Chapter Text
Like so many things in Vox’s life and afterlife, tonight has come full circle.
Vox is yet again standing uncomfortably in the lobby, waiting for the elevator door to open. Al is standing beside him, back to being half-engulfed in Vox’s coat, though his red hair is dusted in rapidly-melting globs of fallen snow.
He and Alastor are both a little short of breath and soggy, having trudged for several blocks through some of the most unpleasant precipitation Vox has yet seen in Hell. It didn’t come down in fluffy white flakes like it might in other realms, oh no - it was as if the sky had decided to rain a viscuous soot-colored slush from above. It hit the road as already-a-problem, forming a bizarre frictionless ice-jelly that had caused the two of them to have to dodge the occasional sliding vehicle even from where they should have been safe on the sidewalk.
The number 13 flashes helpfully on the screen above the elevator.
12.
11.
Vox is soaked to the skin. Giving Alastor his coat in a fit of fake chivalry meant that the unprotected cotton of his shirtsleeves became instantly damp as his body heat melted the falling sludge.
“Odd that we came straight back,” Alastor muses. “I thought you might have decided to detour to cannibal town for a late dinner.”
“And why,” Vox asks, hunching his shoulders miserably over his tightly-crossed arms, “would I do that?”
He should have worn his damn vest, casual night out be damned. Visible nipples are NEVER in style.
“Well,” Alastor says, “you DID say you’d go back to Rosie’s with me when Hell froze over. I foolishly thought you to be a man of your word.”
Vox closes his eyes.
He takes a deep, noisy inhale through his vents.
He lets it out.
He can hear Alastor SNICKERING to himself like he’s just delivered the punchline of the year instead of a war crime in joke form.
His eyes still closed, he envisions murdering his roommate in at least three different, gory ways involving the umbrella stand by the door, the fake potted plant by the elevator panel, and the ugly portrait of Lucifer fucking Morningstar that just seems to come STANDARD in every building Vox finds himself standing in.
When he feels calm enough to open his mouth without an entire tirade of paint-peeling profanity spilling out, he says, “One more joke like that, and so help me fuck, I will toss your obnoxious ass STRAIGHT back out the door of this place.”
“You’ll try, chum,” Alastor sing-songs with a little cape-twirl using Vox’s borrowed blazer.
Where the FUCK is that elevator? Alastor is entering a manic mode, Vox can tell - though whether that’s from the late hour and sleep deprivation, or from the onset of double death from exposure, Vox can’t begin to parse.
9
8
Back up to 9, what the fuck?
8
“Do not even start with me tonight,” Vox says. “I have had enough of you for today. I am at my ALASTOR QUOTA for fucking up my evening -”
“Did I fuck it up, Voxie? Or did I make it memorable?”
Vox feels his expression flatten. “You fucked it up,” he says. "By any metric in Heaven OR Hell, you absolutely fucked it up."
“Well, you certainly didn’t seem to mind the show, at least,” Alastor says, and there’s something in his tone, something sharp in the practiced honey of it that makes Vox suddenly wary. “Or maybe it was the company?”
Both of Alastor’s red eyes slide over to Vox like he's a fencer looking for an opening.
“Are we referring to the hooker who stole my phone and drank half the liquor reserves in the Pentagram on my card tonight? Is that the ‘company’ we’re talking about?” Vox asks.
“Oh, you were buying him drinks?” Alastor asks, his ears perking forward in his ‘prey detected’ expression. “How gracious of you. It’s nice to see you branching out, making friends-”
“Aaaaand you’re trying to pick a fight again,” Vox says. “Over the hooker that I have not brought home -”
“Would you have?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on, Vox, you know I’m fascinated by peoples’ decision-making processes! Would you have brought him home? Did you try? Was he bought-out for the night, or was he just…not your sort of thing?”
“Are you asking if I’m straight, or if I’m, I don’t know…morally opposed to picking up hookers?” Vox deadpans.
The elevator door mercifully dings open before Alastor can clarify.
“Well, someone’s TESTY tonight,” Alastor chirps as he sashays past Vox into the open elevator, nose practically in the air.
Vox follows.
He’s not sure if the slight steam he can see rising off his shirtsleeves is the result of his chilled, over-exerted, still-slush-covered body being exposed to the relative heat of the condominium, or if his blood is starting to boil from sheer fury.
“Gee,” he says, pushing the button for their floor, “I wonder why.”
“I suppose some people just handle the inherent stresses of Hell better than others,” Alastor says.
Vox closes his eyes.
The lights in the building flicker ominously.
“Do not,” Alastor says, tone suddenly serious, “fuck with the power grid when we’re in an elevator.”
“That wasn’t ME,” Vox protests.
It wasn’t. Probably.
“You’re going to get us stuck,” Alastor says.
“I’m not going to get us STUCK,” Vox says. He jabs vengefully at the door-close button.
“Here,” Alastor says, “you’re upsetting it -”
“I’m UPSETTING the ELEVATOR?!” Vox asks.
“Shh, he doesn’t mean it,” Alastor says to the fucking elevator. “Here, let me push the button.”
“Oh, the fuck I will! You’ve been pushing MY buttons all night, and I’m a fucking HANGNAIL from a TRI-STATE KILLING SPREE!”
“Well, that just goes to show how good at it I am,” Alastor says.
He reaches past Vox and hits the door-close button.
The door closes.
Immediately.
Alastor offers him a serene little smile as they begin to move.
Vox hasn’t wanted to strangle anyone this badly since that cooking show bitch told him he had a ‘cute little resume.’
