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There is, Alastor later recalls, a specific moment when everything goes very wrong.
In the moment itself, however, it’s rather difficult to tell how things could possibly end up going poorly. Vox is so very good at being distracting, and Alastor is guilty of not just allowing himself to be distracted as of late, but of throwing himself into said distracting with open arms.
Well. Not entirely open. It’s too fun to watch Vox flounder for that. But enthusiastically enough, by his own metrics.
Like now, for example: Alastor, on his knees, practically purring like a cat as he leans his face into Vox’s lap in the low, blue light of the vast aquarium making up the wall behind Vox. Vox, sitting on the side of his own bed, neatly pretending he hasn’t been vibrating out of his skin with excitement while playing with Alastor’s ears for the past fifteen minutes.
It feels nice. There’s a good deal of hypnotism involved in Alastor holding that opinion, but the fact of the matter is still that it feels nice.
It does not take long for a playful finger twirling a lock of Alastor’s hair to turn into a firm grip. Vox’s palm slides up the back of Alastor’s skull, almost tender for a scant few seconds before his hand tightens into his hair, pulling Alastor’s head back and baring his throat.
Alastor laughs a little breathlessly.
“Your hair feels softer,” Vox mutters, running a thumb over the handful he’s got locked in between his fingers.
Hm. Alastor is a little bit surprised that it’s noticeable already. He’s been straightening his hair for so long that the modern accommodations for such things have gotten a little ahead of his own knowledge, and Angel Dust of all people had a lot to say on the subject for someone who has more fur than hair. Or—perhaps that’s the explanation for why the spider seemed to be so invested in the topic. At any rate, while not all modern hair products are actually better than the tried and true… not everything that is new is actually worse, either.
“I’ve been trying something new,” he says, going for a dry drawl and landing somewhere more in the realm of a pleased murmur. “Would you like to discuss the fine points of my hair care routine?”
Vox’s contemplative expression becomes a grimace as his mouth turns downward. “If I say no, are you gonna be as much of a bitch as Vel about it?”
“She does get quite creative with her hair…”
“How do you even know that?” Vox gripes. “I thought you didn’t pay attention to us?”
“I can’t avoid at least seeing you three when you’ve plastered your photos on every billboard, screen, and otherwise flat surface in this city that you can pay for.”
“Ugh, whatever.” Vox tugs a little, sending a pleasant thrill through Alastor. “Hair was more interesting when I had any. Anyway, you should let me take care of you.”
Alastor’s brows rise into his apparently discussion-worthy hairline. “Is that not what all of this…” He gestures vaguely at the room around them with a hand. “...has already been?”
“I meant like a sex thing,” Vox says, undeterred.
“...Was it not a sex thing,” Alastor asks slowly, “when you told me to kneel?”
Vox’s screen flushes red.
“And here I thought you wanted me on my knees for something specific!” Alastor—yes, it’s a drawl this time. Vox does bring out the smarmy asshole in him so effectively.
A thumb pets over one of his ears, carefully angled not to cut with the sharp edge of a claw. “Yeah, okay,” Vox says, “but then it turned out that I’m a fuckin’ pushover when you act all cute. You’re way too into this in a way that definitely isn’t a sex thing and I felt like sticking my dick down your throat too soon would ruin it.”
Alastor shivers when Vox calls him ‘cute,’ whatever faint confusion, amusement, or other general reaction that he would normally have to a silly endearment like that dissipating under the pleasurable effects of Vox’s compulsion.
“I don’t actually enjoy whatever…‘taking care of’ is supposed to mean,” Alastor finally says.
“How do you know that if you don’t know what it’s supposed to mean?” Vox asks.
Alastor drags his eyes up to stare at him blankly.
“Yeah, okay,” Vox concedes with a mean grin. “Big bad radio demon doesn’t like to get pampered and petted and have his cute little fluffball tail pulled unless it’s a humiliation thing, even though he’s the biggest pillow princess I’ve ever fucking met, which is saying something considering I fuck Val.”
