸̫̰͚̓̏̋͒̚͘Ú̷̬͔̬̎̑R̶͎̲̯̆̈̉̐͜͠͝ ̷͉̲̯̾͘L̶̛̳͎͗͑͝͠Õ̵̡̺̦̣͈̂̑͐̋̚V̸̧͇̌͒͠Ë̷̢̹͗̈͊͂̔Ḓ̵̈́͆͐͛ ̸̜͎̣̃̍͘Ô̸̥̫̝̩̬̩̏̕Ņ̴̬͚̍̀͛͘͜͝E̶̗͙͎̝̳͐̓Ş̷͖͍͇̝̠͌͊̌̕—̷̼̾”
“Red!” Vox yelps, scrabbling at the desk-sized arm pinning him into place. “Red, red, safeword, whatever, holy shit!”
Alastor pauses, tilting his head slightly. He overshoots the gesture and his neck cracks, hanging at a full right angle. Vox whimpers aloud.
“W̵h̶a̴t̶?̴”
“Safeword? We didn’t set one, did we? Shit, but everyone knows the traffic light system!”
Alastor finds that he has regained himself sufficiently for his mouth to twitch into a grin that is more bemused than murderous. He cracks his head back into place. “As it pertains to traffic, you wretched creature.”
“Right. Riiight. Ah, fuck.” Vox’s head thunks back onto the floor as he closes his eyes, nervous static fizzling through his sigh. “Al, for fuck’s sake, let me up. Valentino doesn’t want my bones anyway. How the hell have you lived with Angel for months and don’t know what a safeword is?”
It’s not groveling, but the tone is appeasing enough. Casual, even. Alastor keeps holding him there for a long moment—long enough that Vox starts looking nervous again—before pressing down just to hear Vox’s ribs creak. Then he lets him up.
“I know what a safeword is,” Alastor says, smiling placidly. He seats himself on the bed, prim, and crosses one leg over the other as Vox coughs and gathers himself together on the ground in front of him. “What does that have to do with traffic lights?”
Vox grins up at him, a little smug. There’s a bit of cyan artifacting at the corner of his mouth, trailing to the bottom of the screen. For all that the color is deeply unnatural, it makes him look like he’s bleeding.
“They’re a type of safeword, genius,” Vox tells him. “Green, yellow, red. All good, slow down, stop right now. Easier to remember than a billion different actual safewords when you’re as much of a whore as Val is, so we use that… when he bothers to use a safeword at all,” he finishes with a mutter.
Hm. Alastor’s knowledge of safewords extends enough to realize that they’re used for sexual activity, and there was nothing sexual about the way he was about to disembowel Vox. Judging by the calm grin, relaxed shoulders, and wide, open hands that Vox is showing him—the pathetic thing must be so used to capitulating to Valentino’s tempers—Vox knows this very well.
Still, he’s practically bending over backward for the effort. Alastor should show some appreciation for that.
He leans back onto the bed, laying himself against the pillows at the headboard. “Very well, then.”
Vox blinks, a here-and-there moment of shock that drops his mouth into a moue of surprise—but he’s a gamely fellow, and climbs onto the bed after Alastor, grinning again in but a moment.
“There, you see?” Vox murmurs, crowding Alastor pleasantly against the pillows. “Just tell me ‘red’ and I’ll fuck off. No need to go nuclear. Val would probably do some real fucked up shit with my bones, old man, and neither of us need that in our un-lives.”
He reaches out, skating his fingers up the side of Alastor’s neck.
“Now,” Vox says. He’s close, a cold, bright glow that surrounds Alastor on all sides. There’s nowhere else to look, nothing else to see. “Wanna try that again, dear?”
Alastor refuses to show amusement at the pun purely on principle, but doesn’t do something even funnier—like putting an antler through Vox’s screen—when Vox takes a deceptively delicate hold of his face again.
He turns Alastor’s face to the left, then to the right. Alastor doesn’t break eye contact.
“I would tell you to take a picture,” Alastor says through a smile, “but I’m afraid you’d have trouble capturing a face like this on film.”
“Ha, ha.” Vox leans in, and—kisses him.
Alastor stares in surprise, eyes unfocused, and forgets to reciprocate until a zap of static electricity stings his tongue. Kissing Vox is like—well, he hardly has much to compare it to, but mostly it tastes exactly like Alastor imagined licking a television screen would feel. Except more wet. It’s not until Vox’s hand trails down to his throat and exerts a gentle, threatening pressure that Alastor shivers, letting his gaze go lidded. He supposes Vox must be getting something out of this. He kisses back.