“See?” Alastor says. “This whole being dead thing isn’t so difficult to navigate. You just can’t take it so seriousl-”
The power to the condominium goes out in a horrible sort of gargle.
The lights go out.
The elevator lurches to a stop.
It is…dark. Or it would be, if Vox’s screen weren’t illuminating their current cell-box like a giant, dim-watted blue flashlight.
Alastor’s flat expression, blue-tinged and irritated, is exactly the balm Vox has needed to apply to this entirely fucking AWFUL experience.
“Go on,” Vox says cheerfully, “say it again. Tempt fate a little harder.”
Alastor shoots him a surprisingly cowing look for a man in heels, half-swaddled in a borrowed jacket. His dampened, now-frizzy bangs droop over his right eye in a way that HAS to be impacting his vision, but he’s too prideful and stubborn to swipe it out of his face.
“Is this little ‘I told you so’ moment of yours helping us to get home?” Alastor asks.
“It’s helping ME a lot, actually,” Vox says, “yeah.”
“And what, pray tell, is phase two of this master plan of yours?” Alastor asks, waving a hand. “Yelling for help? Pounding on the door? Or are you just planning to live here until they fix the grid?”
God, he’s so irritating.
“Ooooor,” Alastor says, fluttering his eyelids at Vox - he HAS to know what he’s doing, right? - “you could ask me nicely to get us out of here.”
“I thought you weren’t using your bullshit shadow magic tonight,” Vox says - because when it comes to Alastor offering something only to rescind said offer and gaslight the SHIT out of him, Vox is Charlie Brown to the Radio Demon’s petty-ass Lucy.
“Who’s here to see it?” Alastor asks. “The cameras are down, aren’t they?”
“Great,” Vox says, gesturing magnanimously to the closed door. “Then do your thing.”
Alastor grins like the Cheshire cat. “Ask nicely,” he says, leering in Vox’s face as if he doesn’t realize that his roommate is a single frayed nerve from slapping the smug RIGHT off him.
This fucking guy.
“Oh, Alastor,” Vox says, clasping his hands together in a mockery of supplication, “won’t you please use your fuck-ass powers to get us out of the mess you dragged me into kicking and screaming?”
He manifests long eyelashes and bats his eyes twice, just to really drive the sarcasm home.
“Hmmm, no. Frankly, that was underwhelming and sad.”
Vox feels his hands forming into a vaguely strangle-appropriate shape. Oooooh, no one would ever know…
“Go on,” Alastor says with a little finger flick. “Try again.”
Yeah, fuck this. Vox turns away from Alastor and hooks his claws into the elevator door, slowly but surely prying the damned thing open to reveal that they are stuck exactly between floors.
Vox takes a moment, still facing away from Alastor, to calm his breathing down. Then, with a made-for-TV grin, he turns back to face his roommate. “There,” he says, deliberately smug. “I found my own way.”
Then he blinks.
Because Alastor is staring at him slightly wide-eyed. His sclera have gone a little dark, and there is a dial-tone-like sound in the otherwise-quiet of the elevator.
Has the obnoxious fuck blown a fuse, or…
Vox feels his grin get slightly more smug. Or did that visual do something for him?
“Guess you’re not the only one who’s capable of navigating Hell” he says. He drops to one knee, holding his hands out as if he were helping a lady up into a tall vehicle or a saddle. “Ladies first,” he adds.
Alastor predictably smacks him a good one on the head as he goes by, but he DOES step forward, using the makeshift step-ladder of Vox’s hands, and climb out of the elevator.
A gentleman would never take advantage of that position to stare up a lady’s skirt, but Al isn’t a lady, and Vox is absolutely NOT a gentleman.
There are, in fact, garters. Vox should absolutely have made that bet with Angel Dust, except that the shifty little shit would never have paid up.
Vox climbs out of the elevator right after, taking a moment to adjust what’s left of his tie - and he can’t help but notice that Mr. Radio Dickbag is still a little…out of sorts.Alastor is probably hoping that the low light will keep Vox from catching the distinctly-red flush on his face when Vox passes him on the way to the staircase, but Alastor can keep right on dreaming - Vox had DarkMode(™) installed last week.
It DOES leave Vox to wonder why Alastor is blushing like that.
Is he flustered?
Wait, is this weird tension Vox has had going on all night maybe mutual?
Vox had talked to Angel Dust about technique without any real concrete plants to USE that information; he’d wanted to keep his option open. He’d talked to him just in case the opportunity ever came up - not that Vox was necessarily planning to TAKE said opportunity if it presented itself, but he didn’t want to have to refuse based on something as stupid as not knowing what the fuck he’s supposed to be doing.
He hadn’t expected…well.
He hadn’t expected Alastor to ever even CONSIDER…
It would be a big step.
No, screw that. It wouldn’t be a big step, it would be taking a swan dive off a cliff. You can’t just hit the rewind button on something like that and go back to how you were.
The thing is, Vox isn’t completely sure he wants to DO that.
Hell is full of Kellys and Melissas and even Annabelles, but as near as Vox can tell, it only has one Alastor.
Vox has existed for an uncomfortably long time. He’s had a lot of ‘friends,’ but -
Well, he lied to every single one of them. Somehow, when they were hanging out at the bar or chatting about hobbies, his tendency to leave a path of cadavers on the way to his next career advancement somehow never came up. Vox had kept his smile on, kept his behavior genial, and he’d just assumed, for the first twenty years of his life, that everyone else was the same way.
It wasn’t until his thirties that he’d really started to suspect that he was different - that they weren’t all playing at being sheep, but that most of them WERE.