For the first time in quite a while, Alastor feels his face heat up. It makes him twitch, suddenly concerned that some part of his injury may not have healed in the past couple of weeks—but, no, it’s just—
Kind of fucking embarrassing, to be honest.
Vox laughs disbelievingly, leaning forward to peer down at Alastor. “Ho-ly shit,” he says. “Are you actually blushing?”
The emotion is as novel as ever. “The blush of life, thanks to you,” Alastor tries to deadpan. His face doesn’t quite grant him the emotionally detached success he’s looking for.
Vox’s smile grows wider. He slides his hand out of Alastor’s hair and down to the front of his throat, pressing just enough to be felt. “I’m gonna make you feel good, Bambi. Bet I can make you like it.”
His eye pulses threateningly and Alastor laughs. “That seems like cheating.”
“Do I look like I give a shit?” Vox asks. His hand tightens on Alastor’s throat a little. “Fuck, I wish there was a way to actually choke you out.”
Alastor takes Vox’s wrist and shifts his hand slightly so that his thumb and forefinger are pressed to key points along the sides of his throat. “Your knowledge of anatomy,” he murmurs, “is depressing. Press here.”
He doesn’t exactly need to breathe, but as the other week’s events have proven, the hellish magic keeping him alive seems to be at least somewhat dependent on a functioning circulatory system. Alastor hasn’t actually tried this before (at least, not for fun—more practical purposes are a different story) but… well, if anything is liable to work…
“Good boy,” Vox murmurs, and Alastor can’t help but make a noise.
It’s—the endorphins that suddenly flood him are overwhelming. It’s all the joy of a fresh kill, hot blood on his hands, except it swoops straight through his stomach and down between his legs in an uncomfortably arousing bit of Pavlovian pleasure. The last time Vox used his strange hypnotism on Alastor, he’d mentioned how much of it boiled down to hormones—and he’s never been proven more right than now, as Alastor’s entire body warms from the simple pleasure of praise that, normally, he would find discomfiting at best.
“You like that?” Vox asks, smirking as he pets a thumb over Alastor’s mouth. His lips have parted at some point, and the tip of Vox’s claw just barely peeks inside. “I know you do. You fucking love it.”
He does—he does, he does, he does. Except he doesn’t, not at all, but—
It’s all a very confusing, frustrating experience. It makes Alastor want to squirm, except for the way Vox suddenly presses his thumb inside of his mouth practically has him pinned.
“Suck,” Vox tells him, eye pulsing, and Alastor obeys. It’s far from the first time he’s had Vox’s fingers in his mouth today, and the way Vox’s eyes brighten, crimson and swirling, tells him he’s not the only one remembering. “Fuck, baby. You have no idea how badly I wanna fuck your mouth right now. This was the best idea I’ve ever had.”
Alastor can hardly reply with his mouth full, so he just rubs his tongue up against the pad of Vox’s thumb, scraping his teeth against it suggestively.
He doesn’t realize what he’s fishing for until Vox grins and says, “Oh, what a good boy you’re being.” It thrills through him, sending his ears flattening back as a whine scrapes up the back of his throat. His hands find themselves wrapped around Vox’s wrist, not quite pulling or pressing, but just—searching, for something.
“Needy,” Vox says, and drags his hand away. He presses it to Alastor’s throat just where he was shown, instead, forcing him a little higher onto his knees. “Tell me how it feels.”
Everything is going pleasantly light-headed, and his vision is just a little too blurry for Vox to catch his eye. “You’re the one who made me like this,” Alastor gasps, claws digging into Vox’s legs.
“Well, ‘forcibly assigned praise kink’ isn’t exactly something I’ve tried on myself,” Vox says, pressing his hand just a little tighter. Black spots start to float in Alastor’s vision and one part of him is vibrating in fear—but it’s a part of him that’s been forced down, suppressed, told to fawn instead of fight.
“What?” Alastor asks with a shallow little gasp that doesn’t help his predicament at all, eyes half-lidded. “You don’t—like being called a good boy?”
Vox opens his hand and drops him back onto his knees. Alastor gasps as blood flow re-establishes itself suddenly and the endorphins of air, oxygen, life shiver through him.