His mouth is cold and tastes of ozone by the time Vox pulls back, chuckling low in his throat.
“Alright,” Vox says, lifting himself to his knees over Alastor. “Let me give you what you need, Bambi.”
It’s an unimpressive line, which just makes it worse that when Vox follows it up with a squeeze to Alastor’s throat, his heart stutters in his chest.
Alastor grins up at him. “Do your worst, my good man. Or your best! I’m certain I won’t notice the difference between the two.”
Vox laughs, utterly fake, and shoves Alastor’s face into the bed. Alastor lets himself go, vaguely enjoying the friction of the blanket on his face—he spent a long time picking out this bedding!—until suddenly Vox is bearing down on his back, trapping him against the mattress.
Vox snaps his teeth by Alastor’s ear, a sharp clack that makes Alastor’s shoulders jump, and laughs in delight.
“Baby, you are so fucked up,” he tells Alastor. “Hell’s biggest, baddest predator, and how many of those adorable little prey instincts are itching up against your skin every damn day? And you enjoy it! Fuck, look at this.”
He backs off, just slightly, and Alastor resists the urge to screw his eyes shut. Ugh. Drat. Without his coat on, there’s no hiding his tail—nor the way it flicks up, flashing the pure white fur on the underside in alarm whenever he’s startled or—or unnerved.
It’s not as though there’s a herd to alert to danger, Alastor thinks bitterly. What is even the point of the damned thing?
Vox just hums appreciatively and uses the hand not pinning Alastor’s neck to tug on his tail teasingly. “It’s like a cute little ‘fuck me’ sign. Hell, you’d look great in a ruffled up maid dress—real short skirt, so you’d have to keep tugging it down over the tail…”
He clearly gets lost in the fantasy for a few seconds. Alastor briefly contemplates the so-called stoplight system that Vox taught him, or just plain biting Vox’s entire head off whole—but Vox notices the way that the edges of his smile twitch up until a snarl, and it’s plainly flattering the way he immediately switches to petting his fingers gently through the tuft of red fur. He’s very keyed-in to aggression. Perhaps Alastor should send Valentino a gift basket.
Vox leans in. “But you’d look better gagging for it on my cock, huh, Bambi?”
Alastor turns his head, staring up at Vox with one baleful eye as he pushes himself up onto his elbows. “I had thought we established that if it’s big enough to gag on, then perhaps you should rethink your choice of equipment.”
Vox slaps him across the face. It’s more stunning than painful, a shock to Alastor’s system that sends him tumbling to the bed as Vox bares his teeth into his face.
“Shut the fuck up,” Vox tells him cheerfully, “or I’m going to make you beg.”
With sharp teeth this close to his throat and Vox’s gaze boring into his, Alastor’s fingers claw into the blankets and stay there, his body frozen as his heart thumps against his throat. His body is on a hair-trigger of adrenaline, ready to flee from the predator crouched over him. It’s awful. It’s—exactly what he wants. And it’s that fact—the fact that he wants this—that keeps him frozen, breathless in shock against the bed.
Because the truth is, Vox could do it. If he pushes this much further—and then leverages it, dangles it in front of Alastor’s face like a treat he’s rubbing his nose into—Alastor cannot with full certainty say that he wouldn’t… ask.
Vox sees it in his face, too, because he laughs. “I can’t believe you’re actually into this. You were so precious about goading me like a bratty princess, and it’s because you were itching for this?”
He wraps his hands around Alastor’s waist, cold tips of sharp claws scraping over bare skin and making Alastor shiver as his hindbrain blares out some confused combination of danger-pleasure-run-can’t-please. They dip into the hollows of his hips, and Alastor realizes in a moment of truly acute terror that he’s hard—so hard that it hurts, even, a hot ache that pulses through his hips in a way he’s never quite felt before.
His hips twitch in Vox’s grip, but he doesn’t manage to move anywhere.
“You think you’re such hot shit,” Vox says, pouting mockingly, and drags a hand through Alastor’s hair. His fingers tighten, pricking his thigh and his scalp both, and he drags Alastor’s head to the side until he can force him to meet his gaze.
“Don’t you?” Vox asks, grinning. Alastor’s eyes are wide, neck straining as he fights not to turn his face back into the blankets and hide. “But all it takes is the right kind of touch and you’re just desperate for it.”