Showing most people even a HINT of the hungry, possibly-soulless predator under the wool made them uncomfortable. It led to hand-wringing and wariness and even disgust - like squeamishness and bleeding hearts were somehow a virtue and practicality was a fucking character flaw.
He thinks that Alastor must have gotten through life much the same way: with a smiling mask of docility that hid hungry teeth in plain sight.
Alastor UNDERSTOOD him.
Alastor hadn’t gasped or wrung his hands when he caught Vox dumping the remains of a rival newscaster into a septic tank when he’d showed up to walk him home from work. No, he’d been genuinely complimentary about Vox’s creativity in body disposal and had offered him some lye soap to get the stains out later.
Vox still vividly remembers the first time he’d seen someone disrespect Alastor in public - some up-and-comer or another who had gotten too big for their weight class. Vox hadn’t NEEDED to ask if Alastor was going to kill them. He’d just leaned over the tiniest bit and hummed along their frequency, Can I watch?
Vox had always, ALWAYS worked alone before he met Alastor.
Getting to go hunting with someone else had been a truly memorable first. As a self-admitted voyeur, Vox had genuinely enjoyed the experience - and Alastor had taken him along on several hits since.
And if Vox thought, now and again, that Alastor was showing off for him - was deliberately giving Vox a good view of his back or his sinewy forearms or his unfairly long legs during one of his hits - then it was only polite not to mention it.
Did he really want to fuck that up by trying to bang the guy?
What if he wrecked it?
Because Vox has kind of a track record of fucking things up whenever his dick gets involved. Oh, not the sex part - that part usually goes well. It’s the emotional availability people expect from him after; THAT’S where things go to Hell, figuratively and literally.
Fuck, the clerical workers at divorce court had all been on Vox’s Christmas card list; he spent more time with those poor bastards than with his so-called ‘friends’ during the busiest phase in his life.
Orgasms are a relatively easy thing to give people, but the fluffy affection stuff? Having pet names and pretending to get gooey over sentimental stimuli that Vox doesn’t FEEL anything from, like ‘our song’ or ‘our favorite place’? Performing that kind of ritualistic relationship bullshit feels like doing a cold line-read for a part Vox doesn’t completely feel like he belongs in. It feels like the kind of thing his agent would put him up to.
What if Alastor would want him to be…different, if they took that next step?
It’s a sobering thought - not least of which because the mere mental WHIFF of what Alastor would be like in divorce court is enough to make Vox’s inputs stand on end.
God, he’d try to set RECORDS with how bad he could make it.
Maybe it’s best if Vox just…doesn’t.
Maybe if he ignores it, it will go away.
He can fuck as many variations of Kelly as he wants; as long as he doesn’t bring them home, Alastor doesn’t care.
(To be fair, there wasn’t much danger of him bringing them home to start with. While Alastor deciding that Vox had brought him take-out WOULD streamline the it’s-not-you-it’s-me talks, Vox figures that enough disappearances would hurt his odds of picking up a newer model.)
He tries to glance out of the corner of his eye to see if Alastor is having a similar existential crisis only to realize that Alastor isn’t beside him - and that Vox has climbed roughly one half a flight of stairs on his own.
Fuck, has Alastor sensed what he was thinking and decided to make a pre-emptive break for it? That’s exactly the kind of thing that neurotic bundle of murder impulses would do.
Vox looks left, then right, then behind him, relieved to catch the sparkly smear of red in his admittedly-poor peripheral vision. No, Alastor hasn’t run off - but he’s at the very bottom of the stairs, fiddling with cold-clumsy fingers to try to unfasten the delicate side buckles on his stupid high heels. He’s apparently decided that five and a half more flights in those torture devices is more than he has in him tonight.
Now that Vox is listening for it, Alastor’s static sounds distinctly annoyed.
Vox puts his hands in his pockets and saunters back down the stairs. “Having a little trouble, there?” he asks, all smarm and condescension.
Alastor shoots him a death glare from beneath very bedraggled bangs. “I want to find the idiot who designed these buckles. Whoever it is will ABSOLUTELY down here. I’m going to find him and eat his fingers.”
“Typical,” Vox says. “I pay your tab all night, and do you offer to eat MY fingers? Fuck no.”
Alastor straightens, making a fruitless effort to shove his hair out of his face. “Did you WANT me to consume your extremities?” he asks, longsuffering.
“Well, NO, but you could have at least offered,” Vox says. “It would have been the polite thing.”
Alastor raises both brows at him.
“Buddy,” Vox says, “Thanks to you, I have been awake now for almost 24 hours, and I’m supposed to be up again in two. If you’re expecting good banter, you’re going to be real disappointed.”
“As I always am,” Alastor sighs theatrically. “How boring -”
“Want me to try to get those?” he asks, gesturing at Alastor’s shoes.
Vox sees the resulting blush even while trying VERY hard not to.
(He absolutely doesn’t file that away for later - that Mr. Radio Demon might get a little flustered about someone kneeling down in front of him and messing with his feet. Is it the feet, Vox wonders, or the skirt, or the visual of him on his knees, or - stop it.)
“Ha!” Alastor says, not quite looking at him. “No. With your oversized hands? It’d be like watching an elephant try to do needlepoint…”
Vox suddenly feels much less bad about this next part.
“Guess that leaves us with this, then,” he says in mock resignation - right before hitting a knee, wrapping an arm around the backs of Alastor’s legs, and standing up with the other demon slung ingloriously over his shoulder.