He presses his face into Vox’s leg, letting himself shake for a minute. Vox goes back to petting at Alastor's ears, though the way he shifts his position pretty well indicates that this really is about to turn into a ‘sex thing’ unless Alastor explicitly puts a stop to it.
“Poor Bambi,” Vox murmurs, mean and disingenuous as he tugs on Alastor’s ear. “A few nice words and a bit of putting you in your place got you feeling overwhelmed? Do you need a little break?”
Alastor turns his head to bite at the pant leg underneath his cheek. Vox yelps, laughing, and pulls Alastor away by the hair.
“Bad,” he tells Alastor, flicking him in the forehead, which mostly just makes Alastor’s nose wrinkle.
“You didn’t attach any compulsions to that one,” he reminds Vox.
“It’s supposed to be a discouragement on its own.”
Alastor stares at him blankly over his best, most placid smile. Vox sighs, at least halfway endeared. “Yeah. Doesn’t work on Val, either. Here, I know something that’ll get you in hand—”
His hand goes to Alastor’s throat again. Alastor grins viciously, something inside of him very much excited for another round even as it recoils in fear—but what encircles Alastor’s neck in the next moment isn’t a warm, claw-tipped hand, but a crackle of static and cold steel.
Alastor freezes.
Vox draws his hand back, sparking a neon-blue length of chain into being with little flashes of light and electricity. It’s made from his own power, wild and unstable without a contract to bind it, and the air tastes of ozone as he summons it—so different, but so—so—so—
Similar—
Familiar—
Vox is grinning, broad and pleased and mean. He’s saying something, but it’s like trying to listen through water.
Red, a voice whispers in the back of Alastor’s head. Then everything sharpens acutely with the realization of what Vox is doing, and what comes out of his mouth instead is a snarl.
He rips himself out of Vox’s grip and lunges. He’s tall—taller—and the collar-and-chain of a dealmaker’s transient power grows in size with him before he even notices that his antlers are arching over his head, scraping the ceiling.
Vox skitters away, a flash of electricity. Alastor is slow in his momentary panic, sloppy—and Vox is a slimy, rancid cockroach that won’t be caught the same way twice. He flickers, gone—and reappears on the other side of the room, tiny and backed into the corner. He’s so small from where Alastor’s looking. Small, and unprotected, all striped socks and soft sweater vest. A knife wrapped in silk. The chain hangs at Alastor’s throat, swinging. A reminder. All Vox would have to do is reach out and pull.
“I knew it,” Alastor hisses, crackling, as he crawls forward. He’s too big for the room—too big to stand—so he claws instead, shoving the bed aside with a single hand as he reaches for Vox with the other one.
His fist closes over nothing. Vox yelps, there and gone, and another spark flashes in the corner of Alastor’s eye—he swipes at it, defending, but Vox is just stumbling away from him again, holding his palms out as Alastor leers down at him.
“What did you know, Bambi?” Vox asks, slow and steady. The way his hands waver betray his nerves.
“I knew I should not have trusted you.”
“Uh, you trust—?”
“Ṋ̵͚̜͌́e̴͓̩̕v̵͕͎̫̀̆̂́̿͌̚è̶̳̐͠r̵̡͈͖̈́̎̎̅͂͠,” Alastor screeches, all popping static and the broken skip of a radio dial. “Not once, not a filthy liar like you.”
“Whoa, easy—!”
Alastor lunges again. This time, he’s set to ram straight into the floor-to-ceiling wall of the aquarium—but Vox vanishes once more, flickering upward before Alastor can turn around properly.
Alastor twists his head and lets his antlers splinter through the plaster of the other wall, instead. He doesn’t need to breathe, but there’s no sense in flooding the room. And the sharks—Vox would—
It doesn’t matter. Vox is gone. Alastor bares his teeth, face cracking into a rigid mask. “Vo-ox,” he calls through the radio, sing-song but for the way his voice is a disparate, half-audible nightmare. “Where did you go, lover?”
There’s a tinny sound nearby, Vox’s voice playing from the speakerphone of his dropped cell phone.
“Nowhere you can grab me, babe, absolutely not sorry to say! Get back to me after you have a Snickers!”
