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Summary:

Alastor, Altruist, Died for his Friends. That was the headline. Vox made sure it was plastered all over Hell the moment he'd seen that demon flee for his life. After he remained missing, Vox accepted that he really was dead. Dead and gone. No rival. He and the Vees were now free to rule Hell as the Overlords they'd always dreamed of being, and the plans were finally in motion.

Then Vox went out for donuts, and everything came crashing down. Because Alastor wasn't dead.

He was barely alive.

Notes:

SOOOO THAT SEASON FINALE, HUH?

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: Dumpster Diving

Notes:

NOW WITH FANART

https://www. /birdsaretoddlers/743153181092200448/op-op-you-can-have-my-life-you-can-gave-my?source=share

Chapter Text

Vox, what the FUCK have you gotten yourself into?

Vox wished he had an answer for the voice in his head. Slouched over, elbows on his knees with a cigarette between two fingers, staring blankly at the flatscreen in his living room, he watched the news without intaking the information. Turf wars. New product announcements, his products of course. Extermination preparations. Petty celebrity squabbles. The usual schlock. Their worlds, the ones belonging to the sinners outside, those kept turning. His world had been turned upside down because of one stupid, head-up-his-ass, truly braindead decision, and he really only had himself to blame.

An empty carton of Chinese food was beginning to get gooey, starting to stick to his glass-top coffee table. His cup of coffee was cold. His cigarette was almost entirely burned to embers, an unbroken line of ash clinging desperately on before it hit the sculpted rug that made up the majority of his little living corner in his penthouse. The extra food he’d ordered had been packed away into his fridge, after some economical energy-drink-Tetris to free up the space. The bag the food had been delivered in stood on the counter, back-lit by the lights over his oven. Almost accusatory. He never ordered enough to need a bag that big, not while he was on his own.

He replayed the events of the last several hours in his mind, rubbing a hand over his screen, mindful of the claws that could easily pierce the film.


Okay, so, seeing a pair of feet sticking out of a dumpster was not uncommon. It was Hell. People got murdered, like, a lot. Nobody else seemed to care about it, despite the fact it was damn obvious someone had dumped a corpse in the trash in the middle of the goddamned day. Again, Hell, murder, it came hand in hand. Vox wasn’t even sure why he noticed the shoes to begin with, he had picked up a box of donuts at eight o’clock post meridiem for ‘a meeting’ (see: to eat by himself) when they caught his eye. His first thought had been, Damn, there goes my appetite.

His second thought had been, Are those deer tracks?

Fuck, sure looked like it from here. Size 14 wingtip boots, black and red, with cloven hooves imprinted on the bottom. Like a certain pair he was so familiar with. But that wasn’t possible, because Alastor was dead.

Alastor had died six months ago. Vox knew that, he’d filmed the whole damn thing live from his multitude of drones spread across the city, always watching. He had seen the entire happy-go-lucky, power of friendship rainbow barf-fest from the safety of the Extermination bunker with the other Vees. No, no, Alastor had died, to Adam of all people! He had melted into shadows, turned tail and run away.

At first, Vox thought he’d just escaped, somewhere safe, but the hours of silence turned to days, weeks, and then the truth slowly trickled in. Death need not be immediate, it could be a long, drawn out affair, over the course of days if one was unlucky. Angelic steel could poison your blood, slowly sap your strength until you succumbed to the injury. It was fitting, he told himself, that the deer demon had limped away with a hole in his chest and bled out alone, just like the animal he was.

Even still, the knowledge that Alastor wasn’t coming back, that he really had kicked it this time, had sent him into a month-long rage. Now that he had no rival, what was the point, he’d said, words falling upon the apathetic ears of business partners who only saw expansion. Yes, expansion was nice, but it was less fun when there was no Alastor to fight with every so often. The Radio Demon had died for his friends, what a headline! It had taken a full day for the public to even begin to swallow the idea, but now, everyone in hell was aware. The Radio Demon was dead.

After his tantrum, Vox, loathe as he was to accept it, had come to stomach that truth. Somehow, those pansies at the newly-rebuilt Hazbin Hotel were more important than eternity at the top. What a loser. What a schmuck. Yadda yadda, roll credits.

So why did he check the shoes? Why did he bother? Why was it him? Why did he have to be the one that stopped, the only one that did, to check the trash where this poor, unlucky sop had been dumped? Vox even had the foresight to give his donuts away to the first person who would take them, caught some rando with a timepiece for a head and shoved the box in their hands. “Hey, you’re the first lucky winner of Free Donut Day , be sure to tell your friends! VoxTech, trust us with your happiness!” He’d said, before promptly walking backwards into the alley as an honest to god brawl erupted, right there on the concrete, only marginally goaded by hypnosis.

The public was a feral, savage creature that loved free shit. Vox knew that and took advantage of it regularly, because the public also loved to fight over said free shit, and it made perfect entertainment on a boring day. He went unnoticed by the pack of sinners scrambling over the donuts as he stepped back, heeled loafers sloshing through a puddle that he would rather not identify. As he approached the dumpster, his internal systems kicked on. Sure smelled like something dead, or at least that’s what his sensors said, but he’d had to actually turn his head to get a real sense of what he was looking at. Part of him knew what he’d find.  The rest was giving him a thousand reasons, ten thousand reasons, why what he was doing was idiotic at best and reputation-damaging at worst.

An Overlord, digging through the garbage!? The fuck is wrong with you?

He’s dead, Vox, you know that. You saw him die.

A million people have boots with animal tracks on them. Velvette released something around ten whole collections. Wild Stepz, remember?

What if you get caught? Think about your reputation!

That’s not him.

That can’t be him.

Vox felt the tangle of wires and circuitry that made up his heart skip a beat, before the voltage regulator wrangled it back under control and stemmed the flow of epinephrine that was beginning to pour out of his adrenal gland. One eye kept on the bloodbath that had grown to eclipse the alleyway’s entrance, he lifted the lid of the dumpster, just by an inch. Just to make sure this wasn’t some silly cosplayer, a time bomb, any number of things that someone could’ve stuffed into a body double of fucking Alastor, but no. He wasn’t that lucky. He wasn’t so lucky as to be getting pranked by Velvette, wasn’t fortunate enough to find some weird freak wearing Al’s clothes.

It was him.

That was Alastor.

Vox sucked in a breath.

Shiiiittttt.

Vox, the Television Overlord, part of the three Vees, was stuck between a donut shop and a clothing outlet. A riot had eaten all of the street at this point. And his greatest rival was three quarters dead in a fucking dumpster. Anyone else would've walked away.

Instead, his next action was to call a car, a black car with heavily tinted windows that specialized in discretion according to the blurb on their profile, to arrive in the back alley that this one fed into. The driver was told to book it if he wanted extra pay, and Vox heard the rev of the engine three blocks over. He remembered thinking to himself, even then, that this was now or never. There would be no coming back from this.

And yet, Vox still hoisted the unconscious body of his rival Overlord over his shoulders, only minorly thrown off by the weight, and scuttled into the dark. If he’d waited, put more than two seconds of thought into his actions, he wouldn’t have done this. Even another second and he might have lost his nerve. The smart course of action would’ve been to drag Alastor out by the back of his tattered overcoat and blow his damned head off in public view, as a show of strength, of power. Alastor wouldn’t be making a comeback, it would say. Miraculous resurrection or not, he would not be coming back. Hindsight made these thoughts all the sweeter, too.

So bundling Alastor into the back of the van when it pulled up, handing the driver a stack of cash, and telling him to floor it and shut the fuck up, well. The logical part of him clicked its tongue on its coffee break.

Once his capacitors recharged from that impromptu deadlift, hauling a two hundred pound body into the low seat of an SUV, Vox flicked his screen back on and continued to shut down the thoughts that wondered what the hell he was doing. Instead, he gave the driver an angry glare for staring in his rearview, and when the eyes averted themselves, started his shaky hands towards Alastor.

He’d never actually… Touched, the Radio Demon before. Their fights were brutal and fought with powers, shadow tendrils and arcs of electricity. Fisticuffs wasn’t his style, nor was it Alastor’s. For a moment, all Vox could do was stare, hesitating, still doubting himself. Alastor seemed hurt, yes, he had to be if he was out cold like this, but was this an over reaction? He was breathing, if shakily, his chest rising and falling under the layers of fabric that made up his ensemble. His hand started and stopped, inching closer and closer, nerves prickling over the back of his neck. He'd wanted to throttle Alastor not even six months ago. Had leapt on a table and proclaimed that watching him die was 'better than sex'. Had thrown the fit of an age when he seemingly slunk off to live another day.

Steeling himself, Vox laid the pads of two fingers to his neck to check his pulse.

He was hot and clammy to the touch, damp from sweat or trash juice, Vox wasn't sure. His heart, as far as Vox could detect, was pumping blood. His pulse was slow, and thready, but there. When he went to tuck his limbs back in, the temperature sensors on his hands helpfully informed him that Alastor's extremities were icy in comparison, and hell, Vox was not a doctor but he figured that was probably bad.

“Step on it,” he growled to the driver, who did just that. Good thing most Vrive drivers had No-Fault insurance, otherwise Vox didn’t even want to think about the amount of money he was going to have to pay to clean up after this little stunt. More than the industrial grade windshield wipers were worth, that was for sure. Distantly, he noted the VoxTech branding on the wipers that were swiftly clearing the blood and viscera of unlucky pedestrians off the glass, and felt the teeniest touch smug. The rest of the ride was spent oscillating wildly between different types of panic until he reached his destination.

He instructed the driver to park at the back of the V Tower, and with a little pulse of hypnosis out of his good eye, to wait there for a special consolation package, courtesy of VoxTech Enterprises!

God, the game show host voice was really starting to clog up his throat. Vox dragged Alastor out of the car, over his shoulder, and fried the cameras he had out here as preemptive damage control.

After that it was a series of dodging backstage technicians belonging to him and his comrades, more blasts of hypnosis to convince everyone they’d seen jack shit nothing and certainly not him dragging a corpse that looked like Alastor up to his penthouse, and a rather undignified skitter to the service elevator. Val was out at some slutty networking party, Velvette was at the same party but for different reasons, and Vox had claimed he would be ‘tied up in meetings’ as an excuse not to see Val. He wished he’d gone to that stupid event because then he wouldn’t have gotten donuts, wouldn’t have found Alastor, and this would not have been happening.

Velvette did say his sweet tooth habit was going to be the end of him. Vox just didn’t expect it like this.

Once he made it to the lift, he had a moment to take off his hat and fan himself with it, leaning against the wall to alleviate some of the burn in his back and shoulders. Vox really had meant to start hitting the gym again, but then he’d broken up with Val, and as usual, his life blew up. The pity party was momentary, Alastor stirred on his shoulder then slumped into a heap, and Vox's thoughts shattered to pieces again and fell back into the void of background processing.

Vox flew out of the elevator the moment the doors opened and half-jogged down the hall, trying not to jostle Alastor more than was necessary. V Tower was one glorified advertisement on most of the floors. The faces of Vox, Valentino, and Velvette were plastered everywhere. Posters and flyers for events, products, and events to promote said products were pasted all over the walls, in some places three or four layers deep. The seedy underbelly that made up the maintenance halls was only a little different, that being dusty, industrial, and dirty. The only reprieve Vox had found was his own penthouse.

The other two Vees may have loved to look at themselves all day every day, but Vox preferred a simpler aesthetic. Black tile floors with runner rugs led up to his door, the pervasive cream color of the wallpaper infecting his outer hall. He pressed his palm to the identification pad, let it scan the RFID chip implanted into what passed for his flesh, and slammed the door behind him as quickly as he was able.

He made it to his guest room, dumped Alastor into a bed, and promptly had another panic attack when the fool stopped breathing on him for a minute. Vox summoned two emergency nurses, paced in his living room outside, then informed them when they arrived that not a word was to be spoken about what they saw. Vox provided them with a change of clothes for Alastor, his own clothes as a matter of fact, and told them they would be compensated heavily and rewarded for discretion.

Then he went downstairs and killed the driver.

It wouldn’t stick, his gun was loaded with simple lead slugs without a hint of angelic power, but hypnosis had wiped the last hour of the sinner’s life and the murder would just double-back and make sure he didn’t remember shit. More goons to clean up the car and dump it in a landfill somewhere, sweet Jesus, was this beginning to get expensive, and another slog up the fucking stairs this time, because maintenance was using their elevator and he wasn’t going out in the lobby right now. The reporters were circling like sharks at every hour, and with both the other Vees due to return at some point tonight, they were especially bloodthirsty. He hadn’t yet had the thought that he should’ve just killed Alastor in gruesome, flashy fashion, but the logical part of him was walking back to its desk now, lighting a stogie as it did. It would hit soon.

When he came up the stairs, the nurses were standing in his foyer. A peek in the door, and he saw that Alastor had been cleaned up of the garbage residue, redressed, and fucking tucked in to bed of all things. His stained, ratty clothes were folded and placed, neatly, on top of a plastic bag to preserve the fabric of the cushioned window seat that the room boasted. They had even cleaned up the blood and trash that had dripped all over his tile. Vox was impressed, he really couldn’t have done any better himself! He told the two girls that with a sharp smile. They were twins, one with pigtails, one with a ponytail, in candy striped colors. They looked like Velvette. Smiled like her, too.

He promptly killed them as well, though he had the foresight to walk them out into the hall before he did that. Shit, today was expensive in men and money. Vox wired their bank accounts two grand each, for the inconvenience of murder, and to fulfill the ‘See Nothing, Say Nothing’ clause in their contracts. Every employee was liable to be killed at any time, though if it wasn’t justified, they would be compensated. Made it easier to handle little hiccups like this. He dispatched another cleaning crew to deal with the mess outside his penthouse’s door, removed his overcoat, and loosened his tie before he collapsed onto the couch.

Vox had had just enough mental wherewithal to order Chinese, receive it, and decide not to kill this particular sinner as he’d seen nothing in the long run. Other than some blood on Vox’s slacks but, hey, that was easily ignored with a nice fat tip. Straight after that, the logical part of his brain sat back at it’s post and cranked up the alarm bells, so he’d had other thoughts to occupy him. He’d just shut the door with his heel when it occurred to him that Alastor was in his spare room, flat fuck, why did you do this!? And he’d gone sprinting off to confirm that, yes, he had done a fool-ass thing like drag his rival out of a dumpster and save his life.

What the fuck was wrong with him.


Coming back into reality, Vox pressed his gloved palm into his screen so hard it began to mash into some of the fluid crystal swimming around in his face, distorting his view until he let it up. He hung his head over his chest, grumbling bitterly under his breath about his misfortune and apparent lack of rationality. You can’t just stay out here forever, you box-brained moron, Vox thought to himself. Go look at what you did. Go on. Get up.

His Heads-Up Display ever so helpfully pointed a dozen big red arrows at the shut door to his guest room, and then, when he didn’t get up right away, a handful of tooltips and a red circle showed up. All pointing him to that door, and what lay beyond. He made a mental note to change his settings for his HUD later.

The HUD then displayed said note.

Vox took a moment to adjust some of the more aggressive ‘reminders’ down to a more reasonable level, then put his burned down cigarette out in the carton of gloppy, congealed noodles before it could burn his fingers. He pushed his hands to his knees and stood with a groan, feeling quite like he was heading to the gallows. His body ached, Alastor wasn’t light, and Vox himself wasn’t exactly the beefiest on the block. He rolled his shoulders under his hand, rubbing the tightening knots out of his muscles as he tentatively approached the door. It was a plain white door, one of the only wooden bits in the whole house. It could be reinforced with metal in an emergency, of course, but some part of him liked the homeliness of it. Paint and a black-stained aluminum handle. Quaint.

The television demon scolded himself for stalling.

Without giving himself more time to go haring off down rabbit holes, he cracked open the door, just enough to poke an eye in. He paused there, hanging in the doorway, peering in at the shape in the bed. Seeing no movement, he stepped in further, lightly. Vox told himself it was to check the work the nurses did, that was all. It was dark in here, the shades were drawn over the windows to blot out the light, but just enough of the neon filtered in to cast Alastor’s lumpy form under the blankets in glowing relief. He was thin and wiry, like always, but… Something didn’t look right. 

Vox crept closer.

The nurses had redressed him and tucked him in on his back, but he didn’t look much better than he did hours ago. His hair splayed out over the pillow, his mouth had fallen out of the trademark smile he wore in any situation, and his ears were completely motionless against the blue-edged black silk of the bed. They didn’t even perk his way as Vox put his hands on the footboard and leaned over, making the wood of the vintage-style frame creak. He looked pale. His face was tight, even in sleep, as if being comatose was some kind of hell beyond hell.

Bandages peeked out of the top of his half-open, borrowed pajama shirt. He had smaller bandaids all over the rest of him, rubble and god knew what else having eaten into his skin. He’d seen Alastor nearly die on the television months ago, but he hadn’t actually gotten to check out the extent of the wounds. He’d been cut across the chest at an unknown depth by holy light, anyone else would have just died on the spot. Anyone who didn’t should certainly be healed by now, right? He still looked so injured. So weak.

It was piteous.

“Not piteous,” Vox snarled to himself, crushing the thought, his claws carving into the wood as his fingers clenched in anger. “It’s pathetic. He’s a washed up, piss-poor excuse for an Overlord. He should’ve died in the trash. It’s what he deserved.”

Despite the snarled insults, he kept his voice low, for reasons he didn’t fully understand. He was so close now he could see Alastor’s chest rising and falling, shallow breaths that indicated he was still alive. Vox counted them. Ten per minute. A quick ping to the wider web, and he found that was slow. He quickly hunted down the subroutine that did that and killed it.

“I only saved you so I could kill you later,” he spat at Alastor, who still could not hear him, on account of being unconscious. “That’s the only reason. The minute you’re up and in fighting shape, I’m gonna drag your ass on Main Street so hard you’ll be nothing but road rash, you hear me? I’m gonna make you wish you’d stayed gone a second time, fucker.”

Alastor did not respond. He was still unconscious. Vox began to feel a little silly, even sheepish, for standing here in the dark and spitting insults at his rival when he was clearly on death’s door anyway. Like he was trying to convince himself that was the plan from the start, to save his life just to snuff it out on his own terms.

He walked, walked, not fled, back to the living room. The Chinese carton and cigarette butt went into the garbage. Vox briefly entertained the thought of going to bed, but just as soon as he’d had the thought, he dismissed it. He was far too wound up to sleep right now. He instead flumped down onto his couch, clicked on his flat screen, and started channel surfing.

Game shows. He liked game shows. They ran all night, because he told the network to make a 24 hour game show channel, and even if Vox himself was the only man to tune in, he’d keep it running anyway. Thankfully, he wasn’t. The channel was barely profitable, but it got to keep chugging along by the skin of it’s teeth and the grace of catering to Vox exactly what he wanted. A thousand reruns of Name That Scream! , consecutively, with the only break being for commercials. Perfect. The remote dropped from his hand onto the couch, and he put his feet up on the table, settling in to… Well, sit here. Forever. Shit, he didn’t know.

The game show captured his attention for all of thirty seconds before he found himself reflexively opening Voxtagram to mindlessly scroll there instead. Velvette was announcing a product line at eleven thirty at night at that stupid party, Valentino was sexting him like they weren’t broken up right now, a thousand small fires igniting across Hell to put out tomorrow. Influencer, influencer, porn bot (immediate ban, it wasn’t a Val plant), animal photo account, pyramid scheme, influencer. He flicked his eyes to the television, where a very unlikable woman was failing to identify the Wilhem, of all things.

Damn, was there nothing good on these days?

A very Alastor thought of you, Vox.

Vox slammed his phone down on the couch and tuned so aggressively back into the game show that he over-focused and found himself critiquing the set design instead.

Chapter 2: Regularly Scheduled Programming

Notes:

oh my god, first of all.

the support i've gotten on this work had been truly unreal. 600+ kudos. 250+ subscriptions. 3k hits. in basically two days. this is the most attention i've ever gotten and i'm kind of flabbergasted, lol. this is for all of you, now.

NOW WITH FANART https://instagram.com/p/C3vZzzQsmdm/

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Vox peeled his face off his black pleather couch, starting his morning with a healthy dose of annoyance. Honestly, it was unfair he could drool even though his entire head was a fucking smart TV he snagged off his own production line, but such was the drawback of an LCD screen. There was liquid between his screen and the film, sloshing around like a mixture of saliva and cerebrospinal fluid. He was still on the fence about upgrading to a plasma display for this reason. Plasmas tended to have worse reflection handling, but damn, would he love to leave the 'drooling crystals all over his pillow' phase behind.

His flatscreen was still running, playing yet another episode of Name that Scream! to an unseeing audience (him). He did half a pushup, felt his entire back crack off like a string of fireworks, and gently lowered himself back down onto his cushions to avoid angering the beast. Face flat on the arm of the sofa, back where he started. Right. Okay. Next order of business.

Velvette was calling.

His phone hadn't died, he could see a little blinking light on the corner of the device with the intent to alert him of his notifications, but Vel was calling his head directly. This was another reason he hated his smart TV 'upgrade'. Direct, constant access to the internet. That meant direct, constant access right to his fucking head if he didn't turn on Do Not Disturb before he went to sleep. He debated on sending her a snarky text to not fucking call his braincase unless someone was dying, but then his HUD began to boot back up and trickle-fed him the missing pieces.

It was ten in the morning. Val and Vel had tried to text him the entire night long, starting at about two when they got back in, and the only reason they didn't break into his house yesterday evening was he'd just changed the locks the last time he and Valentino had broken up. They were worried, but they weren't exactly going to admit that to him. No, they showed their love through constant, asinine text-spam that only petered out at around five when they both passed out drunk together.

The Vees, everybody. Hell's most dysfunctional polycule.

"Polycule," he groaned to himself, flipping over onto his back and staring blankly at the ceiling. "Yeah, right. Vel isn't even into dudes."

He wasn't quite up to snuff yet, his vision coated in snow as his optical sensors got their acts together. His Memory was dribbling in, a byte at a time, and he folded his hands over his chest to wait for the extras to load in. He'd managed to bootstrap himself to always wake in Safe Mode, with the bare bones that he needed to function, and have the rest of his Memory, BIOS, and OS come on after a few minutes. Like the time it took for him to have a cup of coffee in the morning, or read the paper. It made for some slight entertainment, when someone woke him up and started demanding figures and statistics straight away while he was still trying to remember the day before. His brain, literally, just wasn't online. This problem was often further exacerbated by alcohol.

Vel rang him again, once more disrupting his boot-up procedures, and once more he declined her call. That didn't send the message, as no sooner did he close his eyes to settle in and start running diagnostics on why his back and shoulders smarted so badly did she do it again. He growled, but finally answered, gritting out a garbled "What?"

"Good morning, sleeping beauty," she slurred at him, sounding mildly inebriated. "And how is my favorite ghost in the machine doing today?"

"Fuck you, Vel."

Velvette giggled mildly. "You couldn't afford me, sweetheart. Where are the donuts you bought last night?"

Vox sat up, flicking the call into a corner of his screen. He was awake enough to move now, and god, did he need a hit of caffeine. Caffeine and sugar. Coffee wouldn't cut it. "Are you tracking my purchases, you puppety freak?"

"Not my fault you make them so accessible," she pouted through the receiver. Vox could hear her pulling it away from her cheek, unsticking the glass from her felt-like skin. He cringed at the sound and schlepped to his fridge, pulling out the first can of Voom his hand closed around. He punctured the top with a claw and drank deeply, the little sparkles and cracks of carbonation dancing on his tongue. He heard Velvette make a disgusted noise on the other side of the line.

"Are you seriously drinking Voom at eleven in the fucking morning?!"

"Eat shit," came the easy rebuttal. "I don't have any donuts left." Even if he did, she still wouldn't be getting one. Vox liked his sweet stuff and guarded what he had like a dragon.

"Did you eat a full dozen on your own?"

Did he? His most recent memory hadn't loaded in yet. Vox switched the priorities to plug those in first, telling them to jump the queue. He'd fucked with his HUD settings yesterday, he remembered that, and now everything was off. He felt weird. The Voom hit his stomach like a bowling ball, but he powered through it. Energy drinks on an empty stomach never played nice, but he wasn't going to eat on call. Unlike the other Vees, he still had some degree of manners. "Must have, because they aren't in the fridge or on the counter. Just Chinese food."

"Chinese food? You aren't the type for leftovers."

"I'm not the type to cook, either. Do you want the egg rolls? They're from, uh," he paused to check the packaging. "Wok You Like a Hurricane."

Velvette sniffed derisively. "Pass."

"What, too good for carbs this early, princess?"

"I am not eating cold egg rolls."

"I could microwave them?" A sweet, simpering tone that dripped with fake sincerity. Velvette called him a rather unkind word. He laughed and shut the fridge with his hip. "Okay, okay, point taken. I'll order up some breakfast for you in the sitting room. Is, uh. Is Valentino with you?" Vox tried not to sound like he cared, tried to let the question fall naturally from his mouth. Every word was like a plate being thrown down the stairs, shattering immediately and sending a rain of sharp edges onto his pride. Velvette adjusted herself on the other end of the line with a quiet, but noticeable, grunt of someone who had been out far too late. If she noticed the faked casual tone, she didn't call attention to it.

"Yeah, yeah, our most beloved pimp is passed out on the throw rug. Fucker." Vox heard another rustle as he finished his can of Voom, crushing it in his fingers and tossing it to the trash. He imagined she was flipping Valentino off. The can bounced harmlessly off the lid. He forgot he'd just replaced the open trash with a pedal-operated model. "If the entire room wasn't coated in carpet three inches deep I'd almost feel sorry for him, but he was the one that decided to get pissed. Oh my god, you should've seen the party last night."

Vox allowed her to prattle on about the event, bending down to get that empty can into the bin where it belonged, noticing he was wearing his outdoor loafers. He'd fallen asleep with his shoes on. Wow. He placed a hand into the small of his back to help him stand straight again, feeling the fleshy bits of him contract and pop around his semi-organic bones. If he was any less afraid of pain, he might have done some testing, but he was a bit of a bitch in that regard and wasn't afraid to admit it. He liked to keep his bones inside him, even if it would've been useful to know exactly what he was made of. The thoughts plagued him, really, and his diagnostics didn't exactly give him a by-the-element rundown of his composition.

Ah well. Didn't need to know, now did he? "So," he cut into Velvette's monologue, leaning against his bar and finally delivering the empty can to the bin, "you want me to send up a continental?"

There was a moan of happiness from the other side. "Yeeesss, please. Get us orange juice, Valentino squirreled away some vodka under his hat from the bar. The good stuff."

Vox denied telling her that 'hair of the dog' would only delay and prolong her suffering. The orange juice would help, but adding vodka to it would really only aggravate her hangover. He also declined to tell her they had more money than anyone else in Hell, save for royalty, and didn't need to pinch fancy booze from fancy parties. He studied his claws as his memories finished loading up, his HUD scrolling down the major events hour by hour of the previous twenty four, starting with his itinerary for today. No major engagements until two, and knowing that particular company, they'd probably cancel that meeting anyway. He could go up and make sure those clowns were up and presentable before that. "Yep, will do. Grovestand?"

"Grovestand."

"Noted. I'll put the order in, and-"

Eight o'clock PM. Bought donuts. Pulled Alastor out of a dumpster.

Nine o'clock PM. Arrived home at V Tower. Took Alastor upstairs. Summoned nurses.

Ten o'clock PM. Killed driver. Killed nurses. Dispatched cleaning crews. Ordered Chinese.

Eleven o'clock PM. Vee-Top shoes announced. Consumed Chinese. Checked on Alastor.

Midnight. Automatic shutdown.

His words died in his throat, his eyes following the scroll of yesterday's activities as they rattled off under Velvette's call icon. What the fuck.

"Vox? Voxxie? Vox!" Velvette demanded. The Television Overlord jumped in place, tuning back in to reality. His HUD had to be glitching out, hacked, somehow. That was not real.

Gleefully, like he relished his own suffering, his recorded memories were trotted out before him. "Uh, yeah, sorry, connection issue," he lied, watching as he proved to himself that he really had done all that. A montage, edited down and sped up for his viewing convenience, flickered in his left eye. Footage of him pulling the Radio Demon out of the trash, caring for him, ordering dinner. That wasn't a lie, some nasty shot of malware from a shady site. All of that was real. He had built in recording and video-editing software, had installed it himself, mostly to make fun of the other Vees in a snap. Making a good meme was an art form.

Now and again, he used it for memory purposes, of course, but having his RAM regurgitate some of the most no-brain bullshit he'd ever done was a nightmare. Horrified, he put a pin in the thought to dismantle that feature later. "I'll order something up and join you in a bit, okay? Try to put on pants, Vel."

He hung up before she could insist she was still wearing pants, jackass, and whipped his head to stare at his guest room door. It was closed as he'd left it the night before, no light spilling out from under it indicating that its occupant was awake. Vox couldn't hear any snoring, either, and certainly didn't hear any radio crackling. Not even an undertone, not a peep of that low drone that Alastor almost always produced. Completely silent to others, but like an airhorn to the speakers for him. They were creatures of a different plane, the world of electromagnetic radiation. It was irritating, to have Alastor creep up on him even when he literally broadcasted his presence to Vox and Vox alone. It felt personal.

Before he could stop himself, Vox took three long, purposeful strides to the door, then stopped on a dime, checking himself. His hand dangled in the air before him, halted on its way to the handle. No, there was a better way to check on him. A less intrusive way. A less... Tactile, way. Vox closed his eyes.

He reached out over the signals that pervaded the subworld, his ethereal fingers carding through the airwaves that surrounded them. Vox and Alastor both had a presence on radio waves, though they often occupied different frequencies. He started low, 30MHz, and worked his way up. Nothing, nothing, nothing. No presence, no weight, like a marble in a pocket, someone sitting on a bed. Up, to 100Mhz, Alastor's stomping ground. Nothing. Higher, to where Vox resided. 200Mhz, silence. Higher, higher, 300, 400, 600, 800, until the distant garbling of a million different devices began to shriek in his ears and his CPU auto-killed the process to preserve his systems. He had a blistering headache and found himself now leaning on the door, panting, a hand gripped over his chest. His shirt felt tacky under his fingers. He didn't remember closing the distance.

Vox resigned himself to the fact that he would need to open the door.

His hand, unfortunately, now did not want to open it. Nothing beyond, it seemed to say. Nobody home. It did suck when his body tried to exert its will over his mind. Vox forced himself through the hesitation, slamming the handle down and rushing the door open, letting the momentum carry him forward and into the room. His optical sensors adjusted automatically to the lack of light.

Alastor hadn't moved from his spot. At some point, he'd woken enough to shift, to roll onto his side in bed and- Had he curled his legs up? He had, his knees were now somewhere in the vicinity of his chest, the blankets pulled up to his neck. Maybe he was cold. Vox checked the temperature with a request to his thermostat, and cranked it up a bit higher. He liked to keep it cool for his inner workings, but Vel and Val did always complain it was freezing in here.

Well, Valentino said it was colder than a whore in Antarctica, but the general meaning wasn't lost on him. Wasn't his fault he worked better in the cold.

Vox stood there in the doorway, watching the deer sinner, like some kind of voyeur getting a fix. He hadn't quit breathing during the night, which was a good sign, but still didn't indicate he knew Vox was there. No kick of a limb, no twitch of an ear, just steady, even breathing that Vox fancied might've been a bit deeper than it was the night before. The vents kicked on, blowing warmer air into the room and fluttering the shades and breaking Vox out of his reverie. He closed the door a lot more gently than he'd opened it and crept away, his heart hammering, hyper-aware of the sound of his shoes on the tile. He returned to his kitchen, cracked open another can of Voom, and started organizing a breakfast order from Cracked Egglette, the go-to breakfast spot for the Vees. Ironically, none of them liked eggs.

Vox slid into a barstool, screen going to low-power as he escaped into his own mind. "So, you saved Alastor's life." Fruit parfait for Velvette, strawberry and blueberry, add peaches. "Not a big deal, Vox! Not a big deal." A slice of honeysuckle pound cake for Valentino, pile it high with syrup, powdered sugar, and banana chunks. "Go in there and kill him." One jug of orange juice. Decanter of ice, too. What did he want? "Just go get your Carmine Carbine Pistol and take care of it! Simple." Chocolate chip waffles. Add some chocolate sauce, too, and a big dollop of whipped cream. Sugar bomb kind of morning, he'd already had a Voom, might as well keep it going. "Get up, Vox." Two Vooms, actually, he was sipping between admonishments. "Don't be a wimp. Get up." Was that all? He hit order. Could just get more later if need be. Killing Alastor was a pipe dream.

His eyes slid to the takeout bag he'd never actually gotten around to throwing out last night. It was sagging now, the long hours of sitting in the grease that leaked out of the containers of wonton soup and sweet and sour shrimp having taken their toll. It was vaguely yellow, despite the cool white lights he'd never managed to turn out the night prior illuminating it from above. Vox thought those were on timers connected to his sleep cycle, but shit, all his systems seemed so messed up lately. Later today he'd have to sit down in his surveillance room and get down to the root of the problem, untangle all his processes from one another until he could isolate the culprit that was making his easy, automated life infinitely less easy and automated. Vox penciled that in on his schedule over the meeting with Carmicheal Productions, because he had just gotten an email from them and knew it would say 'we're so sorry, gotta reschedule'. He sent it directly to the trash without looking at it.

His breakfast order was confirmed, that email cycled in along with a text from Velvette bemoaning the fact that mornings existed. Vox smiled softly to himself. He was fond of her, even if saying so was for little bitches. He even forgave the string of orange and ice emojis she sent after. He pryed himself away from the soothing presence of his bar and wandered towards his bedroom. Before he went upstairs to deal with the drama queen and his piss baby of an on again, off again boyfriend, he needed to get cleaned up. Alastor had dripped that horrible, fetid shit he called 'blood' all over his slacks last night and honestly, he didn't need a functioning nose to tell him that he smelled and looked rank. On his way to his suite, he paused and held the door frame with a hand to kick in an eye that had opened on the wall near the baseboard. No dead, wayward sinners were taking residence in his walls, thank you. Red-black goop spilled out of the hole as he left. He'd have to send these shoes to the cleaners.


After a quick shower and a fresh set of clothes, he felt like a new man. Television. Demon thing. Whatever the fuck he was now. Vox tossed on a sweatervest, slippers, and a pair of joggers before he left his penthouse, but not before he planted a camera in Alastor's- no, the guest room. Just a single camera, a coaster-sized thing tucked behind a book, more for his own peace of mind than anything else. He wired it up to his private network, to avoid anyone wandering into his surveillance hub and seeing it, and made sure it was working before he left. Alastor still didn't show up on film well even when unconscious, but the pulsing, cubic mass that he turned into when on a screen was a good enough indicator that he was still there. If he moved at all, Vox could just call a nurse up to his room to handle it. He even found some dregs of kindness in his heart to leave the zonked-out sinner a glass of ice water on a coaster and a granola bar he'd scrounged out of a cabinet. As he puttered around the room, throwing an extra blanket and pillow on the end of the bed and collecting Alastor's ruined clothing, his sensors, quite against his will, told him that Alastor had improved even further. His heart rate had stopped falling off the face of the earth, strong enough now to get picked up without physical intervention, and he was breathing more evenly.

Lovely, but absolutely useless information. He tucked it away in the Alastor folder he kept on his hard drive and left to handle the other Vees.

Walking into the sitting room, you would think he was the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Velvette gave a deflated, but no less genuine little "yippee" from where she had sprawled, lax and limp, over the loveseat where she'd spent the night. Valentino had picked himself up off the floor at some point in the last forty five minutes and hauled himself onto his chaise, where he was lazily smoking a cigarette while also nodding back out to sleep. It was kind of awe-inspiring, honestly, and entertaining in equal measure. The moth demon's eyes may have been horrible, and even more so with those ridiculous heart glasses akimbo on his face, but his sense of smell was phenomenal. He turned his head to look at Vox as he came in, squinting against the light that poured in from the hallway. They had turned this room into a post-blackout crash den, with all the lights off, the curtains drawn, and the only glow in the dark coming from fairy lights around the ceiling and the embers of Valentino's stogie.

"Turn the fuckin' lights out, babe," the moth commanded, waving a hand in a halfhearted attempt at a greeting.

Vox just shut the door and dimmed his screen, which seemed to suffice for Val. Putting the bag down on the coffee table in the conversation pit, he grabbed some plates from the minibar, along with some plastic silverware. He removed his waffles and Valentino's pound cake from the bag, flipping open the tops of the Styrofoam boxes so they could all share. Vox then weathered Velvette's sloppy kisses along one side of his screen as he sat beside her and presented her with her parfait, complete with a plastic spoon.

"You're bloody incredible, Vox," she told him, feeding his ego as well as her face. "Absolutely brill. Couldn't live without you."

"Well, hey, I live to please," he replied, knowing this was drunk Velvette talking, but soaking up the praise regardless. "How went the networking?"

"Went swimmingly," Valentino intoned, clearly still working the alcohol through his blood. "There was an Ars Goetia there that we cuddled up with for most of the night."

"Oh?" That was worth his interest. "Who? A prince?"

"No," Velvette grumbled, through a mouthful of yogurt and oats. "Just a Count. Malphas."

"Malphas? I thought he was still knees-deep in the shit with that priest on earth?" Vox asked, his pupils turning to question marks.

"Got his ass handed to him with a shotgun, last I heard. He's still moping about it." Valentino chittered softly under his breath, wholly focused on his meal. His glasses had slipped down, though that wasn't making his eyesight altogether too much better. Were they not currently broken up, Vox would've gone over there and lovingly fed him bites of the poundcake he adored so much. As it currently stood, he fell backwards into cyberspace and peeked in on Alastor. Still asleep. It was hard to tell if he'd moved any, given his general 'fuck you recording software' aura, but the water and granola bar hadn't been touched. As good an indicator as any.

Vox came up for air again, and neither Vee had noticed his absence. They were chattering, well, more mumbling betwixt themselves, about how useful an Ars Goetia contact would be. Vox had to agree. It was notoriously difficult to break into those upper echelons of society as a sinner. An Ars Goetia that they were on good terms with could prove an invaluable ally, if they could weasel their way in, but with all the chaos currently swirling around Stolas... They'd have to play their cards just right.

He stared down at his waffles, appetite slow to rouse. As much as his internal batteries tried to tell him so, he could not in fact, live off of power alone. He did need actual food to survive. Calories for the fleshy bits of him, and a fucking cable for the mechanical bits, as well as sleep and water. If he had to breathe he would just be a human with some extra parts, but that wasn't a concern of his. Thank god, he didn't want to know where the lungs would fit in here. He poked at his food with his fork, painstakingly cutting off a little piece. Any calories was better than no calories at all.

"Malphas, huh?" Vox popped the bite in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "Y'know, the priest debacle could be good for us. He looks weak right now. A couple of Catholics just thwarted a century-old plan to raze the mortal world. If we move in on him, subtly of course," he stressed, seeing the look in Val's eyes, "we could get a foothold in demon royalty. Imagine the prestige we'd command if we could break into the other rings? Triple Vee ads in Lust, in Gluttony, in Envy? We'd be rolling in dough before we could blink." He was getting excited, his glorified calculator that he called a logistical processor already haring off and drawing up potential ad campaigns.

His best friends, business partners, and all around most trusted individuals in the world stared at him blankly. Vox dumbed it down a bit for them. "If Malphas gets us out of Pride, we won't have to worry about the other Overlords on our turf. We'll be someplace they can't touch, unless they want to hire imps and hellhounds. It'd be good."

Velvette, having demolished her parfait in record time, leaned her full bodyweight onto Vox's shoulder. Being made of literal velvet and stuffing, she didn't weigh much, but it was enough to incapacitate his arm. Especially with the way she lazily wrapped her own around him, squeezing her cheek into his bicep. "You're the brains of the operation, Vox," she hummed. If she didn't have a half-empty Screwdriver in front of her, he might've taken her seriously, but he ruffled her hair with his claws indulgently anyway.

"And don't you forget it," he concurred, pushing his waffles over towards her. Velvette dug in greedily, which was for the best. Vox hated wasting money, but he was too worked up to really eat. He checked on Alastor again. Still no change. Damn, this sot was going to take up a non-trivial amount of brainpower until he was better.

Val whistled for his attention. Annoyed, Vox exited cyberspace, glaring at Valentino's wiggling fingers. "Eyes on me darling," he ordered. "Where are you scampering off to?"

"Work," Vox bit out, abnormally short-tempered. Even after a bad breakup, he was often better at controlling outbursts of animosity. He felt Velvette cast her eyes on him, and made himself cool his jets. "I have a meeting with Carmicheal at two, and after that, I need to check my systems. They're on the fritz."

Flopping over in a shamelessly whorish manner, Valentino pushed his plate aside to put his first set of elbows on the table. "Aww, amante," he cajoled, "all you need is a little TLC."

"I don't think that'll fix the problem, Val, but thanks for the offer."

The flat tone drew another whistle, or at least an approximation of one, this time from Vel. "Shut your shit straight down, Val. Somebody's still pissy."

Valentino hissed at her, and just like that, Vox's patience ran dry. He put another bite in his mouth then stood up, barely dodging Valentino's lightly reaching arm from grabbing his sweatpants. "Well, one of us is sober, so I'm going to go run our conglomerate. You two have fun with your hangovers."

He waltzed out, listening to Val's desperate, pathetic wheedling for him to come back and sit with him, and the backdrop of Velvette's laughter. Surveillance room. It was time for a diagnostics sweep.


Painstakingly, Alastor clawed his way out of the void.

His body felt cold and heavy and not his own, lead-like limbs. He almost immediately dropped out again, but managed to exert one wilting stab of self control. He remained conscious, even as he curled up tight, shivering. He was so cold. It was so cold there. He did not want to go back.

Hello, babydoll. Nice to see you.

Wrenching a grin onto his face, Alastor pried his eyes open. It was dark. He didn't recognize the room. He didn't recognize the bed. He didn't sleep in silk sheets. His bed was linen, beautifully temperature-friendly and pilled linen, one of the minor pieces of imperfection he thought made life sweeter. His pillowcase may have been silk, but that was for his hair, and only when he was alive. Not here. Not in Hell. This was not his home.

It was looking at him, staring from every direction, a thousand peering eyes from a thousand hiding places. Alastor couldn't prevent the heave his body gave in response, but he could will it to stop before it got worse, clenching his teeth together so tightly his gums bled. It was nauseating. He didn't have anything in his body to be nauseated for.

Aw, didn't like our little stay in the Pit? I let you out, because I'm so nice, but if you aren't appreciative, I could show you how lovely it can be with an extended stay?

"Not necessary," he whispered, the radio filter layering over his voice like a soft shroud. The impersonal nature of it was another shield. He liked to be so layered in armor. "I saw enough of the sights."

Hmm.

The flippant, passionless drone of that note scraped over his eardrums. Alastor's hands shredded the sheets. He stared at the ceiling, eyes swimming, blinking dials to unfocused pupils and back again. He didn't know how he was alive. He didn't know why. He hated not knowing. He hated how unsure he was that this was better than the second death. His chest felt like a bellows, sucking wind that didn't seem to actually satiate his need for oxygen. He laid a hand over his ribs, found he had been clothed in garments that weren't his. More silk. The glide was beginning to drive him wild. There was nothing here that felt real, felt tangible. It was all flimsy and gauzy and insubstantial, like spider webbing between his fingers, gossamer in his brain. He closed his eyes, trying for sleep. The Pit stabbed into the empty space beyond them.

He popped them back open, sweat prickling at his temples, and pulled himself into a sitting position. Immediately, he clutched at his head, his stomach again revolting and trying to punch it's way out of his abdomen. Alastor waited for it to subside, swallowing down the bile. He was still shaking. He was still smiling.