Alastor’s chest actually bounces once against Vox’s shoulderblade, making a wet sort of thunk against his slush-damp-shirt, and there’s something insanely satisfying about the surprised deer noise he makes when he does so. Was that a bleat? Oh, that’s fucking hilarious.
Vox starts up the stairs, whistling a little tune to himself.
He feels Alastor’s entire body go marble-stiff.
He can FEEL the mad building. It’s throbbing down their frequency like a straight shot of cocaine - or like that time Vox had chugged an entire pot of coffee in one go to try to get his game face on for an interview after he spent an entire night removing other candidates from the hiring pool.
When Alastor finally DOES speak, it’s with enough indignant sputtering that Vox thinks that he’s actually skipping stations in his fury.
“This is…what is…
-And you know that ain’t right, but he better watch out if I see him tonight -
"how DARE…”
-oh that cement, it’s there for the weight, dear -
“You’re welcome,” Vox sing-songs, rounding the first landing with a little skip in his step that jostles his passenger, if the little ‘oof’ and offended radio hiss are anything to go by.
“I never ASKED you to ABDUCT me, you overgrown -”
“No, I’m just being gentlemanly,” Vox says. Then, in Alastor’s own voice, he chirps, “Chivalry costs nothing, Vox - you could have a little more class.”
“THIS IS THE OPPOSITE OF…” Alastor pauses to draw an outraged breath in through his no-doubt-smile-clenched teeth.
But here’s the thing: Alastor is one of the most powerful demons in the Pride Ring. He doesn’t WANT to go flashing his powers around when he’s wearing a sparkly dress, and who could blame him, but if he really DECIDED he wanted down, then he’d be down.
He’d have both his sparkly heel-wrapped hooves firmly on the staircase while Vox fought for his life against a horde of angry poppets and eldritch tentacle bullshit. It’s not like they haven’t had creepy overlord-powered brawls over way less significant shit, so for whatever the reason, Vox can only assume that Alastor is exactly where he wants to be.
That does NOT mean that Vox isn’t going to be a dick about it.
“There is no pleasing you,” he says cheerfully as he rounds another landing.
There is no pleasing you, Vox said, and Alastor is willing to concede that there may be some truth to that.
Alastor’s libido is broken. It always has been. Oh, he learned to fake it for those fancy-suit idiots who’d been able to give him something he couldn’t get otherwise - learned how to stroke their egos and soothed his snarling pride with promise of blood later.
They weren’t hard to convince. A few dime-store novel lines at the right times, some well-placed oh’s and ah’s, and a few minutes spent envisioning the way they’d sound choking on their own gurgling screams, and then Alastor had at once had whatever he'd wanted, and a shiny new target to anticipate.
He’d always HAD to fake it, right up until he’d landed in Hell, where he’d finally been in a position to say ‘never again.’
So he would very much like for someone to explain to him how, upside down on his asshole roommate’s shoulder in a borrowed dress, still half-burritoed in a borrowed blazer, he’s experiencing the warning tingles of a sensation he’s only ever gotten the ghost of before.
What the actual fuck.
Why NOW?
Alastor knows that he’s a few chimes short of a cuckoo clock, but has he somehow MISSED being degraded? Is that a thing you can develop an unhealthy taste for, like nicotine or liquor?
That must be the case, because loathe as he is to admit it, this is definitely doing something for him.
It’s ridiculous.
His hair is in his face, and the combination of fake lashes and water-sharpened bangs keeps jabbing him in the eyes so that he has to squint.
His skirt has twisted around his legs, doing as much work as Vox’s arm to keep his thighs pressed together and kicking firmly out of the question.
And he has somehow never felt so….eugh…turned on in his life or afterlife.
It must be the blood rushing to his head.
There is no other explanation.
He surely doesn’t actually want Vox to think he can get away with doing…any of those things to him.
Quite apart from it being messy and undignified and uncomfortable, Vox will…
They always think less of you after.
They think they’ve taken something from you that you can’t get back. Alastor doesn’t want Vox to feel that way about him…to look at him like he’s a used tissue to be discarded. They have such a good thing going on, where Vox is fussy and fun to annoy, but also present and dependable whenever Alastor has a…situation.
Vox’s psychopathy means that he’s incredibly difficult to phase. Fuck, he was more horrified at the way Alastor loaded a dishwasher than he was when he opened the fridge to put leftovers away and discovered their former neighbor’s severed head. His large size and easy strength make him a perfect accomplice for moving heavier bodies when flashy magic isn’t convenient. He holds his own at tea parties with Rosie and at overlord meetings.
He’s the kind of amoral, powerful, potential-filled social climber who might, with the right, Radio-Demon flavor of motivation, help Alastor slip his chain one day.
Alastor can’t replace him, so he isn’t about to go and fuck up this situation by getting his dick involved.
(But Vox hadn’t looked at him like something cheap or disposable when he’d slid into his lap at the club -)
He just has to wait this out.
That does NOT mean that he’s not going to be a bitch about it.
He reaches down and very deliberately wraps his fingers around a strap of Vox’s suspenders. He pulls it back slowly.
Vox stiffens under Alastor’s abdomen. “Don’t you EVEN -” he warns.
Alastor lets go.
Vox makes a very satisfying sound - something like ARK! - and jolts forward, and Alastor makes a good go at getting hooves on the ground. He manages to brush the soles of his shoes against the carpet, but unfortunately, Vox recovers faster than expected. He straightens, giving him a little pop with his shoulder to hike him up even higher, so that his hips are rather uncomfortably digging right into Vox’s collarbone.