His voice fizzes slightly over ‘desperate,’ the way it does when he hits a particularly feverish note of glee, and, hell, the way he’s getting off on this—
“Oh, fuck, I think I’m going to make you beg anyway,” Vox rasps, and flings him off the bed.
Alastor catches himself before he gets rug burn somewhere uncomfortable, though he does land in an ungainly heap on the carpet before he shoves up into a crouch, whirling around with a snarl—but Vox is leaning down and catching his chin in one lackadaisical hand, claws skittering against the soft underside of Alastor’s jaw.
His other hand goes to Alastor’s shoulder and pushes down forcing Alastor to his knees in front of Vox. His slacks are unbuttoned, shoved down just far enough that the ridiculous electro-pulse of his stupid blue light-up dick is visible as he guides Alastor’s face closer.
“C’mon,” Vox says. “You think I’m gonna sit here all day? I’ll kick your ass right to the curb if I get bored, so at least bother putting on a bit of a show and ask, you little bitch.”
Alastor is fairly certain that a bigger lie has never been told in all of hell, especially not by Vox, the man who had a very embarrassing, very public meltdown on live television the exact minute he realized that Alastor had come back to town—but Vox’s claws prickle against the back of his neck, and Alastor gasps, voice rough.
“P̶l̸e̴—̸a̵s̶e̶.̷.̵̋”
Vox laughs right at him, and Alastor feels his face actually grow warm.
“Fuck!” Vox exclaims. “You can’t even talk straight! That’s fine, Bambi, I got somethin’ better for your mouth.”
His hand goes into Alastor’s hair, and he forces him down.
Alastor chokes. As abjectly fucking stupid as the light-up dick is, it’s a much more reasonable size than the monstrosity Vox had attempted to show off with last time. Softer, too—the godawful spikes are replaced with silky silicone, a realistically-textured outer layer that surrounds the glowing solid core inside. Alastor is pretty sure he’s seen slime monsters with dicks like this the time Angel ran into the hotel waving a CD, excited that someone had adapted his likeness into a hentai. Except those were prehensile. This one just vibrates.
Regardless: It’s a more reasonable size and Alastor still has no fucking idea how to do this. Luckily—or arguably unluckily—for him, Vox doesn’t give him any time to figure it out. He just presses Alastor down, slow but inexorable, until Alastor is gasping minutely through his nose, cock halfway down his throat as his hands scrabble against Vox’s knees. His own dick is harder than ever at the humiliating treatment, his core tight with an unfamiliar tension. It’s not the first time he’s been hard, but it certainly is the first time he’s felt—well, somewhat desperate to touch himself.
And Vox is just—he moans in pleasure, quiet and deliberate, and pets his fingers over where Alastor’s ears are pinned back. “You have no idea,” Vox says breathlessly, “how fucking hot that is. Shit. Shit.”
He reaches down with his free hand and twists something into place at the base of his dick, knuckles brushing against Alastor’s nose.
“There,” Vox says. “Now I can go all night if I feel like it. Hah,” he barks when Alastor twitches at that, “don’t worry, babe, I know you’re too delicate for that. I’ll play nice, as long as you keep your hands right up here. No touchy, you hear me?”
Alastor claws his hands into the flesh above Vox’s knees in response, undoubtedly and deliberately ruining the tailoring. Vox titters in delight, halfway to manic, and keeps petting at Alastor’s ears with a condescension that is as enraging as it is arousing.
“What a fuckin’ expression,” Vox says wonderously. “Like you wanna kill me so bad you’re crying about it.”
The aggravating part is that it’s at least partly true: the rough treatment has caused tears to spring to Alastor’s eyes, absolutely involuntary as his body struggles for breath it doesn't even need. His monocle has been lost at some point in the tumble. That comment is finally too much, and he flicks his eyes away, glaring to the side instead of meeting Vox’s eyes. He does want to kill him, but not more than he wants Vox to fuck him.
“Poor baby,” Vox mocks. “C’mon, let daddy give you what you asked for.”
If Alastor’s mouth was free, there is no way he would have let that pass without a hysterically amused comment—and Vox must know, because he takes just that moment to pull Alastor back slightly by the hair and fuck him.
Alastor’s breath hitches as he tries not to choke again, and Vox grabs one of his antlers like it’s a damned handlebar. It’s rough, it’s fucking disrespectful, and worst of all Vox will not shut the hell up.