Alastor flicks it away, sending the phone skittering across the carpet until it ends up under the bed. All of the furniture is out of place—he remembers moving the bed, but he’s upended quite a number of other things, too. The new couch that replaced the last one his shadow had thrown is on its back, the coffee table beside it now nothing but shattered glass and a metal frame. A photo frame is halfway under the bed. A lamp is laying on its side, still lit.
There’s no room. It’s too small. It’s too small.
He claws at his throat, shrinking—but the collar, the burning, cold metal that won’t even deign to warm with the rushing pulse thudding through his ears—it shrinks with him no matter how he claws at it, stumbling back into the wall, shoulder blades pressing into the corner. It presses against his throat when he swallows, making him choke. It’s too tight—he can’t breathe. Wasn’t that what Vox was trying to do? He can’t breathe. Why does it even matter? He shouldn’t need to— he can’t breathe.
He’s on the ground, knees pulled up defensively in front of him. He doesn’t remember getting there—but it doesn’t really matter. The fucking collar—Vox’s power, blue and bright and electric, familiar and pathetic, weak, how dare he think that he could bind Alastor—but it’s around his throat, still. Who is the weak one, really?
The chain hangs down his front, clinking as he shakes. It won’t be broken. That’s fine. Metal isn’t the only thing available to break. He’s not going to do this again. He is never going to do this again.
His claws are sharp and his flesh is weak. Blood spills out from under his nails as he sinks them into his own throat, and—there’s pain, of course there’s pain, but it’s a relief, it’s real, it’s not cold-small-binding—
Liquid rattles in his chest as he gasps, but the deeper he claws, the better he can breathe—
“—op, fucking—stop, holy shit—”
Cold manacles wrap around his wrists. No—they’re hands. Less cold and more cool, clammy with sweat. They pull, and fail to shift anything at all. Vox is weak. Pathetic. He’s wriggling his hands under Alastor’s, wincing as he goes, and suddenly there’s another layer between Alastor’s claws and his own skin, except it’s not metal—it’s just fucking meat, as soft and buttery under a claw’s edge as anything else.
They’re not quite cold, though.
Alastor blinks, breath shuddering through him. He coughs a little, and some blood comes up with it. When he tries to speak, nothing comes out except for a wet gurgle.
Something flinches in front of him. His eyes flick to it, fearful and defensive, but—
It’s just Vox. Alastor’s shadow has its claws curled over his shoulders, looming over his head and simpering with a miserable, jagged expression on its face. Alastor snaps his teeth at it, and it retreats behind Vox’s back.
“—wrong with you,” Vox is demanding. “Did I not tell you to never fucking make me do this again? It’s been two weeks!”
Alastor coughs again. Blood flecks onto Vox’s sweater, but it’s less than last time. The lacerations to his throat are already starting to heal.
“You’re such an asshole,” Vox says, shaky. He’s staring at his hands, not Alastor’s face, and Alastor lets his claws prickle against Vox’s skin. He should rip him open. He should make him feel the consequences of this betrayal. He should—
Vox lifts a hand, and Alastor’s falls to his side. Vox’s thumb brushes against the skin underneath his eye, swiping something away, and Alastor realizes—
“Don’t touch me,” Alastor manages to gargle out.
Vox finally meets his eyes, staring. “Are you going to keep trying to turn your throat into fucking mincemeat?”
Anything other than immediate obedience is unacceptable. Alastor grins, wide and dangerous. “So much for your fucking fantasy.”
“I—what are you talking about?”
“This!” Alastor drops his other hand, shoving himself up to his feet—and only making it to his knees, which is still enough to tip Vox’s crouch over and land him on his ass. Alastor presses a hand to his chest, shoving him flat onto his back, and leans over him. “Us, lover. All that fucking talk of love, and this is what you do the first chance you get?”
Vox eyes Alastor’s hand nervously, but doesn’t try to escape just yet. “Okay, cool, we’re—using our words, sort of. That’s great. Can we use our words some more? Explain to me why the kinky shit is suddenly new and horrible like I’m five years old and also you don’t care about traumatizing a five-year-old.”