“You OBNOXIOUS little…” Vox starts. “Do you WANT us to fall down the damn stairs again?”
Alastor doesn’t even need to be able to see - which is good, because with his frizzy hair in his face, he absolutely can’t - to know that Vox is gesturing wildly with his free hand.
“I feel as if the fact that you have to add an ‘again’ to that statement makes my argument for me,” Alastor says.
“I wouldn’t have fallen down the FIRST time if someone’s dainty little DEER ANKLES…”
“Go on,” Alastor says, “keep trying to blame ME for your dismal lack of coordination -”
The sound registers before the sting across his ass - a resounding smack that sets Alastor’s ears pinning back.
There is no way in Hell that just happened.
He feels his tail flag up and poof at the sheer audacity.
“You did not,” he says slowly, tasting every word in his mouth like it’s something he ripped out with his teeth, “just do that.”
“Hey, if you want to gaslight yourself out of it and save me the trouble,” Vox says, giving the offended part of Alastor’s person a condescending pat, “then you go right ahead.”
Alastor can hear the sound of him trying to fit his key into the lock as if he HADN’T just committed suicide-by-ill-advised-spanking.
“Men have double-died for FAR less,” Alastor starts, his antlers branching.
“Excuse me, YOU started with the impact play,” Vox says. “I’m just matching your energy - which, if I have to clarify, is being a petty bitch.”
Being a WHAT now?!
Vox walks through their apartment door with Alastor still slung over his shoulder, and it’s disorienting to see it from this angle, bobbing like a camera held up by someone who is running.
Then, much too abruptly for his taste, Vox sets him on his feet, kicking the door closed behind him. The deer demon reflexively steadies himself on the other man’s arms, clutching his damp sleeves over his biceps as the blood goes much too quickly from his head back to his feet.
He doesn’t look up, in the same way that you don’t look down when you’re walking on a narrow ledge - doesn’t dare look at his friend’s roommate’s face.
Then, he feels Vox’s hands slip through the open front of the blazer that Alastor is still wearing to settle on his waist - gingerly at first, the way you touch a pan that might still be hot, and then with the sureness of a fellow who does this sort of thing a lot.
“So, do I get that back, or am I destined to lose it along with half my DVDs in the roommate breakup?” Vox asks.
“You gave it to me,” Alastor points out. “That makes it mine.”
Not looking up means that he’s looking instead at Vox’s chest - at his much-abused white shirt that has gone semi-transparent in the very damp aftermath of their snowy trip back from the club.
At his surprisingly well-defined arms and the way the fabric strains just slightly over his shoulders.
Alastor has had precious little of being held in his life. He’s always been handled like an old pair of shoes - like something that’s meant to be used until it wears out.
He doesn’t know what to do with the way the other man’s hands are just…cupping his waist, or with the nigh-gravitational pull he feels, the urge to step forward.
He should put a stop to that, probably.
A few good smacks and some poisonous words about a sparkly dress crossing some of the cheap wiring in the other man’s recently upgraded head, and they can maybe, after a few days of mutual sulking, salvage this.
He’d better do it quick, too - because a line will be coming ANY second now.
It’ll be something crass and cheesy and terrible, too. It always is, once you let them get you alone, once they draw the blinds and decide that your body is a fair trade for -
“Hey, Al - will you - will you look at me for a minute?”
That is…not the line Alastor was expecting.
“I am looking at you,” Alastor says. His throat feels much too tight. “Specifically, at…is that a pocket protector?”
“Oh my God, WHY are you LIKE this, you - Al. Look. at. Me.”
“Dibs on the shower -you’re not getting all the hot water this time.” Alastor starts to pull away, but Vox reels him right back in.
He feels the blue claws settle under his chin and gives in, letting the other sinner tip his head up to meet his oversized eyes.
Alastor is still halfway expecting this to be some kind of seduction thing, or, worst case scenario, a swirly-eyed thing that will end in immediate and gratuitous violence - dependable roommates or not, certain things just can’t be tolerated.
He meets Vox’s eyes expecting the worst.
It doesn’t prepare him for what he sees - because right next to the sleep-deprivation, the pronounced bags, and the CLEAR irritation, there’s also concern.
“Where did you go?” Vox presses, because the obnoxious blowhard can’t ever leave a single damn thing alone.
“Is your transmission malfunctioning again?” Alastor asks. “I haven’t gone anywhere -”
“Yeah, you did. One minute, you were right here, being a pain in my ass, and the next, you were….I don’t know, a fucking dial tone. Literally. You were playing a dial tone…”
Alastor bristles. “I was doing NO such thing -”
And he glares at his shadow, because the traitorous thing is doing a slow nod on the wall behind Vox.
Whose side is that damned apparition on?!
“Listen.” And it’s Vox’s turn to not quite make eye contact. “You’ve clearly got some…some kind of thing going on here with this, and I know I’m not exactly subtle.”
“But you want,” and Alastor makes a helpless sort of gesture between them, “this.”
“I want you,” Vox corrects. “I’m not gonna pretend I don’t, but -”
“Well, thank fuck. Your agent was wrong about a lot of things, Vox, but your acting ability wasn’t one of them. I’ve seen better lines from the noodle vendor on-”
Alastor blinks at the warm sensation of Vox’s HAND suddenly pressed over his mouth and takes a moment to ponder what stupidity or desperation led the man to put his skin THAT close to Alastor’s teeth when they’re having a disagreement.
“Fuck’s SAKE, Al, I’m trying to have a goddamned conversation with you like an actual adult…”
So Alastor bites him.
Of course he does.