Now we're moving! Go on to the bathroom, babydoll. Let's get a look at you.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and collapsed the second he put weight on them, a less than graceful fall to the ground. The carpet felt nice against his skin. It was rough, scratchy, more present than all of that sheer, smooth fabric on the bed. A crescendo of pain in the back of his brain stem got him moving again, washing his nerves in frigid pinpoints. He tried to get himself upright again with the bedframe, but he couldn't get a good enough grip. His fingers slid uselessly over the wood. Crawling it was. Alastor did not allow himself to think about how pitiful this looked. That would mean he lost, and he would not lose. He would not break. It could not break him.

What felt like an eternity later, he made it to the cracked-open door of the bathroom. A plug-in nightlight cast the room in a blue tint, and even that much hurt his retinas. He pooled into a heap on the floor, feeling the cool ceramic tile under his cheek. Alastor was still watched here, from the corners, the shadow cast from the shower curtain, peering down at him. He grinned in that direction, felt the eyes narrow.

So cocky. Up with you.

He obeyed, smiling all the while. His hands wouldn't grip, but his claws were still good. He thrust them into the door and destroyed the wood of the cabinet on his way up, eventually gaining one finger, then a few more, on the corner of the vanity. He pulled his exhausted body up, one inch at a time. His hooves slipped on the floor, unable to find purchase, but he made it, legs splayed awkwardly to hold his weight, bowed over the sink on his arm. At some point, his left hand had wound its way into his hair, was pushing it out of his eyes. Alastor looked at his reflection without seeing it. It seemed like him, grey and black and red, a borrowed shirt half-open over his torso. Someone had bandaged up his angelic wound. It felt like everything on the inside was trying to make it's way out. He dropped his gaze, neck going limp, concentrating on breathing.

No, no, look. Look at yourself.

Something grabbed his hair and forced his head back, back to that image of himself in the mirror. His bared his teeth, a grimace, the corners of his mouth straining from how hard he was working to keep that smile on. It tittered at him.

You make this so hard. What are you proving? Who are you proving it to? Not me. I have all the time in the world. You'll break.

"You'll have to work for it," he rasped, delighting in his defiance. "When I go, you'll have to find someone else. You love me."

I don't.

The world became a smear of color. Alastor barely felt the corner of the marble sink crack into his skull. The impact, certainly he felt that, but at some point the pain threshold had capped out and he could feel no more. Blood trickled down his face, making the temperature problem even worse. The vent he'd landed by turned on, blasting him with lukewarm air. It felt like God's idea of a joke.

But you know who does, babydoll? You know who does love you? The Princess and her friends. They mourned for you. They grieved your loss. Why don't we prove to them we're still around?

Alastor groped for the sink again, arm trembling as he raised it in the air. His blood began to dry against his forehead. He closed his fingers around nothing, grasping at straws. His staff summoned itself, planted in the ground by his ear, like an angelic spear. A threat.

Broadcast.

Notes:

i added the horror tag. for a reason.

Chapter 3: Swing and a Miss

Notes:

-cries in 7k chapter-

thank you to everyone who's commented. im sorry i can't get to them all, but every single one of them is goading me on for more, so please keep leaving them! sorry that this one is so long, but there's no good place to split it!

optional listening, starting at 'Alastor's eyes pinged open,' :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP1c5-eE00A

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

For once, public belief was correct: computers did dream. Just not of electric sheep. At least, Vox wasn't dreaming of those tonight. He wasn't even fully asleep, not really, not the full shutdown his systems went into if he didn't move or twitch or input a command for long enough. He'd laid down in bed, wiped down his screen with a microfiber cloth and a bit of Windex, and gave himself over wholly to cyberspace.

At least he'd made it to bed this time, got himself flat and comfortable before he went completely, totally boneless.

Vox's surveillance room was nice, but it was a lot to take in and handle at once. All that data streaming into his cores made it hard to focus when he plugged in, but boy, the flow of information was unparalleled. Constant input from all his hidden cameras, every search query, purchase, and incognito tab, feeding into personal files on every sinner in Hell that so much as looked at a VoxTech device! It was like a waterfall, a never-ending surge of dopamine, but he could only take so much before he had to jack out, lest he waste the entire day scrutinizing the life of one poor scrub in Zestial's side of the Pentagram. Which he had today. He had gone in with the intent to hunt down whatever little glitch was cascading into the rest of his programming. Then he'd seen a bulk pre-order purchase of Vee-Tops go through and, whoops, there he went, pissing away the hours identifying a career scalper that lived just outside of the Clock Tower and hawked rare and limited-edition goods.

All in all, brilliant work.

Not.

Vox liked to call his monstrosity of servers, monitors, and computers the Tower of (Techno)Babble, which was only funny to him and nobody else. Vel and Val rarely went in there. Velvette because the fibers she shed would get stuck in the fans, ending up in a constant need for cleaning, and Valentino because it was even colder in there than in Vox's penthouse. He claimed he didn't make a habit of hanging out where he could see his own breath. Not Vox's fault his circulatory system was shit. Maybe if he wore actual clothes and not just his wings and fishnets, he wouldn't be complaining about the temperature all the time. Idiot.

Snuggled in under his bedding, head propped up on a pair of thin, firm pillows, Vox put those thoughts out of his mind and sank deep within the code that made up... Well, him. It was like putting his head into the ocean and opening his eyes, watching the fish swim by through the coral, mesmerized by the movement and color and life. He could see every packet and bit of data as it was ferried around his inner workings, flying around at 200 kilometers per millisecond. The tiny, self-governing program that kept his heart beating, the protocols that dictated what his levels of organic substances like 'cholesterol' and 'triglycerides' should be, the myriad of red flags indicating every tiny thing that was outside the 'normal' range that he ignored. If he paid attention to every minute issue his anatomy raised with how he was living, he would be micromanaging everything down to the amount of steps he took and nutrients he consumed. That was crazy nonsense for social-media obsessed teens or health-obsessed nuts, of which he was neither. He was fine as long as he could move.

He sieved the organic from the inorganic, trying to find out what was disrupting everything else, but he was getting nowhere fast. He was too involved, too 'in the middle' of it all. If he wanted to isolate the problem, he'd need a more... Firm, split. So, he disconnected his brain from his meat, and then just... Let go. Floated off, untethered from his physical frame, and stood back.

The first time he'd done this, it was an accident. He'd been stretching his wings, looking for new powers, and stumbled on this absolutely mind-boggling effect. He'd been terrified out of his wits, and for good reason. Vox literally just left his meat shell behind and escaped to the wider beyond, the world of information, with no real consequences to his soul if he didn't go back. He had, of course, he'd scrambled back to throw himself into his bones and swore never to do it again. Over time, he'd dipped his toes into the water, testing the limits and the boundaries. Now he was fully comfortable with the process, and even found it useful. It was easier to be objective this way, to look in on his physical body without the distraction of being in his physical body.

So, he kicked back and he waited for the problem child to reveal itself. His organic systems seemed fine, disentangled from the outside world, partitioned away in a little virtual box while he twiddled his thumbs. The problem had to lie outside his body, which was a relief. He hadn't yet had to do any major debugging on his frame. Once, he'd stolen Valentino's Fizzbot Kitty to rip off his head and set it on the table for reasons he couldn't recall, and he didn't want to go through that again. Being a wholly metaphysical being, at least without the option of returning to reality, sucked, thank you.

He 'moved', as much as he could move, towards the other parts. The bits of him that interacted with the outside world, but not the fleshy parts. The routines that took the info from his brain's responses and enacted them on the environment, for instance, the timer that was meant to turn out his lights if he fell asleep without turning them off at the switch. There, that was the problem, the data coming out of his body wasn't configured correctly to interface with most of V Tower, and that was causing a cascade of fuckups for the rest of his programming.

He had just begun to troubleshoot when Vox was forced to stop. His audio software reported a noise. That was another downside of being disconnected from his actual, physical self: his reaction time was now complete dogshit. He paused, watching his 'ears' like a hawk, but... Nothing. No more blips of caution. No more strange noises. Vox settled back into the work. Now why was information coming out in an incorrect format?

Swanning betwixt organic and inorganic, his flesh and his code, Vox got into a bit of a rhythm. He enjoyed debugging, though he enjoyed it far more when it wasn't his own fucking head he was having to debug. He'd nearly found and fixed the problem (his literal subconscious tried to enact an upgrade that bitched up everything else, how fitting) when, once again, his audio sensors started complaining. Growling, and with a stern warning to his brain to not do any further upgrading when he wasn't looking, he fell back into his soma.

Nothing. Pure silence. Again. The ceiling above him was dark, painted with white stars. Valentino liked to make fun of them, and that was the chief reason why they didn't do any 'activities' in his bedroom anymore. His bamboo sheets were soft and smooth, black and ringed with blue VoxTek branding. His thin shirt and long nightwear pants were comfortable and warm, nicely hemmed to fit him for maximum coziness. There was absolutely nothing wrong in his world.

"I better not've broken my own goddamned ears when I was fixing my brain," Vox muttered, shutting off his optical sensors and dimming his screen. He was alone. It was quiet. Valentino didn't have the code to get in, his phone and head were both on Do Not Disturb, nobody was going to come and bother him for anything. At least, not if they valued their lives...

Vox indulged in a guilty pleasure. He adjusted himself in his bed, wiggling down further to pull the covers up to his neck. He put his arms under his head, dug into his archives, and pulled up one of Alastor's past broadcasts.

Okay, he didn't hate the radio, even if he claimed to. He much preferred the medium of television, but radio itself, the concept, not the demon, was fine. Television wouldn't exist without it, after all, and Alastor had a gift for the art form that was a live broadcast. Vox had started recording them, every last one, to look for a weakness. As the rivalry grew between them, he was just saving them for posterity and preservation's sake, tucking them into Alastor's folder to listen to when he felt nostalgic. He dipped into the folder, set the database to sort by 'content', and picked one he had labeled as 'mostly music'. With one last moment spent listening to the penthouse, he set the recording to play softly out of his own speakers.

Alastor had been in a modern mood that day. Most of what the Radio Demon played was from the 40s. Rum and Coca-Cola, Amapola, Frenesi. That fucker had a taste for jazz, like the wimpy, limp, old-timer prick he was, but Vox couldn't deny that it was... Nice, to hear music he remembered, even if he had embraced dubstep fully in death. Nowadays, all he heard was that sultry, cheap, unoriginal pop that pervaded Valentino's studio, or Velvette's spunky dance track that coated her floor. They were younger than him, the both of them, and not by a scant few years either. Valentino was killed in the late 70s, and Velvette was still scrubbing the stink of the living off of her most days. There were nearly thirty years between him and Valentino, and it was hard to wrap his head around the concept most of the time, even with eternity to spend here in Hell together.

Alastor had ended that broadcast with Till the End of Time, falling directly in line with his sick sense of humor, and laughed about the plight they all shared. It almost felt like a sign. Vox felt himself starting to drift off and opened Solitaire in the background, simulating it on his screen. Alastor chattered away in the background, as a new archive loaded in, and if Vox ignored the fact that it was him, it was nearly comforting. He intentionally blinded himself to the guts of the game so he couldn't cheat and sorted out the cards. Solitaire was one of the few games he could play that wasn't trivially easy, with the calculator built into his brain. Another song started to play. Vox got through one rotation of the deck before he closed his eyes fully, heaved a deep breath, and felt his thoughts go wonderfully, beautifully fuzzy...

Me and My Shadow, 1927. Isn't that such a relatable song? Hello, listeners. I know it's been a while since you've heard my voice. Thankfully, not as long as my last hiatus, haha!

That didn't sound like a recording. Vox's eyes sprang back open. His endocrine system got giddy, preparing buckets worth of epinephrine to dump into his blood.

Tonight is clear, temperatures seem to be holding steady at around sixty eight degrees Fahrenheit. That's twenty Celsius, for those of you who prefer that style of measurement. Not a cloud in the sky to be seen! Absolutely lovely weather, I'd say, if a touch dry. I could stand for a bit of humidity, personally, but I'm not one to complain!

His voice was throaty and low, almost rough, like new pavement that hadn't yet had fresh asphalt poured over the gravel. Vox turned the archives off, and he could still hear Alastor's voice in his ears, a buzzing feeling against his speakers. The radiowaves he ran on had been hijacked, he couldn't stop listening if he tried. That was, as the kids said nowadays, not good.

Who am I, why, it's your host. Alastor. Yes, that's right, the Radio Demon is live and in the flesh. Isn't it funny how these things seem to work?

Vox stumbled out of bed and caught himself on the wall, his legs weak and wobbling, not exactly understanding why they weren't asleep. He fetched his gun from his nightstand, then toddled across his room. He opened his bedroom door, sending a quick jolt to turn on the smart lights in the living room, already knowing what he would find. The guest room was open. There was a trail of something slick and black across the floor to the door to the hall, which was still locked, but that didn't mean shit. Alastor could travel through shadows.

He'd escaped. Just walked right out.

"Should've set every light in the house to full power," Vox muttered. "You fuckin' idiot."

From what I can tell, I have been gone for six months and five days. Much more preferable than seven years! I hope you didn't miss me too badly, listeners. You won't be rid of me that easy. I survived angelic attack and I'm still here to tell the tale. How many others can lay claim to such a feat?

On that last word, feat, Alastor's voice seemed to break into a sibilated growl. The static covered the worst of it, but Vox thought he picked up a wheezing note, a pant for air. Alastor smoothed it over easily, like he'd meant for that strain to come through, like it had never happened at all. It was all a trick of the air, the quality of the radio.

Not many, my friends, not many. To my owned souls and contractees, tribute will be due soon, so do endeavor to tally up your amounts and get them suited for collection before I come calling. Now, why don't we hear another song? I'm feeling old this time, something vintage, from my youth. It's been so long since I've heard rag.

Piano music assaulted his speakers. Jazzy, because of-fucking-course it was, but not quite swing. That ragged, syncopated rhythm, his audio processing software told him, was indicative of ragtime music. An individual piece was called a 'rag' and, typically, was composed for piano. The style had it's roots in African-American communities as far back as the 1890s-

"Other priorities!" He growled to himself, killing whatever son of a bitch search engine was rattling facts off at him to save himself the Memory, and maybe out of a little touch of spite. In a rare faux pas, Alastor spoke over the beginning of the track.

I am coming to you live from the top of V Tower. Yes, listeners, I know, what am I doing there? Well, that is for me to know. Enjoy the song.

Fucker.

"Okay," Vox muttered to himself, heading for the door. He threw his hat on his head and grabbed a pair of shoes from the tray by his front door, accompanied by a jacket from the rack. "You have about thirty seconds before-"

- [radvelvetcakes] DO YOU FUCKING HEAR THAT?

Damn, Velvette was on the ball today. She'd tagged him on Votter about the current catastrophe already. She had her ear to the ground at any given point, and typically waited until she saw a piece of news from three separate accounts before she started disseminating the gossip. It hadn't been a minute, and she was circulating the drama as fast as she could hit 'retweet'. This was quick, even for her. It struck Vox that this kind of reaction must've been because it was Alastor, and she knew how much that horrid excuse for an Overlord riled Vox. She was also well aware of the danger he posed, even to someone like her. Especially to someone like her.

- [radvelvetcakes] WHAT DO WE DO???????

- [moth_pimp] yeah uh. are we gonna deal with this or?

Valentino had been here for long enough to grow out of his caution where Alastor was concerned, but Velvette was young, new. She'd fallen screaming into Hell while he was gone, that seven year sabbatical he refused to explain, and had never actually met the Radio Demon herself. All she knew were tales, myths about how Alastor had slammed into Hell like a shooting star. Some said as hard as Lucifer, though that was likely an over-exaggeration. All the same, every story included the detail of how Alastor had toppled Overlords that had reigned for decades, and forced their souls to wail for all eternity on his murderous broadcasts. Her fear of him was propped by stories from Vox himself, long yarns he'd spun about the epic battles they waged over turf around V Tower, how hard he'd had to work for every single victory, draw, and loss he'd ever escaped with. Hindsight made him regret those long hours he spent with her while prepping her to become the third Vee, teaching her how to be bitchy, to carry herself with confidence at every point, how to manipulate the narrative to her own ends. She was afraid. She wouldn't say so, he'd broken that habit quite quickly, but he knew she was.

This was his responsibility. Her fear and the situation both. He tagged her and sent back one line, and Vox hoped it would soothe her.

- [voxtagram_8k] Stay in your room. I'll handle it.

Tough talk, out of him, but the fuck else was he meant to do? He'd brought Alastor here, this was his fault. He jammed one arm through the coat and slung it over his shoulders before dashing out of his penthouse. The hallway was empty, nobody but him and the other Vees were up at this hour. All the staff had left to go home for the day, save the cleaning crews, and they scheduled their visits to this floor well in advance to avoid running afoul of the Overlords. He looked up at the camera down the hall, the one that pointed at the main elevator, the one he'd fried and had to have replaced yesterday. That would take too long, who knew what Alastor was doing, how much time it would take him? This would be faster.

He took a deep, synthetic breath and centered himself, felt the thrumming of the power cell that resided somewhere in the soft space between his ribs. He focused in on it, the potential energy he was, and reached out for the electricity that huddled in the camera, that beckoned to him.

Then he tugged on it.

In a snap, he was in the wires, felt a million junctions and outlets all across the Tower. Again, he didn't like being a metaphysical being in totality, but this was different. He didn't have a body because that body was pure energy, potential energy now, but with the kinetic power stored up to race anywhere in a split-second. He held on, counting away the moments as he grasped the thick armored cable that went towards the ceiling, and then let himself go. It felt somethin like climbing a rope with just his arms, but once he set himself going, it was a breeze. He shot up, following the bends in the cabling as he crested the Tower faster than the elevator could ever hope to be. He aimed for the junction box on the ceiling and hit it, then leapt out, letting go of the 'air' he'd been holding in. His person remembered it was a person, and ejected him from the electric field that his flesh and bone was not meant to occupy.

When he'd first found out he could turn himself into electricity, right after the 'out of body' incident, he'd thrown up after he left the wires. Now he landed on his feet with barely a puff, bursting onto the terrace that made up the very tip-top of V Tower. The windows had been removed, as it was currently summer, and this place was a great venue for small, intimate parties. Black scaffolding held up the pointed roof where it encircled the radio tower, and plants ringed the outside, well-tended by the gardeners on staff.

He glared frantically around the greenspace, his HUD kicking on and lighting up. Alastor's staff had been stabbed into the antenna that controlled all the satellite signals coming to and from the Tower, enabling him to broadcast with an abnormally large reach in frequency and distance alike. That explained why Vox could hear him despite being on his own turf, Alastor was blasting every single wavelength with his bullshit.

The Radio Demon himself had his back to the antenna, eyes closed. With the low lighting, the pink-blue-purple glow that was permeated everywhere the Vees touched, Vox could see his eyes moving under the lids. His left eye was a spinning dial, the right, completely still. It was weird and disturbing in a way that was unusual, even for that freak.

"Hey, asshole!" Vox challenged, throwing his arms open. He could feel the drones that circled the tower homing in on him, capturing footage for tomorrow's morning news. "Are you gonna pay for all the airtime you're eating?!"

Alastor's eyes pinged open, still turning, but after a harsh blink, they were once more normal. Black pupils, candy apple irises, carmine scerla, if it wasn't such an overdone complaint, Vox would tell him his color palette was unoriginal at best. As it was, he put his hands to his hips and glared, curling his lip into a sneer as he leaned forward. Vox's presence turned the ragtime piano into a drum and bass track, morphed it into something electrical rather than purely tactile and real. "This shit isn't cheap you know! One hour is five thousand dollars, cash up front!"

The grin that split Alastor's face was nothing short of pure, feral excitement. His ears shot up, twisting towards the Overlord's direction, and he hopped to his feet. Without using his arms. Showoff. "Vox, my good man!" He said cheerily, clapping his hands together. "It is a pleasure to see you, yes indeed! How long has it been?"

Vox blinked, took a step back. Alastor didn't look right, even beyond the changes Vox himself has orchestrated. He was in a stolen dress shirt and slacks, his red-black pants replaced with a pair of Vox blue-black ones instead. The top button was opened, the collar folded down and crisp, and he'd dug up a pair of gloves someplace. The only thing he was wearing that was his were his shoes, which Vox had intended to take to a professional cleaners at some point in the coming week. That goodwill was now burned. Vox's hands curled into fists at his sides, darting his eyes over the deer sinner, trying to pick out what his systems were registering as 'wrong'. Nothing glaring, beyond the obvious. It was just a feeling he got, a twist in his circuitry someplace that was setting off some long-forgotten alarm bell. This... Wasn't going to be a normal fight.

"I dunno. You ran from me seven years ago, so I think that long?" He cackled, putting on that stage front that he always did when he and the Radio Demon got into a spat. It was good for the ratings. Alastor tittered and began to approach, circling. Vox fell into step opposite him, sidestepping, waiting for the hostilities to erupt.

"Now, now, Voxel," he chastised, like Vox was some petulant child. Used his full name, too. "Don't go telling lies. We mutually agreed that one was a draw."

"Yeah, 'cause you had somewhere else to be, dickhead."

"Language."

"Fuck yourself," Vox instantly spat back. "You couldn't be bothered to stick it out, so you ran. That's a loss."

Alastor's smile became all-encompassing, his eyes turning black, ears tipping backward. Most people read that as fear, but it wasn't. That was aggression. "Oh, was it now?" He simpered, as if he was oh-so-sorry. "Well, allow me to even up the score."

"Oh, you absolute- I'm in my pajamas, bitch!"

Alastor did not seem to care.

Vox was expecting tentacles. He was expecting moppets. He was expecting the weird voodoo shit that Alastor always pulled out on him. What he was not, in a million years expecting, was for Alastor to sprout those fuck-off big antlers he reserved for threat displays only and charge him with them. He startled and put his hands out just in time to catch the weaponry before he got gored, but Alastor's thin physique hid a deceptive amount of strength. The deer sinner shoved him back, back, back, his shoes scraping the ground as Vox struggled to get a grip on the stone. The breath he didn't have was driven out of him as his back cracked against the transformer box, struggling to keep the sharp points out of his chest.

The transformer box. Vox smirked, pushing back against Alastor without making any headway, but he didn't need to. He was right where he wanted to be. "I suggest you look where you're going, bambi."

Alastor snorted and huffed. Vox let go of the antlers and let himself drop into a crouch, scraping his claws on the metal of the machinery on his way down. All of that sweet, sweet electricity arced out and sparked in the air, then grounded itself through him, supercharging his power cell. He rallied back, feeling the shock like a kick of Voom right to his heart, and drove his shoulder straight into Alastor's stomach.

The deer sinner grunted, and whatever smarmy remark he was about to make was cut off by the hundred Joules of power that Vox delivered through the blow. He staggered away, putting distance between himself and the TV Overlord, and Vox was grateful for the breathing room. He put a hand to his knee and shoved himself back to full height, the abundance of power surrounding him like a blasphemous halo. They stared each other down, waiting for the next move. Feeling one another out. Alastor bared his teeth.

"Good show, but a cheap trick. How's about this?"

The air itself glowed green, flooding the cool tones of V Tower with sickening light. Alastor raised his hands and called upon the extent of his magics, finally opening his portals and putting this fight back into more 'normal' territory. The ground shook underfoot, and Vox looked down just in time to jump out of the way of a tentacle that was coming to end his life. Another one followed up, and another, and another, and Vox found himself doing something approaching a silly little jig to avoid getting his foot caught in a snare. The repair bill for the roof was about to be nasty.

All the while, Alastor laughed. The music changed, back to piano, as Alastor's influence returned in full force. "Doesn't it remind you of old times, pal? Before all this silly 'Vees' nonsense."

"Don't call them silly!" Vox snapped. All he heard in response was mirth, at his expense, no less. He pulled the gun from his jacket and clicked the safety off, snarling, the energy bleeding out of the box he'd punctured making his batteries blare with overload warnings. He shut down the popups as fast as they appeared, and while he was at it, logged out of Votter, because Velvette's frantic tweeting was getting a bit much. "Are you broadcasting this, you psycho?!"

Waltzing over to the radio tower, Alastor removed his staff from where he'd driven it through the steel latticework, and spun it in one hand before he tucked it into the crook of his elbow. He was like a virus, he needed an infection point, but once he took root... "It reminds me of our old dramas," he said pleasantly. Staff reclaimed, he turned his eyes on Vox, and snapped his own neck.

The thing about the fights he had with Alastor was that they were never just physical. Well, as 'physical' as arcs of electricity and shadow monsters could be. Alastor drained everyone in a fight, exhausted them, sapped the energy from their bones until they could no longer continue. Even those with the height of stamina, Zeezi for example, could never last more than a minute or two against his onslaught. Nobody but Vox, that was, because he understood how Alastor did it. He fought on two planes. The material, and the electromagnetic. Most people couldn't ever hope to go toe to toe with him on the second one, but that was why he and Alastor were rivals.

Because Vox could.

He threw up his firewalls just as Alastor's mind slammed into them, and now things were getting spicy. It was hard to see where he was going with Alastor psychically trying to scramble his brains like this, but he knew that there was no room for error. The railing up here was just for show. Any amount of force, and he'd go straight over. Or through. He couldn't afford to lose too much ground, even if his entire FOV was covered in radio-related snow and distortion. He grit his teeth.

Vox exerted himself over the airwaves, drowned out the music with something of his own, and retaliated. He dug his hands deep into the static and struck back, piercing Alastor's own guard. Alastor's music was lost in the sea of synths and electronic beats, and he visibly cringed. Vox felt pride purr inside him, rubbing against his sides like a fat, well-loved cat that was begging for a second dinner.

"Didn't like that one, did you, shitlord?!"

"As I said before," Alastor hissed through his teeth, still smiling, forever smiling, even as he held a hand to his no-doubt aching head, "language!"

The tentacles were back with a vengeance. Vox fended them off as best he could, but he couldn't handle quite so many at once, not when he was trying so hard to not back up directly off the tower. One of them poked through his defenses and pinged into his screen, denting his face and piercing the film. Vox slapped a hand to the wound and recoiled, feeling the liquid crystal he produced instead of blood begin to run down his face. He touched the discoloration on his screen gingerly with his tongue even as his mouth shied away from the corner, like a cold sore, like he'd bit his cheek.

Okay. Whatever he'd felt for Alastor, whatever warmth had grown in his chest for the poor man who had been left to die in the garbage, thrown away like a piece of trash, was now dead. That killed it.

Vox shot at a shadow tendril, and it flinched, spewing green-black goo everywhere that was going to be hell to get out of his clothes. He was going to have to burn these pajamas. He was still upset that Alastor had the gall to start shit in the middle of the night to begin with. He didn't even let him change into a suit! The deer demon circled back on him, started stalking closer, effortlessly avoiding his own tentacles. As he popped a few more bullets into more marauding shapes that were getting a bit too close for comfort, he was thankful for Valentino's insistence that a day at the range counted as a date. It was difficult to both aim and keep an eye on Al, especially while trying not to go screen-over-ass over the railing, but the practice certainly helped.

His HUD chimed at him with an analysis. Vox didn't read it, but the information was plugged into his processors anyway by his overzealous frontal lobe. The logical part of his brain banged its ashtray against its desk. They were both of the opinion this was vital information.

He's dancing, he told himself, a whisper-quiet observation.

Was he dancing? Vox slipped backwards, his proximity sensors telling him he'd just avoided a second blow to the face by the glow of his teeth, and took a closer, more active look.

He was.

It wasn't club dancing, no, not that mindless gyration of body and soul that was dictated by whatever felt good. The Radio Demon was a product of his time in many ways. His voice, his mannerisms, the way he carried himself at all points, through all things. It was infuriating how much he refused to modernize, to get with the times, but goddamn. Vox had to admit one thing.

The man could jive.

But so could he. He fell into step, copying Alastor's movements as much as he could, the twist of his leg and sway of his trunk as he spun around the tentacles. It felt a bit like a Fox Trot, though they were both doing it on their own, and at speeds that were not exactly suitable for trotting. Studying him like this, Vox even noticed that the floor glowed right before something from his nightmares came sprawling out of the spot. If he thought about it, this whole battlefield was one glorified version of DDR, and at that, Vox was the fuckin' champion.

He got more comfortable, fell into the groove, and now this was easy. He couldn't get a clear shot through the thicket of writhing appendages from the depths, but that didn't matter. Alastor always seemed to be immune to bullets anyway, shrugging off lead slugs like they were beestings. Once, when he got really frisky, he'd bitten Vox's gun in half and spit it out right in his face. That had been... A moment in Vox's life, that he certainly tried not to replay every time he cleaned his replacement. All the while, he was still shrugging off Alastor's mental poking, the music from the radio station he'd been forcefully tuned into squealing and mutating in his speakers. Right now, he thought he had the upper hand on that battlefield, and was holding his own in reality. Alastor chuckled, the tentacles ceasing their advance. Vox glanced at him questioningly. That couldn't be good.

The deer circled his hands before him. Left wrist, right wrist. He looked... Contemplative.

"What's the matter, bucko? Gettin' tired, old man?" Vox sneered, covering up just how much he was finding this whole thing to be a massive tax on his muscles. He'd gotten soft without Alastor around. It had been seven years since he'd had a big throw-down, now all his battles were fought with money and manpower that didn't come from himself. But shit, he wasn't about to lose. His heart was insistingly pushing an error message, though, which was concerning. This needed to be over soon. The music turned piano-heavy again. Alastor winked at him, barely looking winded.

"A good pianist can have a tremendous left hand and give you that beat, but still furnish you with the music from the right hand," Alastor informed him. Vox wondered if he'd lost his damned mind. "Today you always find a bass player or a drummer helping out the piano player. The left hand's a lost art. But here's how it was in my day."

Alastor moved again, and so did his summons. Vox fell back into step, but with such attention called to hands...

Is he giving me a hint? A fucking tutorial?!

He was. Alastor lunged, Vox sprang away, but now his systems were feeding him more information. His hands were what were puppeteering his eldritch backup. The left hand was mostly still, just doing same motion over and over again. His fingers were pulsing in time to an unheard beat, keeping time, but his right... Alastor twirled his right pointer, and Cthulu's left pinky swung for Vox, nearly severing his head from his neck. If Vox had been even a split-second off cue, that would've been it.

His right hand controlled fine movements. His left kept the show running.

Good to know.

With the missing piece, Vox scraped together what he had left of his power boost from absorbing the transformer. He balled it up, held it his power cell, and held still. Waited. Held, held held...

Alastor rumbled, a deep reverberation from his throat, and jabbed his staff in Vox's direction.

"Swing it!"

Every tendril came after Vox, and he let go of the energy through the little antenna on his head. He called it Discharge. Valentino always made a rude gesture about it. Velvette called it his last ditch effort. No matter the name, he fried everything in a fifteen feet sphere around him, electrocuting every piece of calamari that Alastor had thrown at him... And a few unfortunate Voyeur Scopes that were trying to collect footage. He thought he heard a shriek that his technological brain couldn't even comprehend and didn't begin to try, and his meaty bits didn't put forth much of an attempt to do so either. The air around him became significantly less black and writhing and slimy, as the tendrils burned and sizzled and retreated, back to the hellscape from which they came. He surged forwards to close the gap between himself and the Radio Demon, now that he was out of the corner he'd been placed in, and vengeance tasted like squid ink soup and ozone.

They very seldom threw actual punches at one another. Vox's body was so fragile he liked to keep a nice bit of space between himself and whatever he may be fighting, and Alastor was so slippery that it was hard to land a hit on him to begin with. Some kind of switch had been flipped inside him, though, and Vox suddenly didn't care about all the work he'd put into making sure Alastor didn't bleed out in the dumpster. Now he was going to put him right the fuck back there, slam the lid, and walk away.

He turned himself to energy and zapped right up into Alastor's face, swinging his arm around to pistol whip him. He missed only because Alastor snapped his neck a second time, backwards, which was pretty unfair. His gun sailed by with only an inch of space. Alastor whacked his staff into his wrist, and the sharp crack of pain that ran up from his hand to his elbow loosened his fingers enough for the gun to fall. Shit.

Vox weaved desperately backwards as Alastor's leg shot out to try to snap his shin in half, his wingtipped heel catching the fabric of Vox's sleepwear and ripping a gash through. All his strength was in his lower half, his calves, which did make sense. He'd seen Alastor kick a hole through brick and mortar once, and after that, Vox had maintained a healthy fear of the hart's boots. Not one to give up easily, Alastor slammed his staff into the ground, missing Vox's foot by a scant inch. It felt like the tip of loafer was almost dragged in by the speed of the motion, the end of the cane piercing the concrete. Alastor growled and pulled on it, but couldn't get it out with a single tug.

Vox knew what to do here, though didn't think fast enough to realize it was a shitty idea. He put a hand to the top of the staff, vaulted himself up, and landed a knee directly to that smug fuck's jaw. Alastor jerked backwards, stumbling and touching his mouth, as Vox completed the motion and skidded back to the ground. Now they were both bleeding from the lip. He was thankful he took those pole dancing classes with Valentino, but on the same hand, GOD, FUCK, HIS SPINE.

"You're paying for my physio, cocksucker!" He croaked, pressing a hand to his lumbar and leaning over the stolen staff as Alastor snickered like a maniac. His blood dripped onto the floor in fat droplets, leaving a stain on the already quite ruined decking. The snickering turned to giggling, then to violent peals of guttural laughter. Vox paused, once more a little rattled. Alastor usually couldn't get under his skin like this, but today... "What the fuck are you laughing at?!" Vox barked, trying not to show how much Alastor was actually managing to get to him. That would mean he won.

The Radio Demon's laugh was edged with an elk's call, giving it a whining, screeching quality that only added to the unnerving atmosphere that was poisoning the vibes. "You hit me! You actually hit me! What a performance, Vox, what a performance!"

His antlers grew again, the button-nubs turning into a full-sized, award winning rack that any hunter would drool over. Alastor's eyes turned black and bloody, his torso stretched and shoulders cracked, neck elongating. Alastor was powering up, finally entering his demon form. Vox startled, fear worming it's way into his emotional state. This was not good. He couldn't be thinking straight if he was doing this, a fight at that size on the roof would be far too dangerous, not to mention no fun. The victor would go from he who fought better to whoever got the first good shove in and sent the other off the edge. Vox backed up, slowly, leaving his gun where it fell.

"Are you insane?!" He yelled, already knowing the answer. "You can't do that shit up here, dumbfuck, there's no room!"

"I can do whatever I want," Alastor warbled out, his teeth becoming serrated and growing to the size of Vox's hand. "You've been tangling with something far beyond your scope, Vox. I am the fucking-"

Before he could reach his full, proud size, it was like someone wrapped a hand around his throat and squeezed. He choked, coughing on his words. The green light and fog he'd been producing throughout the fight seemed to turn on him, curling around his neck and chest. He glowed, voodoo symbols floating off into the air, joined by glyphs that he-

Wait, no. Those weren't his symbols. Were those...

Stitches? Over his mouth all the way to his ears, down his shoulders and over his hips, big glowing X's carved into his joints at knee and elbow. He looked like one of his own dolls, the minions he carted out to take hits for him, the ones he made by hand. Alastor screamed, that caterwaul of the dying and damned, the one made of all the Overlords and sinners he'd consumed on his way to the top. Vox shadowed his eyes with his arm, wind billowing out from where Alastor wilted back to the ground, purely spent. Vox fancied he might have heard Alastor's own voice in the chorus as he shrank, ten pounds of bravado being forced back into a five pound sack of meat and hot air. He shivered, shirt ripped and hanging off his emaciated frame in tatters, wavering backwards. Like he was unsteady on his feet.

"I am... I am..."

Alastor's back hit the railing. Vox sucked in a breath through his teeth.

"Bitch, don't you do it-"

"I am the Radio..."

Vox broke into a sprint.

"Demon..."

Alastor's eyes rolled up, and he tipped listlessly backwards. He went over the railing.

"You fucking asshole!"

Vox jumped, got a foot on the railing, and vaulted over it to fall with him.

Notes:

LAUGHS MANIACALLY. sorry to end it there but i am NOT posting a 10k chapter it's not fucking happening

check out my tumblr!

Chapter 4: Downtime Done Badly

Notes:

sorry about the cliffhanger!!!! a lot of yall really liked the song recommendation last chapter so as you read on through the fall, please play free bird but only the best part. thank you.

btw EXPLICIT FUCKING CANNIBALISM THIS CHAPTER. both past present and future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d43lJsK7Kvo

maybe i should make a static shock playlist....

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Okay, in hindsight (this second), there were probably several better options than to throw himself off the roof, but Vox was nothing if not stubborn and overly committed. The moment his shoe left the railing and he launched into the open air of hell, a swan dive, free falling to his death, he had some regrets. He was killing himself for his rival, a pest that not more than five minutes ago, he had felt a white-hot and murderous rage towards. He still felt white-hot murderous rage for Alastor, if he were honest, but that didn't matter at present. There were a lot of things wrong with him, a laundry list full, but he could book and then back out of a therapy appointment when he was back on solid ground. Currently, he was several hundred feet in the sky, heading for the ground at about five meters per second rounding up, and he needed to get out of this situation before he became a rather gory Banksy on the pavement. His built-in calculator told him he had around fifteen seconds to stop them before gravity took matters into its own hands and did so itself, and that he'd just burned half of one on this stupid-ass train of thought. Another half calling himself names.

Alastor was falling with him, limp and lifeless. His eyes were closed and the lights were clearly no longer on upstairs, otherwise, he might've done something to save his own skin. As it was, he was a useless sack of rotten, bruised, bloody meat that was heading head-first for the concrete, and Vox couldn't fathom why he felt the need to save him. All he knew was that his body had acted faster than his supercomputer brain, and when he was able to use his superior reasoning skills, he was beyond the point of no return. Really, what was the point of having so much processing power if he still didn't use it to think before he acted, and had to fix his mistakes after he made them anyway, rather than prevent them entirely?

Thirteen seconds. Time to nut up and shut up.

"You're gonna owe me so much fucking money!" Vox groused, angling his body downwards. Alastor may have had powerful legs and voodoo magic that made him a beast on the battlefield, but Vox had a built-in gyroscope that made orienting himself in physical space a breeze... As long as it was calibrated correctly, of course. Ordinarily he used that to avoid falling over when he did something stupid, like throw his knee into a roundhouse while balancing on a staff. As of now, he was using it to remember which way was up, and move accordingly.

He swiped for Alastor, felt his fingers go straight through his borrowed shirt and come away with threads of nylon streaming away like ribbon worms. His HUD told him that the shirt would never be wearable again, even after a tailor got to it. He tried again, clawing at the air like he was trying to swim through it to reach for the deer sinner as he cannonballed to his second death so soon after Vox had gone through the trouble of saving his sorry excuse for a life. Nothing. He missed entirely.

On the third attempt, he caught him, got his hand hooked under the placket where the fabric was stronger and held up to the pawing. There was something nearly divine about this, the race of the city lights past his head, looking down at the Radio Demon. Alastor looked peaceful, even serene in his unconscious state. His antlers were glossy and black, reflecting the gentle glow of Vox's panicked expression back at him, warped beyond recognition. He wasn't wearing his monocle. His ears were pushed forward by the wind and his head tipped back, fur feathery and soft. The street below was bathed in cool tones that made Alastor's blazing red stand out, a haze of smeared color around his head, a finger-painted halo of wine. Like a fresco created by a college dropout on too many psychedelics, the Creation of Man through the eyes of an ant. It was beautiful. All Vox wanted to do was soak it in.

Damn, dying really did make people poetic. Ten seconds.

He pulled Alastor closer and clutched him tight, which was uncomfortable for them both for multiple reasons, but only Vox was currently present enough to complain. The other man felt waxy against Vox's skin, and cold, and if this bastard had died instead of just passing out Vox was going to be extremely upset. With the deer sinner now in his grasp, he cast out a wide net of signal, pinging every last device nearby, looking for a plan to throw itself at him. A million cellphones glittered in his peripheral, the smart cars below cracking bright against his sensors. He filtered them out, looked at what was left. The automatic windows on the Tower, the elevators, the wiring that spider-webbed all over the building. He couldn't just jump in there if he wanted to save Alastor too. His powers had limits, he couldn't make anyone else become energy, just himself.

The Radio Demon huffed against the vent on the underside of Vox's head, where his own was laid against Vox's shoulder. He was alive. That plan was now out entirely. If Alastor had already been dead, maybe he could've just let him fall, but he was alive. Why Vox cared was still beyond him.

There was a little glow, a sparkle of connectivity, a faint, dim ember of hope. A Voyeur Scope was still active, had escaped the initial frying that disabled it's brethren. It's camera had been killed by the accidental EMP wave that tended to come with Discharge, but the ducted fans, the motors that actually gave it it's lift, those were working. It certainly wouldn't hold his weight, much less his weight combined with Alastor's, that would be far above the recommended 300 pound limit. But it might slow his fall enough to get out of this, might, just might.

Eight seconds.

Vox flipped his body in the air, twisted his hips to get enough torque and shifted Alastor over to lay over top of him without devoting much thought to the way this felt. Cradling his rival to his chest, he held onto the other Overlord as tightly as he could, nails drawing red blood that looked black in the night in thick gouges that raced over his shoulder. His other hand reached for the sky, calling out to the Voyeur Scope he knew was there. The first command he gave it was a pathetic, desperate Help! that meant nothing to it's programming. He brute-forced his way through the crack protection, got into its tiny pea-brain, and shot a line directly into it's CMD, one that made more sense to it.

Here.

He couldn't see it at first and thought perhaps someone was spoofing it, had a different device pretending to be one for reasons known only to them. A surge of dread made his blood run cold, he really was going to die here, for Alastor of all people, but then the buzzing registered in his ears and he saw it coming down towards him, a VoxTek-brand blue spark in the dark void of the sky. This time he nabbed what he was aiming for first try, got a hand around the chunky, clunky body and used his sharp claws to penetrate the plastic exterior and get a good hold on the machine. Vox told it to pull, ignoring it's bitching about being damaged, and it did, if with some complaint. He could 'smell' the burning produced by the small motors whirring as hard as they could, working far beyond the expected scope of a spy drone. A noble sacrifice. It didn't slow him down enough to save his life, no, he'd still fucking die if he hit the ground, but if he could stop his descent now-

Six seconds. He hoped this worked.

Vox threw the schematics of V Tower up on his screen, looked at the side he'd thrown himself off of, opposite the big Triple V branding. The Voyeur Scope brought him closer and he pressed the heels of his shoes into the glass, generating friction, trying to slow himself down further. He succeeded, but only by so much, it still wouldn't be enough, and the Scope was writing out it's last will and testament in melted plastic. He had one plan. He had one Hail Mary. He had one, crazy idea that chained into this one that might be able to save his life, and if it didn't, well, that would be curtains for him. Goodbye, he'd had a nice run as an Overlord, but had thrown it all away for his rival.

He took a breath, said a prayer to a god he did believe in but strictly hated, and manually overrode the windows on a conference room below him. They swung open, outwards, the tilt and turn style that Velvette insisted was better for airflow. Like a scoop. He told the Voyeur Scope, with it's dying whine, to kill it's motors and then jerk upwards again, and it did.

Just as it died for good, Vox let go of the drone, swung his legs forward, tucked Alastor closer, and braced for impact. This was going to hurt.

And it did hurt! It hurt so much he blacked out, apparently. That was fun. Not for long, not for more than a few seconds at least, but Vox was well aware what a skip in his internal video feed meant.

Vox's head had shut itself down to avoid major damage to his hardware, which was very nice of it to do, really. It booted itself up immediately after impact, a flood of error messages sprawling over his vision. He was bleeding, which he already knew and had dismissed earlier, but it had been upgraded from Trivial to Major after he'd hit the window, which did warrant a bit more attention. His back felt wet and cold. There were shattered bits of glass around him, and, hey, what do you know, Alastor was here. He looked fine, relatively unharmed even, like he'd just decided to take a nap under the conference table. It was so picturesque that Vox would've snapped one, if he didn't already know that it would just come out a fuzzy, snow-filled wreck anyway. Downtime was likely only a second or two at most. The fans on the Voyeur Scope he'd sacrificed, which had made it into the room by the grace of said hated god, were still gasping and twitching, trying still to fly. Like a wasp hit with a fly swatter.