Alastor’s shadow is pulling at the arm he’s using to pin Vox, the stupid, incorporeal thing. He flicks it away, annoyed. He raises his hand nonetheless, tracing a claw gently over Vox’s throat.
“I was right, before,” Alastor explains slowly. “About you and what you really want—I don’t care if you meant it, Vox, I’m sure you’re great at lying to yourself, but it’s disgusting to call it love when all it is, is your covetous, greedy hands grasping for whatever sliver of power you can pull from your betters—from—” He twitches as his shadow throws itself at him again, writhing into the sliver of space between Alastor’s sharp edges and Vox’s vulnerable throat. Alastor pulls his lips back to show his teeth, and reaches up for the collar instead. “—whatever. Or maybe it was just sexual. I can hardly complain, can I? I’m the fool who fell for the stupidest fucking trap in the book. And now I’m—”
His hand closes over nothing.
Alastor stutters into silence, staring down at Vox. He presses his palm to his throat. It’s tacky with drying blood, rough with rapidly-fading scar tissues. But—
“It’s gone,” Vox says quietly, reaching up to take Alastor’s hand. “I took it off a minute ago, Bambi.”
“I—”
Alastor flinches at the touch, but Vox doesn’t do anything except hold his hand.
“I don’t—”
He falls silent. The pause stretches. Vox’s hand is growing warm in his own, and it’s just as red with Alastor’s blood. A clear droplet falls onto the back of Alastor’s hand, washing some of it into a watery pink.
“I don’t understand,” Alastor finally manages.
“That’s okay,” Vox says, more gently than Alastor’s ever heard him say anything before. “Maybe we start by sitting up?”
His eye isn’t a pulsing, spiraling red. There’s no chain around Alastor’s throat demanding his obedience.
He sits up.
Vox follows him, until they’re both kneeling in front of each other, holding hands like a pair of schoolgirls as Alastor’s shadow flees under the bed.
Alastor tightens his hand, not willing to let go.
“So, um,” Vox starts, cupping Alastor’s hand in both of his and fiddling with Alastor’s thumb. “Remember that time I mindfucked you and we both had a great time? As opposed to this time when I mindfucked you and we had a great time that quickly turned into a horrible time?”
Alastor doesn’t say anything.
Vox holds steady. “Well, there was a comment you made, about, er—Bambi, what I’m trying to say is, uh, this is what a panic attack feels like.”
Alastor laughs exactly once, startled into it. Then something catches in his throat, and he…
Vox shuffles forward, hooking his free hand around the back of Alastor’s neck to press his face down into Vox’s chest. Alastor doesn’t fight it, too grateful for—for—
He shakes like that for a while, hand tight around Vox’s.
Vox doesn’t release his hand or his neck, petting his thumb over the back of Alastor’s hand and combing his fingers through the hair at his nape. Alastor doesn’t think about very much of anything at all, least of all what his face must look like right now. Vox’s sweater vest is soft, just worn enough that the starchy quality has faded. It doesn’t feel as expensive against his face as he thought it might.
Eventually, the trembling stops. The way his breath hitches, the tightness in his throat, it all abates. Nothing lasts forever, and that goes for his instability just as much as his composure.
When Alastor drags his head back up, Vox releases him just to cup his jaw, turning Alastor’s face back and forth as his eyes rake over him.
“Well,” he says. “That could have gone better. You healed really fast, though.”
Alastor snorts. “Well, it’s hardly another angelic wound.”
“...Wanna talk about it?” Vox asks.
“Not even remotely,” Alastor rasps.
“Want, uh…” Vox tugs on Alastor’s hands, standing up with a crack of his knees. “Here, c’mon. The bed’s got shitty lighting all of a sudden for some mysterious reason, but it’s still standing.”
Alastor lets himself get pulled along, and then lets himself get sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard. Vox clambers on after him, finagling himself so that they’re side by side, staring at a brand new angle of the aquarium that hadn’t been previously available from the bed.
“Maybe I should keep it like this,” Vox says as a large shark swims past them, a trail of glowing light in its wake.