What, he’s practically DARING him to!
“GYAH, fucking shit, WHY?!” Vox yelps, “You and your motherfucking CROCODILE TEETH…”
Vox gropes blindly along the counter, no doubt looking for something to smack him with, and this is good, right? They’re going to go back to normal, they’re not going to have this conversation, not now, not YET -
The blast of water from the detachable faucet is, to say the least, a surprise. Alastor’s hissed inhale immediately draws water straight up his nose and he coughs, releasing Vox’s hand.
“HA!” Vox says, pumping his free hand in the air in victory. “Just like using a squirt bottle on a CAT! Oh, you have NO idea how satisfying -”
It’s Alastor’s turn to grope blindly along the counter, snagging a saucepan and holding it up in front of him like a shield.
The curved surface does exactly what he hoped it would do.
The water sprays RIGHT back into Vox’s screen, leading him to flail, yelp, and most delightfully of all, fall over backward. He immediately loses his grip on the hose, so the water continues spraying, the nozzle swaying wildly any time the spray comes into contact with a cabinet or the fridge.
The TV demon lays on the floor for a moment, stunned.
Alastor’s static thrums with anticipation. Oh, this is going to be GOOD.
Then, Vox dissolves into blue static and he’s suddenly upright, his eyes strobing. “All right, princess, THAT’S it.”
HA! Not flinging misplaced sentiments around now, are we?
Delightful.
“Bring it, you fluorescent poser!” Alastor says. “It’s about time I taught you the ropes.”
Alastor cracks his knuckles under the ruined silk gloves, adjusts his stance, and pops his neck to either side. He lets the restrictive blazer drop off his bare shoulders. Vox might be big, and he might be (alright, Alastor can admit it) justifiably earning some strength points from sheer, blind rage, but Alastor is also willing to wager that he’s forgotten more about scrapping than Vox has ever learned.
In Alastor’s defense, it has been a very long and very confusing night. He’s tired, his feet hurt, and he thinks he’s been having this sexuality-based existential crisis for long enough that it’s just part of his personality. He’s just permanently LIKE this now.
That is possibly why he had not remembered that Vox has rather enthusiastically talked about how much he enjoyed RUGBY in his obnoxious college days.
Which is POSSIBLY why, rather than swinging at him like a sensible person, Vox barrels into Alastor instead, carrying the two of them across the kitchen and into the counter with a condiment-and-appliance clattering THUD.
Alastor smacks him a good one upside his TV head out of reflex. “Watch the glassware!” he snaps.
Vox hauls back to hit him.
And stops.
“Aw, have you frozen?” Alastor goads. “Do we need to pack you in rice?”
“NO, I just…just….God DAMN it, I can’t!”
Alastor pauses, the legs he’d reflexively wrapped around Vox’s waist loosening slightly. The hand he’d fisted in the front of the other man’s shirt to aid him in his next punch also loosens a little, though his fingers remain twisted just over the button line. “You can’t what now?”
“I can’t fucking HIT you when you’re DRESSED like that!” Vox snaps, making an exasperated gesture to Alastor’s utterly ruined dress.
It’s so ridiculous that it takes Alastor a moment to process it.
And then, he laughs. “Are you SERIOUS?” he asks. “You shameless chauvinist! As if I couldn’t mop this entire apartment with you, in or OUT of a petticoat…”
“Look, it’s a fucking mental block, all right?” Vox blusters. “I get you’re you, but you look like a…”
“How pathetic can you GET…”
“Shut UP,” Vox pleads, thunking his head against Alastor’s shoulder as he might have thunked it against a desk after reading an especially error-riddled expense report.
His voice has a thread of hysterical laughter hiding just under the ragged edges, and the static from his stupid screen has all the hair on the right side of Alastor’s face defying gravity.
“You said ‘but’,” Alastor says.
“Sorry, I what now?”
The hissing sound of the rogue faucet finally, mercifully stops, as Alastor’s shadow apparently takes it on itself to contain at least THAT much of the chaos.
“You said you wanted me, BUT,” Alastor reminds him.
“...Understand that I realize the irony of saying this as I’m standing ankle deep in water and spilled pasta -”
“Oh, don’t be DRAMATIC, it’s barely a puddle,” Alastor hand-flops at him.
“- But I actually don’t want to fuck this up,” Vox says, continuing on in the dogged way of newscasters discussing the weather on-scene in a hurricane. “We’ve got a good thing going, with the standing bar night on Fridays and the trivia on Wednesdays, and, ya know, the occasional homicide…”
“Oh, Vincent, so sentimental,” Alastor says around a sudden, inconvenient lump in his throat.
Does this idiot really want to keep him more than he wants to fuck him?
Oh, that is…
That’s never happened before.
“I can’t just go get another one of you,” Vox says, oblivious to the crisis of self he’s triggering with his stupid sentiments and gooey feelings.
Alastor peers over the other man’s shoulder - at his discarded blazer on the floor like a soggy accusation, at the spilled container of pasta and the salt shaker that may actually be floating. “Would you WANT to?” Alastor asks. “Because while they’d be wrong, I can see where some might view that as a ‘good riddance’ sort of situation under the circumstances.”
“Yeah, you make me fucking crazy,” Vox says. “And I don’t know if it’s Stockholm Syndrome or what, but I don’t…I’d rather put up with you being bitchy and insane than be ALONE again.”
Alastor can feel the tension in the other man’s arms - can practically sense his hands drawing into fists on the counter. He takes a surreal moment to appreciate the way THAT feels, all that frustrated strength wrapped around him, and still just waiting for him to say what to do with it.