Nice.

He was going to fix that thing and put it on a pedestal. He was going to rub it in the other Vees faces every time they made a stupid, company-risking decision. He was going to make it an honorary Vee. He was going to give it it's own desk. He was-

Shutting down again. Vox overrode the shutdown command, but he couldn't keep doing that forever. Eventually, his body was going to win, his failsafes would activate, and he would pass out in actuality without a word to be said edgewise. Before that happened, he had some housekeeping to do. The first thing was to message whatever cleaning crew was active to come in here, after his body was retrieved, and deliver the 'payload' back to his guest room. They were given explicit instructions not to say anything about what they saw, to anyone.

Security was then told to follow them, at a distance, and kill the crew once they emerged from his room, and summon the backup cleaning crew to deal with those bodies. More wanton murder for Alastor's sake. More debt he accrued. It was going to be fun bossing him around for the next century.

After that, Vox pinged Vel and Val with his coordinates, and that was as far as he got before his body insisted it was done with conscious thought and issued another shut down command, this one more aggressive. Well, he'd made good use of his time, at least. He slid an arm under his face to protect his screen from the debris and passed out.


Alastor woke up. Again.

This time, there was no fanfare, no struggle. He wasn't dragging himself up from the depths of The Pit, wasn't fighting tooth and nail for every millimeter of ground he gained away from it. It was simple. He was asleep, and then he was not. Honestly, it was quite the refreshing change of pace, all things considered. He was even free of the wet-blanket feeling of soul-rending imprisonment! What a treat! Things were turning up roses in the first several moments of his newfound alertness. A man could get used to such luxuries, yes he could!

Then he noticed he was handcuffed. That was less pleasant.

The Radio Demon wiggled up to prop himself up on his elbows. The handcuffs had a remarkable amount of chain, which was a mistake for multiple reasons. He could stretch his hands about as far apart as his shoulders. Ridiculous. Why, he could choke himself, or others, with this much freedom!

He squinted his right eye, adjusting to the light and the new surroundings. He half-remembered the decor, aggressively modern, black and white and blue. There was a dresser at the end of the room, a nightstand, a lamp. The bed he'd been put back into, though nobody had taken the care to tuck him in. A tree in the other corner in a large pot. And, towards the bathroom door, an office chair, facing the opposite way.

"Ah, Alastor. You're finally awake."

Vox twirled around in the chair, clearly intending to stop when he was looking at Alastor. He pushed too hard instead, went too far. He scrambled and stuck out his leg to catch himself on the base of the wheels, hooking his foot under the lever.

"Wait, shit, hold on-"

He went too far the other way. Alastor's eyes tracked the TV Overlord as he finally got himself into place, patting a Voyeur Scope on his lap. Alastor felt he was probably referencing a movie of some kind, as with every other inane, nonsensical little theater piece he did. If Alastor devoted any thought at all to Vox, it might've been an adorable attempt at pop culture and intimidation. As it currently stood, it was gently irritating, like a kitten attempting to climb his leg.

"There!" Vox grinned, all sharp teeth. "Welcome to the world of the living, freak." He sipped from a VoxTek coffee mug. Alastor let his eyes rest on the other demon for a moment, the weight of his gaze penetrating through the bravado. When Vox twitched in his chair, nervously set his mug down, Alastor finally deigned to speak, smiling. He had been smiling since he woke.

"Vox!" He replied, gleeful and carefree. "To what do I owe the pleasure of being the subject of your depravities?" He raised the handcuffs a bit, for emphasis, and got the uncomfortable response he was after.

The grin slid from Vox's screen, a toothy frown floating up in it's place. There was a bit of discoloration on the bottom of his screen, a crack in the plastic, hastily glued. He'd been struck recently. "Don't make this weird."

"I didn't."

"You did! You're literally making this weird right now! I, ugh, fuckin', poster child for lockjaw ass..." Vox devolved into muttering and groaning. Alastor thought that round of insults went handily his way! Vox picked his coffee cup up from the windowsill, drank from it again, and regained what dregs composure he possessed to begin with. He tried to grasp any amount of authority over the situation, sitting up straight, shoulders squared, like a high schooler about to give an oral report. "Listen, you, you've caused me a fuck-ton of problems over the past couple of days and I'm struggling not to find a reason to kill you."

"Charmed," Alastor purred. "I would love to hear about these escapades in brutal detail. Please, do waffle on about every single way I piss you off, your obsession with me is flattering."

In reality, Alastor was struggling to recall precisely what had happened, though he'd never admit that to Vox. He woke up, dragged himself to the bathroom, had heard his dealer whispering in his ears, but there were massive chunks in his brain that weren't there, ghostly impressions left in their place. It wasn't his first rodeo with memory loss, but any time he couldn't put the pieces together, there was typically a bloody, violent reason for it. Or one that held his chain. He didn't feel the presence of his dealer here, no otherwordly stare pressing into his body from every direction. He turned his focus to what he did feel.

He'd been changed into fresh clothes, a nice, soft shirt and long johns. His face hurt, his elbows and knees hurt, all in all he was sore all over, though it wasn't the worst pain he'd ever been in. His chest ached where Adam had nearly vivisected him with a guitar, of all things, but it wasn't the sickening agony he'd been in when it had first happened. It was nearly healed, if still a bit raw-feeling in places. He touched his tongue to the corner of his mouth, found that someone had put a butterfly suture there. His bottom lip was split, too. A cursory fluff of his hair revealed a large gash over his forehead. Something in his abdomen didn't feel like it fit. His shoulder burned. He remembered receiving exactly none of these new wounds.

By the time those thoughts processed, Vox had worked himself up all over again. He pointed an accusatory finger in Alastor's direction.

"You know what? Doesn't matter. I saved your life. Twice! I fucking own you, asshole!"

Alastor's antlers shot out without his say-so, his voice falling into that guttural scrape he reserved for threats. "N̷̡͝Ǒ̷͍B̶̨͛Ȯ̴̲D̴̛̙Ÿ̸̗́ ̴̭͌Ọ̸͝Ẃ̸̗N̶̙̽S̷͕̔ ̴̙͛M̸̱̃Ē̶͉," he barked, the violence in his voice leaving furrows in the flesh of his throat. Vox put his hands up, making a little wave motion. He almost looked scared... Almost. He'd faced Alastor at his worst often enough to not be frightened by such displays, but had also been beaten often enough to harbor a healthy respect for it. He adjusted himself in his seat again, like he couldn't sit comfortably, was favoring his back.

"Okay, okay, whatever. Settle down. But you owe me, big time. I pulled you out of a dumpster and stopped you from falling several stories. That's twice I saved you from a pretty ugly death. Be grateful I'm not demanding your servitude in return."

Oh. Well, that made a few things click into place. Alastor remembered the roof now, though the space before the dumpster, and after the dumpster, and basically everything that wasn't getting into a scuffle with Vox on the top of the Tower was an unhelpful blank. Normally he was far sharper than this, and the lack of mental acuity was worrying, but he was, technically, on the back foot. Alastor changed the subject to cover his memory loss, rattling the cuffs he wore as his antlers retreated back into his skull. The chains clinked together loudly. "May I ask what this is about, then?"

"Oh, those." Vox blew out a breath, simulating a raspberry with the lips he didn't have. Almost impressive, to make such a noise without it getting artifacted beyond recognition through the speakers. If Alastor were wearing a hat, he would tip it for such masterful audio mixing. "Yeah, you kinda ran out on me earlier when I was asleep and I wanted a head-start in case you did it again when I wasn't looking."

Alastor quirked an eyebrow, slowly, his smile turning deadpan. "You are aware these will not hold me. It's not the first time I've ever been cuffed." He'd slipped out of handcuffs before a time or two, twice while sober and escaping police custody, once while drunk and taking the piss with Mimzy. It was not hard. His hands were finely crafted and delicate, well suited to the task of lock picking, or just plain wiggling cuffs off his wrists.

Vox laughed. It was almost, just a touch, good natured, if you ignored the context and subject and a literal decade's worth of animosity. "Well, shit, yeah, I'm not an idiot-"

"Debatable!"

"I know those won't hold you. But you need your hands to do your magic, and even if they bought me a couple seconds, it would be worth it."

"Hm." Smart. Alastor wouldn't give Vox the privilege of hearing him say so, but, it was smart. "You are correct, my good man, I do need my hands for magic. Tell me, how long did it take you to figure out this glaringly obvious piece of the dark arts?"

Vox glared at him, but something indeterminate slunk around in his eyes, behind his pupils. He'd hit a nerve, but it wasn't the usual one. Otherwise, Vox would be yelling, standing up and puffing and screaming and throwing a tantrum about how he was intelligent, Alastor was just obscenely obtuse. Instead he said, "I'll get you out of those."

"No need!"

Alastor promptly dislocated both his thumbs and shimmied the cuffs off. Vox's screen turned a lovely shade of chartreuse at the display.

"Oh, you fucking- Whyyyyy?" Vox whined, turning away and putting a hand over his mouth. Alastor hummed a little tune as he put his thumbs back into their proper joints, rotating them in a few circles to ensure they were settled correctly. He ignored his nerves blasting his various cortexes with pain signals. At this point, dislocating his various body parts was a parlor trick and nothing more. He barely felt it when he turned his head around like an owl, even if his neck still made a big fuss over the incorrect orientation.

"My, my, mister Television Overlord, don't tell me you're squeamish?"

He knew Vox was. He hated the sight of blood and gore. That was precisely why he'd disabled his hands rather than wait for the key.

"You're an asshole and I hate you. I should've let you die." Vox was still turned away, heaving and trying not to lose his lunch. Breakfast. What time of day was it? Alastor wasn't sure. He closed his bad eye entirely and glanced at the blinds. Definitely later in the day. He made sure he opened it again before Vox turned around. It wouldn't do to reveal a weakness to Vox, even one as small as faulty vision!

"Yes, that would've been the wise choice," Alastor agreed. "So why didn't you?"

As if he finally remembered his own evil plot, Vox began to swivel back, slowly, making certain that all of Alastor's parts were where they started before he pivoted entirely around. "Ah. Yeah. Because having you owe me was worth way more than the clout I'd get from killing you. I mean, you were already three-quarters maimed, what's the fun in that? What's the honor? You don't get prestige by kicking a dead horse."

Alastor wondered about the merits of bringing up the several different 'Yeah, I Fucked Your Sister, So What?' spin-offs that he'd been forced to hear about via Angel and Niffty both, but deigned not to press his luck. He had a more immediate concern. Something felt... Off. Different. Beyond his dealer's influence, who was being remarkably silent about the whole affair, though he knew he would be hearing from them sooner rather than later. Beyond his stinging injuries. It was beyond his immortal tissues, residing someplace in his soul, rousing. Vox was continuing to talk.

"So, here's the deal: I'm gonna make sure you pay me back, exactly how I want to be paid."

On instinct, Alastor put his hand out, reaching deep for his deal-making magic. His hand was immediately slathered in light, or glowed with the absence of it more like. Vox pulled a face and gently pushed it aside with the Voyer Scope he was still toying with, which was for the best. Alastor didn't feel his deal magic actually spark. It was like turning the key in the ignition, only to find the machine was on strike. It was there, it was tangible, it just couldn't be tempted into working for blood or money.

That was interesting.

Alastor hummed. "Well, you're no fun."

"Yeah, I like having my soul, thanks. Here are the terms."

Vox nattered on, but Alastor's attentions were once more wrenched away. It felt like his stomach had fallen into a pit. He knew what was wrong, why he felt so off.

Hunger. A deep, sucking sensation in his soul, coiled like a snake, inky and oily and frigid. That was the hunger.

It rolled over and over in his guts, biting and tearing and ripping him apart from the inside, an insatiable beast he could only coax into slumber, but never fully vanquish. He could only eat a little at a time, and much of what he ate needed to be sourced from other demons, otherwise... Well, once he'd woken up in a pile of limbs, none of which appeared to belong to the same body. His hair had been so thoroughly matted with bits of blood and viscera and sinew that he'd had to cut most of it off, it all so was beyond saving. He'd found later that he had blacked out for three days, cut a bloody swath across Camilla's turf, and had almost gotten into a fight with the Overlord herself before she'd stood down and let his rampage continue.

At present, he had gone without eating for days, perhaps weeks, and now he was reaping the consequences of those actions.

Most demons assumed his sin was Pride, and they were right, it was. However, there was a heavy dose of Gluttony in there too, and Wrath to boot, and every sinner had a punishment to befit their crimes. He had blood from a kill splatter onto his face once, made the mistake of darting out his tongue to taste it once, thought it was divine once, and now, and now, and now-

"Vox."

Vox stopped. Put his head on his hand. Glared. "Were you even listening to me?"

"No."

He scoffed, but Alastor couldn't be bothered to soothe his ego. He laid a hand to his forehead, dug his claws in. Now that it had been acknowledged, the monster that called itself his appetite was screaming to be fed. He felt woozy, light-headed, squeezed his eyes shut to avoid looking at the only other living thing nearby. He tried not to smell the heady scent of another creature.

"I am going to give you these instructions once, and you will heed them."

"Like hell-" Vox began, standing from his chair, but Alastor cut him off. There was no space for his ridiculous swagger in this room. There was barely space for Alastor.

"Listen to me. You are going to leave this room. You are going to call Rosie's Emporium. You are going to tell whoever picks up the phone that you are ordering on my behalf. And you are going to give me whatever they deliver. I will pay you back for it another time."

"Are you fucking serious? Here I am telling you all the ways you're going to pay me back for the original debt, and you're telling me to run a fucking errand? Are you out of your-?!"

"Do it," Alastor keened, feeling a howl crawl halfway up his throat before he choked it off, felt it slide back into his lungs. His fingers curled against his scalp. Strands of his own hair came away with it, twined into his claws. He was tense, like a bowstring, ready to snap. He wondered how much of Vox was meat, and how much of him was machinery. If it wouldn't be more problematic than rewarding, he would find out, right now.

Vox, idiot that he was, was still standing there, puzzled, satiating his curiosity rather than obeying instructions. Alastor grit his teeth. "Why?"

"I'm hungry."

"That's the lamest attempt to get out of a contract I've ever heard. Sit tight, I have Chinese food in the fridge-"

"Not that kind of hungry."

The other Overlord paused. Silence settled over the room. A car horn sounded off somewhere in the distance, far below their pocket of fragile ceasefire. Finally getting the picture, Vox said, slowly, "Oh."

Oh, indeed. "You will leave or I will eat you instead."

Vox left. Again, smart man. Alastor rubbed shaking hands over his face as he heard Vox outside the door, dialing the cannibalistic Overlord. Rosie's Emporium was the only place in Cannibal Town that had a working phone, at least one that could be dialed from outside the Town itself, and catered to all kind of clientele. Alastor rocked back and forth in place, fingers tugging at his scalp, keeping his mind present, in the moment. No wonder he couldn't think. No wonder he couldn't remember. No wonder, no wonder, no wonder. He was starving. His dealer laughed faintly in his ears.

Hello. You put on a good show last night.

"Go away."

Is that any way to speak to me?

"Go. Away."

Fine, fine. We'll talk later, babydoll. Go satisfy your cravings first.

"Alastor?"

"Go away," Alastor hissed through his teeth, and, mercifully and at last, Vox did as he was instructed the first time. Alastor shook, held onto what presence of mind he had, and, shakily put something on his radio. Something to focus on that wasn't the gnawing feeling that stuck itself to his spine and chewed, chewed, chewed until Alastor thought he would snap in half.


In the kitchen, breaking into the leftovers that Alastor clearly wasn't going to eat, Vox heard a George Gershwin song come crackling, faintly, through his radiowaves. Someone to Watch Over Me, 1926.

He looked to the guest room.

Notes:

please continue on to the next chapter if you don't want to hear me get sappy btw this is your ONE WARNING!!! SAPPINESS AHEAD!

you were warned.

the amount of positive support i've gotten is truly, absolutely, 100% baffling. people are reaching out to me for writing advice, fanart permission, even just to be my Friend. i've never gotten this kind of attention for anything i've written. i have multiple long ass comments i keep rereading over and over again. i've never been overly confident in my work, i knew i was okay but never thought i was good, and everyone dropping by to leave second kudos, to give me a play by play, or even just a line of heart emojis is making me cry real irl tears. so thank you, i guess. i'll try to see the story through for you.

Chapter 5: The AV Club

Notes:

no notes this time. thank you, everyone. playlist is under construction.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Vox leaned his back, sore as it was, against the door of the guest room. He tried not to hear the absolutely revolting sounds coming from behind it, but that was kind of difficult, when he knew exactly what was making them and his brain was playing every single nature documentary he'd ever seen in a background tab.

He been forced to spend a solid five minutes hopping between idiotic telephone jockeys that refused to believe he was who he said he was, gotten disconnected twice, and was nearly ready to sacrifice yet another employee into Alastor's waiting jaws just to solve the issue when he was finally put through to Rosie. When he was at last given a chance to repeat what Alastor had instructed him to say, the Cannibal Overlord asked him how bad it was. He replied, honestly, that he didn't know. Rosie had asked him to put Alastor on the phone. When he denied the request, she'd threatened him, claimed she would turn Cannibal Town loose on his empire unless he allowed her to speak to the Radio Demon right that minute, and that he now knew damn well how strong she was after last Extermination. When he explained that he had doubts about Alastor's current ability to string together a single sentence, much less several in a row, she'd gone quiet. For a not-insignificant amount of time. He was only slightly afraid she'd just put the phone down and walked away, and was currently rallying an army to raze his Tower to the ground.

Then the line crackled, and Rosie told him she had exactly what he needed. She informed him a runner would be sent to V Tower with a delivery order, but by Lucifer himself, if he came back hurt in any way, shape, or form, she was going to twist Vox's arm off and make him eat it with her. Vox believed that threat. Wholeheartedly. Lots of people were threatening to eat him today, it seemed.

Velvette then decided to text him and asked why he'd just gotten food from Rosie's Emporium of all places. He snapped back at her to mind her own business before he could stop his Broca's area from teaming up with his built-in messenger, but softened the blow by following up that he would come and see her later. She texted back a smiley face, a band-aid, and a clock. It was time for his dressings to be checked on. Probably for the best. She also sent an ice pop emoji. He had... No idea what that one meant.

The glass had absolutely shredded his trapezius and Latissimus dorsi, which were all very fancy words for back muscles. Vox had tough skin, in both turns of the phrase, but that glass was meant to splinter when it was hit, not shatter. Splinter it had, and he'd run himself down that cheese grater on his ill-fated slide into the building. The thick wads of gauze Velvette had packed over the cuts made his shirt feel a size too small, and he was even going around with it partially unbuttoned. He felt a bit like a whore, and not in a good, Valentino-approved way. He was using that as his excuse for his trying to preserve some alone time, some privacy, covering for the half-feral deer sinner he'd once more smuggled into his fucking house. He should get into the black market, at this rate, at least more aggressively. Vox wrote that potential business idea down and stowed it away on his internal notepad for later consideration.

When the delivery boy showed up in his foolish-looking flat cap and uniform, Vox handed him a stack of tens, told him that if it wasn't enough Rosie could call him and they'd settle up later, and slammed the door. He was burning a hole in his reserve of liquid cash, but when he had more money than God, it didn't matter. All he had to do was ask Valentino for a top-up, and then he'd be right back where he started. It was nice, for money to literally stop being an object. Helped him forget about the times he had none.

The bag was nondescript, brown paper with a woven handle and Rosie's logo embossed on the front in black ink. Yet, if he had a nose, he would certainly be wrinkling it. Against his will, he could detect the lipids oxidizing, pick up on the cadaverine and hydrogen sulfide being tossed out into the air. God, he was going to stink. This whole house would need to be deep cleaned the minute Alastor left the premises. Yet another alibi he would need to come up with in his egregiously little spare time.

Carcass cast-offs in hand, he'd approached the guest room, again. It looked so innocent, so innocuous for what was contained behind it. A white, a four panel archtop textured door, just wide and tall enough for him to fit through with a bit of space to spare. A black, antique handle that clashed with the rest of the decor. He noticed that it was beginning to get a bit worn, part of the silver metal beneath the varnish was shining through. Vox would need to get that replaced. He'd get it done in the deep clean.

"Uh... Alastor?" He'd asked. The radio that had been softly filtering from behind the wood, playing all kinds of Oldies, died immediately with an audible whistle. The house was plunged into an uncomfortable quiet. Vox heard Alastor breathing on the other side, deep, labored snuffling. It almost sounded like a sob, but he knew better than to think that. He put a hand on the knob. "Your food is here. I'm gonna open the door some, okay? And just... Kinda, slide it through. I'm not going in there."

"Wise," was the only word Alastor rumbled, and after that quick exchange was facilitated through the noble sacrifice of the tip of Vox's Oxford, he sat heavily onto his ass and put himself in the front row seats for the weirdest goddamn ASMR this side of the Pentagram.

It was kind of scary, hearing the tell-tale sounds of flesh being rendered from carrion, the crack of bones beneath a powerful set of teeth and jaws. It made his stomach disappear into some deep, dark reach near his pelvis and leave a suicide note in it's place. He thought about a nature documentary that he'd once seen, where a lion ripped apart a zebra, with all the wet chewing that entailed in full HD audio. It was a bit like that. His Memory 'helpfully' pulled that one up, along with eight other documentaries, and he was playing whack-a-mole with the unsettling imagery that was piling in and making this whole thing worse. The tension was so rife in the air that Alastor could probably tear a chunk off and eat that too.

So he did what he did best, and cracked a stupid joke.

"Am I gonna have to replace that carpet...?" Vox chuckled nervously. Alastor audibly licked his lips. His response came over the airwaves, a frayed message in the frequencies only they could communicate on.

𝙸͢ 𝚠͢𝚒͢𝚕͢𝚕͢ 𝚠͢𝚛͢𝚒͢𝚝͢𝚎͢ 𝚊͢ 𝚌͢𝚑͢𝚎͢𝚌͢𝚔͢.͢

Back to the slurping noises. Vox cringed. He hadn't looked in the bag, hadn't wanted to look in the damn bag, and was already mentally drawing up figures for how much a new carpet would cost as his imagination ran away without him. It wouldn't be cheap, but shit, he'd needed to redo it anyway, might as well be now. At this point, a deep clean was out of the picture. By the time Alastor was well enough to leave the penthouse, he would need to do a complete renovation of the entire space. Maybe he could claim he'd hosted an orgy that got proceedingly more and more violent and out of hand? No, Valentino would want to know why he didn't get an invite. He'd have to brainstorm excuses for the damages that were and would continue to be wrought over his interior decorating over the next several days.

Velvette sent him another text, this one just a string of excalamation points and another clock. He sighed, pulled up the messenger app on his screen and told her he'd be on his way. "Listen, I need to go and actually do my job for a bit. There's granola bars and shit in case you get hungry again, I have coffee, make yourself- Don't make yourself at home. You're really in no shape to be wandering the Tower. You... Stay here. Okay? There's no cameras in the apartment, but there are some in the hallway, and I'm not the only one that has access to those, just- Can I trust you'll keep out of trouble?" He was rambling. He waited, with baited 'breath', for Alastor to respond. Another snap as some poor demon's ribs were turned into easily-swallowed chunks of cartiledge.

𝚈͢𝚎͢𝚜͢.

"Uh, great."

Vox didn't know what else to say. Alastor continued to make an absolutely revolting concerto. He stood up, bracing himself against the frame as he did, and straightened up his jacket as best he could without having to do up a button and pull his clothes tighter. It didn't help much, especially without his tie, but it would suffice until he got downstairs and Velvette could fix him up a bit more. "Well... See ya, then. I'll be back later."

Alastor did not reply.

Vox left the penthouse, feeling a little silly, and swung into his private elevator to go see the newest Vee. After the last few days of skulking about in the service elevators, in the wires, and taking the fucking stairs of all things, his own lift seemed gaudy. It was covered in wallpaper that looked like upholstery, with cream tile and golden accents essentially everywhere. A far cry from the industrial inner workings of the minion world, where there was an inch of dust and cobwebs on everything and not a single suggestion of glitz. He screwed around on his phone as he waited to descend down to Velvette's fashion department, playing some kind of tower stacking game that he'd been paid to shill for recently on Vox 2-Nite. Thank god that show only ran on Tuesday nights and pre-planned specials, otherwise he would've been several days behind on episodes, and that was always shit for ratings.

... He quickly checked his internal calendar. It was a Tuesday today. He'd have to leave Alastor a lot longer than he'd thought. Fuck.

His phone made a series of rather sad chimes to tell him he'd blanked out, and as a result, lost the level. Double fuck.

Vox was still aggressively trying to stack blocks like his life depended on it when the elevator spat him out onto Velvette's floor, and he took three steps out of the cab autopilot, swiping away. He stood directly in the way of everyone else until he lost a second time, then jammed his phone into the pocket of his slacks with a static-laced grumble. Nothing was going his way today. At least Velvette wanted to see him. He did love to spend time with her.

Her runway hall was busy, as ever, with a crowd of frazzled young fashionistas working themselves to the bone for her approval. He grabbed one of the many, many assistants that crawled this room like roaches and asked where he could find Velvette. He was told she was in her sewing workshop, waiting on him. Vox sized this assistant up before he let her go. She was cute, tallish, some type of lizard demon with a tiny, glowing frill that puffed nervously when she talked. He liked her. He would have to ask Velvette if she'd be willing to let him borrow her for a bit, because he was beginning to suffer a major hemorrhage of manpower with all the murdering he was doing and could use the extra hands. He tucked the thought away next to the 'become a drug lord' one and let her scurry back to work.

Velvette's sewing room was hidden under a set of stairs that climbed up to one of Valentino's many 'tantrum corners'. Thankfully, it didn't appear like Valentino was here. Vox was no longer keeping strict track of where Valentino was at any given moment, considering they were broken up, but it wasn't hard to notice when he was present. He hadn't been summoned to baby the other Vee, so he had to be out at one of his studios. Good. It'd been a while since he'd spent any one-on-one time with his protégé without a moth-shaped nuisance coming to crash the party. He didn't bother to knock before he came in.

If Valentino had a tantrum corner, so did she. This place was constantly a whirlwind of various fabrics of all descriptors, gauzy ones, thick ones, everything from tulle to denim to burlap. Yarn spread across every surface like mold, with thick stalks of crochet hooks and knitting needles stacked up like Lincoln Logs. There was an entire wall of threads arranged in a way that made sense only to his little influencer, a bushel of tiny cloth tomatoes laden with so many sharps they looked like metal hedgehogs, and a dusting of buttons, zippers, snaps, and every other odd and end anyplace there was room to put them. It was chaos in the finest sense, a rainbow had walked in here and exploded. He hated it. Velvette always thought it looked just fine and was completely navigable, and he was simply kvetching about nothing like a fussy old maid.

Wasn't his fault he preferred a clean space. He watched the rug for needles. Last thing he needed was to ruin a second pair of shoes.

Velvette herself was posted up on a couch, one leg flopped over the other, scrolling on her phone. To everyone else, it looked like she was slacking, but Vox knew she was doing her job. Posting teasers, disseminating rumors, elevating rage-bait with sock puppet accounts and manipulating the algorithm with the tools he'd given her. She was hard at work as the Social Media Overlord, always on the hunt for the next big thing and making sure the Vees were in on the ground floor. Today she'd chosen to pull her hair back and put it into a twist, the white streak in it curling up and over itself like a snake. She'd put on striped stockings and a black dress that had a white ribbon running up the back of it, along with a pair of dripping ruby earrings. Always dressed as if she was about to waltz out in front of a sea of cameras.

Her eyes cut to him, looked him up and down. Whatever she saw, it made her mouth quirk downward, and she shut her phone off, tossing it lightly onto the seat beside her. "I ordered ice cream."

Vox shook his head. That explained the emoji. "Vel, you didn't have to do that."

"Shut up, it's raspberry-pineapple-vanilla swirl."

Well. He did like that flavor. Velvette's grin was shark-like, just like his own, and she patted the ottoman she'd pulled up in front of her chic loveseat. "Come sit down, I want to check on how you're healing up."

"You're bribing me," he accused without malice, sitting down obediently in front of her despite the clear and blatant carrot on a stick. She made a soft 'hmph!' of amusement and leaned over to dig in the minifridge beside the couch, pushing aside chilled wine. A bowl of ice cream with a spoon in it was presented to his admittedly eager hands, but she snatched it back. It was raspberry-pineapple-vanilla swirl, just like she'd said. He fixed her with a humorless look.

She tutted at him. "Shirt first, Vox. You can have your ice cream while I work. Hopefully, you'll be too busy eating to bitch about pain."

They locked eyes, and Velvette broke nigh immediately, the faux cattiness evaporating into thin air. She pressed her fingers to her forehead, as if she was trying to hide the genuine concern in her voice. "You didn't eat much yesterday morning, I'm doubtful you ate lunch, and I know you didn't eat dinner. So, here. Eat it."

"I had Chinese food this morning," he offered, which was a mistake. She pulled a face like she'd seen someone wearing two different widths of stripes and start claiming it was a new trend.

"Is that the Chinese food from three days ago?! You are going to give yourself food poisoning!"

"I am not."

"You are. Stop arguing, I know when you come from you didn't have a modern fucking refrigerator, but that is no excuse to be eating week old General Tso's."

Vox rolled his eyes and shrugged off his jacket, letting it pool on the ottoman behind him. "Firstly, I had a modern fridge, I'm not that old. Secondly, it was three days, not a week. Get your facts straight."

"No more eating month old food."

"Fuck you."

Ah, bonding. Vox reached behind himself to find the zipper for his vest and cringed. The rips in his skin that criss-crossed over his back whined in protest as a result of him daring to use his arms beyond an immediate radius in front of him. Velvette set the ice cream down in his lap, which was a welcome distraction, and snapped her fingers. His sweater disappeared, along with his dress shirt, leaving him bare from the waist-up save for his top hat. He dug into his treat and put a spoonful into his mouth to avoid saying something mean in response to feeling humiliated. Velvette patted his shoulder comfortingly.

"Wanted to let you try to do it yourself, darling," she explained quietly, picking up a first aid kit from the floor. She left the bigger bit unspoken. I know you hate feeling coddled. It was kind of her.

"Yop," Vox said through a mouthful of dessert, straightening so Velvette could see what she was looking at. She traced her felted fingertips over his back, hissing and clicking and sucking on her teeth as she removed the bandaging she'd thrown on the night before and saw the full extent of his injuries, now unhindered by exhaustion or intoxication. She had panicked and fixed him up before they could get a medical team to scramble to their location, but that was fine. She was a deft hand with a sewing needle and possessed minor, extremely minor, healing powers. It was a rare sinner in Hell who could help anyone in any way whatsoever, and it was even rarer to possess direct healing abilities. She used them sparingly, though. They came with a cost, like everything else. It was good that she had joined up with the Vees and become an Overlord. Otherwise, well, if and when news ever broke of her power, she'd be a lot worse off.

She stripped away the layers of gauze and tape she'd haphazardly layered onto his abrasions, and he played along like a good sport by not complaining every thirty seconds about how much this hurt. Vox was demolishing his ice cream at record pace, but she was right. If his mouth was full, he couldn't yelp, or cry out, or make any other number of pathetic noises that they would both need to ignore for the sake of their combined pride. Velvette worked mostly in silence, critiquing the stitches she'd placed the night prior before she dabbed a bit of ointment on them and applied silver dressing foam. That was the best type of bandage to use for him. His body could always use the metal, and he wasn't going to pretend he knew why.

He felt her fingers stop over a particularly nasty-feeling gash on the back side of his ribs, saw her retrieve a pair of tweezers. She laid a shard of bloodied glass onto a napkin. "He really did a number on you," Velvette said quietly, holding a handful of gauze to the wound until it stopped leaking so much. "I was pretty freaked out when I heard that broadcast come on. I was afraid-"

"That I'd lose?" Vox interjected, trying to stop her before she worked herself up. "Never. Me and that old-timey fuck get into it pretty often, or we did, anyway, and I've always made it out just peachy."

Velvette removed the gauze and applied more foam, pressing the edges down to make it stick. "He bashed the corner of your screen in, Vox."

Reflexively, he touched the area. It hurt, but it was a hurt he couldn't do much about. He'd super-glued it in the mirror this morning and called it good, planning on waiting for it to regenerate. Minor injuries could be trusted to knit themselves back together on their own. Sliding over broken glass, that would need medical intervention. "Yeah, well, he's done worse. I'm alright, Velvette, really. Alastor won't kill me."

"And how do you know that?" She muttered angrily, picking at her needlework over another laceration like it had personally offended her. "You talk about him like he's your bloody best friend. He's an enemy, Vox. He should want you dead."

Rage started coiling around his spinal column, but Vox swallowed it down before it could slither out of his mouth into words he would regret. He stared at the empty bowl in his hands, clinked the spoon against the porcelain in a jittery rhythm. "I hate that fucking guy," he assured her. And he did. Alastor could piss him off like nobody else, but... "But we share a... Kind of mutual respect. Neither of us will kill the other. We just threaten it all the time because it looks better that way for everyone else."

"Why?" She demanded, which was a fair ask. Vox struggled to find an answer that would satisfy her, without revealing a bit too much of something squishy and soft, and, god forbid, sentimental.

Eventually, he settled on the correct phrasing. "We just wouldn't, Vel. It's like smoke and mirrors. It makes both of us appear stronger to have a rival. Overlords benefit from conflict. We both get something out of the deal."

The other Overlord scoffed, applying a little tape to another dressing, a butterfly suture to a tiny cut she'd missed before. He felt like a mannequin she was stitching on. His whole back was covered in plasters. "It would've been fuckin' nice of him to tell you he was going to drop by, if you're so into getting your ass beat. Where'd he go, anyway?"

Back to his guest room, where he was currently eating lunch. "Dunno," Vox lied. "He'll be back when he's back. Don't worry about him, Velvette, he won't hurt you. He's only interested in me."

"And what if that's what I'm worried about, eh?!" Velvette cried, grabbing the undamaged corner of his screen to forcibly turn his head, making him look at her. Her eyes were rimmed red, and her lower lip was wobbling a bit. Oh. "We're the Three Vees, Vox, three! What if he decides he does want you dead? Because throwing you off the fucking building doesn't seem like smoke and mirrors to me!"

Shit.

"Hey, hey, there's no need for that!" He soothed hurriedly, pulling her around to his side. It was a touch awkward, as he was shirtless and her hands were bloody, but what was privacy between the Vees anymore? Velvette gravitated towards him like velcro, wrapped her arms over his middle and held him tight. He could tell she wasn't squeezing quite as hard as she wanted to, out of consideration for his multitude of injuries. His heart broke a bit. God damn, this Alastor business was making him selfish.

Vox put an arm around her, patted her bicep with his hand and let her hug him until she got it out of her system. "We're some of the strongest sinners in Hell, Velvette," he comforted, or at least tried to. "Nothing's gonna hurt me. Not even Alastor, okay? That Radio Demon is nothing to fret over! I've got it well in hand. I'm gonna be just fine. Hey, are you listening?" Vox put a hand under her chin, made her look him dead on. She was putting on a good effort to not start crying, but he could see tears swimming around in the corners of her eyes, and he ruffled her hair in an attempt to make them disappear. "I'll be fine, Velvette. I will be okay. I broke my own back landing on a window, I can fuck myself up without his intervention."

"I'm gonna kill you if you make me ruin my makeup crying over your sorry ass," Vel hiccuped, fanning herself. He snorted with laughter, though the expression froze on his face when she pressed closer again, asked the question he was afraid she'd ask. "Why didn't you just jump into the wires?"

Ah. Yeah, that would've been the smart thing to do. "I like making you stress," he teased, which got him a little punch on the hip. Velvette detached herself with a disgruntled huff and threw his shirt back at him, where it landed on his screen and got stuck.

"You are a bastard, do you know that? You're fine now, I won't have to change your dressings for a few days. Put that back on and I'll help you with the vest. After that, you are sitting right here and we are watching the whole new season of I.M.P. City Mob Wives."

Vox winced, and not from pain. That show pulled so many viewers, and it was so bad, and he did not get the appeal of reality television. "I'd rather you shoot me."

"You would, wouldn't you? Chop chop, ass in the chair. It's the least you could do for making me deal with your shit."

He groaned, but pulled his shirt back on and redid the buttons. Velvette snapped his sweater vest back onto his chest, pressed a heart pillow into his arms, and started giving him the play-by-play of last season's finale like he hadn't half-read the damned script three months ago. Vox swore to himself he was going to pull it off the air one of these days... When Velvette stopped liking it so much.


"What happened to my powers."

Alastor could think now. The hunger had been a major problem, but he was quickly discovering that it was not the only problem. He'd finished picking his teeth with a sliver of bone, then promptly eaten it, but when he tried to summon up a portal to pull through a napkin... Nothing. No portal. Not even a hint of the pocket dimensions he made blatant and flagrant use of. No moppets, no deal making, nothing. He could barely summon his staff, which he was now speaking into to try and contact his dealer. It was always watching, even when he thought it was asleep.

"I know you're there!" He sing-songed, trying to cover his mounting anxiety. "Don't play coy with me~. Where are my powers."

It rolled over, opened a sleepy eye. He felt it focus in on him.

Oh, now we want to chat? And I was beginning to think you didn't like me, boo hoo. Poor me, all alone.

"Stop. Playing. Games. I don't find them particularly funny! What happened?"

You didn't listen to directions, his dealer replied. Now he felt it more strongly, the presence, the watching, as it opened more eyes. It made his skin crawl, but he'd become accustomed to the feeling now. Like being a prized hen at a farmer's market, primped and fluffed and put on display for someone else to look at and coo over. Alastor could almost ignore it, if he tried hard enough, but he couldn't quite shake the uneasiness that accompanied being in a new place. Much less Vox's apartment.

I told you to stand down, and you refused! You fought, and then you ran away with your cute little puffy tail between your legs. Couldn't make up your tiny mind. So I took away your powers.

His heart dropped past his now-full stomach, and he heard it cackle wickedly at his plight. Oh, don't look so terrified. I've locked your big boy powers behind a wall to stop you from hurting yourself while you heal. You nearly died, after all. You'll get them back in a few weeks. Try not to get into any big fights before then!

Alastor was smiling so hard that his mouth felt like it was going to split all the way to his ears. "Oh, is that all? Why, for a moment I thought our deal was over! I can't say I wasn't excited."

You're not nearly that lucky.

He laughed. At himself, at his dealer, at his horrible situation, laughed just for the sake of laughing itself. "I wouldn't dream of it! You own me fair and square, dealer mine, far be it from me to weasel my way out of a sternly worded contract."

The eyes leveled at him, louring. It made a chill skim over his spine, tracing every bump of a vertebra. You know my name.

"Earn it."

A battle of wills, but a battle he won. It made a derisive sniff. I don't have the patience for you today.

"What a shame! I have the patience for you. Why did you let me live?"

Because. You're still my favorite little toy. And you still have your uses, Alastor. Just don't forget who holds your leash.

Alastor felt it then, like fingertips over his neck, the ghost of a touch. A suggestion. A promise. He swallowed in spite of himself and straightened up. He heard a high, breathy giggle touch his ears in response.

Good boy, babydoll.

He needed to get out of the room. It felt suffocating in here rather than cozy and comforting like it did when he was chowing down on Rosie's offering. He needed to pay her a visit when he didn't feel like his hooves were going to give out from under him at a moment's notice. Bring her roses, maybe, and some tea. He had so many errands to run!

Alastor stood up, and it vanished. The weight around him, the looming ambiance, the prickling on his neck, all of it disappeared, like it had never been there. He wasn't so naive as to think he was completely alone, but, for now, he had his brain back... If not full control over his balance. He leaned his back to the drywall, felt the bite of pain that came with whatever had scratched him up being compressed, and took a deep, steadying breath. He forgot quite how handily his bad eye interfered with every other factor of being alive. He was dizzy, he felt sick to his stomach, and his head was beginning to pound. A good meal had only intensified these feelings. Alastor desired nothing more than to crawl back under the covers and sleep all this off, but then he would wake up again, just as blind as before, and find himself face to face with more of the hunger. It only made sense to use what sanity he'd bought with the meal, if he could see or not, and do what he could.

So, his powers were limited, but not gone. He had no moppets, no poppets, no pocket dimension. Alastor stared at the floor, took in the darkness he'd been left in, and concentrated. He had some help left. This was something he'd landed in Hell with, not been gifted. His shadow stretched lazily over the carpeting.

It felt like peeling the paper off a new package of meat without using his hands. All he had to do was get the edge of his mind under the film, then give it a gentle pull backwards until it came away. That was how he, very gingerly, coaxed his other half into the world of solidity. Once he got the shoulders up, his shadow assisted itself, wriggled up and off of the flooring with the disgruntled atmosphere of a rather comfortable cat. Alastor couldn't hide the slight exhale of relief he gave at the sight of his oldest friend, and only true companion.

"Charmed to see you, foncé," he greeted it. His shadow cracked a wide smile that held the suggestion of too many teeth, and cheekily offered him its arm. Alastor accepted, grateful for the support, and allowed his faulty eye to slip closed. He couldn't see through the shadow, but he could rely on it to see for him, and that would have to do for now. "Righto! We've been given free reign of the house, my boy. Let's go and get the lay of the land, shall we?"

Notes:

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Chapter 6: Trucey-Goosey

Notes:

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(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

There was a fish tank in the floor.

Why the fuck was there a fish tank in the floor?

Alastor stared down at it, dumbly, his bad eye squeezed shut so he could be completely certain he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. Indeed, he was. A fish tank built into the floor.

... Amazing

Okay? Okay. Certainly. The floor was a perfectly logical place for a massive saltwater tank full of, presumably, fish. As he watched, a large shark, swathed in blue and red neon lights that outlined it's skeleton, bumped up against the glass underfoot. The impact rattled the pane, and he took a perfectly logical step back, opting to go nowhere near that part of the apartment again, thank you. He wasn't the type to go tempting fate any more than was necessary or funny, and getting eaten by techno-sharks fulfilled neither condition. His shadow pulled a face, seeming to agree, and dragged him away by the arm. Ordinarily he would object to such rough handling, but given he was blind, still injured, and still shaking off the heebie-jeebies that his dealer always managed to eke out of him, he forgave it this once.

He was alone. For the first time in days, perhaps months, he was well and truly alone, at least physically. It was freeing in a way that he'd almost forgotten he could feel, and yet, incredibly vexing. The leash was invisible and intangible, but it was there all the same. Now and again, he thought he felt the kiss of rope around his neck, a promising noose, and it always made him draw up short and touch his throat. He busied himself by indulging himself in a bit of 'investigative journalism', minus the journal.

The Radio Demon and his shadow had spent the better part of an hour doing something that he would deny was snooping, but very much looked a lot like it. Vox's penthouse was spacious, Alastor would give it that, if so modern it was kind of sickening. The guest bedroom may have looked like it was from the 50s, with the older-looking amenities right down to the handle of the door, but the main living space was... Not Alastor's style, to put it politely.

To put it impolitely, any color other than black, white, or blue, appeared to be completely illegal. Curved lines were also on thin ice. It was fuss-free, unoriginal, monochrome, and had a few pieces of truly bland 'modern art' that looked a bit like a geometric zebra had been skinned and pinned to the wall. The only stand-out piece, the only bit that contained any hint of the Television Demon's true self, was an abstract mural painted directly onto one wall that looked like wires and circuitry. Alastor contemplated it with his good eye for several minutes, decided it was fine by nature of containing more than two colors (blue, red, and grey, how daring), and moved on to other oddities in the home.

Vox had massive wall-to-wall windows on the far side of the living room that looked out over Hell, complete with an overstuffed chair for optimal viewing and gloating, though it was ruined with the circular fish tank that made up part of the ground. It looked as if it spilled down and out into Vox's surveillance room. If Alastor stood in just the right place, he thought he could just barely see the walkway that made up the little voyeuristic paradise, but there was so much clutter in the fish tank in the way of enrichment items that it was hard to tell. Vox clearly loved his fish, and for that, Alastor could nearly forgive the glass flooring.