Alastor manages a quiet huff of air, but even though he damn well tries, can’t really think of anything else he could possibly say. It’s like there’s a giant hole where his chest would be, which is a funny thought, because the feeling is nothing like the time there was an actual giant hole where his chest should be.
“...Want me to, uh,” Vox says slowly, “make you tell me?”
“Hm.” Now there’s a thought. It probably won’t work, but…
Alastor turns his head, meeting Vox’s eyes. Vox’s eyebrows shoot up, nearly clipping off the screen—but then he frowns, letting his left eye pulse and swirl as power infuses itself into his voice.
“Tell me anyway,” Vox commands.
“I,” Alastor says—and coughs, stuttering. “—can’t.”
The red glow of Vox’s eye fades back to his normal brightness. “Well,” he offers, “the good news is that I’m not a total fucking idiot, so that’s already pretty telling about what your, uh, situation is. As far as…chains are concerned.”
Alastor turns back to the fish tank, trying not to visibly grit his teeth. His smile is barely hanging on by a thread, and if Vox mocks him right now—
“I guess you can’t tell me who,” Vox says, picking at the rumpled sheets. “And I guess if you can’t do shit about it, then I probably can’t, either.”
Alastor snorts. “Implying you care just makes you sound like you think I’m a fool.”
“Okay,” Vox says. His voice has gone a little hard. Then: “If you’re gonna be like that. Can we talk about you nearly murdering me, then?”
Alastor doesn’t know what to say. Vox lets the silence hang longer, this time, before snorting.
“Seriously?” he asks. “Nothing?”
“...It’s hardly the first time,” Alastor tries, off-balance and sure only of the fact that this is not going to go well. He’s genuinely not sure where this is going at all, really. Vox’s eyes are narrow, his mouth twisted as he stares at Alastor. Alastor finds himself—not really wanting to meet his gaze in return.
“It’s the same shit with Val, too,” Vox says, fists visibly clenched. “Every fucking time, Bambi, I—you know, I actually fucking felt bad last time, when you made me think about how—like, yeah, you’ve been putting yourself out there for me, in your own weird, fucked up ways. But how many times am I supposed to do the same shit before you stop trying to carve me open every time you get a little snippy?! I saved your life! And—”
Vox throws his hands into the air. “I’m a fucking overlord! Why doesn’t that matter?! Why do all the people I actually like get to just—”
He cuts himself off, hunching over.
Alastor reaches out, catching the corner of his screen to tip his head back up.
“I’m sorry,” he says, swallowing the acrid taste of the words. “For what it’s worth, I—”
“It wasn’t—don’t you dare say it was my fault,” Vox interrupts, stuttering. “I didn’t make you do that shit.” His eyes are wide, staring. He’s very still—has been from the moment Alastor touched him again. The clear fear should be gratifying, but Alastor finds himself simply withdrawing his hand.
“...I wasn’t,” Alastor says slowly. “Though, now that you mention it—”
“Are you actually fucking kidding me?”
Alastor shuts his mouth and glares at the bedspread with a thin smile, flaking off bits of the dried blood on his claws. He doesn’t know how to explain this. Frankly, he can’t even put a finger on why it’s so important to him to explain it at all. His throat fucking hurts. He thinks he might be afraid, and he doesn’t know of what. Vox can’t hurt him in any way that matters, no matter what his stupid animal hindbrain thought in the moment that the chain made its way around his neck.
A finger traces slowly over one of his ears, which he suddenly realizes are flat against his skull.
“You’re still all hissy and pinned back,” Vox says slowly.
“You normally announce the things you’re planning on doing,” Alastor says, ignoring Vox’s words. Vox blinks, hand trailing off of Alastor’s head. “If normally in the stupidest way imaginable. I assumed that it was on purpose, but maybe you’re just a compulsive motormouth who can’t stop talking about the things that get him off.”
“No, it’s…” Vox manages a weak grin, though it’s half-hearted at best. Back to peacekeeping, then. Well-trained after all, despite his little outburst. Alastor grits his teeth. “I mean, yeah. Let’s go with ‘both.’”