And damn it all, Alastor thinks the overzealous lummox actually MEANS it.
If he says the word, Vox will let him up off the counter. He’ll let him go to the shower, will probably reach for a mop to start un-disaster-zoning the kitchen.
They’ll both pretend it didn’t happen tomorrow.
In a week, they might even start to believe it never did.
And Alastor suddenly doesn’t want that - doesn’t want to convince himself that this strange moment, as imperfect and STUPID as it is, wasn’t real.
“Have me, then,” Alastor says, dizzy in the way of a man leaning too far over a bridge. “Let’s see if you live up to your own hype.”
There is a crackly moment of silence where Alastor briefly wonders if Vox has bluescreened.
If that is the case, Alastor has already decided he’s going to kill him, JUST on principle.
He is, in fact, in the process of figuring out the best way to get the man’s oversized bulk off him and whether their garbage disposal is really rated for THAT sort of bone when one of Vox’s hands deliberately lifts from the counter and settles on the outside of Alastor’s thigh.
“Are you sure?” Vox’s screen thrums against the side of Alastor’s face, sending a fresh, ticklish pulse of static across the fine hairs on his cheek.
His oversized palm smooths up the still-damp nylon of the thigh-high stocking Alastor’s wearing to hook in the delicate lace at the top.
“No, I fully intend to yell ‘gotcha’ at any moment -” Alastor mutters, and any squirming is STRICTLY him trying to find purchase on the slippery surface of the counter.
His legs are not now, nor have they ever been sensitive.
It has nothing to do with the way those too-warm fingers are fiddling with his garter belt.
“Because you know if you give me something, that makes it mine,” Vox says.
Indignation and something equally warm flare simultaneously across Alastor’s face and somewhere low in his belly. “That was in reference to a BLAZER, you -”
The shock of Vox’s tongue - hot and wet and static, like shocking yourself on a doorknob - presses against the side of his neck.
What is this?
“You can’t apply those same rules to a -”
“Watch me,” Vox all but purrs into the side of his neck. “Or don’t. You can close your eyes if you like that better.”
Hold on.
“I bet you do.”
Vox is pulling him closer with one hand on his back. The other has pressed flat against the ridiculous, lacy underthings he put on with this ridiculous dress because Mimzy had assured him it was the only thing that wouldn’t show.
“I bet you’d like just drifting on my voice, feeling whatever I do to you, pretending it’s not driving you fucking crazy -”
Those fingers trace the shape of what he’s wearing under his skirt, and the grin sharpens against his neck.
“Oooh, someone committed,” Vox says, and Alastor thumps him a good one on the shoulder, even as he feels himself scrabbling for purchase when the other demon tilts him a little further back.
What on earth is Vox doing? What’s he drawing it out for?
“Yes, well you’d best not expect THIS kind of presentation on the regular,” Alastor mutters. “More trouble than it’s worth -”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s true,” Vox says. “I mean, from where I’m standing, it’s worth a LOT of trouble.”
The heel of his hand presses against the front of those flimsy, lacy shorts, and Alastor is frankly astonished to realize that he’s hard - that Vox is feeling him and getting that SMUG undercurrent to his static that makes Alastor’s ears flatten.
“Well, well,” Vox purrs, and Alastor isn’t sure whether he’d rather punch him in the face or die on the spot.
This figures, actually. Alastor’s libido has always had it out for him - trust it to respond to the most ridiculous stimuli possible just out of spite.
“I think I’d be willing to put some actual work into convincing you to repeat at least this much of your performance,” Vox continues in his most honey-flavored baritone, even as his hand gives a teasing little squeeze.
Why is he still talking? Does he not understand how this works?
Does he not realize that he’s meant to have asked him to turn around or - or let him up so that he can get on his knees? Or maybe…
“Huh-uh, Al. Stay with me.”
That hand is uncomfortably hot against him. Vox moves it slowly, a rhythmic sort of press and drag, and static sparks behind Alastor’s eyelids.
“Well, where in the Hell else would I be, Bermuda?” Alastor asks, instinctively trying to twitch his legs closed to mute some of that too-intense sensation - but Vox is in the way.
The man is remarkably GOOD at being in the way - of both modesty-preserving leg closing and Alastor’s attempts at disassociating his way through this awkward experience as any sane person must do.
He’s not actually meant to be PRESENT for this whole mortifying ordeal, is he?
“I don’t know where you’re going or who you’re with,” Vox says, “But I don’t share my stuff with just anybody.”
Oh, he did NOT just -
“Your stuff?!” Alastor blusters, giving Vox’s back an utterly ineffective thump with one of his hooves.
“I said what I said,” Vox says, insufferably unrepentant. “Take a deep breath.”
“And WHY would I need-”
That question is answered when Vox digs his hands into those silly lace underthings and rips them right down the seams.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, who DOES that?” Alastor blusters. “Are you on a watch list?”
“Several,” Vox says cheerfully. He tosses the ruined underwear over his shoulder to join the other debris in the kitchen. Then, he reaches past Alastor to one of the shelves…
Alastor sees what he’s reaching for and swats his hand. “You are NOT using my imported Manni olive oil as lubricant, you uncultured HACK.”
“Yep,” Vox says, somehow fond and resigned and exasperated all at once, “this is somehow exactly how I thought sex with you would go.”
“Cullinary sacrilege is a turn-on for you, is it?” Alastor asks.
“Only when I get to do it with you spread out on a counter,” Vox says.