Another shark bumping against it, so firmly that he felt it through his hooves once more, sent him not-quite fleeing the scene. If his tail weren't tucked under his waistband, he was sure it would've been flashing white for all to see. As it was, the only people here were himself and his shadow, and, well. Le foncé would never tell. Alastor went poking about the rest of the house.

There was a truly massive television mounted on one wall, cables spilling out of it like kudzu, at one point contained by zipties but now far beyond such mortal trappings. An entertainment center sat beneath it, where the cables once more converged into a myriad of odd boxes that Alastor couldn't get to work if he tried. All of them displayed different, incorrect times of day, according to his masterfully tuned internal clock. The side cabinets boasted an honestly impressive film and CD collection from all eras of music and film, especially for somebody so digital. There was even a box or two with titles Sharpied onto them, clearly pirated from some reach of the dark web and then preserved as physical media. All of that sat in front of a large, black pleather couch that had a white throw draped over the back, along with a pair of matching armchairs and a glass and metal coffee table. A single, sad-looking wooden bowl sat on top, with nothing in it. The entire affair was clinical, like it was staged for a photo op. There weren't even magazines on the bottom rack! Pitiful. Unimaginative and impersonal. This man had no idea how to live.

A door to the left of the television, towards the windows, suggested the existence of room that shared a wall with his current bedroom. Unfortunately, this one had a biocoded lock on it, and Alastor didn't quite feel well enough to slip into shadow-form and squeeze through the scant inch of space to take a look inside. No, no, he was overfull and half-blind. Another time. There were more doors on the other side of the living room, another one with a biocoded lock, and one without. Alastor went traipsing in there, given it was the only option that didn't require trying to slip into a skin he felt would currently reject him.

Behind the unlocked door was a bathroom fit for a king. White marble tiling, a huge shower with multiple heads, a deep bathtub, all sparkling to perfection. Products were scattered everywhere, contradicting the rest of the meticulously spotless space. Another biocoded locked door, too, which was directly across the house from Alastor's quarters. One could assume that would be Vox's bedroom, and that he really didn't want anybody in there. Luckily for him, Alastor was feeling generous enough to respect his privacy, for now at least, and left it as it was. The saddest part of the entire vapid, shallow, torpid affair was the kitchen. The kitchen, quite frankly, made him homicidal, and not in the fun way.

It was all black and white and grey, like everything else in this cursed place, and clearly had never seen advanced usage. None of the dishes had a crack or stain, the oven was pristine and scratchless, the fridge had no sticky notes or reminders or patches where the paint had been worn away with use. There were barely any cooking utensils, even less cookware, and the entire fridge was full of nothing but energy drinks and a single, half-empty container of coffee creamer. The cabinets were in a similar state, except they were full of Voot Floops, coffee beans, and junk food. The island was the only place that looked to have seen any action, containing a deep sink, some nice counterspace, and a high-backed bartop that had several chairs spread out before it. The mini-fridge full of booze was well-loved, too. The coffee machine was the only piece that didn't look like it was either left behind or recently purchased from an outlet, and that was because it had more bells and whistles than any coffee machine really ought to have, and all of those buttons looked as if they'd been lightly punctured with claws.

"How is he alive?" Alastor asked Le Foncé with barely disguised disdain. They shrugged at him. Alastor grumbled through his smile, trying and failing to read one of the cereal boxes to check the nutritional content. He couldn't see distance out of his bad eye, but he couldn't see up close out of either one of them, and didn't have a pair of reading glasses to remedy this. His portals were still down, too, so he couldn't just obtain one. Hell really did think it was funny, giving him all of these powers, yet making him keep his horrible eyesight even in death. More evidence for his theory that Overlords got weaker as they got stronger, that was the only silver lining.

His shadow made a wonderful impression of trying to read the box for himself, hooking his sharp chin over Alastor's shoulder. Alastor passed it over to Le Foncé, knowing full well it wouldn't get him anywhere, but willing to play along, for now. He then almost immediately hip checked the island, saved only by his shadow pulling him an inch to the right at the last second. His sense of balance was off, and the headache produced by the lack of proper vision was only intensifying. Brilliant.

"Perhaps I should sit down before I break something!" Alastor chirped brightly, as to avoid succumbing to rage. His shadow, wisely, did not comment, merely helped him sink into a stool without hitting his ribs on the bar. In order to pass the time while Vox was gone, Alastor turned on the radio. He was feeling something slow, today. Wistful and nostalgic. He thumbed through his mental collection. West End Blues, 1928. That would do for now. His shadow bedded down at his side and removed his claws from his hair before he could rip any out.

Blind, bored, and oddly lonely despite his shadow's comfort, Alastor began to wait. He and Vox had been getting too chummy recently. He intended to rectify that... Whenever Vox returned.


Vox had meant to check on Alastor. He really had. But by the time Velvette had allowed him to escape from the trashiest reality television she could muster, he was due to be on set for his talk show, and didn't have time to run upstairs to change. With a snap of her fingers and another hug or two, she'd gotten him dressed into his best-known suit and hat and turned him loose to jog to the studio. One long, rambling segment later where he advertised his cereal, his Popsicle brand, Angelic Security, the stacking game he actually did enjoy, and his fucking preferred pajamas of all things, his work day was only beginning. He pointedly did not address his fight with the Radio Demon, told the production assistant who asked for a comment off the record that he was fired, and generally tried to forget about the Overlord for just a few minutes. He had so much work to catch up on that it was easy enough to do.

He'd forgotten him too well. By the time he remembered, it was eight thirty at night, he was three drinks deep with Valentino at the lobby bar, and was pleasantly buzzed on bourbon and the presence of the moth demon. He liked Valentino, he really did, but it was the same song and dance every time. They made absolutely astounding friends and business partners, but horrid, tedious, shitty boyfriends. Didn't stop him from putting his tongue in Val's mouth anyway to greet him, but, hey, things were good until they put a label on it. So he wouldn't label it. Valentino had spent the last hour narrating his day, all the new talent he'd scouted, and things of that nature, while Vox drank his whiskey and allowed himself to just relax for a bit. The last week had been incredibly stressful, after all.

The lobby was empty enough right now to allow the load to be taken off. The reporters had been kicked out early to allow the Vees the time to themselves, the bartender was on call for the rest of the night, and the liquor flowed freely. He also knew enough not to make any smarmy comments about the nature of whatever the hell was going on between Vox and Val, and for the discretion, was getting a substantial amount of bread dropped in his jar. Vox didn't even care that the fishy demon was clearly on his phone. That came back around to benefiting them in the end, after all. Every engagement fed right back into their pockets eventually.

Valentino had draped one arm over his shoulders, put one around his hips, held a cocktail with the top arm on the other side, and was doodling on a napkin with the last one. Vox sipped at his drink while Valentino rubbed two fingers into an uninjured spot above his hipbone, which was nice and soothing, mindlessly answering emails while he listened to his not-boyfriend talk. There was so much to do, so many ducks to get into a row before tomorrow. Appointments he had to confirm. Production schedules he gave the okay to. Planning a party so he had an excuse to meet Malphas himself. 666 News begging for an interview about the fight with Alastor on top of V Tower. Viewer reports on Yeah I Fucked Your Mother, So What? that were pretty promising, considering it was a spinoff. Budget balancing. Ordering a replacement window for the conference room. Asking Vel to borrow her lizard model.

The fight with Alastor. Alastor.

Vox jolted in his chair. Valentino removed the arms around him with an apologetic hiss. "Sorry, baby, did I touch a sore spot somewhere?"

To anyone else, that would've been sarcastic, or even sardonic. For Vox, that was sincere concern coloring his question, as Valentino pet the side of his screen with gentle fingers, the fur of his sleeve soft and plush. Vox straightened up from where he'd had both elbows resting on the bar top, slowly, trying not to rip open any wounds. He felt a couple split anyway, which was to be expected. He really had hurt himself with that stunt last night. Probably should've been laid flat out on his stomach, but he didn't have the time to lounge, not with an Ars Goetia within his grasp, if he played it right. "Nah, powder puff, you're fine," he replied, stretching his legs a bit. "Just realized how busy my day tomorrow really is. I need to go up and sleep."

"Could come up to my room?" Valentino hummed, tilting his Tequila Sunrise in Vox's direction and lowering his eyelids. It was a genuine offer, with the undertone of more if he wanted it. Or, none if he didn't. He could be respectful to those he really loved, and wasn't just using. Vox shook his head, flashed an 'X' on his screen as he loaded up the words. Shit, he was drunker than he thought. His optical sensors were lagging, only minutely, but just enough that it made him dizzy. He stood still, letting his video feed catch up to his moving body before he ended up on the floor.

"Thanks, Val, but my day starts pretty early," he lied through his teeth. "I won't have time to get back to my room and change before I'd have to go. Maybe tomorrow afternoon we'll go out for a bit if my meetings end early, huh?"

The moth grinned, sliding the bar napkin doodle over to him. Vox took it under his claws, glanced down at it as Valentino spoke. "Sure thing, centello. I'll clear my schedule."

"Sounds perfect."

The doodle was Val himself in a bunny costume, maybe only slightly in play. Vox thought it was adorable and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

He stuck around for a few minutes more, ordered dinner while chatting mindlessly with the second Vee. Went over what type of food he should have for dinner ("Mexican, but make sure it's authentic. No, don't order from there, let me help."), their preferred orders, a quick argument over cilantro. Honestly, time really did fly with Val, but that was what drew him into making the same mistake every single time, the mistake of a real relationship. It always worked out that whenever those feelings got involved, things got more complicated than either of them were able to handle in a mature way. Even so, Vox leaned into Valentino's chest, let himself be held, and waited for the food to arrive. When he was standing and Valentino was sitting, their heads were at the same height, if Valentino slouched just the littlest bit. Val paid for his dinner, as he was nice like that... And Vox pointed out he was out of liquid cash. Valentino offered an injection of funds if he didn't mind cocaine-stained fives, which he did, actually, and then told him he would have an envelope ready tomorrow afternoon when they met up again.

Vox steadied himself, only minorly aided by Valentino's arms in mostly chaste places, and took the last sip of his drink. And Val's, as the moth claimed he wasn't going to finish it. A few more kisses for good luck, and at last, he made his way to the elevator, toddling just a pinch as his systems adjusted themselves to his BAC. He checked on Alastor's camera, but the damn thing had fried at some point, which was to be expected when Alastor was involved. Recording devices and screens would only last so long before whatever aura he put off completely cooked the lens, and he must've been doing a lot better, because it was still working last night when he'd had the bedraggled deer dragged back to bed. He laid his head against the wall as the lift climbed all those stories to his penthouse, and only begrudgingly removed it to stumble back to his front door. Honestly, he just wanted to fall into his room and pass the fuck out.

It was a good thing his logic center, brainstem, and body worked together without his full awareness, otherwise, he might have died.

When he opened the door to his house, he felt a prickle in the air, the hair he no longer had standing up on the back of his neck. An infrasonic growl caught just barely by his microphone, a flash of red on his screen. Vox felt himself reaching into his jacket and pulling out his gun, kicking the door closed behind him and cocking the hammer with his thumb. There was a clatter, a scrape and screech, and he caught back up to reality to look at himself leveling his pistol at Alastor's head. Alastor had found a butcher's knife somewhere in here and armed himself, was halfway to launching his body over the counter to pounce on him and drive it straight through his screen. They stared at one another, cooly, Vox with his pistol aimed at Alastor's forehead, Alastor with a knife the size of his forearm gripped tightly in his hand. Neither of them moved. Vox swayed on his feet. Alastor's mouth dripped, his eyes black dials. His barstool rocked back and forth on the floor where it had been knocked down.

Vox was too fucking drunk for this.

"I brought dinner."

Alastor blinked. Grin wavering in confusion, but present all the same. "What is it?"

"Shrimp ceviche. With lime."

"Enough for two?"

He thought about it, then, "Yes, if you don't mind a smaller portion."

They held the staredown for a minute longer, as both of them considered their options. Finally, the tension broke.

"I'll set the table."

Alastor put the knife down and clambered off the island. Vox put the gun back in his coat. Just another fucking day in the afterlife.

It turned out that the Radio Demon was extremely particular about how he set the table. Vox attempted to just sit down with the plastic fork provided and pop open a container, but Alastor's neck broke with a sound like a tree falling as he swung his head around to stare at him. The lights flickered, his antlers pulsed with red light, and Vox made the executive decision to hang around and leave him to his weird-ass ritual. He produced two place mats Vox didn't even know he owned, a pair of drinking glasses, and two small plates. Vox leaned against one end of the bar as Alastor dug through his silverware drawer, closely examining every bit of it before he set aside what he deemed 'acceptable'. Whatever criteria he was using, Vox was not about to get involved, as he didn't quite trust that the hostilities had truly ended between them. He knew Alastor felt the same, as he'd caught that freak's shadow blinking at him from the porcelain flooring.

"How is it," Alastor purred with sweetness so fake it was probably banned by the FDA, "that you, a grown man with more money than 90% of Hell, own five spoons, only three of which are from the same set?"

"I, uh, don't eat here much," Vox explained, feeling rather scrutinized in a way he did not appreciate. Alastor hummed darkly, but made no further comments, retrieving what he needed without being told. It occurred to him that the only way he would've known where to get half of this shit would be if he had gone rifling through his house while Vox was gone, but he was too tired to do anything about that at the second. The confrontation had burned most of the drink from his blood, leaving him with all of the exhaustion and none of the floaty qualities of being sloshed.

Alastor set the silverware out with the practiced hands of someone who had done this a thousand times before, and enjoyed the process each and every time. "Do you happen to know where my clothes have gone?"

Right. His clothes. Vox stifled a yawn. "Laundry."

"Enlightening! Do tell me more."

"Jackass," Vox muttered, deleting the thought that he actually had a point there. "They should be delivered up tomorrow morning. All my stuff gets professionally drycleaned and tailored as needed, so don't worry about it. It's in good hands. Uh, and it's a super discreet company that does it, so you won't have to worry about-"

"My monocle?"

His monocle? Vox looked at him, arching an eyebrow. Alastor patiently waited for his brain to catch up with the program. "Oh! Uh, kitchen drawer. With the scissors and shit. It's in a little bag. You didn't find it earlier? I thought I told you that's where it was."

He barked a short, annoyed laugh. "You did not!"

"Sorry."

Vox watched his guest paw through the drawers for a moment until he produced the tiny velvet bag in which he'd stashed the eyewear earlier. Alastor noticeably brightened once it was in his possession, carefully removing it from the bag, being particularly mindful of his claws. He breathed on it, wiped it down on his sleeve, and clipped it to his collar. When he arranged it onto his cheek, Vox could tell, some of the tightness he'd been holding in his shoulders and the muscles of his face began to loosen. He'd thought it was just Vox's own presence that was making him so snippity and on edge, but the speed and obvious delight that were present in the motions of putting it on... "You don't actually need that thing, do you?"

Alastor chose not to answer, simply tweaking the table settings until they were to his liking and gesturing for Vox to take a seat. He chuckled softly to himself. "Holy shit. I thought that was all window dressing!"

"Be quiet."

Ordinarily, Vox would take some offense to being ordered about in his own home. At the moment, he did, in fact, stay quiet as Alastor spooned an equal amount of ceviche onto both of their plates, and dug in without further antagonistic behavior. It was bright on his tongue, delicious, despite the odd company he shared for the meal. Valentino had made a good call.

He lasted about two minutes, but by that point, the lack of background noise, save for the clinking of their spoons against the dishware, was far too awkward. He flicked a finger to turn on the TV, scrolling through channels that he couldn't see and could only recognize based on how they felt, and landed on the news. Good, old fashioned, everybody loves it news. As if to spite his choice, Alastor made a disgusted noise beside him. Well, kind of beside him. There was a nice, five foot distance between them that was preventing any further fighting, as they both had their own space in which to breathe.

"Do you not have any idea how to sit in silence and enjoy the moment?" Alastor snarked, cutting a look in his direction.

"Big talk out of you," Vox shot back, firing off a command over the airwaves to make the static that hung over the Radio Demon like a shroud pop with volume.

Taking a moment to chew on the retort, Alastor put a piece of shrimp in his fanged maw and didn't argue, focusing his attentions back to his dinner. "Touche."

's what I thought, bitch. Vox was unable to wipe the smirk off his face, using the proximity and general, unspoken ceasefire to study him. That was always the game, for him. Information gathering, identifying potential weaknesses, new powers, anything that might give him a leg up the next time they faced off. He'd learned a lot, over the last couple of days. The tidbit that Alastor literally couldn't see out of his right eye without his monocle to aid him was useful. Watching him eat didn't produce much of worth, yet, but it was still new, so he drank it up. Alastor was persnickety about manners, keeping his elbows tucked in to his body and holding his utensils with the upmost care and aristocratic consideration. When Vox tried to put an elbow on the counter, his shadow yanked it back without a word spoken by the Radio Demon, every movement economical, with not a single drop of juice or crumb of avocado escaping his spoon. Given this was a guy that, not twelve hours ago, Vox had seen near-feral with hunger, it was just another weird inconsistency that plagued the man. He put it out of his mind, for now.

If he was any less drunk, he might have had some reservation about sharing a dinner table with the Radio Demon. As it was, he was just drunk enough to have this conversation. He had a sip of the cold water Alastor poured for them both, licked a bit of tomato off his tooth, and bit the bullet. "We need to iron out the deal- Oh, you fucker, that's my counter!"

At the mention of the deal, Alastor's claws had bit deep into the stone like it were made of butter. More property damage. His eyes pinned to dials, then back again, and he swallowed. Forcing himself to calm down, he removed his hand from the quartz, gently wiping the dust onto his napkin. "Continue."

"Stop destroying my shit, I already have to replace half the guest bed and bath because of you. I don't wanna know what you did to that cabinet in there, or why. Whatever the case, I don't want your soul."

"I would have killed myself before I ever gave it over."

"Stop being a dramatic asshole for thirty seconds. Would it kill you to do that? Sheesh." Vox stabbed at the food on his plate. He wasn't hungry. He checked his internal calories counter, found the number impossible to gauge through the booze still swimming through his systems, and choked down another bite. Better safe than sorry. "Here, how's this. You set some terms and I'll counter-offer."

"Giving me the opening salvo? What a gentleman!" Alastor jibed, but settled in to think. The TV scrolled off meaningless headlines as he did, all of which were old hat to Vox. Eventually, he seemed to reach an accord with himself. He held up a finger, ticking up more as he went, listing off his criteria. "I will not kill anyone for you, I will not do anything degrading to my own reputation, and I will not go onto one of your silly little television segments." He waved his other hand and rolled his eyes to emphasize 'silly little'. Vox nodded along, already expecting those caveats. Especially the television one. One day, one day he would get Alastor on camera, he promised himself. But not today.

"Fair. I won't make you kill anyone, I won't make you ruin your reputation, and I won't make you go on Vox 2-Nite to tell everyone that I'm better than you."

"Yes, lying is a terrible sin, don't you think?"

The Television Demon choked down the VHS warping sound that threatened to burble out of his mouth in agitation. Alastor covered his own lips with a finger, suppressing a little snicker of mischief. Vox decided he needed to be the bigger person, even if it was killing him, and sipped from his water to try and sober up a bit more before he continued. "I'm asking two big favors. One for both times I saved your life. I don't know what they are right now, but we'll leave that open ended."

"Absolutely not! Tell me what they are right this instant so we can be done with all of this baloney."

"Fuck off," he snapped. "I'm half blitzed and can't think. Besides, I don't even know what I want, other than you constantly wondering when I'm going to call on you for something stupid. Maybe I'll have you model for Vel."

"That goes against the 'reputation' term."

"Like hell it does!"

They devolved into several minutes of petty squabbling, their plates slowly clearing. Vox wordlessly pushed his leftovers aside, and Alastor wordlessly accepted them, somehow still having room for more even after lunch and managing to argue with his mouth full while avoiding speaking with food in his jaws. They continued to bitch back and forth even when Alastor stood and collected the plates, began brewing coffee, and rolled up his sleeves to do the dishes. Did Alastor not currently owe him, Vox would've had a few complaints to his being near the knives again, but the violence portion had by now fizzled out. They settled into the comfortable territory of banter, the insults and barbs flashing between them like fireworks, with plenty of actual animosity but no will to escalate to physicality. Alastor made him a cup of coffee, for fuck's sake, they were beyond the real blows being traded, even if they still hated one another. Neither felt like throwing a punch, and that was all there was to it, that nice familiarity of warm, fuzzy rivalry that enabled them to share a drink even as they called each other vile names.

They could've gone like that all night, around and around and around without a lick of progress, but the television interrupted them with the 'Breaking News' shriek, and both of them stopped to give it their attention. Like dogs with a bell. Pavlov would be drooling.

"Breaking news!" Katie Killjoy crackled through the screen, Tom Trench long having been pushed under the desk and stomped into submission for daring to speak on the show he was meant to be co-hosting. "We have just received word from the Big Boss of Hell himself that we're going to air this stupid segment filmed by the Hazbin Hotel, or else!" She cracked her neck to the side, a trait that Vox was really beginning to dislike about the company he was now keeping. "We here at 666 News are required by law to do what he says, so please feel free to leave and get a sandwich or something while this rolls! We will be back after these messages!" Her eye twitched and began to bleed. Vox swiveled fully in his stool, one arm on the bar and the other sipping his coffee. Alastor could make a good cup, it was bitter, with just enough creamer to temper back the bite. Alastor had taken his black, standing on the other side over the sink, swirling a spoon in his mug to dissolve half of a sugar packet. They didn't say anything. The entire argument was gone, dropped, to be resumed another day.

The news reel zoomed into the video feed they played in the corner, in on the newly-remodeled Hazbin Hotel's signage. The air in the room had gone from 'comfortable banter' to 'tense as a whore in church'. The camera was shaky, but gradually came into focus, panning down to the Princess. Charlotte 'Charlie' Morningstar. She was alone. The massive statue of Dazzle was nothing but a glowing beacon, absorbing all the light from the sparkling bulbs that spread over the hotel like a mold. Whoever was filming this had no idea how to properly account for that, how to hold a camera, how to do any of the minutia that made television an art form. Amateurs.

For all intents and purposes, though, the princess did look good. Charlie had her mother's beauty and her father's ebullient air, always putting her all into whatever it was she did. She was wearing her usual red suit and bowtie, held a microphone tightly in both hands, and was trying her best to keep her head up high. Her mouth was pressed into a forced, nervous smile. As a bundle of anxiety and the crushing weight of purpose and destiny and all the other shit that she had to deal with, Vox didn't pity her.

"Hello, Hell! This is your princess speaking, Charlie Morningstar!"

She made a brief wheeze that might've been a laugh, but the stage fright that buzzed over her shoulders made it fall flat. Apparently exhausted by the attempt, she let them fall. Not all the way, but just enough to vent a puff of whatever it was that was eating her. Vox raised an eyebrow. Alastor's radio static crepitated.

"Okay, Sinners, I'm not actually here for you. I want to speak to one person. And I don't know if he's listening but I really hope he is, because otherwise we have no way of getting in contact with him and he could really be anywhere in Hell, but we could really use his help and would appreciate it if he'd answer, ahahah!"

Back to the giggling. Whoever was manning the camera made a rolling finger gesture for her to get on with it. Charlie winced, cleared her throat, and tried again. Her eyes were bright and determined, maybe a teeny bit demented at the right angle.

"Right, sorry. I want to speak to the Radio Demon. Alastor."

Vox heard Alastor stop breathing. His vents shut down too, leaving no background noise. Even the fuzz of static Alastor produced went silent.

"Listen, Alastor, we... Hope you're okay? We thought you died, but after hearing that fight last night, we know you're out there somewhere. If you don't want to be a part of this anymore, that's fine, but if you still do... Come back? Take all the time you need, I mean, we're not rushing you or anything, and I am managing this hotel perfectly fine without you!" A false bravado, even Vox could see the cracks in the facade despite spending no time whatsoever around the princess. Alastor was leaning so far forward his head was now parallel to Vox's, neck stretched beyond normal capabilities. Staring. Charlie forged on.

"But you said you wanted to help. With the hotel. And, even if you want nothing to do with any of us anymore- and I don't blame you for that!- I do want to thank you. On behalf of everyone, for everything. For holding off Adam, for giving us Husker and Niffty, for all the other little things you did around here to make this place the best it could be, even if you were only doing it to see Sinners fail. We're all really thankful, and... We really miss you. I, really miss you, Al. So, whenever you're ready... Or, if you're ever ready... We're waiting for you. You will always have a place here at the Hazbin Hotel. With us. Okay?"

And then she smiled. The nicest thing about the princess was her smile. It contained the light of the sun, a rare beam of hope and love down in the depths of Hell. It was true and kind and sweet, like a drop of dew on a flower, and Vox had no doubts, whatsoever, that she was telling the truth. Alastor didn't look like he had any, either. His grin was strained, pulled to the point of escaping the confines of his face.

Then the lights flickered and went out, and the entirety of V Tower was plunged into darkness. The backup generators kicked on a moment later, quite used to Vox's blackout-inducing tantrums, and just this once, Vox was content to let everyone think that he was the cause. That he'd seen the broadcast, been reminded of Alastor's miraculous return to life, and had worked himself up so hard he'd killed power to the block. All because of one thing.

It was good to know Alastor could do that to lights, too.

When they came back on, and the world was no longer lit by Vox's face alone, Alastor was sitting in his stool, drinking his coffee, pretending to be unbothered. The TV did not turn back on. Neither of them addressed the broadcast or it's contents.

Vox huffed in resignation, his fans contributing to the effect by puffing out a blast of air to begin cooling his systems again.

"Listen, this shit is getting us nowhere. Just agree. Two favors. Nothing that will damage your reputation, no killing on my behalf, and no TV. Done?"

The Radio Demon bobbed his head from side to side, listening to some song only he could hear. He wiped a finger around the edge of his mug to collect some spilled creamer, stuck it in his mouth, and considered the terms again. "One more thing."

"Oh for fuck's sake- What now?"

"You will leave the Hotel alone."

Stunned, it took Vox a moment to calibrate and form a response. "You mean you actually care about those wet blankets and their candy-ass plan?" He said incredulously. "Your roof is leaking."

"My roof is perfectly intact," Alastor growled through his teeth, still, despite everything, smiling away. "I have goals beyond your understanding in that place, and you will not attack it. On the street, we will remain enemies. In public, we will remain enemies. We will fight and we will quarrel and we will keep this ruse up until I have paid back my end of the bargain. You will not tell anyone else that I owe you anything. In return, I will not continually snap your neck every time you regenerate in order to escape this frivolous agreement."

"Done," Vox confirmed, completely ignoring the threat of eternal punishment. "Now would you get the fuck out of my house? If you're well enough to try to stab me, I think you're well enough to leave. Oh, and by the way, Rosie said she saved you a couple of angel corpses to eat. I hated hearing that, so consider that one a show of goodwill even though I'm kicking you out."

"The moment I have my clothes back, I will leave you in peace. The deal starts upon my departure, and not a moment earlier."

"Fine."

"Fine."

They drank coffee together, irritably of course, but without the weight of the uncertain contract hanging overhead. Vox was already planning how he was going to make that demon regret the day he'd ever crossed paths with him, a slow, evil twinkle working it's way into his eyes.

This was going to be fun.

Notes:

check out my tumblr!

important status update on my tumblr, but as a tldr;

this chapter completes the prologue! i may be taking a short break after this one to get my act together, but it's been a wild, lovely ride so far. i just need time to rest, condense my thoughts, all that jazz. you can find me on my tumblr, if you miss me

I've written about 32k in a little over ten days. that is Insane to think about. that's about 3.2k a DAY of edited content. this pace is ridiculous, but spurred on by comments, so I don't expect I'll be gone long. juuuust long enough to get itching for another hit. see you soon, loves <3 as always, thank you for the support.

Chapter 7: Homecoming Host

Notes:

minor reference to self harm in regards to alastor, if you don't want to see it ignore the paragraph under 'if it wasn't actively seeping, it wasn't his problem'.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Vox had gone to bed, plastered beyond what he was willing to admit, sometime around midnight. Alastor had 'turned in' soon after, though he didn't 'go to sleep' so much as 'try and fail to flex his powers until his dealer got the hint and gave them back'. In the time between the news reel and Vox calling it a night, they had both finished their coffees and gone back to mumbling insults. Tacky television, ancient shitheel, static snorting whore, the usual fare that filled the silence until they were both willing to hang it up, their feelings made clear. Alastor had clocked in for another shift at the dishpit to wash the mugs, then began to wipe down the counters, and proceeded to mindlessly busy himself with the small cleaning tasks that piled up when one wasn't looking. If Vox cared about him poking around the knives again, he wasn't present nor cognizant to complain. He'd shut and locked his bedroom door behind him, told Alastor not to damage the upholstery, and that was it.

Honestly, quite the bold statement, to go to bed now that Alastor was awake and caffeinated, but he could muster up the tiniest bit of respect for it in the same breath. Maybe he'd done a poorer job of hiding his hurt than he'd thought, hadn't managed to swallow all the blood that threatened to leak out of his mouth as every single movement stretched the angelic wound that gaped across his chest. It was mostly healed now, though the edges of the cut had yet to taper down or knit together. Every time he turned, moved his arm, did anything, he felt his skin brush against his shirt, like the flesh around a hangnail. He should have been laying down, flat on his back, and reading books in his derelict mansion until he felt better. But now that Charlie had called for him specifically, all but begged for him to return to her and her misguided, ridiculous hotel... Well, he was a sucker for attention. And he needed to be there.

So he cleaned the kitchen, quietly of course, avoided the petty urge to poison any of Vox's food given he had none to poison to begin with, and tried to find his limits. Shadows were still within his grasp, and to his delight, he discovered that minor portaling was in his wheelhouse once more. On the other side of the coin, tentacles were slow to rouse, major portals were a no, and teleportation was out of the question entirely. His staff, summoned from his guest room, crackled dangerously where it leaned against the cabinets. It had yet to fully regenerate itself from Adam, and using the damned thing as both a crutch and a weapon so soon was taxing for him and for it. He was without so many of the things he'd come to take for granted. The fact he still had his internal radio was an unexpected boon, and he set it to play the blues as he cleared away a year's worth of dust off every single plate, bowl, and the few spoons Vox owned. He did like to clean. The whole process was... Cathartic, in a way.

Vox may have extracted two large favors from him, but Alastor was concocting plans on how to be the most aggravating, gracious thrall there ever was. Even thinking that word, thrall, made his speakers hiss and pop. He already had one dealer, he did not need two, and especially did not need Vox thinking he was all high and mighty. It was a stroke of luck that Vox was boiled as an owl when they were haggling, otherwise, he might have demanded Alastor actually sign something, and that would have been a real fight. The bloody kind.

Speaking of bloody, he was nice enough to not murder the servant who left the laundry outside of the door towards morning, even if he felt the desire. He waited, quite patiently, for the laundry to be dropped off, and then waited longer for the worker to check his phone before he finally wandered back to his job. He opened the door when he was certain the sinner was gone, dragged the bag in, and set about retrieving his clothes. He searched through the bag and removed his overcoat, vest, shirt, slacks, boy, didn't his ensemble have so many pieces? The price he paid for comfort. After he'd gathered it all, he escaped to his room, to the bathroom, and shut the door, as the pale blush of dawn began to crest the horizon outside, light dribbling through the curtains.

Le Foncé wordlessly pooled beside him on the tile, waiting in the wings to be summoned. Alastor held off on the command, just to look himself over, while he had the opportunity. He'd been too out of it over the last several days to really take stock.

Alastor didn't think he looked too bad, especially considering the trials and tribulations of the last week, or... However many days it had been. His eyes blinked back at him, tired, empty, but his own. No trace of the green that drowned them out when he was without himself. The big gash over his forehead delivered at the cruel hands of his master had clotted and was now easily hidden with a frock of hair swept over it, a quick and unmentionable deviation of his style. His smile was subdued, restrained by the butterfly bandage, so he removed it. A little pop of the scab coming off, he swept his tongue over the resulting wound until it ceased to bleed. He smiled again, and the skin split, and he spent a few minutes repeating the effort until his body gave up on trying to talk sense into him. There. Near perfect. The swelling should be gone by tonight.

Le Foncé took the initiative and became corporeal without being told to help him remove his shirt. He eased it down and over his shoulders, throwing it into the hamper. He didn't dwell much on his body, beyond a cursory glance. He was so coated in scars.

He ignored them, out of habit, ignored the lines racing over his arms, his chest, his stomach. If it wasn't actively seeping, it wasn't his problem.

His skin was pale grey, limbs tapering off to black at the ends, fingers tipped with bloody claws, thin and fine, like scalpels. He could use them to sever muscle from bone in a clean stroke, play a carcass like an instrument until it fell into neat, clean pieces by his design. He looked them over for damage, found none, and moved on. He turned to glance at his back in the mirror, saw a patch of gauze that he had Le Foncé gingerly pull away, enough to get an idea of what lay beneath. That revealed deep claw marks under his right shoulder blade, a small group of bruises ringing the punctures. He still didn't remember how that got there. Maybe he'd done it himself. It wasn't an impossibility. The claws were too wide to be his, though, the scrabbling of an animal. Even at his worst, his work was always methodical.

The minor injuries looked at, he smoothed the bandaging back over his shoulder and turned to look at the botched vivisection that was clamoring for his attention, lighting up his nerves with a pain signal he'd long since learned not to feel. What a useless feature, pain. All it did was distract. He hooked a claw under the wrappings and started to remove them. Alastor had hardly peeled them back by an inch before he found himself dizzy and sweating, taking deep breaths through his nose and leaning onto the counter. A quick glance at the laceration, which was angry and lit with a touch of glowing white, and then he lowered the gauze back into place. Okay. It had started to heal, but he really needed to avoid anything strenuous for... Quite a while. He hated to admit that his dealer ever had a point, but maybe, this once, they were right. Traipsing about while he was coming back from being nearly cleaved in twain with a guitar was likely unwise.

"And whatever is a man to do?" He asked Le Foncé, handing over his dress shirt from where it hung over the edge of the shower's rail. Vox was right, it had been excellently repaired. As summoning one of spare shirts was out of the question, it would do, at least until his dealer drip-fed him his abilities. His overcoat had been similarly repaired, though the bottom edge remained frayed, just how he liked it. Well worn, well loved. Every good item deserved to be used until it was held together by naught but dreams and a bit of glue. It was such a shame nothing was built to last anymore.

He allowed himself to be helped into his button-up, keeping his temper in check as his shadow dressed him, like a child. He would not be petulant like one. "Charlotte will be expecting me at my finest, not..." He searched for a word. None of the ones that accurately described his condition were ones he ever allowed to be used about him, so he settled for "like this," and let the weight lie there. Le Foncé remained quiet, leaving Alastor wracking his brain for a solution. He didn't actually expect his shadow to respond, it was never able to speak, but it made for a good sounding board when he needed to walk himself through a plan. New socks, new pants, now the vest. Le Foncé helped with that too.

"I won't tell her, obviously," he decided, as if it were ever a possibility to do otherwise. "About any of it. Where I've been." Alastor chuckled to himself, trying to lighten his own mood through the sound. "The little princess doesn't need to know! She'll be so excited to see me she just won't ask. Dazzle and distract, Le Foncé, dazzle and distract!"

His shadow held out his overcoat. Alastor slipped one arm into it, reached back on instinct to shrug it over his shoulders, and nearly whited out as he tore himself open again. Le Foncé caught him, making a quiet chitter of admonishment as he was lowered to lean against the bathroom cabinet, breathing heavily through clenched teeth. He was so sick of the floor. He was so tired of constantly being low. He was so... Tired. Just tired. His eyes were heavy. He closed them, feeling the burn of missing rest.

"... Perhaps we'll wait a day or two before we go back. Leave them wondering if we'll answer their prayers."

Alastor's ears canted against his will. Through the walls of the apartment, he heard an alarm chime, and the telltale sounds of someone who did not yet want to be awake grumbling about how being alive was a curse. He had no more time to rest. It would have to be now, injured or not. He could do this. He could fake his way through. What had he been doing this whole time, if not that? His smile was his most powerful tool, the thing he used to guard himself from the masses, from his master, from everyone. As long as he wore it, he was untouchable.

Vox's bedroom door opened. Making an executive decision, Le Foncé disappeared into the floor, and Alastor allowed it to drag him down too.

The dark had always been his friend. Even as a young boy wandering the bayou, he'd never felt fear when alone in the blackness, because it was his ally. He sated the things that lurked within it, fed it what it wanted, and in return, it served him. As it was in life, as it became in death. As above, so below. Alastor melted into its cold, open, waiting arms and became the dark itself, melded in, welcomed and adored. Being 2D, less than 2D even, was a freeing experience. He barely felt the pain here, barely felt anything, nothing but the inviting, all-encompassing space that was the blackness. His physical body became a thin film of ooze, and he tugged it along as he crept out from under the door, around the corner of the windowsill, and out into Hell. It was a good thing it was dawn, otherwise, he might've had to walk to the Hotel, and that would've spoiled his grand entrance! As it was, he was so much faster without a shell of meat to lug about and worry over hitting against kitchen islands, or doors, or anything of that nature. He'd be there before the 'sun' was fully up.

Hell had better watch out.


Stage fright was an old, beaten down, tied up, and murdered friend of Alastor's. He loved the spotlight, loved to be adored, loved to be heard most of all, but as he approached the Hazbin Hotel again for the first time in nearly six and a half months, he did feel that sorry sot try to creep along on his coattails. Le Foncé snapped at it, wired and aggressive because of the situation. He'd had to crawl across Hell in the shadows, dodging the lights of the street and the neon that soaked through the Vee's portion of the Pentagram. Once he was out of there, it was easier, but travel had still been far slower than he would have liked. Alastor smiled wider to soothe his shadow, fiddled a bit with his bowtie until it was straight. He looked utterly dashing, his overcoat freshly washed and repaired, standing tall and strong and most of all, looking powerful. His stage was set for his return.

And yet, for just a moment more, just a scant second or two before he brought the end of his staff onto the front doors of the newly remodeled hotel, doubt seized his heart with freezing fingers. His first rap was quieter than he would have liked, though the second and third were far stronger. He busied himself studying the new design as he waited for an answer, and sent his momentary hesitation wailing down into a hole with the stage fright.

It wasn't his cup of tea. Too many lights, far too many lights, and so many conflicting motifs of apples and music notes and cards, honestly, it looked a bit like a child threw it together. That did make sense, if Charlie had any input. The old hotel was a family property with a cohesive style, this one... Well, it was clear that she'd had quite a bit more say in the decor than he would have ever given her, if he'd been here to oversee construction. Given that he hadn't, he put it on his list to make sure his own quarters had none of this frivolity associated with them. There was absolutely nothing wrong with keeping it simple, and nobody who'd drawn up these plans had any understanding of such a basic concept! Red and black and cream and pink, it was a bit of an eyesore, stretching near to the top of the sky and threatening to pierce it with the massive key and signage. Arrows pointed at the front door, and to either side hugging the walls of the courtyard were massive bushes, overflowing with growth. A statue of Dazzle sat in the middle of a little fountain, already filled with tiny silverfish and coins. There was a painting of Sir Pentious out here too, if he wasn't mistaken, Egg Boiz by his side, cordoned off with rope.

Hm. Interesting. He turned his head to get a better look, but then something else caught his eye and he found his attention meandering. Alastor tipped his head back. Squinted. Was that... A black and red spire? It certainly didn't match the rest of the decor.

The door clicked. He didn't have time to really get a good look, nor put further thought towards it. Eyes flickering with a back light and radio humming, Alastor leaned forward. He was smiling, straining against the bandages he'd hastily re-affixed to his chest. He expected Charlie to greet him, had a 'hello, my dear', balanced on his tongue, a song and dance just for her enjoyment.

This was not Charlie. This was a Hellhound. One with a rather bored, unimpressed look to boot. She was red and black and white, spotty and striped, with a huge mane of hair. It was an interesting pattern.

Hm, again. Perhaps a new hire? She wasn't dressed in the uniform he'd provided as a template.

Alastor tilted his head, perhaps a bit farther than a natural skeleton should allow. "Why hello there, my little mutt, would you be so kind as to-"

"Who are you?" The Hellhound interrupted. Oh, not a hound, he was mistaken. This was a sinner. A hyena, by the looks of things, though she carried herself with the slouch and lack of status that most hounds did. She had a rather doom and gloom approach to fashion, a red shirt with a skull, a spiked choker. She and Vox's mannequin friend would have much to talk about.

He laughed, trying to brush off how the lack of recognition, and her own lack of manners, stung him. "Who am I?-"

"Eeyap," she mouthed around the thickness of her accent. Alastor found himself unable to place it. English, surely, perhaps Yorkshire? Whatever it was, she was very rude to cut him off before he could finish a sentence. Twice. "You lookin' for a place here? We got plenty of rooms still, so you're in luck."

Alastor tamped down the thought to slap the accent out of her mouth. It wouldn't do to start assaulting the... Patrons, of the hotel, without due cause. Even if he felt he'd been given it. "I would like to speak to Miss Morningstar, please!"

"You withtha news?" The hyena sinner asked, oblivious. She couldn't have been more than twenty two. She laid a hand on her hips, cocked them to one side, her hand reaching for her phone. If she started texting in the middle of this conversation. "We're not acceptin' interviews with anybody, luv. Move off."

He was going to kill and eat her.

The Radio Demon had just barely managed to crack his jaw to start sizing her head up for a snap when she was saved by another sinner wandering past behind her. This one, a fishy-looking thing, sighed. It was a long-suffering sound that carried the trace of gargling, like speaking through a film of phlegm, or out of a fishbowl. "Crymini, you have to let them in the door first-"

The fish demon looked at Alastor, mouth agape and dripping. Alastor recognized him, gave him a too-wide smile that made the corner of his mouth leak. This sinner made the correct choice. He screamed and bolted out of sight, howling "Radio Demon!" at the top of his lungs as he booked it. Alastor and the hyena, who's name was allegedly Crymini, watched him go. Alastor blinked, put his jaw back into place with an audible click of his bones.

"What an odd little fellow!" Said he.

Crymini hocked in her throat. "Eeyap, Baxter's a craven little bitch, he is."

"A shame," Alastor replied. He forgot about his earlier desire to eat the girl. She forgot about her earlier rejection of his presence. "Crymini, is it?"

She looked him up and down, as if taking in his personal manners of dress, decorum, those all-important components to a first impression. Alastor thought he looked quite nice. Girls did seem to love his old style flare. Crymini didn't appear impressed, which was no skin off his nose. "Thas me," she confirmed, the second 't' getting caught in her teeth. "You wanna come in, or-?"

A gasp so high-pitched it nearly left the realm of human hearing pierced the air. By the way Crymini's ears airplaned, Alastor was sure he wasn't alone in thinking it was far too high on the octaves, but it could come from nobody else. A pounding of dress shoes concealing hooves thundered over the new carpeting, and Crymini shouted at her to slow down, but Charlie on a mission was not to be stopped. Alastor moved Crymini aside with his staff before she could be trampled, scooting her aside on her heels, which he thought was rather charitable of him. She growled. He growled back, and found satisfaction in how she stared, clearly baffled, but with a touch of respect. Good. She would learn who he was in due time.

"Charlie!" He greeted warmly, as the Princess of Hell, quite literally, threw herself at his feet.

He knew what happened, of course. Her arms were outstretched, wanting so badly to squeeze him within an inch of his life, and in the last moment she recalled how much he despised to be touched. So she stopped short, fell over, and skidded the last foot until she came to a stop at his boots. Logically, he knew this course of action, he'd just seen it play out in front of him. But try telling that to the three full-course meals and several snacks his ego had just harvested out of the sight of a Morningstar on the dirt before him.

Alastor wasn't shy about his greatest sin being Pride.

Charlie lifted her face off of the door mat and smiled. "Al!" She cried, pure joy shining through her words. Alastor leaned down (ow) and lifted her to her feet, found that his smile came easily now. He did enjoy her company, despite finding the entire concept of redemption to be horsefeathers at best. Sinners were in Hell for a reason, but this hotel was important to him, too, for reasons she could never know.