“If you had told me what you planned on doing,” Alastor tells the bed, “then I would have declined more politely.”
Vox hisses, TV static that Alastor eventually deciphers as air getting pulled through his cooling system, and pulls his knees up just to clunk his head down on them.
“Fu-uck,” he groans. “This is why Club Consent hosts all those kink etiquette seminars? You let me fuckin’—my hand was already—and the context changes everything, okay, fine.” There’s a pause. “Man, we’ve really been flying by the seat of our pants with this shit. Hey, remember when your hands were in my fucking guts? What was up with that, huh?”
“You didn’t complain,” Alastor notes.
“Would you have stopped if I had?!”
Alastor finally looks up, frowning at Vox. “Excuse me? You’re the one who introduced that little ‘stoplight system.’”
“Then why didn’t you use it?” Vox demands.
I wanted to, Alastor almost says, and then catches himself. What does it even mean, that he wanted to? Why the fuck does that matter? Vox hardly wanted to do anything other than get his rocks off, and that didn’t exactly have an impact on Alastor’s reaction.
But Vox is looking at him like he’s waiting for a genuine answer, and Alastor doesn’t have anything else.
“I must confess,” Alastor says, “that I honestly don’t know. I wanted to. I…” And here’s the rub, isn’t it? “I trust that you would have listened if I had. I’ve never—”
He presses a hand to his chest, where his heart is still stuttering along at a rapid, irregular pace. It should probably worry him, except he’s fairly certain that he’s not actually susceptible to blood clots and other such ailments. It’s just him and his fucking feelings, hammering incessantly away at the inside of his rib cage.
“Never had a panic attack before?” Vox asks.
Alastor shakes his head.
“...I guess I knew that,” Vox admits. “I—are you okay?”
Alastor has no desire whatsoever to answer that question, honestly or otherwise. “I don’t think you understand exactly how much leeway I give you compared to what my better instincts would have me do, Vox. And what that…means. To me.”
“No, I—” Vox gnaws on his lip. “I kinda do, though. I’m sorry, Bambi.”
Alastor laughs, finally. “Two overlords in a destroyed bedroom, apologizing to each other over hurt feelings and a tantrum. What has hell come to? Charlie may redeem us yet, at this rate.”
Vox shudders, leaning his shoulder into Alastor’s heavily. “God. Don’t even joke about that. I’d walk to the edge of heaven and jump off the nearest cloud. Don’t let Val try to put the pieces back together after I go splat, Vel’s the one who knows how to do it.”
Alastor hums. “I think I’d like to sample a cherub, first. Perhaps catch up with my mother, if she isn’t too put off by, ah, where I ended up. She raised me Catholic, after all.”
“Oh, fuck, I forgot you weren’t hatched from an egg that a frog sat on,” Vox complains. “Are you—really? Catholic? Just out of curiosity, babe, where did you find cannibalism in the fucking Bible?”
“Deuteronomy 28:53,” Alastor quotes. “‘You will eat your children, the flesh of your sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you.’”
Vox stares at him. “That’s not the whole line. That can’t be the whole line. I really don’t think that verse means what you’re implying it means.”
Alastor just grins at him, wide and toothy. Vox looks back at him, mouth going wobbly in that way that it does when he’s having some kind of squishy feelings.
“Fuck, I’m having an actual moment. Of course you can just quote that. If you told me last year that this is the conversation I’d be having, with you of all people... Can we go back to the gross, precious cuddling thing?” Vox asks. “That was really good. I even almost got your whole thing about not caring about the actual fucking part of it when we were doing that.”
“Oh?”
“For, like, two seconds,” Vox clarifies. “Then you made a weird but adorable deer noise and I was like, ‘Oh, I’d fuck that,’ and the five seconds after that were dedicated to the realization that it wasn’t even a bit, I’m just like this.”
“...”
“And then I was like, ‘Noo, he’s having a good time’,” Vox goes on, gesturing with a hand. “So I told myself not to let my one-person bukkake dreams be dreams but maybe to wait, like, five minutes. I can be a nice guy when I want!”
What is—nevermind, Alastor knows better than to ask.