Alastor’s face burns, and he makes another futile, instinctive effort to twitch his legs closed - because he’d been doing such a good job of not thinking about the fact that he’s fully exposed on a surface that’s meant for virtually ANY other purpose. It’s mae worse that Vox is still obnoxiously dressed, hasn’t even lost his stupid SUSPENDERS -
“Ah ah, no,” Vox chides. He’s managed to snag an inferior oil, opening the cap with a messy plop before pouring a generous amount in one of his hands.
Forget talking spiders or fountains of fire - nothing has ever forced Alastor to suspend as much disbelief as hearing that this man had a cooking show at one point. How did ANY network let that happen for ANY amount of time?
“Come on, Al, since when are you shy? I thought you liked a little attention.”
Vox is pressing close again, his screen slotting just under Alastor’s chin, his breath much too warm on Alastor’s neck.
Alastor’s ears pin at the narration. “Do you really plan on TALKING through this entire -”
“That WAS the plan, actually. Yeah.”
Fuck.
That’s not normal.
That CAN’T be normal.
“Shh,” And that’s Vox’s achingly familiar voice against the pulse in his throat, Vox’s static-sharp teeth pressing into the delicate skin in a way that makes Alastor’s body jolt without his say-so, “stay here.”
What kind of drivel is he spouting? Alastor is HERE, of course he is, where else -
“Stay with me.”
His hand is too hot, too wet, too slow. Doesn’t Vox realize this is meant to be fast and messy?
Doesn’t he realize it’s meant to be over before you know it’s happening?
“Fuck, you should see yourself. You’re like the best kind of pinup.”
There’s gravel in Vox’s studio voice, and Alastor can feel how turned on he is - in the tension in his body, the eager forward tilt of his chest, the hot length of him crowded up against Alastor’s bare thigh.
“Christ, Al, you’d make our entire smut department so jealous they’d collectively get diabetes from the consolation ice cream -”
“Shut UP,” Alastor pleads, his nails digging helplessly into the other man’s back.
“Yeah, THAT’S gonna happen.”
Alastor’s head is swimming like it does after one too many strong drinks. Is this some kind of hypnotism? Surely it must be, surely ALASTOR isn’t feeling…
“That’s it, baby, just a little more for me.”
He can’t keep his eyes open. It’s too overwhelming - the blue light from Vox’s screen, their shadows dancing on the kitchen ceiling, the entirely too focused way Vox is watching whatever mortifying thing is happening to Alastor’s face right now.
Alastor can’t breathe.
He can hear himself GASPING like he’s the heroine in one of those blasted snuff films that came out when sound started up - one where she’s running futilely from an unseen monster that, due to special effects budgets, will never actually appear on screen.
He knows he looks ridiculous. He SOUNDS ridiculous.
Vox must think he’s -
“Come on,” Vox coaxes, nothing but sandpaper and want. “Come on, baby, you’re perfect, just like that -”
Alastor has had orgasms before.
Of course he has.
They’ve always unfortunate things, something like a facial tic or the way your knee twitches up when hit with the reflex-mallet.
This is more like an out of body experience - his body trying and failing to jackknife, pressing instead into Vox’s steady heat, his legs spasming helplessly, his vision gone white and then blurry yellow.
He feels…adrift.
Dizzy.
Unmoored.
“There you go.”
Is that Vox? He sounds…hoarse. Different.
It must be him, though, because those are his fingers soothing through Alastor’s hair - that’s his big, warm arm around Alastor’s back.
“One smug word,” Alastor murmurs, his words muffled into Vox’s ruined shirt, “out of your smarmy mouth, and so HELP me, Vincent.”
“You can just say I rocked your world, Al. No reason to be all coy about it.”
God, there’ll be no living with him after this.
“How long was I -”
“Blissed out?” Vox suggests, and God, he’s like this ALREADY.
Alastor pushes back slightly and gives him the flattest look he can manage through his bleary eyes.
“Just a few seconds,” Vox says. “You good?”
IS he?
Alastor doesn’t know.
That was…a lot to process, honestly.
“I…yes. Fine,” He says.
What else do you say?
No, Vox, actually, I believe you’ve hand-jobbed me straight into an existential crisis. I’m now questioning everything I ever knew about sex! Isn’t that delightfully overwrought?
“That was…unexpectedly generous,” Alastor adds, resisting the urge to tap his index nails together or fidget in some OTHER undignified way.
Vox shrugs. “Selfish,” he says. “It’s a Hell of an ego-stroke.”
“I believe I’m…ah…functional again, if you…”
Alastor gestures vaguely downward.
“What would you like?”
There’s an odd sort of understanding in Vox’s smile after that.
Alastor isn’t sure he likes it.
“I’d like to get us out of this trainwreck of a kitchen,” Vox says.
“We should at least mop -”
“It’ll keep until tomorrow,” Vox says. “And,” he adds, raising a superior eyebrow, “your legs don’t work, anyway.”
“Oh, FUCK you, you - “
“That’s the idea,” Vox says.
And it feels much too significant, when Alastor allows Vox to scoop him up - to carry him, covered in smeared make-up and oil and his own unlikely mess - into their shared bathroom.
It feels like shaking hands on a deal.
It feels final.
But it also feels, the slightest bit, like the first time Alastor picked up an axe and decided to use it.
It’s kin to the way when, after that first, clean cleave, something in him had sprouted wings.
It’s exhilarating. Crazy. Probably destined to end badly.
But, ultimately, Alastor thinks the same thing he thought all those years ago, when that first fresh corpse hit the floorboards:
Worth it.
However this ends, it was WORTH it.