"Darling, it is so nice to see you," he said, and found that it wasn't even a lie. He pulled her into a very gentle hug, hoping she would get the message with the light pressure. She did, the quick embrace he got in return was measured and dialed back, taking what he gave without asking for more because she knew his boundaries. He was happy she'd had a lesson about that, even if he declined to participate in it beyond telling the staff to never touch him unless they were offing that body part up for dinner. The threat had been taken to heart by all present, save Angel Dust, but Alastor never could find it in his heart to bite off the spider's hand. Perhaps because he would then need to contend with a bill from Valentino. He pushed her back once he'd had his fill of physical contact, which was not very much if you pleased, and held her at arm's length. "A sight for sore eyes indeed."

The Princess looked frazzled. Her hair was the tiniest bit fluffed, her red cheeks flushed, a button of her suit jacket undone. He deigned to do it up for her as she talked, hoping Lucifer was watching. He would be the better father if he meant it or not. "I'm sooo glad you're okay!" Charlie said, and then turned the shoulder-holding around on him, which was uncomfortable at best. Her eyes darted all over him as she spun them both, putting him firmly indoors, catching on the cut of his lip. She raised a hand to touch it, caught herself, then touched her own mouth. "You are okay right? Oooohh migosh, you're not still hurt are you?!"

Yes.

"No," he lied, smoothly as ever, shadows feathering his edges just enough to slip out of her grasp and trot backwards on the carpet. "I am right as rain! Just a little trip out of Pentagram City was all I needed. Don't worry yourself!" Alastor glanced around the parlor as he talked. It looked... Remarkably similar to the old one. Right down to the melding of wood and fabric where the bar met the foyer, if a bit cleaner than when he had done it. He revolved around on his toes, took it in, feeling Charlie bouncing through the vibrations in the floor. Everything about the parlor was nigh-identical to the old. Updated, of course, with a brighter, whiter aesthetic and some music notes on the wallpaper, but... "You liked the old design of our hotel oh so much, didn't you?" Our hotel. He was beginning to get possessive all over again.

Charlie made a short squeaking noise, coming to stand by his side. He balanced both hands on his cane as she talked, leaning just enough of his weight on it to take the pain from his chest to his back. Easier to tolerate that way. "Yeeeaahh," she hissed through her teeth. "The first draft was a bit... Um."

"Cluttered?"

"Cluttered," she agreed, then seemed to inflate with that infectious cheer she shared with anyone who came near her. It was a good thing his heart was a cold, dead thing in a box someplace, otherwise he might have found himself affected. "Al, it's so good to have you back! Ooo, do you want the tour?!"

Alastor glanced back at Crymini, who was blinking, tapping at her phone, trying to take a picture of him. She really must not have known who he was, if she was trying that. "Introductions to come later, then?"

"Oh, I'm sure we'll see the others on the way!" Charlie was already trying to drag him, unsuccessfully, towards one of the back halls. "Everyone is doing activities today. Activities, Alastor! We have enough residents for activities! You've got to see the game room, and the library, and Angel has put together a little quiet room for decompressing, and-"

Well! Seems his choice was made.


Alastor became more and more amused as Charlie took him around the hotel as fast as she could ramble, yammering without end and pausing only slightly to allow an interjection. At some point, he had stopped even trying to use a more up to date slant to his language, and was instead leafing backwards through his rolodex of slang. The thing that got him caught was 'gee, willikers', but rather than get annoyed at his antics, she gave him a gooey, saccharine smile that made his stomach twist like he'd just stuck his nose in the sugar dish. By the end of the tour, now taking the elevator to the rooftop to see what Charlie said was 'the best part of the hotel', he reflected back on the sights.

The entire hotel was a reskinned version of the original, down to the damned layout, if stretched and squashed a bit. The themes differed slightly, there were now 'wings' of rooms in addition to floors, and they certainly had their fair share of amenities, but it was more or less the same as the old mansion. It was kind of hilarious, if he was honest with himself, which he always was. He hummed a snatch of song as the elevator took them up, changing the music that floated out of the speakers to jazz. He would need to plant radios all over the hotel again, he hadn't seen them present in any rooms, but that was easily rectified with a single night alone.

Charlie rocked in place, absolutely buzzing. He could tell, she was eager to touch him again, wanted to crush the stuffing out of him in a hug to make him feel like she did, but if she tried it he'd likely spill his guts everywhere in a literal sense, and that would never come out of the carpeting! He supplied her aching need to get some sign of reassurance from him with a fond smile, a pat on top of her head. She ate it up like she was starved for attention, closing her eyes and leaning into it like a cat. Always the easiest to manipulate. A moment of support, a kind word, and she'd melt into an easily molded puddle.

Patience, he told himself, curling a sprig of her hair around his finger before he returned to leaning on his staff. One project at a time. Reconnaissance first.

He wasn't here to play nice. He wasn't here to help the hotel, beyond what served his own gains. He was still here to watch sinners grasp for betterment and see the looks in their eyes when it slipped away. He was temptation, he was the siren's call of sin, and he would feed their worst desires for his own ends.

But the princess could read into his actions however she liked.

The elevator dinged, the doors whooshed open, and Alastor wasn't sure what to take in first.

A garden sprawled before him that could rival Eden. Planters of every shape and size were organized in more or less even rows over the roof, overflowing with greenery. Flowers on one side, hydrangeas, begonias, daylilys, and countless others he couldn't begin to name ate the left side. Down the middle were fruits and vegetables, tomato plants crawling up trellises, peppers, squash, bless his heart, was that okra? And to the right, rows of seedling trees, barely big enough to be removed from the nursery. It was a riot of color, the smell of dirt and earth and the workings of a field, and for a moment Alastor remembered his home, the hollyhocks and lavender that pervaded his life. He blinked, hard, to rid himself of the image. It would do no good to dwell on it.

"Charlie!" Vaggie barked, not unkindly. It was just the way she spoke, beaten into her during her time in the angelic legions. Oho, how he had loved learning about that. "Did you bring Baxter up? We need that new fertilizer he invented before Cherri turns it into bombs and-"

She came around the trees, nearly catching her shin on one of the wooden boxes, and stopped dead in her tracks. Alastor twiddled his fingers in a wave, finding it hard to catch his breath. His chest was cold. He might have been overdoing it at this point, though not yet to the point where pain registered. Charlie made a squeeing sound and dashed away from him, swooping her girlfriend in the air.

"He came back!" She exclaimed, venting her need to squish Alastor by smushing her cheek into Vaggie's. He and the fallen angel were locked in a staring contest. An Overlord and an angel, the hotelier and the manager. She broke first, with...

A smile. A real, honest to goodness smile, one that reached her remaining eye and lit it up. "Good to have you back, Alastor."

Odd. "Charmed to be back!" He said as he sketched a bow, feeling his skin warp in response, and at the sound of his voice, the rest of the cavalry came flooding in.

"Al?!"

"Alastor?"

"Mister Alastor!!!"

Angel Dust, Husker, and Niffty, three parts of the old crew, popping up like the flowers from where they'd been bent over their work, all of them dusted with soil. Niffty got to him first, skittering over at mach ten. She was dressed in big yellow gardening gloves and a rubber smock, but she still smelled of the sharp green scents that came from weeding. He didn't have time to warn her to be careful before she threw herself at him, clambered up his body to hang off his neck, nearly choking him with the enthusiasm. He removed his hands from his staff to support her weight, but allowed her the transgression of his personal space. He even gave her a bit of a cuddle, he was feeling magnanimous like that. Niffty didn't weigh much, this was fine, certainly, and not at all exacerbating for his injury.

He stole a glance at Husker over top of her head. That look was all they needed to share, a blink of acknowledgement. Husker's dour expression never did change, not even after fifty years. Every time Alastor reappeared, he wore that same look. Hilarious. He refused to believe it was layered with fondness.

"Niffty, my darling!" Alastor plucked the little maid from his front like a kitten, scruffing her and holding her out before his face. "And how goes the bug keeping?"

"I'm winning this time!" Niffty writhed with glee. He set her down, back to her sharp, stubby feet, to let her express herself more fully without elbowing him. "I've been keeping a collection of the biggest ones, Charlie says it's good to find a passion!"

Entomology. Of course she'd like that. Spearing insects to a board with neat little labels, that was so up her alley he was shocked he'd never suggested she pick up the hobby himself. Speaking of bugs, Angel Dust came swaying over next, all hips and chest and useless sex appeal that was lost upon him. He was expecting the approach, the way he held himself, the sway, the long strides of longer legs. What he wasn't expecting was for Angel to put his hands on him.

He didn't have time to blip away. "Alastor!" New York, definitely a New York accent, thick and round and rhotic that sounded quite a bit like the Yat accent of New Orleans. Angel Dust seemed happy to see him, which wasn't altogether unsurprising, given the amount of advances he'd ignored or turned down when he was here last. But these touches weren't lecherous. Angel Dust threw aside a variety of garden tools and put all four arms around him, and finally, somebody did it. He pressed down, hard, never knowing a soft touch to be given or received, and Alastor felt a stitch pop and his lungs collapse. He gave Angel a brief, patronizing pat, as a signal to kindly get off him now. Angel obliged, grinning, his golden tooth glinting in the light of morning. He looked happy. It was a nice look. "Where ya been, pal? We missed ya buildin' the new hotel! Coulda used your hands.~"

Angel winked. There was the blatant sexualization of his person. Alastor laughed, wheezing only a bit on the last 'ha' that he forced out. "Just taking care of some business," he said, rubbing his claws on his lapel to avoid having to make eye contact as he lied. He swallowed the blood that spurted into his mouth, willing his body to stop being so dramatic. He hoped it didn't show on his tongue or teeth. "I'm sorry for my extended leave of absence! I will be sure to process the proper paperwork next time, Miss Morningstar."

Having hauled Vaggie over from the jardinières, Charlotte grinned, so bright, so sunny, so wholly trusting. It was almost too much. "I just gave him the tour," she explained to everyone who had gathered around him, crowding him back against the elevator door. Alastor was positively glowing under the attention, even if he felt something went start trickling down from his pec to his stomach. He hoped it wouldn't soak through. "And he's met everyone! Well, save for Baxter. But he saw him in the hallway!"

"That probably just set him back about a year's worth of progress for gettin' him outta his room," Husker groused. Angel gave him a pat behind the ear, and Husker leaned in, even as he lifted his lip in a snarl.

Oh, so that relationship had progressed. Good to know. "Yeah, probably," the spider sinner agreed, "but we can work on that!"

"Oh, no, I know him already!" Alastor chirped, fingers tapping on the top of his cane. Husker glared at him.

"How?"

"I tried to eat him once."

A firm reminder to everyone involved that Alastor had cannibalistic tendencies. He saw Charlie pull something of a face, though she held her composure. Angel leaned over Husk, raised an eyebrow.

"Uh, tried?" He spread out his bottom arms. "Whaddya mean 'tried'?"

"It wasn't Friday, so there was no need," he explained without explaining.

Nobody wanted to touch that squirrely logic with a ten foot pole, nor read too deeply into the implications it held. Angel looked around, saw that everyone else was just staring, and ponied up a distraction. "Hey, Al, didja see the library?"

"I saw the whole facility," he confirmed. He was rather partial to the library. Alastor foresaw himself spending many, many hours there, when he felt tolerable for company finding him, stretched languidly on a couch with a good book. Maybe with a tot of whiskey. Damn, this new hotel meant that all the booze he'd hidden in the walls was gone. He'd need to find new hiding spots. No hard liquor was allowed within these walls, but he lived through Prohibition. If anybody could smuggle it in and keep it hidden, it would be him. "I especially like the little stage in the parlor."

"That's for talent night!" Charlie squealed, absolutely elated to hear a personal comment, as they'd been sparse during the rapid-fire open house. "Oh, and we're going to get a piano from the palace, dad said he's going to have it delivered tomorrow-"

Dad. Lucifer. Alastor felt his mood take a sharp nose dive, the jazz he'd dragged with him from the elevator warbling like a bad station. "Your father is still hanging about?" He cut in, reigning back the rampaging jealousy that covered his own need to always be the strongest being present. The mood was dampened, but only slightly. Vaggie took over. It tickled him, that he was something to be managed, to be catered to and crept around. One never knew when Al would disappear and the Radio Demon would take his place.

"Lucifer has been filling in as sponsor and facility manager while you were gone." The angel pointed at an apple-shaped dome that Alastor thought was just a rather tacky piece of decoration. Seemed it wasn't. A metal leaf popped out of the top, a weather vane. The personal dormitory had a red roof like the peel of a ripe Red Delicious. The worst kind of apple. You couldn't see into the windows from here, it was just barely level with the roof. Alastor's smile twisted.

"How polite of him to play at parenthood," he said, words sharp but flavored with a compliment.

Charlie, as ever, chose to ignore the insult. "We weren't sure when you'd be back," she explained, leaving her girlfriend to stand by him again. He sidestepped the hand on his shoulder, and pretended not to notice as she deflated due to the rejection. "So he's been helping out."

Alastor put a hand over his eyes, looked side to side. "Why, I don't see him now! Declined to get his hands dirty?"

"Well, no," Charlie said, just forceful enough to give him a hint that he was on thin ice. "He's been dealing with Heaven recently, and just now he's had to go down to Greed and Lust, but- That's not important!" She cut herself off mid-exposition, waving her hands to dispel the tangent. "I wanted to show you something up here! Other than the gardens."

"Oh, but they're so lovely. Which is?"

"Your room, Smiles." Angel crossed his arms over his fluff.

His room?

The spider sinner pointed two spindly arms to the other side of the roof, opposite the apple top he could see, and, oh.

It was beautiful.

Shiny black steel with deeply red windows as to be opaque, glistening and dangerously pretty. It looked as if it was trying to rip itself from the hotel, metal contorting as it tore away from the safety railing. It jabbed up at the clouds, he always did prefer verticality to his dwellings, with wire 'antlers' that doubled as signal transponders. From here, he could reach all of Hell with his broadcasts with little effort expended on his own end, and see it all, too. A staircase spilled from a door out onto the roof, giving him direct access to the gardens. Someone had set up an outdoor table for him, complete with a parasol if he wanted to stay out of the light for whatever reason. It would be perfect for tea at any time of day, a spot to relax and smell the flowers that crowded up just beyond his patio.

He loved it. Alastor hated how much he loved it. He hadn't designed it, hadn't had a chance to provide input about it's construction, and yet it was exactly what he would have wanted. Sleek and deadly and gorgeous for all of that, like a snake in the marsh, a gator waiting in the muck. He found himself strolling over to stand at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at the tower with a critical eye. He couldn't see through the windows on this side. Privacy, complete and utter privacy, even when standing close enough to hurl a rock through the glass.

He turned back. The residents of the hotel looked so... Hopeful, even Husker, who claimed that his ability to love had died years ago. Alastor found that his smile wasn't forced, not even a little. How strange. "You certainly know how to make an Overlord feel welcome!" He said, grabbing his lapel and bobbing on the balls of his feet, just once.

"I took some of the stuff from your mansion to here," Niffty bubbled. "Just to make it feel more like home!"

"Al's got a mansion?" Angel gasped. "And you aren't lettin' us see it?"

"It is my home," Alastor said simply, the smallest touch peeved Niffty had revealed it's existence, but too happy about the new tower to really scold her for it. He spun the staff and leveled it in his hands, poking it in Angel's direction. "And it is mine. Apologies if I would like some things to remain private!"

The spider looked like he was going to press this issue, but Vaggie stopped him, putting an arm over his stomach to block him from getting closer. "Don't, start this," she warned. "We hope you like it, Alastor."

He did like it. He liked it very much. He laughed, letting his genuine mirth seep into it, pulling grins from all in attendance. "I think it is absolutely swell! Yes, I'm quite keen on it, simply a pip!"

That was some of the oldest slang he'd ever used. His radio was dealing out swing music to anyone who would listen. This was the most extreme example of happiness he'd ever shown, and Alastor made an effort to reel it in, seeing Charlie vibrate in place so hard she was threatening to wear a hole through the roof directly into the hotel below. He cleared his throat, set his staff to the ground and rested on it. His chest was beginning to burn, he'd need to stop soon, pack some new dressing over it. "I like it very much. Thank you."

That heartfelt expression of sincere gratitude nearly pushed Charlie to song. He saw it, heard her take in a big breath, felt a long-rooted fear flood outward from his heart, but Vaggie saved them all and patted her shoulders. "Babe, calm down. We need to go get Baxter and Crymini, it's almost time for the morning circle."

Angel and Husker groaned. Whatever 'the circle' was, they didn't like it. Alastor was certain he wouldn't like it either. It sounded like some kind of overly open bull. Charlie opened her mouth, hopeful, and Alastor answered her unspoken question with a swift "No."

She was too pleased with herself to care."Well, that's okay! If you ever feel like coming to join us-"

"I think I'm going to have a look about my new tower," he interrupted. He was really beginning to be sore now, pressed a hand to his chest and sketched a dip to cover the action. "I'll see you for dinner!"

"You're gonna cook?!" Niffty squealed.

"You're ditching us until dinner?" Husker grumbled.

"Jambalaya," he promised, patting his maid's wee head. Lots of those being doled out today. "If you'll be so kind as to collect me some of the vegetables from up here? Tomatoes, peppers, onions, you know the drill, my dear."

Niffty threw him a salute, and he smiled, looking at the collective gathered before him. Part of him had missed this group. Deeply. The part that craved attention, of course, and nothing else. He never felt a need for companionship, and not even they could change that. Alastor bid them farewell, set a firm time for dinner, and crested the stairs to his new home. Only, as he touched the handle, swung the door open on squeaky hinges that had never seen traffic, he put something together.

Only now did it occur to him, he had yet to see Sir Pentious. Only a portrait of him downstairs. Surrounded by flowers.

Ah. A pity.

"Farewell to you too, old friend," he said, and took a step onto the welcome mat of his new living quarters. "You were a dogged opponent."

Notes:

CRIES. MAN I BARELY GOT THIS OUT AFTER MIDNIGHT. FUCK. this bitch is bigger than chapter 3 wtf.

hi! i'm back from my break, kinda. the every other day schedule is fucking insane and i don't think i'll be doing that anymore, but i can aim for an at LEAST weekly schedule, if not twice a week! i hope you enjoy. as always, thank you for the support.

Chapter 8: Cocktails for True

Notes:

okay i will admit, the rough draft of this WAS done to 'cocktails for two'. however, the editing and third pass were done to this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=722kVblPhec

and i think it more accurately captures the vibe of... whatever the fuck it is. someday ill get tired of fucked up dinners. not today tho.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Niffty had done a fine job of decorating this place in accordance with his personal style, but that was little wonder. She'd been to his mansion, after all, that was where he'd pulled her from when he started this whole hotel business. The diminutive cyclops was the closest thing he had to a friend in this hotel, aside from Husker, and their relationship was rocky as a general rule. Niffty knew him best, and so the living quarters were done up in Art Deco, as they should be, with extraordinary craftsmanship displayed in every item. A fireplace with a hidden chimney to the left, accompanied by a pair of plush burgundy armchairs and a small loveseat. Niffty had pilfered one of his bookshelves from his home, one that was squat and stout, and filled it with his favorite titles. She'd even dug up an extra record player from who knew where to set it in the corner. There were runner rugs coating the floor, a plush door mat to wick the dirt from his boots, and a large bear skin thrown near the fire. The hotel staff had even given him a kitchenette, which was very thoughtful of them. Wise, too. He'd be able to stop labeling all of his food so meticulously to ensure nobody ate anything they didn't mean to, which had happened and had gotten him thoroughly lambasted for the improper storage of demon flesh.

In his opinion, if they didn't want to run the risk of eating something they didn't intend to ingest, they shouldn't go cracking open tinfoil that they didn't package. Manners were lost on that lot, though.

Upstairs, or, rather, up-ladder, was his new broadcasting room. It was almost identical to the old one, if a bit higher in the ceiling department. A new radio mixer had been procured for him, along with a microphone, a coatrack, a table for a lamp. The usual fare. Alastor spent time in here, making sure everything was up to his meticulous standards, but they had done quite well for themselves. He was almost disturbed by the lack of complaints he had. The only problem was that the rug seemed a bit too worn, even for him, but then he noticed it was the rug that was originally in his station before Adam destroyed the hotel, and understood why it had been salvaged. A bit of the old to accentuate the new. Niffty must have sewn up the rips, gave it a good scrub and beating, and laid it out underfoot. How quaint. As he left, eyes opened around the lamp, just like the last one he'd had in here.

His bedroom was found through a small trapdoor that covered a set of curved stairs, and it was even cozier here than in the living room. A large four poster was placed to the back of the room, rounded just enough at the head to fit snugly against the wall. Niffty had piled it high with quilts and linen sheets, which he did so appreciate, and added a chaise that would be utterly perfect for putting his feet up after a long day. There was even another fireplace here that surely fed into the original, and even more bookshelves. These were sparse, only holding a few tomes that likely had never actually found a proper home in his mansion. A place for a personal collection, outside of the prying eyes of the residents. And all of it, every last piece in the entire apartment, was red, red, red.

Niffty truly did know him well.

Alastor shucked his overcoat onto the back of the chaise, intending to throw himself onto it later to close his eyes for a tick, and went searching for a private bath. He found one, and with it, his one and only real quibble about this arrangement.

His bathroom was connected to the hotel itself.

Not directly, of course, there was a small hallway, but there was a door on the opposite side of his bedroom that fed into a passage which ended inside the hotel. His bathroom was here, a spacious thing that he spent little time examining. He made a beeline to the mirror, hastily undid his shirt, and winced as he noticed that he was bleeding through his bandages. He started his day in a bathroom not four hours ago, and now here he was, back in a bathroom, still watching his life drip out of his troublesome veins. Unacceptable. He was better than this. He dropped to a knee to rummage through his vanity, and, yes, Charlie had packed a first aid kit in here, knowing it would be the one chance she ever got to foist one upon him. He would need to thank her later, in a way that didn't reveal he'd actually needed to use it.

The Radio Demon stood, feeling a bit queasy as he did. Le Foncé stretched himself out on the wall, it's head at a ninety degree angle to it's body. It said nothing, merely stared into Alastor's eyes through the mirror. Waiting.

"I didn't summon you," he told it. Le Foncé shrugged.

Sighing, Alastor sat down on the edge of the tub, procured a towel from the rack, and laid it over his lap. He'd noticed a wardrobe in his bedroom and could only hope Niffty had grabbed him some clothes, as he had bled right onto his red undershirt and needed to replace it. He popped open the kit, took out all of the gauze and medical tape he could, and handed it over. "Get on with it, then."

Le Foncé changed his bandages. Alastor didn't remember much of the process and didn't want to, but by the end of it he was shaky, felt wrung out, and found himself absurdly thankful he'd given himself until dinner to sort out his shit, as it were. He trembled back to the chaise on dainty legs and Le Foncé's shoulder, kicked off his boots, and blacked out in nothing but his slacks and spats. It wasn't sleep, no. Alastor rarely slept. Instead, he lost himself in the flow of the radiowaves, and drifted about until something jumped out at him that he wanted to hear. Oftentimes, he would tune himself into a real station of some kind. All music found its way to him eventually, even the modern gibberish, and he would find what offended him the least. However, now and again, he would find a radio that was within his range and listen through it, see what was going on in the unimportant lives of the peons of Hell. Today he found himself at the front row seat of a very aggressive legal battle over a hotly contested will, and was absolutely enamored by all the ways one could find to tell their deceased relative to go fuck themselves. Truly, he was building a catalogue of new insults, and even a few new swear words he hadn't run across before. It even ran through lunch.

When he resurfaced, the clock on the wall told him it was seven o'clock.

Dinner was meant to be at five. It was always, always at five. To have rested this long was... He didn't want to think on the implications. No. He was fine. Just tuckered out from traversing all of Hell this morning, and then further drained by playing at gratitude and engaging socially. Everybody was tired after a performance!

Alastor still felt peaky, but less like a balled up, discombobulated pile of limbs that didn't all quite come from the same body. He sat up, slowly, felt no protest from his wounds, and got himself upright. He toiled away at making himself look more presentable, threw off the overcoat that Le Foncé had draped over him in place of a blanket and swept a hand over his body. His powers weren't all back yet, but magical sprucing was no trouble at all. A comb through his hair, a new shirt and a de-wrinkling of his clothing so it didn't appear like he'd just crashed out on his chaise for nearly nine full hours, and he looked almost normal. The angelic wound was throbbing, but he ignored it, told his body to just relax for once. He summoned his staff, spun it betwixt his fingers, and whistled to Le Foncé to come to heel. There. Now he was ready. He left his bedroom through the bathroom hall, finding that he still didn't like the idea of his bathroom being this close to the hotel itself, even if the direct access was convenient. Perhaps it was to facilitate laundry pickup? Or just the best way to fit a bathroom into a circular layout without sacrificing space?

He would have to ask whoever drew up the floorplans. If there were floorplans.

The hotel was remarkably quiet, at this hour. Not that he expected it to be loud, no, they didn't have the numbers for that, but the eeriness did brush a finger over the frayed ends of his nerves. The knowledge that there were people here, he just didn't see them... That whole concept had never sat well with him. He chewed on this feeling as he took the elevator from the 13th floor down to the 1st, ears perked to pick up any sound, an indicator of life. Alastor never liked being without control, and especially didn't like being without information. Modern workings he could do without, and he wasn't as stupid as he allowed himself to come across as in that regard, but it was knowledge of other people that drove him up the wall when he lacked it. That must be why the quiet disturbed him. He didn't know where everyone was. Perhaps still waiting for him to cook! He would have to make a dessert in order to apologize for his absence.

Cooking, however, was an outlet for his stress, and that pendulum swung both ways, good and bad. After trapping the entire hotel into a five course meal one night, after a particularly grating day, Charlie had ever so kindly asked him to inform her when he was in a foul mood when it was his turn to cook. In his mind, all of his food was always flawless, and they certainly hadn't had anything better to do that night, but he did see her point. Alastor cooking too much or too little was a reliable indicator of his emotional state. Too much, and he was tetchy, felt peeved. Too little, uninspired, insipid, directionless. He did hate that she was able to identify that, though, able to see into his head just by noticing how many frills he added to a doberge cake. She was annoyingly perceptive like that, and he disliked that she directed such skills at him. He was no patron nor patient of the hotel, he was it's manager. He was above the rabble, and certainly wasn't pursuing something as feeble-minded and impractical as redemption. Redemption required guilt, required an acknowledgement of past sins, and every 'heinous' act Alastor had ever committed was ruined firmly in cause.

No, no. His dealer had other goals. Alastor was simply serving those.

As he stepped out onto the carpet of the first floor's back hall, he stopped. Sniffed. Someone else had already made something to eat, he could smell it. Rich, tomato-heavy, with a background of spices. It was mouth-watering despite not containing any of Alastor's dietary requirements, eliciting a favorable turn of his stomach. There was pop music playing in the kitchen, and not from a radio, Alastor knew that much. There were none in the hotel, not yet. It was a phone, his sixth sense told him, which was far more difficult for him to control... But not impossible. Every piece of technology had to run on his radio waves. He closed his eyes, grabbed a hold of the signal, and with a bit of a yank, put on something better. Cocktails for Two, Duke Ellington's version, 1934. A year beyond his time, but close enough for him.

Angel Dust groaned.

"If you're gonna change the music, Al, don't be a freak about it!"

Ravioli. That's what he was smelling. Angel's favorite, when it was his turn to cook, though Alastor didn't make a habit in partaking. He loved his own cooking, but found himself rather pedantic and choosy about others. The deer sinner sauntered down the hall, swung into the kitchen with a chipper smile and light air, not at all the one of someone who had blacked out for the majority of the day, and took in the scene.

Angel Dust was leaning against the counters with a subtly annoyed expression, phone display turned towards Alastor so he could see the music video being played on the screen. Alastor hummed casually and pretended not to understand the intent.

The spider sinner scoffed. "I shouldn't have saved you any dinner."

"I thought I made it clear I was going to cook!" Alastor pointed out, glancing around the kitchen. The table had been set, napkin, bowl, silverware, but only for one person. It was just the two of them here, no Niffty, no Charlie, no anybody. Just him and the spider. Not a typical state of affairs, to be sure. He and Angel Dust didn't often cross paths for more than a moment, mainly because the carnal nature the other man carried was off-putting at best and actively uncomfortable at worst. Then again, after that night out with Husker, his behavior did seem to have mellowed, reserving his jokes for the perfect time and place. He'd yet to draw a real laugh out of Alastor, which was a snub in of itself given how easily he shared it with the world, but now and then the Radio Demon did need to suppress a smirk or two. Alastor would place them into a category of 'wary friends, better acquaintances'.

Angel had traded out his typical striped suit jacket for what appeared to be black leggings and a pink cropped top that was showing less skin than was perhaps normal for his usual attire. Alastor refrained from commenting and meandered towards the stove, one ear tweaked to hear what Angel Dust had to say. He popped his lips. "Yeah, well, Niffty was gonna wake you, but I told her to leave you be and I'd take care of it."

"Whatever for?" Alastor asked, examining the fare provided. Ravioli with a meat sauce, but far better than anything out of a can. It looked utterly delicious, with fresh herbs sprinkled over the top of the sauce, the sweet-savory smell blotting out everything else. It was... Oddly familiar. Alastor didn't often eat food he didn't make, here in Hell, not unless he was sharing a meal with Rosie. The risk of poisoning, even by those he trusted, was too great. The only reason he'd shared a meal with Vox was because Vox had eaten the same food, and eaten it first at that. So why did he remember this smell, the aroma that clung to the back of his tongue? Angel Dust was taping away on his phone with his bottom arms, gesturing with the top set, immune to his plight. The Radio Demon narrowly avoided getting his ear clipped by a stray appendage, swaying out of the way.

"Ya looked like shit, Al."

Kind of him to say. "I most certainly did not."

Angel made a short raspberry noise, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, ya kinda did. Or do. Trust me, I know the look of a guy that needs a good lie-down, I've been there before. I woulda offered to rub your shoulders if I didn't think you'd rip my arm off for it."

"Guilty." The idea of a six armed massage sounded nice. He also felt like he might kill someone if they dared touch him at the moment.

The other man barely reacted, continuing to swipe away on his device. "I figured. So I told Nif to let ya rest, and I took care of dinner." The porn star offered half a smile and a bit of eye contact, gold tooth peeking out from under his lip. "But you're cookin' tomorrow. I missed the jambalaya. You were right, it really does have a kick. Can't get that anywhere else in Hell."

Disconcerted, and without knowing if he should feel insulted, patronized, or flattered, Alastor absconded from the conversation to retrieve his bowl from the table, but the second he reached for it, Angel clicked his tongue. "Al, just siddown, will ya?" He scolded. "I've got this."

The independent part of him rallied against this kind of pampering. The attention sponge that made up most of his prefrontal cortex pulled his tail into the old wooden chair and didn't give the chance for a rebuttal. His choice made against his will, an unfortunately recurring theme as of late, Alastor pulled the napkin into his lap and allowed Angel to take his bowl. He watched him with a skeptical eye, feeling very much like this was some kind of intervention. No such thing came, though there was an awkward glance shared when the spider returned and set the dish down before him, pulling at the corners of his grin. There weren't many ravioli in the bowl. At the questioning raise of an eyebrow, Angel rubbed his hands against his arms. Sheepish. Like he'd been caught.

"... Noticed ya don't ever eat much, when ya do."

That was true. Alastor had to eat little and often. When the hotel had dinners, he would bring something from his own kitchen, as it cheered Charlie for him to be included in the day to day of the residents lives. The schedule was good for him too, kept him on a good pace. Yesterday's doubling up of meals was a rarity, and one he did not wish to repeat if he wanted to remain comfortable. The fact that Angel had picked up on such a fact made him even more uncomfortable, so he declined to give an answer. Instead, he cut a piece off his dinner and tasted it, feeling Angel watch him over the top of his screen the entire time, anxious for a reaction. Alastor was a foodie, a bit of a snob to be frank, and even if he always smiled... One could tell if he didn't like something.

But this. This was homey, but in a good way. A meal from practiced hands and long-used equipment always had a particular flavor to it, though Alastor never subscribed to the idea of 'love' being a real ingredient. It was like saying that one could season a food with sadness! A ridiculous notion. Nevertheless, it was delicious, and yet again, something stirred in the reaches of his memory. Like a lost friend, someone run into again on the street after years of absence, cavorting about like there had never been a gap in the knowing. He had never eaten Angel's cooking before, so...

Alastor blinked. He was smiling, as ever, but it was real now. He looked up at Angel, who had returned to resting against the countertops. He wore the cheekiest ghost of an expression, edged with relief.

"Why, I recognize this!" Alastor looked back down at his plate, remembering. It was hazy, far off, but undeniable. Taste and smell were good triggers for memories.

Angel blinked, and finally turned his phone off to give Alastor his full attention. He looked surprised."Ya do? You've never eaten anything I've made."

"It's from a little Italian restaurant, just off Broadway! I used to go there after a show." He'd taken friends there, dates, future victims, though the categories tended to get muddled. He'd had such a time, in Manhattan. When he was alive.

"Oh." Angel rubbed the back of his neck with one of his hands, his pink gloves traded out for black, to match his pants. "It's, ah, my Nonna's recipe. Well, the closest I can get, down here in Hell. You know the produce and stuff is all different. The rest of my family knows it too, so you must've hit one of our establishments."

"That place served fantastic food."

"Yeah, well, 'that place' was a mob front."

"I knew that. The mafia was often kinder to me than others in New York, in those days."

The air became charged. A moment of understanding, connection, maybe recognition. Alastor covered up these feelings with another bite. Yes, absolutely, this was that recipe, he would know it anywhere. Memories of long nights on Broadway filled his mind, partying in speakeasies, taking out the trash, as it were, when the opportunity arose. He was only there for a short time, but what a whirlwind it was. Harlem, Long Island, the Bronx, he'd almost let those memories slip away from him in the bloodshed and carnage of the last century in Hell. He'd cleared his plate before he could think twice about it, chasing that, the fleeting pieces of being alive, trying to hunt it down and catch it between his fangs. Being human. He loved being a demon, adored the power he held, but Hell managed to strip away the most important parts of what living was. It took away the life that came with it.

He licked his teeth. The feeling faded, leaving an uncertain knot in his chest that he didn't know where to begin to untangle. It was uncomfortably warm, like an infection, radiating outwards and washing over pieces of himself he though had wasted away. It scared him.

"Damn, Al," Angel joked, trying to lift the mood a bit. "I should start cookin' more often."

No, it didn't scare him. Alastor was never scared. It was new, that was all, and new things tended to be bad. He needed to regain control. Now. By any means necessary, even if it meant destroying whatever this was.

"I would agree." Not a lie, not even a hint of deception. Just a smooth, cool tone that rolled into his best attempt to slaughter whatever was making him experience the new. "When did you die?"

That was a bucket of cold water on the vibe. Angel made a sound like someone had hit him in the stomach, all of the breath evacuating his lungs as if a fire alarm had been pulled. "The fuck? Alastor, you can't just ask a guy that!"

Asking after another sinner's death was a good way to get oneself punched, cursed out, or even killed outright. It was a rude thing to do, to request someone excavate their past, which was often painful, and hone it down to the worst moment of their life: the very end. To compress it all, every single piece of their time on Earth into one brilliant moment when the soul fled the body and left it a pile of meat, rotting, in some forgotten interstice, for someone else to pore over. It was almost like inquiring about someone's nude photographs, though Angel likely would have been more comfortable with that question than this one. Sinners didn't speak of their living lives. It wasn't done. It was past. It was mortis. Dust.

Alastor rose from the table. He swiped a bit of sauce from the edge of the plate, grasped that last drop of vitality and watched it slide down the leather of his glove, and repeated the question. "What year."

Angel Dust hemmed and hawed, made a series of sounds that were all contrary, but like it always did, Alastor's silence, and a single look, got him what he was after. "... 1947. Ya happy? I died in 1947, fuckface."

"Hmm."

The Radio Demon extended his tongue and licked the sauce off his glove, partially for his own benefit, partially so Angel felt he got something out of the exchange, and ferried the dish to the sink. Angel Dust stared at him, white-hot with rage, but too bewildered to do anything more than sputter out insults and demands. "Hmm!? You ask me when I fuckin' died and all you have to say is hmm?! The fuck's your problem, Al?"

Lots and lots and lots and lots. Alastor had many problems. At the moment, the odd emotions rampaging about his chest were the main ones. Not even destroying that sense of fragility had managed to calm them. He stood by, horrified, as those warm, fuzzy creatures pried open his ribs and poured out a drop of his soul onto the vinyl.

"1933," he said. "I was killed in 1933."

He remembered that quite well. Fleeing for his life, like an animal, like the very filth he'd set out to cleanse from the world he lived in, the report of the gun and the tiniest singe of gunsmoke and powder. All he could think was that he wasn't done. Forty seven wasn't enough. There was so much more work to do.

Angel Dust was silent. Staring at him with every last eye. He was beyond the point of emoting with his hands, so perplexed and disturbed that all he could whisper was "What the fuck," which was beginning to get repetitive. Alastor turned to leave the kitchen. Angel regained literacy.

"Wait, no, shitlord, you tell me what the hell that was about! Why the shit do you care? What the fuck was any of that?!"

The Radio Demon grabbed the doorframe to the kitchen, refused to go back, his claws sinking deep into the drywall. He wished he had an answer for it. He wasn't sure himself what pulled that out of him. Somewhere inside, it felt like his organs were twisting, writhing, straining against his body. Sickening. So he said the only thing that made sense. "You and I are the same."

And he left.

Notes:

shorter chapter, but last chapter was fuck you long so im forgiving myself.

Chapter 9: A Walk Through Hell, Literally

Notes:

WE BREACHED 50 THOUSAND WORDDSSSS LETS GOOOOO

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

When he returned to his rooms, Alastor was faced with a choice. He could go back down into the Hotel and explain himself, properly, or he could hole himself up in his apartment and mull over the last several days in silence. One of these involved emotional intimacy, the baring of his owned soul, and the vulnerability that came with truth. The other involved beignets.

So he stayed in his apartment and baked. Niffty had taken the liberty of stocking his kitchen with the basics, enough for him to whip together pastry, so he set himself about the task with single-minded determination to pack all of these odd feelings into a tiny box somewhere deep down. A repetitive bit of work would just help with this. He kneaded the dough until he felt like his hands would fall off on a basal refusal to ever engage with a stand mixer, measured everything by eye and heart, and bent to pull racks out of the oven until his back felt as if it would snap. He took a break for a cigarette midway through, accompanied by small glass of whiskey (god, Angel had rattled him badly enough to smoke, who even was he?), and slapped The Cuckoo Hour on his radio. He felt well enough to listen to something now, even if he wasn't listening so much as just hearing. By the time light was wavering over the horizon, he felt a touch more like a demon again, dough coating him up to his forearms and his mountain of baked goods tall enough to reach eye-level from the counters.

There. There was no slippery, slimy feeling that couldn't be routed out with a nice nightful's worth of beignet-making.

After the initial round was done and the hotel was certain to have pastry galore for the next week, Alastor set about making a 'special' batch for himself. It was annoying, his dietary needs, constantly having to ensure what he consumed had a bit of demonflesh snuck in somewhere to avoid the hungry, sucking void that resided somewhere on his hipbones breaking out and taking his body for a joyride. He had a bit of bone flour left in his mansion, he was sure, and mixed into the regular dough, it was nigh undetectable. Making even more bread after spending the entire night doing it did seem redundant, but he needed the bone flour variant for one specific reason:

He was going to need to see Rosie today, and one never made a social call without bringing some kind of gift. Ordinarily it would be a bottle of drink for them to share, but he hadn't yet found time to stock up after his entire supply came crashing down with the hotel. He had only been conscious for half a week, a lot of things he once took for granted would now be niggling annoyances until he whipped this place back to his liking. Alcohol smuggled into the walls was just one of them. The lack of radio in every room was another. He really had been spending far too much time here, enough so that he had preferences about how he wanted this hotel to be. Had opinions. He'd never wanted this.

Alastor shut down that thought process with a rather aggressive shake of his 'special' beignets in the powdered sugar bag. He really, really needed to go and speak to Rosie and let her sort out all his damnable feelings. She was good at that sort of thing, at taking whatever it was that was bugging him and beating it until the wiggling, writhing ends laid flat and became recognizable. If he thought she'd show, Alastor would invite Mimzy, too, but he knew better. He also knew he needed to get ahead of the scolding that was coming his way vis-à-vis his little 'altercation' with Angel last night.

The pastry was good for that too. The Radio Demon split the beignets, a quarter for him, the rest for the hotel's residents, and teleported down and into the kitchen. That was a big leap and he knew it, a large flex of his powers that he wasn't too sure he'd have back yet, but aside from a scant sway after the initial landing... He felt okay. Lightheaded, perhaps, but okay. Vertical, at least. That was good. He laid the mound of bribery on one of the counters and waltzed out of the kitchen, assuming he'd be able to sail straight out of the door and be on his way. He was not quite so lucky.

The instant he showed his face in the parlor, he felt Vaggie's eyes narrow in on him. She, Husker, and that little hyena girl were crowded around the bar, clearly having been embroiled in some kind of spat. Alastor closed his eyes and hummed, used his staff to tap his way over the carpet, begging all that was evil to just let him out today with no fuss, no fanfare-

"Alastor!"

Damn.

"Vaggie!" He exclaimed, as if he was particularly delighted to see her this morning. "And how can I assist you, my delightful winged bearcat?"

Bearcat. Vaggie's eyes narrowed, determining if today was the day she wanted to question him about what that word meant. Apparently, it was not, as she merely took two fingers and spread them over her eyes, pushing the tension headache away, for now. "I need you to take Crymini out."

Alastor glanced at the hyena in question, sitting on her phone at the bar, ostensibly dead to the world around her. This seemed to be usual behavior, as Husker had already poured a glass of orange juice for her. Being told to take the snot-nosed tagalongs of the Hotel was beginning to become a pattern. At least the Egg Boi that survived seemed to be out of sight, and therefore, not his problem to handle. "Do I perhaps look like a babysitter, or-?"

"He ain't takin' her nowhere," Husk grumbled, already a fifth of the way through a bottle of wine this early in the day. A wine drunk Husker was even more irritable than normal, but there was no way he'd been awake long enough to drink that much. No, no, this distaste had to be personal. More so than he already disliked Alastor on any given day. "Vaggie, I can watch her right here, she'll be fine."

Ah. Protective. Husker must be fond of the little cur. That was good to know. Easily exploitable!

"I don't want her getting dragged into Angel Dust's mess," Vaggie argued, clearly having already been through this reasoning beforehand, if the sigh she gave was anything to go by. "He's always hard to handle when we go looking for his drug stashes, and she doesn't need to see that."

"It's Hell, Vaggie! She knows it ain't a fuckin' picnic!" Husker threw up his arms, wings fluffing. Alastor settled in with his hands over his cane, like it was a particularly interesting tennis match. His eyes pinged between the two warring sides, as Husker leaned over the bar, pointing an accusatory finger at the ex-angel. "I'll keep her at the bar and she won't see a thing!"

The hotel manager growled, both hands pushing through her hair, leaning back to face the ceiling. "Well Angel is already high as a kite, and he's not exactly being nice, asshat! Alastor, take her," she demanded.

Angel was strung out? Maybe last night's conversation had ruffled him a bit harder than he'd intended. Alastor opened his mouth, intending to tell Vaggie where exactly she could put her orders for dogwalking, but then Crymini actually re-entered the waking world. She put her phone down, oblivious to the argument, and looked at him. Her nose wiggled. "Oi, are those donuts you've got?" She asked.

Oh, he'd nearly forgotten. Alastor glanced at the white paper bag he carried, filled to the brim with Cannibal-style fritters.

"You won't want any of these."

"Well, what are they?"

"Special. There are edible ones in the kitchen!"