“Ah, fuck, there you go—Al, Bambi, you were made to suck cock, you’re such a natural—”
There’s a wet click in the back of Alastor’s throat as he desperately tries to swallow. He does not feel like a natural. In fact, most of his concentration is going to keeping his serrated teeth out of Vox’s delicate parts. Then the head of Vox’s cock hits the back of his throat and he whimpers, suddenly gaining a new respect for Angel Dust. Maybe he should concentrate a little less. Vox is very plug-and-play, isn’t he? Any bits that end up shredded are replaceable.
“—can feel you squirming down there, hah, betcha wish I’d let you touch more. Don’t worry, babe, I’ll do you one better—”
And then Vox is shifting his legs, keeping Alastor in place by the antler while he toes a shiny black shoe between his legs.
Alastor actually chokes this time. His breathing catches and he jerks, and Vox pulls him right off by the hair to gasp raggedly at fresh air. He doesn’t let up with his foot, though, pressing the tip of his shoe up until it’s flush against Alastor’s balls.
“Ah, f̴u̴c̷k̸—̷!”
Vox laughs, dragging his cock across Alastor’s cheek and pressing it against his bottom lip. Alastor almost lurches forward, but Vox still has him by the antler. He feels wild-eyed and twitchy, too hot and too big for his skin, like something is shivering along the inside of his flesh that might burst out at any second.
“What do you want, babe?”
Alastor stares up at him, eyes wide. Vox just stares back, one eye impossibly large and pulsing with electric energy. He uses his free hand to pump his dick, slick with Alastor’s spit and his own fluids, until it’s leaking at the tip—a bitter kiss, there to tempt him and give nothing.
“Let me finish you off,” Alastor rasps, not a whit of static to be heard as he suddenly realizes he wants nothing more. There: something given, something gained. He’s capitulated to the question, now Vox is going to owe him something in return.
“Hm,” Vox hums. “Nah.”
Alastor twitches, static popping in one ear. What—
“I’m tired of that show,” Vox says lazily, dragging a hand along his dick. It’s so close, the sensation is a phantom against Alastor’s lips, and—he squirms unintentionally, rubbing himself against Vox with a gasp.
“That, though,” Vox says, “is a great idea, babe! C’mere.”
He drags Alastor forward, still clutching him by the antler in a way that Alastor is certain he doesn’t know enough to mean anything by, except for the way that Vox’s cluelessness means absolutely nothing to the part of Alastor’s brain that takes a man wrangling him into place by the antlers and sends his tail skyward, pleading urgently with his body to submit to the establishment of dominance and flee.
Vox does not let him flee. Vox settles him forward on his knees, dick pressed against the rough texture of Vox’s pants, and grins at him. “Well? C’mon, you always say a show is better live.”
Alastor bares his teeth in a smile. “You want me to… “
“Hump my leg like a bitch, yeah,” Vox says, smirking. “You’re already on your knees, baby, it’s not like it’s much of a downgrade.”
He presses two fingers into Alastor’s mouth before he can reply. It’s salty and slick, dragging along his tongue in an imitation of a proper fucking, and when he pulls his fingers out, a string of saliva dangles between them.
“Or are you not literally gagging for it?” Vox asks, low and pleased with himself, like he thinks he’s being clever.
Normally, Alastor would laugh in his face at the thought. Normally, Alastor isn’t gagging for it—but whatever Vox figured out when he started playing on the prey animal instincts living in the back of Alastor’s mind, the heat of humiliation trickles from his face all the way down his spine, suffusing his body and mind in a haze of—of prickling, frustrating want.
Alastor shifts his hips forward, and gasps quietly.
“That’s it,” Vox murmurs as he does it again, clumsy and increasingly desperate. “C’mon, Bambi, I wanna watch you. Bambi really is right, you know, you’re like a baby deer learning to walk for the first time. It’s so freaking obvious you’ve basically never touched your own dick before—”
The soft skin of his cock is chafing against the coarse fabric of Vox’s slacks, but it feels so fucking good that Alastor can’t stop, balancing his hands on Vox’s knees as his hips stutter forward for pleasure and back away from the pain.
“—fuck,” Vox swears softly, and starts moving his hand on his own dick again. “Hurts so good, doesn’t it? Bet you want it so bad. I made you beg and you didn’t even try to kill me for it, huh? You didn’t know you could feel so good.”
“Shut up,” Alastor snarls through a grit-toothed smile, and Vox snickers.
“Absolutely not. I wish I was recording this. I wish you weren’t a fucking cryptid on camera, too goddamned edgy for even a decent porno—”
“Ah!” Alastor falters as the pleasure builds, and Vox yanks him in more firmly, until his legs are splayed, hooves dragging without purchase on the carpet.