“Actually—” Vox is clambering onto his knees, leaning over Alastor. “—fuck cuddling, how about we just fuck? That’s how Val and I solve our relationship issues, too, it’s been going great for, like, years.”
Alastor stares at him. He’s been doing a lot of that today, and Vox has not yet ceased earning it. “The furniture?”
“Later. Got people for that,” Vox says, wheedling as he fiddles with Alastor’s bow tie. He lost his jacket at least an hour ago, but hadn’t bothered undressing any further. Now, Vox’s claws are unraveling the tie, tugging it away. “Started setting aside an ‘Alastor destroys my fucking furniture’ fund, even.”
Alastor stops Vox with a hand on his wrist. He opens his mouth, and hesitates, not certain what, exactly, he intends to say.
Vox stills, watching him for a moment. Then: “Aw.” Vox grins, shit-eating. “Are you fucking nervous all of a sudden? You look like a virgin about to deflower his true love on their wedding night. Hah! You do care.”
“I—”
“It’s a saying, fuck, it’s a saying,” Vox says, waving him off. “Calm down, Bambi, shit. Here.”
He grabs Alastor’s hand and links their pinkies. “I super duper pinkie promise,” Vox drawls, “that I will try to remember not to spring total surprises on the goddamned Radio Demon, even if they’re objectively really sexy ones. You super duper pinkie promise to not try to murder me first and ask questions later for making an oopsie. There. Are we good?”
Alastor looks at their hands together. Black and blue, pinkies linked, a splash of red from his own blood and claws marring the image. Truly black and blue and red all over. It seems fitting enough.
“Hm.” He twists his hand, clasping Vox’s palm to his. “You have a deal, old friend!”
“Wait, what—”
Green light cracks through the room, twisting together with blinding blue electricity. The power displacement sends air buffeting around them violently, tossing the one sad lamp that’s still standing over on its side with a crash—and sending Alastor’s hair flicking around his face as his antlers retreat to their regular size, two-pronged on his head. His shadow, finally reattached to him, laughs maniacally where the aquarium light casts it onto the wall.
Vox looks half-manic himself, staring at his hand like it’s going to tell him something. “What? What?”
Alastor grins, satisfied with the aftertaste of power still flickering over his tongue. “The terms seemed fair enough to me.”
“Oh,” Vox starts, blank-eyed. Then: “You asshole. That—okay, those were pretty harmless terms. I just, fuck.” He wheezes, clutching his chest. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“Do you still have one of those?” Alastor asks, genuinely curious.
“Cannot emphasize enough how very much beside the point that is. I. I need a minute.”
Vox leans back against the headboard, taking deep breaths, and Alastor watches him. The power difference between the two of them—as much as Vox plays at respecting it most of the time, it certainly is making itself evident to the both of them. The mutual touch of souls that happens when a deal is made...how delightful.
Still, the man doesn’t let himself be kept down for long. He drags his gaze, red and greedy, up from his hand and over to Alastor after a minute. He watches Alastor like he’s seeing something entirely new, suddenly.
“So,” Vox says, squirming in place. “That, uh—that a yes on the whole sex thing? ‘Cause I’m not gonna lie—”
“You never do, when there’s an opportunity to be lewd,” Alastor murmurs.
“—I’m probably way more turned on than I should be by blinding displays of power,” Vox finishes, looking hopeful. “Let me touch you?”
Alastor laughs. “No. But you can have fun by yourself, and…” He rolls the thought around in his head for a moment before finding something to settle on, smirking. “...if you’re a good boy, maybe we can see if I’m feeling like enough of ‘a nice guy’ to get you off.”
He stretches his leg out, pressing his foot between Vox’s legs.
Vox looks like he’s been beamed between the eyes with a two-by-four. Alastor grins. Maybe he does get the appeal of the whole—what did Vox call it? Praise kink?
“Oh,” Vox says, swallowing as the corner of his screen finishes flashing a spinny little ‘loading’ circle. “Oh, fuck yes.”
He starts stripping off his shirt.
Alastor rolls his eyes and snags his discarded bow tie, fastening it back into place.