Crymini was off before anybody could get another word out, ambling away with her nose in the air. All parties present watched her go. When she was out of sight, Alastor addressed the problem at hand, straightening up and sweeping out his arm. "Regrettably, I must agree with Husker! You don't want her going with me on my errands today."

"See?" Husker said, now gesticulating at Alastor. Vaggie looked like she could use some of the wine he was drinking, a vein throbbing in her temple. She'd crossed her arms, nails digging into the meat above her elbows.

"Are you going anywhere particularly unsafe?"

"Unsafe?!" Both men exclaimed. Husker got another word in first, before Alastor could even begin his tirade of ridicule. "It's Hell, Vaggie! Nowhere is safe!"

"Well anywhere is going to be better than here when Charlie gets Angel out so she can search his room, Husker!"

"I am not taking the dog," Alastor grit through his smile, though nobody seemed to want to listen to his opinion on the matter.

Crymini returned to the parlor, her face covered in powdered sugar, with about five beignets piled into a makeshift paper-towel sling. Husker ducked under the bar to get a wet rag for her to clean up with, though she didn't seem to notice his efforts. She breezed past to stand before Alastor, eyes a-sparkle. He took a small step back.

"i'dyu fuckin' make these?" She asked through a mouthful of pastry, sending crumbs everywhere. Alastor flicked his fingers to clean her up out of habit, Husker glaring at him in the corner of his eye. Well, tough shit, seemed like he was playing daddy for every wayward soul in this ratty hole.

"Yes, dear, I did. Don't talk with your mouth full! You may choke."

The hyena swallowed, with some amount of difficulty. Her grin was toothy and sticky, an ear-to-ear saccharine smile. There was genuine joy on her face. Something about it tickled Alastor, down in that heart of his he had been trying to kill as of late. It was particularly tricky, when someone looked at him like that. "They're fuckin' banger, like! I didn't know food could get this good in Hell! Mm." She shoved another beignet in her mouth.

Alastor looked at Vaggie. "I'm taking her."


Thankfully, unlike the Egg Bois he'd been saddled with for a day, around a year ago now by his estimate, Crymini made for perfect, quiet company. At first she was quiet because she was busily snarfing down the beignets he'd made like someone was going to take them away from her, and after that, she was quiet because she was on her phone again. She seemed glued to the thing, which was a blessing and a curse rolled into one. A blessing because she wasn't attempting to talk his ear off like the Egg Bois did, and a curse, because he knew she was likely scrolling five different social medias sites with no break between. Rotting her brain with the instant dopamine fix, the constant reward cycle of every swipe producing another spark on her over-worked synapses. A shame. She was hooked on it like a drug. VoxTex's brand of literal hypnotism notwithstanding, of course, as Alastor's aura tended to cancel those effects out, or at the very least, dim them.

By the time they were midway through the outskirts, Crymini had begun to pant. "So, uh, where are we going, mate?"

It had been thirty minutes of walking. Alastor was a little astonished by her stamina, for someone who seemed to spend all their time sitting or texting. He also wondered if he should answer her. She had put her phone away, after all. He had been intending on trying to prove a point to her by not speaking unless she deigned to give him her full attention, but she'd been so quiet up 'til now that his plan was moot. He decided to reinforce the behavior of interacting with the world around her, sidestepping a rather bloody puddle of viscera on the sidewalk as he spoke back. "Cannibal Colony, pup."

"Ah. Mint."

She had no idea what that place was. If she did, she likely would have had something to say about it! As it stood, her phone buzzed in her hand, and she returned to mushing her grey matter. She walked around the pile of carnage without looking up. Alastor was mildly impressed once again, and then horrified by said awe. These children today with their cell phones! Turning them into utter zombies. He did not want to admit that Crymini's spatial awareness seemed to be exceptional, quick glances at the environment sufficing in place of any actual visual input. It was terrible and a complete damnation of the modern world's youth and not at all, in any way, shape, or form, something to be admired. No, no, she was managing to move about so easily because there was nobody else on the street to start with.

Disappearance or not, mortifyingly public Angelic ass-kicking or not, dramatic fight on the roof of Vee Tower or not, Alastor still held enough fear as an Overlord to clear an entire block. Any demons that had been here when he'd turned onto the road had long since scattered to the wind. He could see the eyeshine of a dozen Sinners in their hiding places, peeking out from alleyways or under awnings, businesses shut up tight in the middle of the day. Most of the time, they had naught to fear from him, unless he was particularly hungry and had chosen to hunt in this sector or that one. The respect was still extended, the fear was still maintained and listened to, for one simple reason.

This was his territory.

Because it was nobody's territory.

The center of the city, the six pieces that made up the Pentagram itself, those were owned and fiercely defended. Carmilla, Zestial, the Vees, Ghast, Rosie, and Zeezi made their homes there, and fought tooth and nail to keep hold of as many souls as demonly possible. Alastor wasn't going to go and fight them for the space, either. No, no. He made his power through other means. Owning souls, of course, he owned a hundred thousand or more of those, he really needed to do a headcount soon, but he'd never been interested in the territory part of Overlord-dom. Too much micro-managing, too many moving parts to keep track of. As an aside, he had far more reach than any Overlord really knew. He had Sinners under his thumb throughout the entirety of Hell. In any sector, no matter who owned it, there was always somebody he could call on if he needed a favor in the immediacy. He was an infection, a cancer, a blight that got it's claws in when one wasn't looking. And if and when an Overlord ever took notice that he owned a thousand souls across a few blocks, well, picking a fight with him was a wonderful way to get your ass beaten in style.

As for the outside bits, the rest of Pentagram City, those were too hotly contested for anybody to stake a claim on too major a stretch and bring an Overlord's flavor of order. Constant turf wars between what he and Rosie called 'Little Leaguers' made it nigh impossible for any one Sinner to gain a firm enough foothold! Cherri Bomb and Sir Pentious fell into that category, once, when they were duking it out on these outskirts, but with Sir Pentious gone for good... Well, there was a power vacuum, and Alastor was certain that the last several months were spent embroiled in bloody scraps that might gain a Little League Sinner a block or two at a time. This was no place to establish any kind of base of operations.

So, Alastor didn't even try. Being an Overlord hardly interested him in the first place! The rules, the meetings, the manpower, that wasn't what he wanted souls for. He liked having lackeys, having people who owed him, souls he could dangle on a chain. His dealer wanted him to have souls, too. So in the achieving of that, he maintained a status... But no official territory. The rest of his minions lived through these pieces, though, the places the other Overlords didn't bother with, a small network of those poor sots. That was what made him terrifying. His power was little in any given area, but throughout all of Hell? Well. He'd fallen to Hell harder and with more innate strength than anyone had ever seen, and had only spent his time here getting more powerful.

Thus, an Overlord he remained, without the need to force all of his contractees into one themed area. He liked this system. It gave him influence no matter where he went! Why, every sinner in Hell that had fallen before his seven-year sabbatical knew him and feared him enough to go running for their lives!

"Twelve dollars are enough?"

Well. There was always an exception.

Alastor stopped. He stuck his staff out to stop Crymini, too, who miraculously just came to a halt without a word. Her thumbs were flying over her keyboard at a mile a minute, no doubt embroiled in some 'fire war' on a 'form', if the mildly costive look she wore was any indication. Not his problem. So far outside of being his problem that he was near to breaking her phone, if just to have her realize there was a whole wide hellhole out here for her to suffer about. Perhaps he was being a bit snitty, but he had his reasons.

Some meatheaded-looking wolf sinner seemed to not have gotten the memo about Alastor being someone to be frightened of. He was holding out a stack of bills in his hand to some poor cashier, that in no realm added up to twelve, unless Hell had changed the printed dollar's value when he wasn't looking. One of his eyes was replaced with a red lens, and his right arm was made entirely of metal. He wore a bandolier of bullets around his hip that snaked up and over his chest to then feed into his shoulder, like some ridiculous, cartoonishly-masculine getup. Cargo pants and a red tanktop completed the look.

"Well?" Meathead said forcefully, shoving the bills at the fringe-filled clerk, who was shaking behind the hair that cascaded over whatever she had instead of eyes.

Alastor really didn't want to get involved in this. He was above scrapping with Little Leaguers, a caste Meathead clearly belonged to if he had the gall not to run screaming in the opposite direction when Alastor appeared. But, Cannibal Town was that way, and he wasn't about to cross the street for someone so crass. Plus, someone acting so unkindly to a lady did tend to make him sore. He was still debating on what to do when Meathead happened to glance at him, and the eye left to him lit up.

"Hey! Its you!"

Alright that was probably not a good sign for things to come. Alastor leaned aside to Crymini, pushing his bag of beignets into the fluff on her tail, as her hands were occupied. She did not notice. "Minmin, darling, would you perhaps take a small detour into that alley and wait?"

"Eeyap."

And she did. Just walked right off into the alley without a second thought, without a quibble of protest. If he'd met her when they were alive, he would've wanted to kill her just for the crime of being so easily persuaded and gullible. Or at least led her to a dark, secluded place and given her a thorough talking to about her behavior, she would have been an effortless mark for any serial killer with less scrupulous morals! Though at the moment, if she had stuck around to ask questions, he imagined things would get messy, and not in the fun way, the messes he created.

His point was proven when Meathead leveled his mechanical arm at Alastor and, oh, that was a hidden sub-machine gun, built right into his very limb! How quaint. It made a whirring sound not unlike a jet engine, the sight that popped up on his forearm going unused as this wits-poor scum grabbed it with his other hand to use as a brace.

"I'm gonna blow your head straight off your fuckin' shoulders, you washed up piece of shit!"

Oh. That hadn't been a good sign! Alastor fell backwards into the shadows just in time to avoid a storm of bullets sent his direction, instead peppering the shopfronts and some poor, undeserving traffic sign. This was not, exactly, how he had wanted this walk to go.

As he slithered around behind this rather misinformed ruffian, who was now whipping his head around searching for his target, Alastor chewed on Meathead's words. Washed up? Was that how people saw him now? An old hat, a weak Overlord who could be accosted in the street without retribution? Well, that wouldn't do. Not at all! It was high time he sent a message, let everybody know that his work with the Hotel didn't mean he was now some squishy pushover who would take such blatant disrespect without a measured dose of schooling. Alastor popped back up behind Meathead, watching him continue to look back and forth, like a baby losing a game of peek-a-boo, clearly bewildered that his prey had just vanished before his very eyes into a withering puff of smoke. The cashier had closed her window with an iron screen, which was a wise choice.

"Do you have a name?" Alastor asked conversationally. Meathead jumped, whirled around, sight-line once again trained on the Radio Demon. Alastor didn't let his gun-shy nature bleed through, even if his traitorous tail had flipped up from under his waistband to show absolutely nobody the white underside. Nervousness was just another emotion to beat into submission. He covered it with his more logical side.

Now that he'd seen the wolf sinner in action, Alastor could piece together how that whole system worked. The bullets on the bandolier fed into his shoulder and down into his arm, and they were then deposited into the chamber, where, one could assume, the rest of the mechanical parts that made a gun fire were stored. Empty shell casings littered the ground around his feet, ejected through a hole that had opened on the underside of his wrist. Smoke billowed around his elbow, clearly, there were still some kinks to be ironed out in the design.

"Wolfenstein," the wolf formerly known as Meathead said, rather awkwardly. Like he hadn't planned for a universe in which he didn't just paste the Overlord immediately. Alastor tapped his claw against his chin, making a spectacle of rolling his eyes as he flicked the name off his tongue.

"Hmm, Wolfenstein! That's a new one for me. Tell me, which Little Leaguer did you kill to get these blocks?"

"Wha?" Wolfenstein lowered his gun, which was a bad decision on all accounts. He scratched the back of his head with it, making Alastor wince and strangle the deer instinct that tried to get his hooves to kick off and bolt. "Uh. I chased out Rocket-Earring...?"

Rocket-Earring. Alastor did know that name. She'd owned this stretch of slums for years and never pestered him one bit, often tussled with Cherri Bomb for the title of 'bombshell beauty'. That was sad, he'd rather liked her, because she kept her explosives to her-fucking-self, and didn't come begging for his protection come Extermination in exchange for tolerating his presence. Wolfenstein shuffled, clearly off-script and displeased to be there. He pointed the machine gun back at Alastor, questioningly, like a puppy teething on his pantleg. Like he'd broken the game, and would like to play again.

"Oh, go ahead!" Alastor encouraged, going up on his tip toes and leaning on his staff. "Do shoot me! I have a point to make, after all, and I'd rather make it quickly. You're wasting my time."

He elongated his neck and snapped it, again, and again, and again, until his head hung upside down like a street light. His eyes turned black, blood dripped from his teeth, and his assailant stepped back. A wet patch grew on his pants as Alastor's teeth grew longer, sharper, his fingers turned spindly, and his legs grew by a foot. He leaned over his staff and stretched out his spine until he loomed over the misguided, unfortunate idiot. A drop of Alastor's blood fell from his mouth to the broken concrete under Wolfenstein's paws.

A single shot rang out, and Alastor felt the bullet pierce his chest. It wasn't an Angelic round, this pitiful excuse for a daydreaming No-Verlord likely couldn't afford such a luxury. It left a smoking hole in his overcoat, he hadn't even hit his sluggishly beating heart. Wolfenstein looked from his gun back to Alastor's face, ears pinning, tail sinking between his legs as he whined. Alastor laughed, stridulent and low, as his body rejected the bullet and spat it to the stone. He did so love these little moments, relished in the look of actual pants-wetting terror that painted Wolfenstein's face.

"Ⱥꞥđ ɏꝋᵾ đꝋꞥ'ⱦ ⱳⱥꞥⱦ ⱦꝋ ⱳⱥꞩⱦē ᵯɏ ⱦīᵯē."

Wolfenstein turned and ran, leaving Alastor feeling just a touch underwhelmed. He'd really been hoping that he would take just one more potshot so Alastor would have cause to rip him in half on the boulevard and bathe in his blood! Part of him did want to give chase, just to firmly drive in the fact that he was not to be trifled with, but he'd been given a charge for the day and such behavior would be irresponsible. He didn't even know if he'd have the power to do that much. As he put his head back on his shoulders, he felt the stitches of his binding tighten, branding into him with a white-hot sting he tried to ignore, like a needle tipped with chili oil that painted sloppy X's up and down his jugulars. It was luck and luck alone that kept them from glowing green, advertising his shame for all to see.

Crymini poked her head out of the alleyway. She looked at Wolfenstein's retreating tail, then at Alastor, as he adjusted his suit to fit and flattened his lapel over the marred spot the bullet had left. "... Anybody ever tell ya that you're fuckin' metal?"

"Quite. Let us be off, Crymini! Don't dally."

Notes:

GOOD MORNINGGGG NEW YOOOORRRKKK

sorry about the delay in updates! someone fucking commented once 'please don't become a "i got hit by a bus sorry" author' and unfortunately i did. lol. sorry girlie. if you're ever curious about what's going on, please check out my tumblr!

short chapter, again, and next one likely will be too, but this was the most logical place to split it and i am NOT posting 10k in a go i just will not do it.

Chapter 10: Emotions are Ill-Advised

Notes:

double upload!

Chapter Text

The delay with Wolfenstein did wonders for Alastor's mood! Sorry, did he say wonders? He meant horrible, vile things and now he was almost worse off than he'd started. He had been thrust, firmly, into the jail cell that was his own mind, with only the scathing consequences of his deal for company. He was now pacing circles in his self-made prison, scrabbling at the walls and writing complex equations in chalk dust and his own blood that only ever added up to self-loathing. That was an unacceptable thing to feel, so he turned it to anger, which only fed him another meal through the slot in the barred door to fuel his circling like a dog. His own dog had looked back down at her phone after that miserable wormish wannabe sprinted off to lick his wounds, leaving him virtually alone with his own thoughts. Alastor wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing quite yet.

Caught up in his own strife and angst as he was, Alastor wasn't completely ignorant of reality. Of course not, his body was all too happy to interject with 'yard time', where his cage's bars were fortified with the pain and hunger that wound round his legs, trying to trip him, get him to spill that ever-rocking cruet of composure and break down into violence. His chest was flaring with bright sparks of agony that crackled along the edges of the laceration, and his stomach was running a tin cup along his ribs. Six months of starvation did that to a man, he supposed. He would need to up his caloric intake until he felt normal, when the sight of those 1930s style homes and businesses didn't send him spiraling and swallowing to avoid drooling all over his collar.

Alastor stopped his party of two again, before they reached the invisible line where the outskirts ended and Cannibal Town began. It pulled an impatient scoff from Crymini, but he didn't have time to fake the loving father routine right now. He placed his hands on her shoulders from behind and spun her around to face him, which did get her attention. His eyes roved up and down, taking in her appearance, mentally taking measurements and drawing up an outfit. A life's worth of experience measuring bodies for holes made this part a cinch. She wasn't too tall, the very top of her head's fluff perhaps reaching his shoulder.

His charge gave him a look over the top of her screen, quirking up an eyebrow. "What."

A spiked collar, a macabre aesthetic, it wasn't the worst he'd ever dealt with, but it was still much too modern. She would be eaten alive if she walked into Cannibal Colony like that! Alastor kept one hand on her shoulder with a steely grip, despite her delayed struggle (note to self: talk to Charlie about self defense courses, because, seriously, she was making a sheep look sharp). He kicked his staff into the hand from where he'd balanced it on the tip of his boot, and with a tap on her nose courtesy of the end of his microphone, changed her clothes.

Mini-dress one moment, a fashionably tight siren suit the next, the same shade of red her dress used to be. It sported a row of shiny black buttons and a black belt with a few tiny skulls studded along the right side, clutching her waist in a way that he thought was rather fetching. He added a bow on top of her tail, partially to contain some of the fluff, having taken the beignets back on the walk and portaled them and now noticing just how out-of-control the fur really was. There, now she looked the part, at least enough to not be consumed on sight. He did allow her to keep the collar, as a touch of personal flare.

"Wha-!" Crymini spluttered, looking herself up and down and pulling at the muslin with her claws, like she was about to tear it off her body. "You can't just-"

Alastor's stomach rolled. He did not have the patience for this, nor, once again, the time to waste. "Listen closely," he growled, leaning down to get into her face, using the hand he still had digging into her shoulder to keep her still. Their eyes met. He liked the defiance he saw there, the hatred. She had such potential, if he ever cared to guide it into a more productive shape. He had too many irons in the fire as it was. "While we are here, you will get offers to join these folks for dinner. Under no circumstances do you accept. Your line is, 'No thank you, I just ate.' Repeat!"

"I'm not a fuckin' bairn-!"

"Repeat."

The blat of static shooting through the letters of his words took the argument out of her mouth, but her eyes burned hotter. Crymini bared her teeth, but he bared his harder, revealing a hint of gum, and the tenacious nature that surely earned this hyena her spot among the damned took a backseat... If only barely. Her response was colored with all the things she couldn't say, face heating with teenage angst. "No thank you, I just ate."

That phrase had never been spit with more venom. He really ought to get her out from under Husker one of these days, she would make an excellent lackey of his for all that moxie. Rosie would love her too.

Alastor smiled and pat her head with his other hand, making sure to furrow his fingers in to reach skin. He was rewarded with a turning-down of her giant radar dish ears. "Good girl."

He pushed her away before she could sink those teeth into him like she was so clearly wanting to and strode over the border into Cannibal Town. Grumbling all sorts of things about how he was the worst person in Hell and deserved to be here, Crymini pawed at her pockets for her phone, and then discovered the other small trick he'd pulled on her when he changed her outfit. "Oh, you tosser, you took my phone too?!"

"It would get you killed, Mimi. Put some pep in your step, my girl, we've got places to be you know!"

He marched off, shoes tap-tapping over the cobbles. Crymini stomped after him, her muttering growing only more vitriolic and expletive-laced, which was a feat! She'd already been dropping at least one cuss word every sentence, now she was averaging two or three! What a lovely backdrop of noise to listen to as he ambled down the road to Rosie's Emporium. It seemed like every time he came here with a guest, he'd had to listen to bitching and moaning about things that he couldn't care less about. On second thought, that was unfair. He had cared to learn that Vaggie was a fallen angel. He had not cared to hear Princess Charlotte wax poetic about quiet mornings now tainted with lies for eight. City. Blocks. This was why he never bothered with a relationship. Seemed terribly resource-intensive.

So he tuned out his mutt and tuned out the adulations of the residents of the town, too. Alastor was a bit of a celebrity here, an anomaly among the Cannibals, the sinners-turned-Hellborn. He was one of them without truly being one of them. He had grabbed at enough power to keep himself safe, didn't need Rosie's protection from the rest of Hell. He came here because he liked it, because it reminded him of his home, and even if he didn't have a place to stay, he knew that if he ever wanted to bed down for the night or needed to hide from Exorcists, every door in the town would open for him. So he threw a few half-hearted waves around for appearance's sake and counted the number of Cannibals that outright fainted to have his attention for even that long.

When he waltzed into the Emporium, holding the door open for Crymini of course, he waited for the real show to begin. The fawning of the populace in Cannibal Town was one thing, but nothing compared to the Overlord.

It didn't take long.

"Alastor!"

There was that Boston-flavored caterwaul of his name. Rosie's head poked above a sea of Cannibals lined up for her attentions, then ducked back down, preparing to shoulder barge her way through the crowd to get to him. Crymini had already begun to float away, poking through the Emporium's many wares. Shrunken heads, outfits, snack boxes, board games, soaps, the entire establishment was packed to the brim with morbid trinkets and knicknacks that fit right in with the decor. All these tiny things and hidden treasures would keep a girl her age with the attention span of a fly busy long enough for him to talk to the other Overlord. Still, it would be prudent for him to cover his bases. He tapped his staff against the tiles a few times, trying to draw her back. "Remember what we discussed, Mimi!"

"Wha? Oh, yeh, sure."

He was unconvinced, as Crymini couldn't spare the time to look at him when he was speaking to her, though he imagined that was fair. He had just stolen her clothes, which was impolite at best and downright scandalous at worst. He'd deprived her of her constant joy buzzer too, which had to dash salt into that wound, though she didn't seem inclined to pull a nudist streak anymore. Without the liberty to spend another second micro-managing what his charge did, Alastor simply hoped that she would just keep herself out of trouble. He plastered his smile up to the highest peaks it could reach as Rosie descended upon him, all glittering black eyes and open arms.

Rosie, the Cannibal Overlord. The closest thing Alastor had to a best friend, given Mimzy's materialistic, using nature. She often reminded him of simpler times, chicory coffee and intimate parties in sunlit gardens. At the moment, she reminded him of an octopus. Her arms flew around his waist to crack his back in what she called a hug, squeezing him tight. He already felt scratchy, but played his part, giving her a gamely pat on her shoulders.

"It's so good to see you!" She cried, allowing him to gently extricate himself from her grasp. Rosie was smiling as hard as he was, her lipstick picture-perfect and glistening, every white hair tucked into place. Her skirts swished elegantly around her feet as she kicked up a leg, clasping her hands together near her cheek. "You can't keep disappearing like that! You are worrying me to death mister, and I don't have the experience like you sinners do to say if I'd like to!"

She wagged a finger in his direction and began to brush an imaginary bit of dirt off his shoulder, always touchy and lovey. With an amount of grace he didn't know he possessed, he took her palm in two of his fingers and removed it, trying not to notice the questioning, almost hurt look she gave him. "Not today," Alastor ground out, quietly, and Rosie put a hand to her mouth.

"Oh no," she whispered, at the volume most people typically reserved for outdoor conversation next to a major interstate. "I'm sorry, Alastor. Not up to it right now?"

"No."

The other Overlord blinked. Rosie had always been excellent at reading him, seeing what lurked under his smile, the things he didn't allow to come to the surface. He wondered how good a job he was doing today at keeping it all under his mask, sealed away behind what most could assume was lockjaw. The look in her abyssal eyes told him, piss poor. So she fell back on her checklist of what problems usually brought him to her doorstep in such a foul state.

"Ya hungry?"

"Starved."

"Yeah, I can tell, honey. C'mon, let's go back to the tea room and we'll getcha all fixed up."

"Why, I would love nothing more!" Alastor hooked his arm through hers and allowed her to lead the way to the back, where a more private conversation could be held. The patrons of the Emporium parted for them, naturally enough, as two Overlords were always given priority no matter where it was they were headed. Almost as an afterthought, Alastor added, "I brought a guest. Nobody important!" Hastily said, giving her a light tug to keep Rosie from whipping around to go and see who he'd dragged along this time. "Just a hotel resident."

She puffed a bit, flicking her hat higher on her head as her nose turned to the air. "Well, apologies for being so eager, Mister Smiley, but last time you had a guest it was the Princess of Hell!"

"Yes, I know. Would you make sure nobody tries to eat her while we're gone? I did my best to make her fit in, but her personality isn't as sparkling as Husker's."

"Alright, alright, I've gotcha covered, Al, but you don't really have to be so concerned. We're all well fed! Now let me be excited to see you."

Rosie's private tearoom was a subdued space, a tiny den situated directly across from the stairs that led to the second floor. In a way it was too public, but the constant gibbering of the Emporium's customers, and the creaky stairs, covered their voices quite well. They'd shared many a conversation here, schemed for hours over cookies or tiny sweetmeats and coffee on the best ways to maximize their combined influence across Hell and minimize damage done during Exterminations. They'd done puzzles together during happier years, played cards, sipped whiskey from the minifridge as Rosie cried to him about how her sixth husband was just as bad as the fifth, it was so awful that she'd needed to get rid of him, by the way, how was her new recipe for red velvet cookies, she'd used some of his blood for the coloring. This was the only person in Hell around which he'd allow himself to be anything other than hitting on all six cylinders. The only person he trusted.

It had been years since Alastor had actually stepped over the threshold to this sanctum, so he took a bit of extra time to wipe his feet on the mat before he trod mud onto Rosie's throw rugs. Ordinarily he would set aside his coat to be polite, but he didn't want Rosie kicking off about the bullet hole in his jacket until he was prepared to bring it up. Thus, Alastor sank into one of the Bergere chairs that accompanied a tiny drum table as Rosie shut the door behind them, his cane standing on it's own as he materialized a few extra legs for it. As soon as the latch clicked, she set her hat on the coatrack, pattering over lightly. She put hands to her hips as he let his ears pitch back, and the admonishing tone she was about to take with him evaporated. She studied him, the tension he carried in his shoulders, the way his posture curled inward.

Barely holding on.

"Shit, you really are in a state, aren'tcha?"

"Astute observation!" The cheer was so fake it could be sold to a plastic surgeon.

Rosie sucked a breath in through her teeth and took a seat, turning on the automatic kettle-warmer that sat on the table between them, a space for the handy gadget delicately cut from the lacey doily that covered it. There were bones in the pattern. Alastor in turn blew a breath through his nose, staring at the window without seeing the Town through the gaps in the embroidered curtains. They sat in peaceable, if tense, silence, as Rosie filled the kettle with water and set it to heat. Once there was a pot of suitably steeped Darjeerling poured into two delicate teacups, Alastor produced the beignets from the pocket of space-time in which they'd been stored, and the Overlords broke bread. The bone flour blunted the edge of his ever-present hunger, and the familiar surroundings blunted the edge of his annoyingly-present nerves. His tail hadn't lowered from the encounter earlier. He felt like shaking. His cup rattled as he set it to the saucer. He took his tea black, not one for excessive sugar beyond what was required for a recipe. A drop of it furled over the edge of the china, a condemnation, a confession.

The Cannibal Overlord, his friend, sighed. "Al," Rosie said softly, "I can't help you if you don't let me in. You've been gone for almost a decade, darlin'." She leaned forward, elbow balancing on her knee, pinning him in place with her gaze. "What's goin' on up there?"

"I wish I knew," slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it. Alastor crossed one leg over the other and clenched his hands together, like if he put enough tightness into his body, it would preclude any further outbursts. Her eyes narrowed, notating every detail. He changed the subject. "I was shot on the way here."

Rosie startled and jumped out of her seat and she stole to his side as quick as she could, clucking like a hen. "Well why didn't you say so in the first place?! Here, hold still, let me get the bullet out."

"Wait, Rosie-"

Her hands flew over him before he could stop her, like tiny birds, flitting from one spot to the next before he could grab either of them and set them straight. Alastor gasped and doubled over as she pressed her fingers against the angelic wound, protecting his soft parts, static ripping out of him in a wave. Rosie froze, her palms hovering over his shoulder as he trembled and finally had to admit it to himself: It hurt, it hurt so badly, and he'd been trying to ignore since he got the damned wound it but any movement just made it all worse.

So he just tried to breathe.

"Oh, Al," with a click of her tongue, like he was something to feel sorry for, like he was wretched. He hated that, reviled it, rebelled against it with every fiber of his being even if it was coming from the person he trusted most in this infernal pit. Maybe visiting Rosie had been a bad call after all, maybe all he needed to do was sit by himself and day-drink until he forgot what it was he was drinking for to begin with. He started to form an excuse about how he had to see a man about a dog, but his feet refused to put pressure to the floor and he went nowhere. He sank deeper into his chair, instead. Rosie waited for him to speak, hovering, not too close, but near enough that he could sense her presence. She'd peeled his shirt back enough to see the top of the bandaging. He pretended she hadn't.

"It wasn't an Angelic bullet," he said at last. Alastor snuck a finger under the edge of his shirt and vest, found that he wasn't dribbling, yet, but any more displays and he certainly would be needing a new set of glad rags. Again. "It wasn't even an Overlord."

"It wasn't Vox?" Rosie moved to crouch beside him, putting them at more of a height. He turned away, unwilling to meet her eyes, afraid of what they'd tell her.

"No. Just some Little Leaguer."

"A Little Leaguer shot you."

"Yes, I believe I made that part quite clear."

Alastor was being snippy and he knew it, but with every ragged breath he drew, it was like someone had their fingers in that gash Adam left and they were prying it open. His thoughts were held in place only by the unbreakable shackles of his self-control, exerted even through the haze. Rosie laid the pads of her fingers against his shoulder, slowly applying more touch until he pulled away, like it burned. She put her hands overtop of the folds of her dress. "Rocket-Earring?"

"Hardly. It was some new heel. I can't even recall his name. Something stupid and compensatory, Colossus, or some such. He barely knew me." Alastor pressed his hand harder against the wound, as if trying to punish it by causing it more pain. It was contradictory and foolish and did nothing but make him feel worse. He hissed air through clenched teeth, and his body did begin to shiver of it's own accord. He couldn't stand looking this way, so he smiled through it all, like a peacock flushing it's tail despite the mortal danger of a tiger, a threat display, a public relations statement. Like it was going to do anything. He felt the Cannibal Overlord stand, the heat of her body leaving his side to wander elsewhere in the room. Giving him his space. She was quiet for a time, allowing him to gather up what bits of his sangfroid he could reclaim.

"You remember when you met me, Alastor?"

Yes. If she was trying to confuse him out of his funk, it wasn't working very well. He nodded, focusing in on the designs of the china, the way the last of his tea rippled as Rosie's footsteps vibrated over the floorboards. She carried on as if he had given a verbal response. Alastor's ears twitched, hearing her open the minifridge in the corner.

"You were a firebrand. Ripping your way through Hell at speed, tearing down Little Leaguers like they were nothing and chewin' up sovereign Overlords like they weren't much more. You left Primadonna's head on the top of the Clocktower, with her hair washed and dried and styled up like a child's doll."

Alastor did remember that. Getting up there had been fun, at the time, hanging off the spire with one hand and glaring down at the rest of Hell, imagining that one day, it would all be his. Something clinked, the sound of plastic wrap being torn away. He didn't dare inhale, but the thick, cloying smell of Angelic blood invaded his lungs anyway. He'd dug his nails into his palms, and was disgusted when his reaction to the pain was to move them to the chair instead.

"You had guts, razzmatazz and not an ounce of fear in your body, and you came for us next. I figured we were gonna be the next victims on that broadcast of yours. But you know what I felt, when you came to my border and I had to stare you down, show that I wasn't afraid of some upstart?"

Alastor fused his teeth together to avoid biting as Rosie lifted his head, forcing him to look up at her. Her smile was understanding, not pitying. That was the look of someone who knew, intimately, what he was going through. Maybe not the particulars, but... She knew enough. She'd always been able to glean exactly what she needed to, just by being in the same room. That was what made her so darling, and so dangerous. The world imploded to just her mouth as she talked.

"I felt that you were one of mine."

She slid a plate in front of him, piled high with sliver-thin slices of vaguely pale meat, drenched in golden blood that puddled in the rut formed where the lip of the plate became the rim. Alastor couldn't hold his breath forever, he let the smell run over his tongue and kickstart that slavering thing in his gut that was never, never satisfied. His claws tore holes in the fabric of the chair's arms. Rosie didn't say a word about it.

"If you weren't already a heavy hitter, I would've taken you under my wing in a heartbeat. But that wasn't your path. You were dealing with the hunger, just like the rest of them, and that's why you were rampaging. Nobody was around to tell you how to deal with it. Go on, Al. I know you've gotta be starvin', and biscuits won't cut it."

The Radio Demon wrenched his head away, resolutely, trying to silence the animal inside. That was not him. None of this was him.

"I hate this," he murmured through his smile.

"I know you do, Al. Not many of us like it. I can't help you with whatever it is you're dealin' with in there until you let me know what it is, and you aren't ready to tell me. But I can at least make sure you're in control of yourself, so you can tell me when you are ready with your words, and not another head on a pike."

He stole a glance at the plate. Angelic flesh. Vox had told him Rosie said she'd saved him meat from the Extermination, Angels that fell during the assault and were hastily consumed by Cannibals. They must have brought her back several bodies, sinners forever serving the master that gave them a normal life. And then she saved some for him. Rosie popped her thumb against the bottom of his chin, just under his lip, and his tongue brushed against the inside of it on instinct. The backs of her fingers touched his cheek, and she smiled fondly, close-lipped. "Dig in, darlin'."

Despising every minute of this, of needing to bow and scrape to something other than his own wills, Alastor gave in to that animal and did what he was told.


Hours later, Alastor returned to the Hotel, with Crymini in tow. Rosie had sent him off with a deluge of doggy bags, enough meals for a week, even with his new calorie-heavy plan. He redressed Crymini in her original clothing and ignored her attempts at conversation, instead picking up all the parts that had been thrown out of whack after his meeting with the other Overlord and putting them to rights. He was not some miserable, sniveling little boy who was swinging a big stick around, trying to look tough. He was not a beast on a leash, even if his dealer gave that string around his neck a lazy tug, just to remind him who was in charge. He was the god-damned Radio Demon, and it was time that everyone in Hell remembered what the fuck he was about.

So senator, so janitor, so long for a while, remember,

But first, he had a hotel to run. As he opened the doors for his fluffy charge, who was for once playing with something that wasn't her phone, an interactive hand-sized puzzle cube made from knuckle bones that he'd bought for her as an apology, he glanced up. Charlie was here, waiting on their return. He took a breath, straightened his bowtie, and bounded forward with a spring in his step and a song in his heart, because that was the only way he was going to survive.

You're never fully dressed

"Charlie, my dear! I had a wonderful idea for the hotel!"

Without a smile.

Chapter 11: Mid-Season Special

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Even if it didn't look like it, when he wasn't babysitting his business partners or a rabid cannibal that thought reckless endangerment of personal property was a neat game to play, Vox was, typically, very fucking busy.

The weeks following Alastor's sudden reentry and departure from his life were filled with minor tasks that were all annoying in their own way. He had gone ahead and renovated his apartment given the fact that the entire guest suite needed to be gutted from carpet to cabinetry after Alastor's multiple meltdowns. Plus, while he'd had the crew there, that eye he'd evicted near his bedroom had left an oozing hole in his drywall that needed fixing. He did not like giant open sores in his walls, thanks. While his doors were being refit and his bathroom redone, he'd asked Valentino if he could crash in his room for a few days, and one thing led to another and now they had updated their social media profiles to say 'In a Relationship', again, which would only end well for everyone involved. Velvette had sent him an eyebrow-raise emoticon the moment the setting was saved and made public, which he ignored to give her the satisfaction of saying 'I told you so' when they inevitably broke up for the fiftieth time, messily and for all to see. Oh well. At least Valentino's bed was comfortable... If heart shaped.

Speaking of Velvette, he had managed to steal her lizard. The lizard model's name was Cam. Yes, just Cam. When he asked about it, she told him originally it was a play on 'Camisole' for Velvette, but could easily become a 'Camera' joke for employment under Vox, nice to have kept the same name her entire career through Hell. Further poking and questioning over hastily stolen moments for food revealed it was a play on 'camouflage' when she'd first fallen. He'd asked her to elaborate, failing to see how a creature that was predominately lavender, with splotches of pale bluebell and accents of yellow could blend into, well. Anything.

Then he choked on his drink as she promptly fucking vanished. Clothes and all. Gone. Cam had the ability to disappear completely into her surroundings the entire time she'd worked for the Vees, and Velvette had just never bothered to know her enough to find out. Vox jotted down 'yell at Velvette for forgetting Contracts 101' on his schedule for the next time he had more than an hour break that wasn't meant for sleeping. An ability like that made Cam worth her weight in gold, and that was before she'd even had to sit through a single meeting that could've been an email.

Seeing the inherent worth in an employee who could literally attend any function at any point with nobody the wiser, Vox demoted his current assistant Desmond to full-time accountant, a change the fishy-fluffy sinner had been remarkably pleased with. He'd then had Velvette sign Cam over to his employ, fully, forever, because he'd be a fucking idiot to let this one out of his grasp anytime soon. Velvette had thought nothing of the contract changing hands. He'd timed it just right with the initial production of the Vee-Tops, she was too distracted by quality control and design adjustments to pay too much attention to which employee he'd been looking to 'borrow', and for how long. The Vees traded grunts and lackeys like a preschool traded diseases, after all.

Overlords could transfer or modify contracts at any time, that was inherent with the power to own a soul to begin with. Once you belonged to somebody, it didn't matter if you consented to being kicked over to somebody else, as long as both Overlords shook on it. After that happened, you would be lucky if the terms of your contract didn't change along with your owner. With the nature of the Vees, how intertwined they were with every single aspect of their lives, they did it far more often than anyone else. Anybody's employee was everybody's employee, and there were very few exceptions. Not even Angel Dust was immune to being borrowed for a week or two, if Vox needed him for a commercial or Velvette needed a model that didn't make her want to throw a mannequin out of a window. The Vees had experimented with signing a sinner to all three of them at once, but found that the outcome was fighting so hard about 'who's turn it was' with the poor bastard that they had simply exploded on the spot. After that, it just made more sense for a sinner to belong to one Vee, and for the other two to ask to have them when it was required.

Velvette just didn't know he wouldn't be trading Cam back. Once again, he would be an idiot to give away an employee that could straight-up disappear. A quick, custom-tailored VoxTek brand suit for her, and he was off to the races with a brand new personal assistant. And goddamn if it wasn't a trial by fire.

Cam quickly proved she had been absolutely wasted on model work and running errands for Velvette. She was smart, a quick learner, and once given the go-ahead to crack off at whoever gave her a problem, had a sharp tongue to rival his own. Sweet and unassuming one moment, and a literal fire-breathing dragon the next, Vel was never ever getting her back. Cam was an exceedingly good help in whipping VoxTek Enterprises back into shape, because things had gone to pot for the week Vox wasn't actively mother henning his companies and why had he ever expected anything different out of these chumps. He spent his time signing TV deals, shooting and pushing out a myriad of commercials to advertise the upcoming launch of VeeTops, rolling out Angelic Security as a partnership with Carmine Industries, the list went on and on and on and Vox barely had a moment to himself. In the middle of it all, he was sending tentative, yet assertive, emails to the Ars Goetia demon, Malphas. Oho no, he wasn't letting that one slip out of his fingers, not if he could help it.

Valentino had done some of the initial legwork, endearing himself to the Count, but Vox was taking over now. His first couple of prods got an auto-generated 'why are you messaging me, you lowly sinner' response, but then he broke ground. He'd managed to get someone real and breathing on the other end after a few days of throwing his name around and persistence, which was a good win to chalk up on the board, and had since been floating the idea of inviting Malphas to a launch party. Low-stakes, just some investors and the who's who of the Pride Ring, nothing extravagant, and wouldn't it be oh so nice to get the poor Count out of bed? Getting clocked with buckshot sucked for anybody, Vox was sympathetic in the extreme on that front, but he couldn't mope forever! The best response he'd gotten so far had been 'We'll take it up with his highness;' which he would accept. That was last week. Now it was a waiting game, and he'd finally put out the flames that had started raging over the time it took him to fix Alastor and shred himself to pieces over a broken window.

His back had healed from that little adventure. That was a nice, if overdue bonus. It made it easier to lay on a couch and toss a VoxTek-brand stress ball up and down in the air for the 'well-being of his hand-eye coordination'. That was Vox-speak for 'everyone get the fuck out of my face for ten minutes or else'. He'd commandeered a small lounge on the seventh floor of Vee Tower, kicked all the employees out, and was now taking a brief but well-deserved break. Cam had perched herself on a chair nearby and was tapping away on a vPad with all ten fingers, the curled end of her tail bobbing with every particularly strong punctuation mark.

"Ya like Thai food, Cam?" He asked, breaking the silence in which he'd been decompressing. Vox was still getting to know her, it would be useful to figure out her flavor palate for future schmoozing. Unlike Desmond, who didn't have the spine god gave an ant, she had opinions. She voiced them politely, but boy, would she voice them. He liked her more by the day. "How's about Thai for lunch, I really don't feel like another vending machine sandwich."

"Perfectly fine, sir. No qualms with Thai."

"Fuckin' perf. Call Curry It Up and get us a table in thirty." Up went the ball.

"Yes, sir."

He caught it, careful not to pierce the skin with his claws. "God, you're great. Whenever shit calms down around here I'm gonna give you a bonus. What's on the rest of the agenda for today?"

Both hands still on the vPad, her tail dipped into the bag she'd placed by her tail, fishing out her phone. She gave it a passing glance, using the very tip of the appendage to swipe the code and unlock the device. "Lunch in thirty at Curry It Up. I signed in online, sir, no need to call."

"Excellent. What else?"

"A meeting with Carmicheal-" The phone dinged in her grip. Cam's eyebrow ridges narrowed, periwinkle smoke curling out of her nose. The blue patch around her lavender throat went a deep plum, and the ruffles of the frill about her neck puffed. "Nevermind. They've just cancelled. Again."

"Fuck else is new?" Vox grumbled, tossing the ball a little harder than was necessary, mirroring her agitation with his own. It bounced against a ceiling tile and showered him with dust. He closed his eyes, let the ball go and be free underneath the coffee table, and allowed the dusting of plaster to settle over his screen. His capacity for bullshit had waned over the week, and he didn't have the energy to even pretend to throw a tantrum about that. "Why are we even working with them again?"

The Carmicheal Productions contract had been ongoing for two years, a twisting, confusing mass of flimsy excuses and wasted time, but Cam produced an answer immediately despite only being under his thumb for a month at most. Quick on the uptake, that one. "Because, they're paying to keep us on retainer. Eventually, when they produce whatever they're producing, we're to package and distribute it under the VoxTek name as a collaboration. In my opinion, it's a dick-swinging move to boost their status."

"Huh." Vox thought about it, scrubbed back through his internal databases. The only information about them that wasn't in a zip bomb somewhere pertained to how many meetings they'd cancelled in a row. The record was four. He had... Literally nothing else about the company stored in his built-in RAM. Anything further he'd need to download, and like hell he was wasting that energy on these clowns. "Do you happen to know what the fuck they're making?"

"No idea sir."

"How much money are they paying us?"

"A hundred thousand a year, sir."

Chump change, but it would help keep the lights on if nothing else. If they wanted to waste time on the back end, that was not his problem. "Hmm. Okay, pencil in 'yell at Carmicheal' on the itinerary and then throw it in the shredder. God only knows when they'll actually make it to a call."