“Just a little more, baby,” Vox says. “C’mon, you can do it.”
It’s infuriating to be treated like he’s incompetent and ignorant to one of the most basic functions of human biology, and yet it is exactly that hot flush of humiliation that sends Alastor’s hips stuttering one last time. At the same time, Vox pumps himself harder, fingers dipping down for a quick moment to twist at some mechanical part of his anatomy as he breaks his rhythm—
And then he’s stroking himself hard, yanking Alastor’s head back so that he can come all over his face.
Alastor cries out, jerking away, but it’s too late for him too—he’s squeezing his eyes shut and biting his own lip bloody over a long, whining noise as he comes all over himself and the leg of Vox’s pants, cock chafed halfway raw and eyes white-hot with humiliation as Vox finishes coming on him.
There is a streak of come on his cheek, and another striping across his nose. A third made its way across his lips, and Vox is laughing in disbelieving delight as he finally releases Alastor’s antlers and bends down to lick into his mouth.
Well. At least he’s cleaning up his own mess.
The disembodied, prickling daze that Alastor is in brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘kissed silly,’ and there’s a decent period of time during which he doesn’t mind, exactly—but it’s not more than a couple of minutes before he more or less returns to full, shaky awareness of his body. He’s sticky, damp, and uncomfortable, and beyond all that he is still mussed beyond repair, violated, and on his knees in front of Vox.
Vox, who finally stops kissing him and leans back, grabbing Alastor’s hands like an overexcited schoolgirl. Alastor’s eyelids flutter, refocusing as the citrus-sour taste of licked battery slowly fades from his senses.
“That! Was fantastic,” Vox says.
Alastor blinks.
“Oh, shit, wait,” Vox continues, running through words like he’ll run out if he stops talking. “Hang on, lemme just—”
He drops one of Alastor’s hands to reach for his own discarded dress shirt, and proceeds to use it to wipe Alastor’s face clean like he’s a southern mother that found a spot of dirt on her son’s face and not the man who just came all over it with the same audacity that is allowing him to put his fingers anywhere near Alastor’s teeth right now. His movements are vaguely pressured, like they always seem to be around Alastor (though Alastor has seen him around others enough to attribute this to desperate overcompensation, as he seems fairly capable of calming the fuck down around the other Vees), and by the time he’s done, Alastor’s smile is faintly strained.
But his face is clean. And he’s being tugged to his feet, if only for a single leg-wobbling moment, before he’s dumped onto the bed and shuffled under the blankets.
“What,” Alastor asks, no more or less staticky than usual but perhaps overcompensating somewhat on the transatlantic accent, “are you doing?”
“Ya look a little…” Vox squints at him suspiciously, settling down next to him in the bed and wobbling his hand back and forth. “Peaky.”
“Peaky.”
Vox’s screen tints pink—either blushing or seeing the world rose-tinted, not that Alastor cares to tell—and he rolls his eyes. “Look, if I didn’t treat you right, you’d literally never let me do this again.”
Alastor hums, raising an eyebrow. He is not tired and would like to get dressed again, but revealing that at this junction feels like baring yet another weakness. “What made you think that I was interested in doing this again?”
Vox’s screen stutters into an exclamation point for a split second before his eyes refocus on Alastor. “I mean!”
There’s a pause as he flickers through several expressions. The one he eventually settles on is confusion, and distress that is less hidden than he likely hopes it is, which sends a curl of warm amusement through Alastor.
“I guess,” Vox says, “if you don’t… uh! Did I fuck something up? Or—I guess we never said this would be a regular thing, shit, Val’s always saying I get too fuckin’ clingy—”
Goodness. How very… Vox.
Alastor sits up, swinging his legs out of bed, and laughs as he moves to collect his clothing. He swipes up Vox’s soiled shirt while he’s at it, and finishes cleaning up the various fluids spattered around his belly before getting dressed.
“Vox, my good man, you are absolutely hilarious!” he declares, snagging his microphone and giving it a twirl. The insteps of his boots have inserts that extend to the heel, and he settles into them easily enough. How would he be able to get the delightful click of a heeled boot if he couldn’t manage a heel-toe walk? There’s no need to make sacrifices just because one has hooves!
“Uh… ha, ha?” Vox tries.
Alastor’s grin widens perilously. “I’ll see you again later. Now get out of my hotel.”
Then he flings the filthy shirt into Vox’s face and strides out, humming to the early 30’s swing tune that plays around him.