Cam tapped on her vPad and set her phone on the arm of her chair. "With Carmicheal's cancellation, you have an opening for lunch from one to three. After that is a finances call with Desmond regarding taxes, which we've anticipated will take thirty minutes. Three thirty to five is the end of week briefing for Voxtek Enterprises as a whole, which you cannot skip as we've missed the last two for emergent business. Dinner with Valentino at seven. And Velvette has put in a personal block at eight that reads..." She squinted. "Uhm, 'Fuck You, Pay Me' marathon."

Vox pressed the heels of his hands into his 'eyes' until his screen began to discolor and pixelate. Cam charitably ignored his mini-tantrum, as the vents under his head and along his ribs whirred at max speed to leak enough frustration to take the boiler meter out of the red. "Remember what was in that slot beforehand?"

"Thankfully, I think that was free time."

Wonderful. He'd been wanting to just go straight to bed tonight, and he needed to plug in his damned head because his internal batteries were beginning to run low, in both senses of the word. Looked like instead of personal maintenance, he'd just be watching more garbage television with Velvette, which ordinarily he would love but with everything else on his plate, it was beginning to feel like a chore. Vox did not like being overworked to the point where social interaction felt like 'a chore'. He groaned, miserably, kept his hands over his eyes even though it didn't actually block any visual input, and he was still staring at the stupid fucking ceiling with the now-janky tiles. "So I have a free block from five to seven?"

"Yes, sir, you do." The phone pinged again. Cam picked it up with a hand to check the notification. Vox had put his head on silent as not to get absolutely pelted by the stupidest goddamn problems known to demonkind. If he saw one more complaint email from someone trying to put a loaf of French bread into the VoxTek-brand toaster and then bitching that it didn't fit, he was going to shove that bread up their ass. And not in a sexy way.

"Okay, block that out for a recharge."

"Done, sir."

"Cool." Vox stretched himself out on the blue pleather couch, getting dirt from his shoes all over it and finding himself bereft of fucks to give about that particular problem. His metallic spine clicked and expanded and contracted in an accordion-like motion that he really did not like feeling, but had learned to live with in Hell. The hedonistic pleasure of a good stretch wasn't outweighed by the dysphoric feeling of fibrous tissue that wasn't wholly organic bunching up against his cabled flesh. "Two hours for lunch, huh? That's more time than I've been getting to spend on sleep lately. Y'know, maybe we'll just order in, find something on Voxflix? I haven't been keeping up with-"

"Check your email."

Vox paused. Craned his neck up to stare at Cam. He found her staring back, blue eyes intense and focused. "Did you just interrupt-"

"Yes, and I'll do it again. Check. Your. Email."

The TV Demon's eyes narrowed. He considered shooting her for mouthing off at him, but she had kicked enough ass during the last weeks that he let it slide. It would be a pain in the ass to have to wait for her to regenerate, and with the current work climate, he couldn't afford any further setbacks. "I'm giving you a pass this time. Don't interrupt me."

Vox checked his email, taking himself off silent and scowling as he was instantly bombarded with thousands of missed calls and messages. Cam had flagged the email he was meant to be looking at, which made it easier to wade through the muck and mire of shit that did not fucking matter to him right now. He opened it with a little swipe of his eyes, pulling it up on a corner of his screen and glancing over the contents.

He saw why she interrupted him for it. "Holy fuck."

"Indeed, sir."

That was an email from Malphas. Not his proxies or his props or his prats, Malphas. The big M himself. The Ars Goeita Count with forty legions of demons under his command, he who builds strongholds and throws down the ones of his enemies. That Malphas.

Vox's screen completely de-saturated for a moment as his brain caught up with the rest of him. In the days proceeding Alastor's abrupt exit, he'd finally killed that pesky endocrine system that was shoveling hormones into his blood that he didn't want. As a result, he maintained his clear head, if only on the chemistry side of things. Turned out he didn't need adrenaline to panic and could do it just fine on his own. How about that. He'd need to obtain some fast-acting Ativan from someplace and just keep a vial and needle on hand to shut himself up, and hope that anxiety was still a purely physical sensation and not something originating from deep within his code. Though, maybe this was an edge case. He had added a provision for life-threatening scenarios that allowed his adrenal glands to function and bypass the chokehold. Maybe 'talking to an Ars Goetia' counted, given the inherent power scaling involved?

Whatever, no time to go fumbling for that now. He sat bolt upright as he committed the information to memory. "Malphas wants to talk."

The email was clear. Malphas was interested in whatever had Vox so worked up that he'd be willing to suffer through an automated messaging system and a secretary dryer than a backed up lint trap. His interest would not hold, though. He'd set aside ten minutes to hear them out.

Cam nodded sagely, her forked tongue flicking between the split in her lip as she talked. "No problem. I'll find a place for a meeting in our schedule-"

"I mean now, Cam. Right now. We have a time slot for a ten minute video call starting now."

After that, things went from 'calm, casual hangout' to 'DEFCON 1, Ars Goetia on the horn'.

Business was cutthroat. Business was ruthless. And sometimes, business included exploding out of a breakroom and rushing headlong down a beige-filigreed hallway, his loafers slipping underneath him as he went, to not let this once-in-an-eternity opportunity slip him by. After enough time working here, most VexTex employees had learned to flatten themselves to the wall when they heard a rapidfire staccato of his sharkskin saddle shoes. The few that hadn't had that particular lesson were bowled over and left for dead on the vitrified flooring as Vox went full-bore down the corridor, dragging his new assistant along behind and barking orders as they came to mind.

"Cancel lunch, fucking get it delivered or something, tell Valentino dinner might be off, oh fuck, I'm not even in a good suit-!"

There wasn't any time to get to his real office, or even a halfway-decent conference room, so he would need to make do with whatever niceish one he could find on this level of the Tower. He thought he knew just the one. All the way at the end, on the right, a nameplate engraved onto brass that was painted to look gold, like some kind of poser.

Vox kicked in the nice wooden door and pointed one sharpened claw at the sinner in the chair, some poor schmuck with a goat-like head and strands of VHS film ribboned between his horns that let out a startled bleat at the noise. Vox jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

"Out."

VHS Goat complied. Smart of him.

Vox sat down in his chair, having to kick out his heel to stop it from spinning due to the speed at which the executive had spronged out of it. This office would do just fine, it looked mid-level at least and how much attention was Malphas really gonna pay to him, anyway? Then remembered the plaster dust all over his face. Cam had already produced a microfiber cloth from her bag to wipe it off with, which he did, hastily, feeling it scrape painfully against his sensors as he rushed the job. He stuck out an arm and swiped what he was certain were beloved family photos and priceless heirlooms off the desk and into a nearby trash can. He then promptly shoved the bin under the desk to hide it. He and Cam staged the office as quickly as they could, drew the curtains closed behind them, turned the potted tree to present the blossoms on it to the camera, removed any embarrassing chintz and hastily reorganized the books on the shelves into a more aesthetically pleasing state. Well, Cam did most of that. Vox further cleaned the desk, and himself, straightening his lapels and throwing 'cheezygrin.jpg' onto his screen so his real emotions wouldn't bleed through. Being overtly scared shitless likely wouldn't bode well for this meeting.

As he pulled at the edges of his bowtie, he asked Cam, "How do I look?"

"Like an Overlord, sir," came her reply from somewhere behind him. He didn't have to turn his head to know she'd taken up a position somewhere off-screen and turned herself the same shade of maroon as the curtains, the silent partner in the room. Perfect. Velvette was an idiot. He mentally wiped the marathon from his mind and changed the title of the block she'd placed to 'Contracts 101'. Pressing his palms to the wood of the work surface, he thrust his mind into the desktop computer that VHS Goat has been doing something less important on and logged into his own email with a thought. He re-opened the message, and a room key presented itself, heavily encrypted and ciphered to shit to prevent anyone that wasn't meant to be privy to this call from cracking in. At least, not in the remaining five minutes that Malphas had allotted to speak to Vox.

Good thing he had a lizard.

"And we're live, Cam."

Vox moved the mouse, clicked the hyperlink of letters and numbers, and had to remind his heart to keep beating as he folded his hands in front of him, smile plastered over his plasma to present that host visage that everyone who knew him from the commercials loved. The tiny white circle twirled on the black screen, indicting that he was connecting, and Vox could feel the threads of cyberspace crawling against his brain, knitting together with the inquisitive line of Malphas' own. The moment the meeting loaded and the Ars Goetia's camera feed was staring back at him... He began to wonder why he was so worried about this guy.

Malphas was a raven demon, and not a small one, either. He had a large ruff of feathers over his neck and shoulders like Valentino's fur, deeply rich and black, but with a sparkling iridescence that reminded Vox of an oil slick. His eyes were electric yellow and piercing, pupiless and with unfathomable depth. He was perched in a high-backed armchair before a fire that crackled and popped behind him, casting him in dancing shadow. It would've been imposing, if he didn't also looked like a man who had barely rolled out of bed. He was wearing a mostly-open navy blue bedroom robe and nothing else, though nudity was a moot point when you were covered in feathers like that.

If not for aforementioned messy bearings and clear... Well, 'depression' was the only word for it, Vox might have retained a bit more respect, but in his defense? The man looked like he lived in a perpetual state of impending doom.

What the hell is up with all the Ars Goetia being birds? He thought to himself. What came out of his mouth was, in a cheery tone, "Hello, your highness! Good to finally meet you. My business partner, Valentino, said a lot of nice things about his time with-"

"Do not attempt to obfuscate your intentions with inane prattle. I have no use for it. You will speak plainly or we will speak not at all, sinner."

The way he croaked that word, sinner, with all the disdain and pompous, inbred pride that made Goetia so insufferable, made Vox's hair stand on end. Or it would, if he had any hair. More accurately it just made his circuitry vibrate, which wasn't a fun sensation and also not one he wanted to experience again! Vox cleared his throat politely, adjusting his posture to sit up straighter, broaden his shoulders. An Ars Goetia was a rung above him on the ladder, both socially and in terms of power. If Malphas wanted, he could swoop over to Vee Tower, rip him apart, and simply leave like nothing had ever happened. He would need to play this just right.

"Alright, as you command, Count Malphas! I can appreciate a man who gets down to business. So rare these days!"

"I believe I told you to cut the prattle."

Damn, tough crowd. Vox swallowed thickly. "Yes, you did, sir. Let me be blunt: We here at VoxTek enterprises would like to cordially invite you to a private launch event for our new shoe line. It will be a small get-together of investors, shareholders, that kind of crowd."

Malphas stared at him. The shadows around him moved, and Vox realized those weren't shadows, those were huge, fuck-off huge wings. His beak clicked as he talked, creaky and rough. "You are inviting me to a party," he said, slowly, as if ensuring he'd heard correctly.

"That's right!"

"... Why."

"Can I be candid with you, your highness?"

"I have asked nothing less from the start. Are you implying you have not been candid?" Malphas gripped the carved wooden arms of his chair with black claws and leaned forward, closer to the camera, so close that Vox's olfactory sensors could almost detect the smells of rotting meat and bone. It made him think of Alastor.

He then deleted the thoughts of Alastor.

Vox also ignored that verbal landmine. He wasn't completely stupid. "Well, sir, and I mean no offense, but you've been out of the game of Hell for, what was it, a century? Two decades at least? Three maybe? Doesn't matter. You've been gone long enough that the game down here has changed. Angels are mortal, redemption is possible, Lucifer is back, and the rats are scrambling for a way out! It's a madhouse out here, and you just plunged back into it without a clue of the goings-on of the denizens!"

Malphas' eyes pinned, like he was getting ready to insult Vox. The Overlord didn't give him a chance, simply continued his spiel, a practiced pitch he'd done a hundred times in the mirror. "We, and I speak on behalf of the Three Vees Collective, would like to reintroduce you to Hell's society and give you a crash-course on the recent shake-ups. We would also like to make you very, very filthy rich."

"I am an Ars Goetia. I am already rich."

"Could always get richer!" Vox pointed out happily. A good move, most sinners were beholden to some basal parts of animal biology, if they had any bestial features to speak of. It seemed the raven Ars Goetia was no different, as his head cocked to the side, indicating he did like the idea of more shiny things.

"Intriguing," the raven muttered. "What do you desire out of me?"

"Nothing! Nothing at all. Right now we just want you to come and have some fun with us, get out of the house, lighten up a bit! Buckshot hurts, I can tell you that from personal experience. Just come out to our party, stay a while, and see if a partnership sounds like a good idea. A night of fun, on us, no strings attached. Whaddya say, your highness?"

Malphas studied him, the movement of his eyes felt, but not seen. cheezygrin.jpg was doing it's job, revealing nothing but a smooth, boisterous television personality. The type of person who would think that inviting an Ars Goetia to a launch party was a fine idea. Not the sinner currently shitting himself behind the grin, because holy fuck, he was talking to an Ars Goetia demon, and he wasn't sure if he'd made all the correct dialogue choices here. If Malphas declined, the Vees rise to power would be stifled, stagnated, maybe for another century until they could find a different route out of the Pride Ring, and how desperately they needed out. If they didn't, growth would collapse, and the empire may fall, because as much as venture capitalists like to claim it, there was no such thing as infinite 'line go up'. Not without new markets.

Not without new Rings.

After what felt like an eternity, the Count sat back in his red velvet chair. His wings ruffled, again, as if to remind Vox that he was the big cock of the walk around here, and the Overlord was nothing more than a spec of gravel under his talons. "Very well. Forward the invitation to my personal email address, and I will attend your frivolous little party. I make no promises about where our communications will go from there."

"Heh-hey, sweet! Good to have you-"

Malphas disconnected the call, leaving Vox to stare at his illuminated reflection in the blackness of the empty chat. His smile was so fake, so clearly pasted on and held there by an image editor, but that didn't matter. He'd just successfully conned an Ars Goetia into willingly interacting with sinners. He sank in his chair, slithered down until he was barely in it anymore, and considered the gravity of what he'd just done. Him. Him. The farmer's boy from Wyoming, now with demon royalty on the hook for a social invitation.

"Cam?"

"Yes, sir?" The lizard sinner rematerialized beside him, her frill twitching excitedly, fangs poking out from under her lips in a subdued, nervous smile. Vox lazily reached a hand up for a fist-bump, which she returned, uncertain. He grinned up at her, for real, finally dropping the picture he'd been projecting.

"Clear my schedule and text the other two Vees. We are going out and we are going to get zonked drunk."

Notes:

sorry this took so long! other wips grabbed me by the throat.

Chapter 12: Ici, Araignée

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Time spun by Alastor like a spiked wheel of ice. It was too slippery to get a real handle on, and whenever he did manage to cling to it, he found himself feeling run over, run-down, bloody, and ice cold. Like he'd laid on the highway in the middle of Minnesota and allowed every automobile in the state to have a turn doing a burnout overtop of him, and then jumped in one of the Great Lakes to clean off afterwards, for emphasis. Just to really rub that salt in the wound. Hell, a salt truck was probably involved in the proceedings, who knew?

All of that was a lot of words to say: Alastor blinked, and what he could have sworn was three days actually turned out to be several weeks, and he'd lost track of time because he'd stopped sleeping. Almost entirely. He would get involved in a project as the rest of the hotel went to bed, and then reappear for breakfast, promising himself he would sleep that night, and the cycle repeated. Sleeping tended to be a good way to measure days down in Hell, but when he took sleep with a grain of salt, and maybe a hefty dose of spite as a litany against the laziness he'd been indulging in due to his case of near-bisection, he might have... Forgotten, to partake. In sleep.

Being a sinner was something he often forgot about, at least the effects of it. It was only when Alastor had a thought like that, that he forgot to partake in something as necessary as sleep, or at least necessary to a living man, he felt that cold rush all over again. The realization that life would never be the same. That he could never go back to mortality, this was his fate, forevermore. Another ice wheel hit him, this time slotted onto his spine and rattling around like an internal hula-hoop. A nice bit of whiskey did help to flush out those thoughts.

Speaking of whiskey, he 'replenished his stock', and by that Alastor meant he'd found enough time when he wasn't being actively monitored to construct false walls and floors to hide booze in. Prohibition was a wonderful time for the creative spirit! And by god, could Alastor get creative. That took up part of the three days that were not actually three days. He also replaced the radios throughout the hotel. In the last building, he'd managed to sneak them everywhere, and this pitstop for the pitiful wouldn't be any different.

One radio went behind the bar, tucked amongst the colorful bottles of dishwater. One in the parlor, above the fireplace. One in the library, though the volume dial on it was broken to never go above a certain threshold, to maintain peace and serenity. One in the foyer, which still lacked a piano, the delivery was held up because nobody could do their job without being babysat, even Lucifer. A new radio in the elevator, which he did get caught installing by Baxter, but a dual smile from Alastor and Le Foncé sent the poor bastard screaming for his life. He left to find someone, anyone, and by the time he came back to snitch, Alastor was already long gone. And, finally, he'd gotten around to putting a complementary radio in everybody's rooms! Well, almost everybody's.

Charlotte sat him down for a not-lecture about respecting personal privacy when she'd heard about them. Alastor pointed out that, as the hotelier, he possessed a master key for all rooms in the hotel. Charlie informed him that it was for use only in case of emergencies. Alastor said that a lack of radios in every room was an emergency.

The Princess of Hell gave up after that. Her skill at picking her battles had improved greatly since she'd started a fight with Heaven. If she knew about his ability to listen through the radios, she might have fought it harder, but Husk was forbidden from telling anyone, and Alastor loved to be in-the-know of anything he wasn't supposed to be hearing about.

Alongside his hiding of booze and gifting of radios, Alastor had fulfilled his duties as the facility manager by launching a scattershot of ideas at Charlie. A zen garden with a gazebo out back, enthusiastically approved. New decor for the foyer, less apple themed, shot down. Self-defense lessons for the newer residents, approved, though with the caveat that it would be hand-to-hand, and they were under no circumstances going to hand anybody a knife. Alastor considered that to be spoilsport behavior, but acquiesced. He, too, could pick his battles, and he'd picked the ones that were the least strenuous. He was still changing his bandages twice a day, sometimes more if he was pulled into any number of whimsical, and often musical, shenanigans. He was beginning to tire of duets, but he knew the dangers of a lonesome soliloquy in a bathroom while one packed gauze into a bloody wound. Such things invited plot, or interruption. So, despite being the champion of the self-defense class' inception, he often sat out, gave pointers from the sidelines to avoid the temptation of a midnight aria. Getting kicked in the chest wasn't his idea of a good time, nor was an interrupted monologue.

What was a good time was taking over the culinary detail again, but not before he'd witnessed Charlotte's attempt at 'vegan spaghetti and meatballs' that ended up chemically similar to sponges and straw. She then tried to implement a rotating schedule of who cooked, to make things easier and streamlined, but after Crymini proved she was incapable of using anything other than a microwave and Baxter declared that algae wasn't so bad once you tried it, it was agreed that the kitchen would be Alastor's domain. Cooking classes were also added to the rotation, normally headed up by Angel Dust, though Alastor did muscle in on it once in a while, mostly for proper butcher's lessons when he felt like it. That was what was currently on his mind. Not butchering, no, Rosie had kept him full up, as promised.

Angel Dust. For being a spider, the porn star could be remarkably slippery when he felt like it, and not in whatever hedonistic way Angel could find to spin the statement. Alastor hadn't managed to corner him since that awkward conversation over dinner and subsequent fabled drug binge and search. Despite Alastor's constant flitting around the hotel, squirming into spaces that even his shadow thought were ill-advised and mapping out every nook and cranny and blind spot through the halls, Angel avoided him like a conman did a cop. Even during 'Family Meals', Angel would either effortlessly ignore Alastor while still including him in the moment, or force a casual demeanor that fooled everyone around them into thinking everything was copacetic. Well, save for Husk, but Husker was firmly on Team Angel in whatever weird dynamic was forming between the Radio Demon and the most sought-after daisy in all of Hell and made that quite clear with glares far sharper than usual. If Husker knew the details or not, the cat didn't let on, merely sat too close to Angel and permitted too many fingers to fluff his fur or play with his tail.

More information to tuck away for later strong-arming, if he needed it. Tugging the kitty's chain was a last resort. A working relationship with his bartender was best maintained, once things turned into master and servant, it got a lot harder to share a drink.

Thus, one balmy afternoon, on one of his many strolls through the hotel, trying to busy himself so the constant tug of pain on the skin over his collarbones didn't grate his sanity like a fine cheese, Alastor determined he was done playing this particular game. He loved a good game as much as the next Overlord, that wasn't the problem. The issue issued from what he'd said that night so many weeks ago, because it wasn't a lie. He and Angel were, to use a more modern saying, 'two peas in a pod', as much as he did hate to be compared to a basal, bacchanal creature like Angel Dust. Damn it, when he really got down to it, he was beginning to feel a little possessive of the residents of the hotel. He'd always had a hard time making that sentiment known without it coming across as overbearing, or overstepping, not that he often cared about how others felt about his feelings. With his dealer breathing down the back of his neck with every passing moment, waiting for results, though...

He found his boots turning down the staff wing before he could talk himself out of it, ears perked and listening for any interlopers.

Nothing. Charlie and Vaggie were out on a date that he was sure would actually turn into shopping for more kitschy nonsense to clutter up the common rooms with. Husker was tending bar, and Crymini was with him. Last he'd seen, Husker was attempting to teach her some sleight of hand magic, after she'd taken a marked interest in the little knuckle toy Alastor had purchased her from the Emporium. Baxter had no reason to break the rules and enter the 'forbidden zone' of the hotel, which wasn't actually forbidden as long as a resident had good reason to be here. Alastor's rooms here were empty, more for show than anything. He'd converted them into an office space, which was empty given he wasn't in it. All that left... Was Angel's room. He lived here too, with the staff. In the original hotel it was just so he wouldn't feel lonely, living on a floor all to himself. In the new hotel, it was just for tradition's sake.

His door was decorated with an off-white carved wooden heart filled with cork, upon which Polaroids were pinned. All in color, of course, and most of them contained Cherri Bomb or his pet pig, Fat Nuggets. Some of the residents had made it here too, memories captured forever on film. Charlie and Vaggie, with his arms over their shoulders, smiles abound. A strip of photobooth pictures containing Crymini. A photo of the bar, where Husker was serving a visibly quaking Baxter. Sir Pentious had a place here too, balancing a round of shots on the flare of his hood. Charming. Alastor noticed there were no pictures of himself, which made him feel strangely bitter and relieved in the same breath. The only evidence he existed was as a fuzzy blur on the balcony behind a photo of Angel Dust and Niffty together in the foyer. Wasn't it swell to see everyone getting along?

Now he was stalling. He lifted his staff and knocked it against the cherry-petal pink door. No answer.

He knocked a little harder.

"Uuughh," Angel groaned, annoyed and tired. Fabric rustled faintly. "Char, I'm kinda fuckin' busy here!"

"I doubt that very much!"

The sluggish shuffling inside stopped. No doubt, Angel had paused in unearthing himself from a fuzzy blanket pile. "... Alastor?"

"In the flesh!"

"... Am I in trouble or somethin'?..."

Alastor hummed, rolling his eyes and tapping his claws against the dome of his cane. "Hmmnn. No, I don't think so!"

"In that case: Fuck off, Al."

"Well now you are in trouble! Swearing at a member of staff is highly discouraged here! Unless that was an offer, in which case, sexual harassment of the staff is also highly discouraged and grounds for immediate-"

Angel threw his door open, missing taking off Alastor's nose by a hair. His ears stuck up straight, along with his tail, hidden under his coat, signaling a startle to a herd he didn't have. Only decades of self-restraint and throwing himself into dangerous situations allowed him to keep his cool, calmly taking a half-step backwards and letting his eyes roam over the hotel's first, but no longer only, resident.

The 'slut on the town' look had been traded out for 'shabby bedroom chic'. Angel Dust wore an oversized t-shirt advertising some sort of concert, long rendered illegible due to a lifetime's worth of washings, dryings, and wearings. The short-shorts he wore underneath just barely poked under the hem, and his bottom pair of arms hung out of holes cut haphazardly into the shirt. They were uneven and too wide. Alastor would have made a joke about a spider being such a poor tailor, but decided there was a time and a place for such a thing, and the tired, pissed-off look that Angel wore wasn't too flattering an accessory. His fluff was mussed, colors somehow muted, gold tooth dull rather than shiny.

Alastor was undeterred. "Good afternoon! Or should I say good morning?"

Angel's eyes studied him in turn. Alastor thought he looked good. With a constant influx of Angelic flesh, some of the color had returned to his face, and he looked less wan, if equally as gaunt as he always had. The porn star fetched a robe with fluff-levels that could rival a Persian cat and shrugged it on, though it did little for his modesty, given he didn't tie it closed. The Radio Demon doubted Angel cared about modesty to begin with. "What do you want, Alastor?"

"Just checking in on my favorite resident!"

"Cut the shit, Niffty's your favorite and everyone knows it."

Caught. Red-handed, too, Alastor only barely scrubbed away the sheepish quirk of his smile before it could become too pronounced. "Yes, well, I do enjoy her company. Quite the housemaid! Why I found her the moment she dropped into Hell, all needles and poodle skirts and-"

The spider started shutting the door. Alastor's aura burst with static and he whipped his cane in the way before it could close, leaving just an inch of space between door and frame. He broke his spine apart to lean over and put his eyes at a level with the crack, like a wooden, segmented snake toy. Angel glared back with his black eye, the one that marked him as a contractee. It did not look amused.

"Alright, alright, I understand," Alastor simpered, sticking out his bottom lip in a smiling pout that had taken years to master. "Perhaps I can make my presence a bit more... Appealing."

"Smiles, the fact I'm not makin' a sex joke right now should really tell ya how not in the mood I am for your- Is that fuckin' liquor?!"

Alastor had tapped his shoe along the baseboard as he talked, finding the empty spot he'd hollowed out one morning while everyone else was at Circle, covered over with new baseboard and claimed as  a mouse hole to an ecstatic Charlie. She hadn't been savvy enough to see it for what it was. Le Foncé stuck his arm through the hole and removed the whiskey that the Radio Demon stashed there. Alastor's shadow displayed the prize proudly behind his master, just barely visible through the sliver of neon lighting in Angel's room. "It is. Angel Dust, my buxom boozer, you were involved in Prohibition! Tell me you've had the idea before?"

The spider opened the door again. "Well, yeah, but Charlie kept catchin' me. Is it, like... The good stuff?"

"It has an ABV that's over triple what is allowed to be kept behind the bar."

Entry was granted. Angel stood back and waved the Radio Demon in, eyes on the liquid gold prize. He stepped in, smugly, his shadow slithering behind and flicking the door closed with a tendril.

The bedroom reflected it's resident. A white shag rug dominated the space, atop pink and purple tiling that was covered in piles of clothes wherever furniture wasn't. The walls were glittering fuchsia and white stripes of wallpaper, posters of Angel Dust himself tacked up haphazardly with peeling tape. Angel had removed the ceiling light in favor of neon tubing everywhere, and fairy lighting painstakingly organized into a spiderweb pattern. His dresser was covered in a rough estimate of eight thousand beauty products, along with a few wigs that made it impossible to see the mirror behind them. It hurt his eyes to be in here. The bed was a cocoon of quilts and throw pillows, only half of which ended up on the floor in Angel's scramble to the door. Fat Nuggets honked at him from a pile of dirty clothes that had a cat cave tossed on top.

Charming.

Uncaring, Angel Dust swiped the whiskey from Le Foncé, who hissed and spit, and cracked the seal with his teeth. "Okay, you bought yourself ten minutes Al. What is it you want? Like, actually want, no more threatin' to kick me out of the hotel for hittin' on ya or any of that shit."

Careful not to step on anything that looked particularly... Vile, or rubbery, Alastor approached Angel's bedside table. The demon pig Angel kept squealed in warning, but Alastor ignored him, pulled a small radio out of the void with a thought, and placed it gently on the mysteriously stained wood. Angel finished drinking the first half of the bottle before he voiced a complaint, pointing at him with the three arms not currently occupied with the bottle.

"Nuh uh, fuck outta here with that. Get your old-timey horseshit off my furniture."

"I do apologize for my behavior the other week."

Angel paused where he'd been raising the bottle of whiskey back to his lips. His accusatory pointing turned to some confused hip-emphasizing framework, his top arm working into a shrug. "Uh, what."

Alastor found that the cable management behind the bedside table was an absolute tragedy. He summoned up a power strip, in the interest of not starting a fire, and replaced a number of plugs connected to cords charging things he did not want to investigate. He connected the radio and clicked the power button, delighting in the low hum that droned out of it, the sound of a speaker just begging for something to play. He spent a moment futzing with the dials until a signal came through, crisp, clear swingy jazz that bubbled merrily along a lack of sheet music. He turned the volume down. "I didn't explain myself too clearly and caused undue distress! As the hotelier, it was unkind and unprofessional. It also resulted in a rather ugly situation afterwards with your cocaine habit!"

The other sinner flipped him off and took another swallow of whiskey, not stopping to appreciate the burn. Alastor resisted the urge to sigh and instruct the addict on proper drink consumption. Drinking whiskey that way had to hurt. "Your room was searched, was it not?"

"Yeah, you miss the fuckin' memo?" Angel snarked, removing his mouth from the glass just long enough to swear at the Overlord who'd so kindly provided it. "Got every last bag I had. Went and worked overtime for Valentino to buy more. Keep tellin' Char that all she's doin' by chuckin' it is makin' me work more to replace it, but she won't fuckin' listen!"

"Yes, she is rather obstinate in the no drug policy!" Alastor agreed. He glanced at his radio, tested the mesh of the speaker. One of the pieces of the cathedral popped out easily, just as he'd designed. "Put them in my radio."

Angel choked on the alcohol, then spent the next several minutes retching and gasping for air as it burned through his lungs like battery acid on a chlorine tablet. It likely felt just as corrosive. Alastor studied his nails as he waited, kindly biting down on the lecture again. After he caught his breath, spit hanging from his lip, Angel fixed him with a look that was equal parts freaked-out, and, for lack of a better word, fucked-up. "Is this some kinda joke?!"

"I don't think I'm joking!"

"Oh, eat shit, Smiles. You never let anyone touch your radios! You literally almost chewed off Pentious' hand for trying to steal parts from one."

"That was different. He didn't have permission." Making sure that Angel was watching, Alastor showed him the rigged speaker, how simply it could be folded aside with a gentle finger to reveal a space, just barely big enough for a few bags of a drug of choice. He repeated the motion a few times to make sure the message got across. His other hand did something jazzy and performative, to drive the message home. "You do! Even if Charlie comes through on another sweep, she wouldn't dare look in here."

He could see his points, well-structured and clear, drill their way through Angel's thick skull and thicker fluff. His eyes narrowed, widened, hands waving around as he went through the several stages of accepting a really good idea, when it wasn't one's own. "I... Huh. Huh," he said at last, eloquent as ever. Then he did the smart thing: sniffed for the poison in the bait before he took a bite. "No, nah, wait a minute," he declared, whirling on the Radio Demon. Alastor innocently straightened his bowtie, which was actually a check on if his chest felt cold and wet because he was bleeding, or just because he'd ignored his pain for so long his body was trying a new tactic. "What's the fuckin' rub, Al?"

"There are no 'fucking rubs' taking place. This comes as an apology, and nothing more." No blood. He was safe for now.

Bewildered, and with a low threshold to begin with after the rollercoaster of emotions Alastor had just strapped him into, Angel guffawed. "Did you just make a sex joke?!"

"I will deny it in court and nobody will ever believe you," Alastor replied simply. He leaned down, bending at the waist, to give Fat Nuggets a little pat between the ears. The pig accepted it, but not without a suspicious sniff of his hand first. The Radio Demon admitted that was fair. He also admitted that this entire affair had made him hungry.

He also also admitted that his fridge was running a bit low again, and he'd need to look for something to fill it with sooner rather than later. He straightened, grinning at Angel, who returned it with a soft, if still confused, smile of his own. "Yeah, guess so. Uh... Thanks, I guess? I dunno why you're helpin' me, though. Shouldn't you be, like, against drug use here? And are you actually gonna explain what you meant?"

"You'll quit when you're ready!" A sentiment he'd echoed himself over the years. Similar eras, similar problems. Spinning his staff in his hand, Le Foncé skulked under his feet, ready to pull him into the world of shadows again for a jaunt to town. He avoided the other question with the grace of a bowling ball down Main Street, but trusted Angel to be just smart enough not to go digging for answers that were best left uncovered. "Now, I do have other business to attend to. Shall I see you at dinner? Tonight I plan to make crawfish étouffée, and you won't want to miss it!"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll come down for dinner... Right after I find wherever you pulled this from." Angel held up the empty bottle of booze. Alastor chuckled softly as Le Foncé's claws curled up and over his boots.

"They're everywhere and you'll never find them all. Happy hunting!"


With that done, Alastor rambled into town.

The Radio Demon hadn't set out with any kind of plan, per say. It was approaching evening, the sky was only now beginning to go grey and black, lights flicking on outside of a million businesses that kept odd hours and odder clientele. His only goal was to seek out some dinner, find a particularly brutish looking ruffian, stab them, bag them, and smuggle them up to his rooms to spend the night applying the butcher's lessons he'd been so graciously providing to ungrateful students. Though, as he window-shopped, and his aimless wandering pulled him away from the outskirts where fear of him reigned and deeper into Overlord territory, where his presence carried consequence of another sort, nothing appealed to him. Nobody jumped out and said 'eat me!' with an ill-timed smack of a little guy, no takers threw themselves onto a silver platter with an apple in their mouths. Just foot traffic. Boring, busy, foot traffic, of the basic and bland kind.

When he had the time to be picky, to be choosy, Alastor liked to pick another ungulate. Sadly, today, it seemed Hell was on it's best behavior, and the only uncouth activities were coming from predators or impish-looking things. Imps didn't taste very good on their own, they tended to be stringy and astringent, and carnivores were overtly gamey and took too long to prepare. It seemed his takeout bag would go empty, for tonight, and tomorrow he would need to lower his standards and take something less than delicious just to ensure he didn't run out.

Then, as he rounded the corner of a restaurant corridor, he saw something better than food. Better than some boar doing something untoward with a young lady. Better than another serial killer on his territory. Walking down the street, dictating to one of his ten thousand employees, came his most inflammatory rival. The air around Alastor buzzed, and the sinners that had been giving him a wide berth now scattered like scarab beetles, throwing themselves into eateries and then throwing tables in front of the doors behind them, as if that would save them if Alastor were truly targeting one of them. His walk turned into a canter, then a jog, and finally, a sprint.

"Vox!"

He called it heartily, gleeful and maybe a touch maddened. Vox's head snapped up from where it had been buried in his phone. His expression turned from deep focus to immediate, blinding panic, more delicious than any sinner's flesh. Alastor bounded forward, grin splitting his face, eyes blinking and spinning into dials.

"Oh, shit. Cam hit the deck."

"How wonderful to see you, old pal!"

"Hit the deck, hit the fucking deck!"

Faster than any human could ever run, Alastor leapt a solid dozen feet and slammed his knee into the Television Overlord's chest, bowling him over and sending him flying down the street. His assistant was nowhere to be seen. Vox picked himself from the sidewalk and snarled at him, a sound like a magnet being run over a VHS tape while it was playing a documentary about heavy machinery. He curled his fingers into claws and zapped back up to him, a zig-zag pattern that made him impossible to see until he took a swipe right at the Radio Demon. His bowtie fluttered to the ground as Alastor snapped back a moment too late. He felt alive.

Then it was on.

Notes:

hope yall are ready for another fight!

Chapter 13: Yippee-Kay-Fabe, You Wet Blanket

Chapter Text

Vox tapped irritably at his phone screen, his simulated mouth going fuzzy at the edges as he tried and failed to stop projecting a frown. Leave it to Valentino to get 'you're ditching me' out of 'we have to move dinner to a later time, still tonight, because I have important news'. He swiped the flat part of his claw over his keyboard, constructing a message that subtly insulted Valentino's intelligence while not-so-subtly bigging up his looks. It was a little difficult, to tie brain size to physical appearance without implying Val had a big head, but fuck it, he had an ego too. He sent the text and was immediately flooded by a nonsensical string of emoticons that did not look particularly flattered, or happy for that matter. He made a raspberry noise, rolling his eyes.

"Cam, next time I try to forgive Val for his shit after we break up, remind me he's got the emotional regulation skills of a toddler and can't handle a relationship."

"Yes, sir," said the lizard sinner, devoid now of her vPad. Vox wasn't sure why he'd brought her with him. Maybe at the time it had made sense to grab the extra hands.

The meeting with Malphas, and subsequent demolition and reconstruction of his schedule, had taken so long that Vox had missed his lunch hour with the Thai place and couldn't get another table. A vending machine sandwich ended up in his cards despite every effort to avoid it, and he was further deprived of good food when he realized that he could not trust his coworkers with chopsticks when heavy drinking was involved. No noodles for him, not with the amount of alcohol he intended to imbibe to celebrate. A quick call to Ides of March had two large pizzas, an order of wings, garlic knots, and a bottle of generic cola steaming on a counter, waiting for him to pick it up. Well, everything but the soda, he hoped the soda wasn't steaming, because he could think of few things worse than hot soda. Warm soda was bad enough, but hot soda? Yuck. Count him out.

Midway down this rabbithole, weathering Valentino's angry flurry of texts with practiced indifference, Vox killed the thought process. It was getting much too silly and had begun connecting up with marketing brain, and 'hot soda' was an idea doomed to fail from the start no matter how flashy the advertisements could be. The very idea proved that he was going to need a real break soon. The whole month had fried his brain so badly that he kind of wanted to disconnect his head wholesale, just to get some peace and quiet for a while. A headache was brewing in his screen, particularly unfair in his opinion, because light made it worse and his whole face was light. His thoughts were fuzzy, scrambled, like he'd already begun to pre-game when not a drop of alcohol had yet to touch his lips. Plasma? Whatever he had in place of a mouth in this body. He really did need to consider building a new one, but inhabiting any shell other than the one he generated in was always dysphoric as fuck. It was total horseshit he could feel dysphoria when his head was a goddamned TV in the first place.

"Uhhh, Mister Vox, sir?"

"Not now, Cam," he said, waving his assistant off as he began to play damage control. Valentino had burned himself out on indignant rage and was now in the 'tears' phase of a fight, when he was most receptive to ass-kissing apologies. Vox's internal GPS routed them to the pizza place, it was another eighth of a mile down the street, on the right, couldn't miss the huge tacky pillars out front. Night life was just waking up in his portion of the Pentagram, if he was going to get food, it would need to be now. Otherwise it wouldn't matter who the fuck he was, he'd never get it before midnight. Sinners parted for him, not out of fear, but because he owned them and they knew damn well not to bother their Overlords. Especially ones with migraines that felt like a termite colony gnawing on their wiring. They cowered in parked cars, ducked into businesses, disappeared down the alleys. As they should.

"Vox."

He rolled his eyes with a sneer, glaring out of the corner of his screen at Cam, who had blanched into a rather unappealing shade of paper-pulp grey. "What?" He snapped.

"Vox!"

The only thought the Television Overlord was capable of having, hearing his name called in that floaty, buzzing, overly excited tone that belonged to hell on hooves, was 'fuck'.

Once that clog was cleared from the floodgates of his consciousness, the next several bits of mental flotsam started rushing through his processors, slamming into important bits of his brain and sending reverberating alarm bells through his HUD. The softlock on his adrenaline was released, he'd worked out that bug on the walk here.

Really, Alastor? Here and now?

This is why we can't have nice things.

And I was just about to get dinner!

Oh fuck, Cam!

If he'd been a little faster, he wouldn't have lost his table at Curry It Up, wouldn't have gone out to pick up a pizza order from Ides of March, wouldn't have put himself in this position.

"Oh, shit. Cam hit the deck."

But he did. He was distracted, angry, and completely misread that mussed-up, stifling feeling he got whenever Alastor's signal crossed paths with his own. Missed Cam asking for his attention, trying to warn him. By the time she pulled on his sleeve and made him look up, Alastor was already at full tilt and a fight was imminent. So he did the only thing he could think to do.

"How wonderful to see you, old pal!"

"Hit the deck, hit the fucking deck!"

He shoved her, and as Cam's back made contact with the brick wall, Alastor's knee made contact with his fucking chest, which, ow. Vox let himself fall rather than try to win against gravity, tumbled backwards and tucked his head in to avoid damage to his screen. Once he'd stopped skidding, Vox snarled, pushed himself to his feet, and did a stupid thing. The smart option would be to run, to try to get Alastor on more favorable ground, or even to just play keep-away until he lost interest. Vox did not do these things, because he was a pissed off idiot.

He fought back instead.

Growling, he lit his electrons with the fire burning in his veins, and channeled his relationship angst in Alastor's direction. He blipped forward, like a game of hopscotch with invisible lines, the tips of his shoes barely touching the ground before he pushed off and went intangible again. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right hook, swinging his crystalline claws at Alastor's puffed up chest. The Radio Demon bent backwards, his spine curling at an angle incompatible with lower extremity movement as Vox's claws caught on his bowtie. He severed it like a hot knife through butter, the fabric threading apart and fluttering to their feet in ribbons. Alastor's smile became rictus, and he teetered back upwards with a strained laugh. Vox danced back to avoid the returned favor, his HUD informing him of just how closely Alastor had come to removing the soft skin of his throat.

He thanked it for it's service and then shut down the service responsible for updates on bodily status. The popup about the rib Alastor just broke was annoying, he felt that just fine without being constantly reminded.

Now, he thought he'd waxed poetic about the lack of fist-fighting in their fights, but perhaps Alastor had missed that particular memo, because this was a lot more 'physical' than it tended to get for them. Alastor planted his staff in the ground, kicked off with his feet, and struck out with his hooves, extending his body in an attempt to nail Vox in the stomach with his toe. The Television Overlord grabbed his leg and threw him up and over his shoulder, the deer sinner sailing through the air until Vox slammed him down on his back, claws leaving deep gashes in his pants where he'd gotten a grip. He heard bones crack and and pop out of place, swallowed down the bile and the revulsion that now replaced the minor blip in his systems that indicated he needed a calorie boost soon. The concrete splintered beneath Alastor's liquefied spinal column and shoulders, and his grin was the last thing to fade as he melted into shadows. Good thing, too, as Vox had brought his leg around to smash his heel directly into the spot where Alastor's forehead had been not a moment ago. He may not have liked violence, but by god, would he resort to it when he needed to.

"I fucking hate you," he muttered. Alastor's laugh fuzzed through his antenna, half over the airwaves, half in the real world. Not that the airwaves weren't real to him? He couldn't afford to get into the weeds about that right now. Vox ripped his pistol from his jacket, whirled around, and blindly pulled the trigger. It hit a mark, found a home in one of the moppets Alastor had summoned. It flopped to the ground, leaking black sand and something purplish and fleshy onto the concrete, squirming valiantly. Vox didn't see Alastor call it in, but they'd fought enough that he anticipated the reinforcements. Good thing he had plenty of bullets, because there was never only one.

He scrambled out into the street.

Vox was rewarded for his caution as the bricks that were formerly on his right exploded into barely-tangible shadow tendrils, writhing like a sea cucumber from, well. From Hell. "You wanna explain what this is about, Bambi?! Did I infringe on your airtime? Disparage the wrong jazz musician? Give me something to work with!" Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, he sent another bit of lead and powdered angelic metal towards the moppet he'd hit earlier, the one twitching pathetically on the pavement, trying and failing to get back up and reach him. It went floppy, an empty sack of burlap and black magic as Alastor's chuckling scraped against Vox's audio software. He grit his teeth in annoyance, head on a swivel, trying to catch the Radio Demon before he could launch a surprise attack, instead catching a horde of moppets skipping in his direction from behind.

"Just letting off a bit of steam!" Alastor trilled exuberantly, voice boundless and coming from every direction. Vox couldn't see him, couldn't feel the electric pulse that every living creature emitted. He could feel Cam, 'see' her outline where she was pressed up against the wall he pushed her into. She'd gone invisible, good for her, she might be smart enough to avoid the shrapnel produced by today's unscheduled ass beating.

Yes, because the schedule was one of his concerns right now, and he wasn't kidding. "If you make me miss dinner, you son of a bitch, I'm going to dig my claws into your ribs and cook you from the inside out!"

"Don't threaten me with a good time," Alastor purred in a frequency only they could hear, in a tone that made Vox's face pinken. If it were anybody else, that would've been disconcertingly flirtatious. As it was Alastor saying it, it was still flirty, but only for asshole reasons and not an actual proposition. Not that he expected anything less, but now he was coming up with ideas to pitch to Valentino later and if his brain would focus on one thing at a time, that'd be grand, thanks.

"Quit fucking with me!" He replied in kind, tinny and embarrassingly high-pitched, emptying a clip into the procession of voodoo freaks that were merrily stampeding his way.

"No!"

Vox did not see the four-door sedan Alastor threw at him. He was a bit busy with the small fry, which he supposed was Alastor's plan, turned his head around to look for a shadowy hand coming for his neck and instead caught a car to the screen. He imagined that must have been where Alastor had retreated, was hiding in the darkness under the undercarriage, just waiting for Vox to stand still long enough to launch a two ton vehicle at him. Well-played, if annoyingly in-tune with how Vox fought. He'd need to take a judo class or something, as nobody was currently teaching 'Radio Demon Ass-Beating 101'. Though with the amount of hours he'd spent on this song and dance, he was at least into the third year of his studies at Buck Beating University.

Where was he? Ah, yeah, the sedan that hit him dead-on in the center of his back and sent him careening down the street. He yelped, well, screamed really, as he was sent flying down the road, tumbling ass over teakettle with a car for company. He scrabbled at it, digging deep furrows in the metal as he struggled for a grip, his HUD stubbornly heel-turning and refusing to indicate what parts of him were getting injured under his own power and what was the fault of the car. In Vox's opinion, this was not just 'letting off steam'. He knew that Alastor did not care about his opinion, but attempted to voice it over their personal channels anyway. The intelligibility of said opinion was up for debate, but as Alastor was laughing, still laughing, he imagined that enough of the sentiment got across as the four-door finally stopped rolling over. It was by the grace of whatever god still bothered to look down here that he'd avoided being outright crushed by it.

All the same, he wasn't exactly 'unscathed' by the whole affair. Now a quarter mile down the road, hey look at that, there was the pizza place, Vox pushed himself up from where he'd been sent sprawling flat on his back. His fans puffed hot air in a grand attempt to keep his internals from melting, god, pulling gooey plastic out of his abdominal cavity would suck. Grunting, he sat straight, then leaned forward, put both palms to the floor and pulled his knees in. His entire body hurt, pain signals were one thing he refused to kill even if they were distracting, though it was times like these he regretted his earlier reason. Later, when he felt better, he would once again be able to go through the thought process of 'pain indicates something wrong'. Right now, when he was feeling every last bruise and scrape and broken bit inside of his meaty shell, he kicked himself for it.

It was a testament to Vox's durability that he didn't just outright die from that. His durability, and Alastor's inability to throw a killing blow without toying with his food first. Clear fluid dripped down the side of his casing, plinking to the asphalt in a small puddle, mouth open and producing a small drizzle of the stuff to join it. Anger was sluggishly burning through his veins as he sat there, panting, uncertain of his next move. His processors were moving a bit slow due to that world-class bell-ringing, couldn't summon the urgency needed to get up again. His calves and thighs were not responding to any input that required a contraction of his musculature.

The Radio Demon's low, buzzing drone drew closer. "Vox?" He asked, and Vox wasn't dumb enough to believe, even for a second, that he was half as concerned as he sounded.

"You threw a car at me," he said, almost in disbelief. He did believe it, it had just happened, but still. "You threw a CAR at me?!"

"I did," Alastor confirmed. No, that was smug satisfaction, not concern. "For a moment, I was concerned I'd killed you!"

"Like you actually care. You almost did kill me, fuck!" He paused to cough, though he didn't need to. Skeletal structure finally relaying the requests for 'ass-in-gear' that his central nervous system had been inputting, Vox stood. He wobbled, but miraculously remained upright. Mostly just shell-shocked, somehow, he'd avoided major injuries. Lucky stars, rabbits feet and all that, all those fairy tales he didn't believe in. Thoroughly furious, he punched out a window of the car, feeling the glass scrape his knuckles but avoid puncturing his skin, and put both arms over the top of the vehicle. Leg at an angle that porn stars could only dream of, he got his foot into the now-shattered window and vaulted up, falling forward to lean his chest onto the roof. "You literally threw a fucking car at me!" He continued to rage, now dropping out of the airwaves. "I cannot believe you!"

Alastor had slunk out from wherever he'd been hiding, standing in the middle of the street, hands folded casually on his staff. Like a candy-colored bullseye. "Believe it, Voxel," Alastor hummed, smarmy and sly.

Vox was so done with this shit it wasn't funny. It was un-funny. It was Valentino doing standup after one too many drinks, that's how un-funny it all was. He hauled himself up to stand on top of the sedan, seething with fury. Piercing the metal of the roof of the car, Vox braced himself and peeled the top off of it like a tin can, deafening his mics so he wouldn't need to hear that hellacious noise. The roof fought him, just for a minute, paint flaking and wires sparking, but he got his superhuman strength to actually cooperate, the electricity running through his limbs delivering minute shocks to his muscles to trick them into working overtime. He carried on with his tirade as he worked the metal, watching it bend and snap beneath his hands. "Every time I go for food, you start shit. Every time! It's like you want me to fucking starve!"

"I wouldn't wish starvation on anybody," Alastor murmured, perhaps with a drop more sincerity than Vox would ever give him credit for. He wasn't listening, nope, that train had long since left the station, and the pain train had just pulled in. Choo choo, motherfucker, a one-way pre-paid ticket to superhell had Alastor's name on it.

Fans literally steaming, the heat of his mechanical parts boiling the water out of his squishy internal bits, Vox hefted the slab of aluminum he'd just carved out of the vehicle. Alastor was just stood there, plain as day, smiling away without a care in the world. Vox was about to give him something to care about, yes he was. "Just let me pick up my food for once in your fucking life!"

He swung the makeshift discus backwards, then, with a riveting display of strength he was absolutely going to feel in the morning, flung it down the street. For a blissful moment, he caught a brief microexpression of surprise dance on Alastor's face, riiiight before the sheet metal danced into his hips and sent him over onto his ass. The roof of the now-totaled sedan, having done it's duty, sailed away to life a new life as the worlds worst surfboard, or a fan for a titan made of iron. Vox didn't give a fuck where it ended up, he paid people to give fucks about things like that. His hands were stained with black urethane, which he wiped onto his slacks. He paid people to give a fuck about his laundry, too.

Jumping down off the scant few inches that remained of the car's top, he panted, hocked up something that couldn't rightly be called 'blood' but probably served a similar function, spat it onto the asphalt. Vox wondered briefly if he'd done more damage to himself by ripping the sedan apart with his bare claws like some kind of kaiju, but immediately knew it was worth it as Alastor struggled back to his feet. His suit had nearly become a crop top, the bottom of his waitcoat dangling by a thread, and he was bleeding profusely from the midsection. The wound was closing rapidly, but that puddle of red he was standing in certainly hadn't been there before. Vox smirked. His own injuries were closing too, flesh seeking out flesh, shredded halves of the whole reconnecting and building new bridges of sinew and skin. All things considered, other than the broken bones from the impromptu mosh pit with the four-door, he was just peachy.

Staring him down with red-hot eyes, Alastor's voice brushed against his brain, almost petulant. "I wasn't intending to kill you, but if that's how you'd like to play, I'm more than happy to-"

Wait. "Wait, wait, shut up. Hold on. You weren't intending to kill me?"

Confusion, pure and undiluted, pulled at Alastor's eyebrows and neck until he tilted his head like a dog. His eyes narrowed, as if Vox were a particularly dull child. "No! Of course not. As I said, just a bit of stress-relief, that's all! If I intended to kill you, I'd have said so from the outset."

"Is this, like, kayfabe?"

"What the hell is kayfabe?"

"Here, just, look at me for a minute longer, really stare me down, then we'll go our separate ways. We both look too injured to continue, nobody will know we ever had this talk, and we can get on with our lives."

That was true. They communicated on a private channel, not in audible words, the entire exchange taking place in under half a second. Sharing thoughts this way was so much faster than aloud anyway, and with how profusely they were both bleeding, neither of them would be blamed or ridiculed by anyone at all if they both simply ceased to throw hands. Well, at least not publicly, and not by anybody with half a brain in their skulls. Alastor stared at him, blankly aside from mild offense, casting his own possession of 'half a brain' into doubt.

Vox made the choice for him and disengaged, wandering past Alastor and back towards the wall where he'd last left Cam. Huh, her outline had disappeared, weird. With the amount of head trauma he'd just sustained, he wouldn't be surprised if something in his hardware had gotten knocked loose and his ability to sense the magnetism of a person had been temporarily disabled. At least he could put 'flattened by a car' on his list of 'things I should've died about but didn't'. Go him, yippee, god's favorite little punching bag. Death had made him durable everywhere but the head, which was kind of hilarious, given how his life had gone.

Never one to just take a proffered olive branch even when it was far and away the smartest choice to make, Alastor snarled, his ears tipping flat to his head. He swiped for Vox, caught the tips of his fingers into his suit's sleeve, drawing him up to a half. "Don't you walk away from me," he started to growl, but there was the sharp report of a gunshot that did not come from Vox. In fact, he'd long since lost his gun somewhere in the fray, likely during the whole car thing, he was never going to let that go. The bullet itself went wide, whizzed past both Overlords to shatter the glass storefront of the pot shop across the street, Bake It 'til You Make It. Both men turned their heads to the source, slowly, able to follow the trajectory without much issue. It didn't take a rocket scientist to trace a straight line after all. At the end of it:

There was Cam. With Vox's gun, it couldn't have been anyone else's, shiny silver and black and blue with VoxTek branding all over the grip. She was shaking in every limb, but held the gun more or less steady in both hands, the muzzle still pointed at them. No, not at them.

At Alastor. She'd just tried to shoot Alastor.

Oh, fuck.

"Alastor," Vox said, trying to get the jump on the temper tantrum he knew was brewing. No dice, that smile was way too wide, had too many teeth crowding into that knife's slice of a mouth. "Alastor, Al," he wheedled, even dropping to the nickname he'd long since lost any right to use, but Alastor unhooked his claws from Vox's jacket and started towards the lizard, this was going to be bad. "Come on, leave the chick alone. She's got nothing to do with this."

With a grin like lockjaw, and just as sharp and rusty as the source of the disease, Alastor continued to advance. Shoulders hunched forward, fingers jumping, the claws clicking and twiddling in the air as they thirsted for a reptillian neck to sink into. "I disagree!" He chirruped. "She made the choice to take a shot, now she has everything to do with it! Stand aside, Vox."

"Hey! No, no, absolutely not," Vox zapped forward, skipping across the asphalt in energy form until he could put himself in front of Cam, placing his body between the Radio Demon and his assistant. He was so close he could pick up on Cam's breathing, fast and shallow, and he still hadn't earned up a medical degree since the ride in the Vrive with Alastor but he didn't need to have one to tell she was pale. It didn't bode well for a lizard who's normal palette looked like the bisexual flag for citrus fruits to share colors with a sun-bleached Kleenex box. "Off limits."

"S-Sir?"

"Shut up, Cam," he hissed under his artificial breath.

Alastor paused in the street, neck lolling at a right angle. His mouth dripped with black drool, his own blood mixing with saliva, the surface level sanguinity that oxidized so quickly when exposed to air. It fell in fat globules onto his wingtips, rolling off the leather to sink into the stone.

Vox stood his ground, arms wide, blocking the path to the Sinner who was going to owe him oh so much after this. Such displays of loyalty were rare, and spoke to either an easily-manipulated soul, or an empty head. Vox knew it wasn't the latter, so... "Off. Limits."

Best to keep this one around.

The Overlords had another conversation, though this one was entirely silent. A lock of their eyes, tiny, unreadable expressions flitting between them, prodding limits. How serious Alastor was, how serious Vox was, if they were both going to fight to the death or even more grevious injury over a regular, run-of-the-mill sinner. An unspoken rewriting of the clauses that now bound them, placing a rule, that something could just be declared 'off limits' and have that claim be respected. Decades of... Not friendship, it hadn't been friendship for a long time if it ever was, familiarity was the best word for it, allowed for the negotiations. The air was tense, brittle, like a stale biscuit just waiting for someone to step on it and shatter whatever structural integrity still existed in the weave of the grain. Eventually, Alastor groaned and rolled his shoulders, and the murderous affect shed from his body like water from a duck.

"Spoilsport," was all he said, before the Radio Demon took his leave. Headed up the street, not down, the way Vox had been coming from. His shadow materialized at his side to hand him his staff. The radio kicked on, jarring in the sudden presence of music where before there had been silence and static and snatches of laughter and screaming, a jaunty jazz track filling the air and fading slowly as Alastor put distance between himself and his rival. Vox watched him go, making sure that this wasn't some kind of fake surrender that violated whatever rules of the Geneva Convention still held down here. Nope, he was going for real, swaying his hips just slightly to make his coat flare on either side. He was walking stiffly for all that bluster, though, his body wilting then snapping upright as he tried to cater to the discomfort that a near-disembowelment produced. Well, sucked to be him.

Sucked to be Vox, too, though. Relaxing his arms, feeling them shudder as the exhaustion of the fight finally clocked through his cabling, he twisted around to look at his assistant. "Cam, what the fuck?" He demanded, her big, wet eyes doing nothing to untangle the cluster of feelings sitting on his diaphragm. Anger, incredulousness, a desire to take this type of devotion and run with it until something broke. He didn't let her get a word in edgewise, not that she tried, Cam simply weathered his storm of words, shrinking back as he turned to face her fully. "Seriously, I need a five page writeup of what the hell you were thinking. Gimmie that," he said, swiping the gun from her hands. He clicked the safety and stowed it in his pocket before she twitched a finger and shot him in the ass or something like that. Vox didn't bother to read her expression as he did so. Such displays of loyalty like that never ended up roses for him, and he didn't care what flavor of obsessed with him she was, not right now, he had a boyfriend and a protégé he needed to feed news, booze, and carbohydrates, stat.

"We are going to have a long fucking talk about doing dumb shit on my behalf later, miss," he threatened vaguely.

There were tears prickling the corners of Cam's eyes. Fear, relief, betrayal, he wasn't sure what kind and didn't want to know. She clutched her hands close to her chest, opened her mouth to give him a response. A squeak was all that fell out. She ended up nodding instead, which was good enough for him. Vox rubbed two fingers against his screen, simulated a sigh, and beckoned her to follow him down the street, pulling his GPS out of hibernation to get this evening back on track.

"... Pencil in an appointment next week and I'll take you to the range. If you're going to take potshots at other demons, next time, I need to be sure you're going to hit what you're aiming at."

That was the closest thing to approval he was going to give her for that stunt. Cam didn't ask for anything more. He liked her more and more every day.

Chapter 14: Hell is Forever

Notes:

REQUIRED LISTENING FOR THE VEES SECTION:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaAu-V2QEcA

for posterity and myself, this is the point at which we reached 75k

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Alastor was quite pleased with himself. After his little 'kayfabe fight', or whatever Vox had called it, with the Television Overlord, he felt like his old self again! Sure, he hurt, one doesn't have a car roof thrown at them at speed without coming away with some bumps and bruises, but this was good pain. The pain of a job well done, of victory, of a glorious return to form! After all, before his little... Impromptu, departure from the main scene of Hell, he was constantly scrapping with Vox for all to see! This was a breath of fresh air and a reminder of simpler times. This was also, as the burlap sack over his back bumped into his hip for the fiftieth time, a successful hunt. He'd found some moose sinner using the fight as an opportunity to rob everyone in a little shop at gunpoint on his way home, and, well, he couldn't let anyone profit off of his disturbance, now could he? Yes indeedy, lunch, reputation building, a spit in the eye of the new status quo, everything had come up peachy today!

Aside from getting shot at, but, one couldn't have everything. And the new rule Vox had added, that something could now be declared 'off limits'... He would bring that to bite Vox in the cabling whenever was convenient. All he had to do now was wait for that moment.

So, after all but skipping on the way back to the Hotel, Alastor pushed the front doors open, his radio crackling with interference as his radio tower's broadcasting equipment picked up his signal. His hands left bloody smears on the wood and lacquer as he let himself in, another mess left behind for someone that wasn't him to clean up, like the interior of that bakery he'd turned into the scene of a homicide fifteen minutes ago. He spun his cane over his fingers, already sensing the presence of others in the foyer, put a cheery grin on his face and a spring in his step as he wiped the bottoms of his shoes onto the doormat. His aura became flooded with hi-hats and breezy sax, reflecting his joyous mood. "And how is my little flock of devilspawn this fine afternoon?" He asked, to everybody and nobody in particular, spreading his arms wide to broadcast his arrival.

"Oh my god, Alastor, are you okay?!"

Charlie came rushing for him from the bar, one hand resting over her mouth, the other a-glow with demonic-angelic-whatever power. Alastor blinked in surprise, took a step back to the door, which was enough to get Charlie to remember he didn't like to be touched and come to an anxious halt, holding her wrist and looking at him with sad, wet eyes. Truly, how evil was he to set a boundary about how many hands were allowed to touch his person. Ah well, she'd learn to live with it eventually, everyone did. That, or they lost their hands. Alastor wasn't confident he could bite Charlie's off and wasn't inclined to try.

"Yes, Charlie dear? Of course I am! Why are you-? Ah."

A quick glance down, and Alastor saw the cause for concern. His clothes were tattered, more so than usual, and he was quite soaked in blood, turning his ensemble an unflattering shade of stygian red. Thankfully, most of it was not his own! His bowtie was gone, his pants were slashed open and crusty around the back of his calf where Vox's claws had caught in his skin and ripped through, and his overcoat and vest had been torn nearly in two over his stomach. He thought his undershirt was okay, Alastor hadn't bothered to check on the walk back, but he wasn't feeling any drafts around his midsection that would indicate otherwise. His angelic wound was still well hidden. He flicked his gaze back up to Charlie, who appeared to be on the edge of hysterical tears, shifting her weight on her feet with a suppressed desire to touch, to help. It made something queer twist in his gut. He didn't like it. Angel Dust and Husker, at the bar, were politely keeping their traps shut, casting him sideways glances but no empty words or well-wishes. For all intents and purposes, he and Charlie were alone in the room, and her meltdown was his problem to handle.

Delightful.

"Darling, I am perfectly alright! Your concern is appreciated, but laughable and unwanted."

Alastor put his cane on the floor and reached out to pat her head, but she shied away with a minorly disgusted expression. He blinked, took a closer look at his hand, noted that his fingers dripped with gore. He brushed them onto his lapel, found that did not help the situation, and gave it up entirely with an affable shrug. His grin widened as he caught Husker pouring him a drink, sliding it to the end of the bar for him to pick up at his leisure. Good man.

Though his eyes were lingering, in that 'we need to talk later' way. Less good man.

"Where the hell were you? And, uh, wwwhat is that you've got there?" Charlie continued to prod, leaning to the side to take note of the massive, suspiciously lumpy sack Alastor had thrown over one shoulder. She'd started out trying for authority and ended in curiosity, as she always did when trying to pry any information out of the Radio Demon. When would she learn he could talk in circles better than even her father could?

This was the dead body of a sinner who had acted up near enough to Alastor that they had unwittingly sacrificed themselves to his hunger, but under no circumstances would he tell Charlie he had walked a dead body over the threshold of her hotel. He casually angled his body away from her as she tried in vain to get a closer look, rested his arms on his staff and shifted the bag away from her, equal parts frustrating and innocent. Alastor licked the blood from his mouth, a drop of it flicking off his tooth to hit the welcome mat under his Oxfords, and decided to tell the truth. Well, an abridged version of it.

"Lunch," he answered simply. "Niffty, dear!"

Niffty dropped from the ceiling like a spider, leaping out of a light fixture she'd been dusting since he walked in, poodle skirt puffing like a parachute of silk webbing on her descent. No offense to the actual spider in the room, who was expertly balancing a cocktail in one hand and a gossip-hungry affect in the other, pretending, badly, that he wasn't listening in.

Charlie screamed and hopped back onto one leg. That was to be expected, so Alastor ignored the display. Niffty landed daintily on his shoulder, hung off his head with one tiny, spindly hand on an antler before she dropped to sit, kicking her feet delightedly over his chest. How he loved this little woman and all her eccentricities!

"Ooooh man, you're dirty!" Niffty scolded, realizing he was covered in fluids better left nameless. She jumped down from his shoulder to slide down his cane like a fire pole, chattering angrily all the while. "Where have you been? Were you out fighting?! You're going to get hurt sorry to say, what are we gonna do with you! You may be strong but you can't just throw yourself at every problem and expect violence to fix it, tsktsktsk, no no no!"

Maybe he loved her now a little less than he'd loved her a moment ago. Rolling his eyes good-naturedly, Alastor dropped the bag into mid-air. His shadow ripped itself from his back as it lunged to catch it, chittering admonishments at him all the while. Niffty zipped all over his body, leaning, crawling, skittering against him and examining his clothing, the bloodstains that permeated his being, light enough that she didn't aggravate any of his wounds. He'd become so accustomed to his chest hurting that it barely registered. "Yes, I am, good on you for noticing!" He praised her, holding out the flaps of his overcoat to bring her monocular attention to it, her eye focusing in as she stopped in her tracks. "However, this is ripped. Would you mind terribly sewing it up for me? The vest too, now that I'm thinking on it. I don't particularly feel like a trip to the tailor's this late in the day!"

Especially not with what lurked in the tailor's shop. Niffty bounced up on her tiptoes, looking at the rip, tongue caught in her teeth as her hands itched for needles.

Le Foncé shook the bag at him impatiently, awaiting orders.

"Yes, yes, I hear you. Up to my rooms with that, Le Foncé, if you would!" Alastor told it, clapping his hands.

He was hoping that name-dropping his shadow might get the Princess of Hell off his case. No dice, Charlie was still studying him, her red eyes meeting his own before they danced away to take in the rest of him, and now she noted the black blood rolling down the back of his ankle to dribble onto the welcome mat. She glanced from his face down to the slow-growing puddle he was standing in, back and forth, waiting for him to bring it up so she wouldn't have to, but two could play these games. He tilted his head, music fizzing as he did, like the rotation of a dial through a sea of white noise. An unstoppable force, the Princess' ability to stick her nose where it didn't belong, meeting an immovable object, Alastor's desire to explain absolutely nothing. They stood like that for several moments as Niffty nattered on about how much blood Alastor had trailed all over the hotel's grounds, there was only one of her, she would clean it up of course but would it kill him to have hosed down at the end of the drive?!

For Charlie, the silence must've been extremely awkward. For Alastor, who thrived in these little social scrapes, it was nothing new. He brushed a bit of dirt from his shoulderpad. Charlie sucked her breath through her teeth.

"Sooooo, Alastor. Angel was telling me that you were out in the streets fighting Vox? Care to, um... Explain? That?"

"Was he?" Alastor asked, a thin veneer of friendliness failing to hide the depths of interest he now held in the conversation. His neck snapped as his head turned to Angel Dust. The porn star was scrolling rapidly on his phone and pretending he was innocent in all this. So much for friendship. Et tu, arachnid?

"Yeah," Charlie confirmed, stepping in front of him to block his view. It didn't work, Alastor had a foot on her, but wasn't it so funny that she tried? "Here at the Hotel, we have to discourage outside fights to protect our image, and-"

"Charlie!" Alastor interrupted her, laying both of his bloody, sticky hands on her shoulders. She squirmed, clearly grossed out by the bits of flesh now pasted into her suit jacket, but he had a point to prove and he would prove it. He canted into her personal space, pressing their noses together to make sure her attention was his and his alone, forcing her backwards until she was rocking on her heels and he was standing on his toes. Charlie hated this, he could see it on her face, the scrunch of her nose and the curl of her lip.

Alastor did not care. He was still wired from the tussle in the streets, and did not want to hash out his relationship with Vox to Charlie of all people. At the very least, he didn't want to do it now.

"I will say this once: my activities with Vox do not concern you, nor the Hotel! Now if you'll excuse me, I need a shower. I am absolutely covered in viscera and would like to remove it before it stains. I will see you all at dinner, hm?" And with that, he spun her away, using that brief window of disorientation to allow Le Foncé to drag him into the shadows, depositing Niffty onto the floor with a yelp of protest.

Yikes. Perhaps that was uncouth behavior.


The aftermath of a fight with Alastor always sucked for Vox. Universally. Didn't matter if he was getting a car thrown at him, had his wires scrambled by claws or his signals crossed by a stray blot of static over the airwaves, when the adrenaline ran out and his HUD was allowed to tell him all about the damages, he always felt like he'd been run over by a horse. Alastor left one giant pile of residual 'fuck you' in his wake that caused Vox to ache every time he moved, like a poison, some kind of toxin that he secreted and worked into Vox's innards with every moment they spent in the same space together. Thankfully, Valentino had nice, nimble hands with long fingers that were absolutely perfect for 'working out' just about anything. Even vibe arsenic.

The setting was helping. He'd herded them all back into the lounge that Vox had ferried a hangover-curing buffet up to last month, though everyone here was now more sober than not. The Vees had had drinks, sure, but Vox needed his coworkers to stay on the level for long enough to intake his news about Malphas' meeting. It had gone over well, even without a seventeen slide long PowerPoint to get the powerful points across, and if Vox had gravitated onto the couch to cuddle with Valentino while he talked, well, that was his own fucking business, wasn't it?

The Television Overlord leaned his heavy, clunky head back into Valentino's chest, his screen flickering between his face and a black void with a VoxTek logo slowly pinging around the edges. He was sat whorishly on the moth demon's lap and failed to muster up an ounce of shame about it, legs spread and hands on his knees. He'd switched out his suit for a pair of joggers and a sweater he stole from Val, faded and chick-yellow. It was oversized on him, of course, and had a spare pair of arms that laid limp to his sides as he didn't have the limbs to fill them with, but it was ultimately cozy and warm. It smelled like Valentino, the fabric stretched out and soft from years of use, and shockingly enough sported nary a curious nibble taken out of it by the owner. Vox heaved a deep, contented sigh and wriggled a bit, getting cozy with his currently on-again boyfriend, who was working his upper set of hands into the muscles of his shoulders. One of his lower hands was put over Vox's, and the final hand was holding his cigarette stick, always smoking. The ashtray on the table already had two butts in it.

"So, that's the plan," Vox rumbled quietly, only half-sure his comrades were even listening anymore. Valentino seemed more concerned with mapping every square inch of Vox's newly-healed back, and Velvette, posted up on an armchair opposite him and his lover in Vees brand silk pajamas, had her thumbs locked in a blur over the keyboard of her phone. Vox rolled his eyes, but didn't bother to make himself more of a bother. He was more muttering to himself now, anyway, talking through the logistics so he would have a recording of his own voice to play back later. He would've had Cam take notes, but she'd passed out in a ball on a loveseat two hours ago, and he wasn't about to wake her. Not after all the work they'd both been putting in recently. A yawn ripped out of his throat for emphasis as he even thought about the last weeks of non-stop, pedal to the metal 'businessing'. Which was weird, as he didn't need to yawn, didn't even need to breathe, now he was thinking about his lack of lungs again, goodbye, internal schematic guesswork, no need for that tab to open, back to the main thought at hand. At brain? At whatever. The point was: If Cam wanted to fall asleep in the Vees sitting room, could muster up enough confidence in Vox to pass the fuck out in front of the other two Vees and be reasonably certain she'd wake up unaccosted, he wasn't going to punish her for that. "Get Malphas to a launch party, butter him up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and bait him into working with us with a fifty percent cut..."

"Fifty percent?" Valentino replied, his thumbs pressing into a spot under Vox's shoulderblades that made him writhe sleepily in his grasp, groaning a complaint that was both noted and ignored. "Isn't that a bit generous, centello?"

"Yeah, hold on," Velvette chimed in, oh, now she wanted to pay attention, when Valentino was busy driving his fingers into some freshly-made scar tissue, hot off the presses, fuck, that felt so good and so bad at the same time. "Wasn't the end goal of all this trouble to make a fuckton of cash off the other Rings?"

Vox's antenna twitched irritably and he leaned forward, twisting to get his shoulders out of Valentino's grasp. "Enough, stop that, ow!" He whined, taking Valentino's hand off his stomach as the moth demon tried to cage him back in for more cuddling. "Enough with the shoulders, that's sensitive and it fuckin' hurts," he said, pointing accusingly at Valentino with his own hand. Ignoring the pout he got in return, Vox turned back to Velvette, now fully awake again. "I just finished healing, goddamn. Fifty percent will still be a lot, Vel, and he's a Goetia. He'll be wanting a half, if not two thirds, by virtue of being royalty."

"Well, that's a load of shite, isn't it?"

There was more to that rant, but Vox found his screen dimming against his will, plastic chin drooping, microphones warbling out of tune. He truly was exhausted. Two hours of sleep a night with catnaps in between was no way to live, for him or for Cam, and she didn't even have batteries to pull from whenever she needed a bit of a rally. Not that they were helping now, Vox had emptied them over the last several weeks. His fleshy body was striking, every cell and fiber of what passed for meat demanding twelve hours spent horizontal, more or less, and his mechanical parts were screaming for a charging cable lest he get the shut down treatment. Vox had run himself completely dry and there were no two ways about it, but if he had to tend to any need first... His body won out. The one that still bled, whatever type of blood he had left here in Hell. It had to be babied, kept up after, he only had one of those.

Inorganic pieces could just be replaced.

Valentino raised his screen with his fingers from where he'd let it fall against his sternum, the hard angles painful through thick wool of his stolen jumper. Vox muttered out a bleary 'thank-you', taking control over his own neck again to hold his head up under his own power. It was so heavy, no wonder Valentino liked feeling him up, he knew whatever muscles lay under his skin had to be hard as iron from holding up this stupid screen all the time.

"Don't mention it, baby," he cooed. "So what are we going to do while we wait for the party?"

What a dumbass question. "Wait?" Vox responded, a drip of annoyance making its way into his tone. He knew the next steps, had even added a 'how to piss off Alastor super badly' provision, there was nothing more to go over. Unless Valentino had absorbed exactly no information, and at that point, it was a him problem.

Valentino sighed and ran two fingers up his antenna, which nearly triggered sleep mode right then and there. Vox felt his body pitch forward again, and this time, Valentino was already primed to catch him. Val knew full well what touching those antenna did, and being manipulated like that was equally as titillating as it was aggravating for Vox. Val ignored Vox's glitching, skipping growl. "I meant business wise. Everything as usual?"

"Yeah, yeah, everything as usual, more of that please," said Vox, in a tone that wasn't a beg whatsoever in any afterlife.

Valentino chuckled and acquiesced to the request, and Vox thumped his head right back to where it had started: flat against Valentino's chest. This time, he let Valentino keep his arms wrapped possessively around his waist, hugging him close. He wouldn't delude himself into thinking it was protective. That wasn't what this relationship was, and they both knew it. Pretending did neither of them any good.

Velvette made a disgusted sound in her throat, which was pretending. She wasn't half as disgusted by PDA as she claimed, otherwise, she wouldn't matchmake them back together every time they broke up. She claimed to be their number one fan and their number one hater, it all depended on if they were together or broken up. "If you're going to start fucking, at least let me throw down a towel first so I can collect the pheromones for Love Potion."

"Vel, you know I can see your Votter likes, right? You're thirsting so badly for Carmilla that you could fill an Olympic sized pool."

"Cunt!"

Vox cackled. The cackling did not improve Velvette's mood, she was fuming, her fuzzy cheeks puffed out with indignant rage. At this rate, her head might literally start spinning on it's axis, and wouldn't that be hilarious?

"You are the most annoying creature on the face of Hell. Why are you going through my likes?! Those are privated for a reason!"

"So you don't reblog a thirst trap onto your official account at three in the morning?" He replied blandly, watching her turn redder and redder with shame, anger, another feeling staring with 'a', it was pretty excellent. Velvette leveled a shaky finger at him.

"Well you haven't slept in two weeks, Vox! You're in no state to be telling anybody else what to do!"

Vox groaned. "God, you sound like my wife."

The words fell out before Vox could think twice about them. Once again, processing speed, motor mouth, all that did was make it so he could say stupid shit faster. A pin dropping in the room would've sounded like a gunshot, even with the carpet that covered most of the floorspace. Vox was deadly silent, and only dared to speak again once it had stretched too long, yep, the other two Vees were staring at him, he could feel it, oh god. "... Can we pretend I didn't say that-"

"You were married?!"

"Centello, you had a wife?!"

Ah, fucking hell, here they went. Everybody buckle up for the shitshow, because it was about to get underway. Everyone forgot he was bisexual. Even he forgot, he didn't even know the word when he was alive! The impending meltdown a foregone conclusion, Vox let the other two Vees ham up their reactions, grumbling 'never say anything about anything' onto an internal memo pad to be sent to the recycling bin later tonight as he combed through today's work.

Velvette whipped her head at Valentino, the redness of her face replaced with something like bewildered excitement blended with, still, fury.

"Wait, Val, did you not know? He's your boyfriend!"

"Vox has never brought such a thing up to me!" Val squeaked, utterly scandalized, like he'd found out Angel Dust was filming videos with women behind his back and selling them at half-price. The hand on Vox's antenna flew to his breast to press his fingers up against his heart, a drama queen to the very end. Vox put his hands to his screen and rolled his eyes, one of the perks of not actually having eyelids, feeling Valentino's neck ruff puff up against him.

"God, could you two be normal for ten fucking seconds? Ever? That's all I ask. They don't even have to be consecutive!"

"Shut up," Vel commanded, floundering out of her armchair to throw herself into the couch beside them, making Valentino yelp as she slammed into his shoulder. Her eyes were sparking, gossip-hungry and bright with the blood of a story in the water. "You have to tell us everything," she said, waving off Valentino's angered hiss as she commandeered his wing into a blanket.

Vox opened his mouth, intending to tell her that he wasn't contractually obligated to tell either of them anything, nor was he even required to be in the room, but Valentino's hands tightened on his waist and Velvette was leaning over him and he foresaw a future in which he was pressed into the couch by the both of them, so he said nothing. Just thought really hard about it now that he'd put his foot in his mouth and was reminded to think before he spoke, exercised that wonderful little feature that came with 'being alive'. Yes he was dead, shut up, Vox knew that. He settled for glaring at Velvette, tried to crane his neck up to glare at Valentino, couldn't quite manage it, unlike someone else in the room he had these funny little things called 'bones' that confined him to a certain range of motion. Two smug grins bore down on him.

Sensing he'd lost, he sank into the space between Valentino's legs and hung his head, vents puffing in the best approximation of a sigh he could make. "Fine, fine. I'll tell you a little bit. Don't push it," he warned, raising a finger to ward off any too-deep questions off the bat. "It's... You know. I was alive then." Being alive was a painful time for most denizens of Hell, and he was no exception. He trusted the Vees with life and limb on a daily basis, but getting deep into the weeds of his past, of the time when his heart still beat with red blood and his organs were where he expected them to be and his head didn't need a BIOS update every few months to keep up with the endless march of progress, his progress, was still daunting.

Truthfully, he wasn't afraid to tell them anything, but he... Hadn't thought about this in a long time. Vox wasn't sure how much he still remembered, or at least, remembered accurately. Eighty years in Hell did something to your memory.

They were staring at him still. Vox tried not to think about how it made his skin crawl. As if he could read his mind, Valentino put his hand back into Vox's antenna, but kept the touch soft, and light. It was soothing. Felt like having someone's hands in his hair, not that he had hair anymore. He used to be proud of it, when he was alive, remembered others running their hands through it, god, it was hard to find a place to start. He glanced aside, lost, prodding the sore spots in his heart where all of his living memories used to be, now replaced by spongey, dripping membranes that made him flinch if he even got near them, feeling something wet and cold gush out at the acknowledgement.

"Start with a name, darling," Velvette prompted, most of the brash, bitchy flavor of her voice now gone in favor of genuine sincerity. Valentino said nothing. He wasn't good at being genuine, saying anything that wasn't three layers deep in saccharine, manipulative ooze.

A name, a name. Did he remember her name?

"Julianna."

He did.

Everything else fell into place with it. Her face, her eyes, her life, the life she had with him, it all unfurled somewhere in the middle distance, and he watched it, his eyes unfocusing as he threaded backwards.

"She worked as a secretary at the news station I was at. I worked with the teleprompter. Of course, it started as butcher's paper in a suitcase, but I made do, and I really ran with it when it turned digital. Couldn't ever be on screen myself, didn't have the face for it. Getting kicked in the head by a cow as a kid and nearly losing an eye really screws up your looks," he joked, not bothering to pay attention enough to see if either Vee laughed about it. Vox was busy opening doors on memory lane and seeing what spilled out. He was quiet, for a moment, picking out what he wanted to mention next. "But she didn't mind the scar, or the fact I couldn't read in low light, or that I liked sunglasses if we were in public and used more concealer than she did. She had these big, dark eyes, soulful, could see my reflection in them if I looked hard enough. Black hair. Long, too, lots of it, she grew it all the way down to her waist at one point. I used to help her put it up in the morning, and she'd do my ties, since I had a hard time looking down. Again, bad eye. She took care of me."

That was the eye he could hypnotize with, down in Hell. Funny how those things seemed to work.

"You..." Velvette started, hesitated, chanced a look at Valentino. Tried again. "No kids?"

"What?" That snapped him halfway out of his funk. Horror sluiced through him like a cold beer, applied to throat and then chest, inside and out. "God, no! No kids, shit. I mean, not like we didn't try? But she couldn't have any and by the time we figured that out, we were both in our thirties. Goddamn, the adoption paperwork was still filled out and on the table when I-"

Vox stopped. His train of thought crashed into a brick wall as he remembered exactly what day he'd left the paperwork on the table, intending to leave work early to drop it off at the post office with his wife later, go out for dinner with their friends after to celebrate. Vox's vents stopped running for a moment as he closed his eyes, swallowed, pushed down the memories of the last day of his life. Thinking about his wife was one thing. Thinking about his death...

"So, no. No kids." His voice was shaky. Neither Vee brought attention to it. "Fuck, we were enjoying being alive at that point. The only reason we were looking into it was because the neighbors were starting to talk."

Valentino nodded sagely. Velvette pulled a face. "What did the neighbors care if you had kids or not?" She asked.

"Bunny, you died in 2014," Valentino said dismissively, though not exactly unkindly, shuffling his wings to wrap both Vees up tightly in his arms and putting his cigarette out in the tray. "Times were different back then. Now shh!"

Velvette flipped him off for shushing her. Vox snickered quietly. "Nah, Val's right, marriage and kids was... Y'know, what you did. Neither of us were real gone about the other, I don't think, but I loved her, maybe. At the very least I felt pretty strong about her, people used to ask me how I 'let her' work, pissed me off incredibly. My mother worked just as hard as my father on the farm, what did I care if she wanted to file taxes or whatever it was she actually did all day?" He shrugged, catching a dirty look Velvette shot him without understanding exactly what he'd said that had triggered it. "Two incomes made the bills easier anyway. I grew up in the Depression, Vel, and let me tell you, I was not going back to that. Julie wasn't either." He flexed his claws, looked down at his legs, at the shiny shoes on Valentino's feet. Those shoes cost more than a mortgage payment back then, he was certain of that.

Vox wondered how she was. He'd never met Julianna down here, and he'd died first, left her behind with the house and the car and the credit card debt. He wasn't sure why he was here at all. One little murder, one tiny crime of passion, was that really all it took to condemn yourself to Hell? In that case, was she equally as guilty for picking him up late after work, a getaway driver who didn't even know what she was getting him away from? If so, where was she? He would've recognized her, he was sure of it. Mostly. Were her eyes actually brown, or light blue?

Eighty years in Hell warped your memory.

He came back from his mental wandering, blinked his eyes shut, even if simulating it on screen did nothing to hold back tears like a good face-squinching did. Vox missed being flesh and blood, he really did. "... Well, it's all in the past now anyway. She's probably in Heaven with the dog. D'you think dogs go up to Heaven? Fuck, I hope so, Bosco was a damn good animal. Brought the paper to the door in the morning and didn't put a single tooth hole in the plastic." He was rambling, and he knew it, so Vox shut himself up. Just watched his hands, observed his fingers twitching, tightened them over his knees which did nothing but cause the shaking to spread to his arms instead. "That Voyeur Scope is pretty incredible, I rigged it up with legs earlier today and I'm gonna scare the shit out of Cam with it, but it's not the same. It's just not the same."

Vox tipped his head into Valentino's neck fluff to stare at the ceiling. Velvette laid her head on his chest and held one of his hands with her own, cuddled up close. Valentino cocooned the three of them in his wings, two arms for Vox, two arms for Velvette. He'd stopped smoking.

"... I miss my fucking dog."

Notes:

yknow what? i might run through and edit this one more time later but as of now: WOE, 3:30AM UPLOAD BE UPON YE. if anything significant changes i'll add another note.

HOOOKAY: 4/17 10PM UPDATE, I FINISHED EDITING. IT'S DONE NOW.

Chapter 15: Get the Fuck out of My Room I'm Committing Warcrimes

Notes:

so i heard 666 updated?

Chapter Text

Sleeping wrapped up all nice and cozy in some fluffy moth wings was great, for the first hour and a half. After that, there were too many elbows involved, Vox's fans started sucking wind and turning the entire cocoon into a sauna, and he was unanimously kicked out of the cuddle puddle by virtue of literally giving his best friends first degree burns when they tried to reposition his unconscious body. Well, sucked to be them, if they didn't want to smell melted plastic and hot metal, they shouldn't have made him feel all those little bitch emotions and then have to use the last dregs of his energy on said emotions. Vox passing out and becoming a environmental hazard was completely their faults. That was his story and he was sticking to it.

The power nap gave him just enough energy to limp back to his own bedroom after being ousted, complaining the entire time in a mostly-decipherable way as he slogged through the elevator ride and into his front door. He stumbled in, wandered to his bedroom, and flopped face-first onto his sheets after he stripped off Valentino's sweater and shucked it to the floor. He stuck a cable into a port on the underside of his mechanical head, positioned himself mostly comfortably on top of his covers, and then finally granted his body the permission it didn't need but asked for anyway to knock him out cold for however many hours it wanted.

That ended up being ten. Ten entire hours, face-down, motionless, vulnerable physically and wounded emotionally. Absolutely perfect. The other denizens of Hell trembled before his awe-inspiring ability to conk out harder than anyone had ever conked before. Eleven in the morning, said his internal clock, that was when he flickered back to wakefulness. Beautiful time, that hour where it didn't feel like afternoon because it wasn't yet after noon, but sure as fuck didn't feel 'early'. Bright though, it was bright, his blackout curtains didn't get drawn last night because he hadn't given enough of a fuck about it and now his black sheets were cooking, not in the good way either. Vox grunted and flipped onto his back, refusing to turn on his cameras to actually activate his eyes. Instead he opted to zap his phone in his pants pocket to start flitting through his text messages. His memories from yesterday were loading in, one at a time, a sea of memos stamped with time and title opening all across the top of his... Well it wasn't his 'vision', he didn't have working sight yet, it was a bit like if someone had stuck a line of sticky notes under his eyelids.

He didn't have eyelids.

In more important, less redundant news, Cam had sent him a text this morning to inform him that she'd made it back home at roughly 4AM, good on her, and was going to drop by his penthouse later to pick him up so they could get some kind of work done today. They both needed rest, that was the part that went unsaid, and Vox wouldn't be the one to bring that up, but they still needed to get some degree of something finished, roll a ball at least a quarter of the way down the court before they gave it up for the day. She knew how hard he was working, he knew how hard she was working, and after striking that Goetia deal, they deserved a half-day off. He stuck a thumbs-up react to her message and clicked his eyes on, great, let there be light, fuck's sake. He was still raw in a lot of meanings of the word and didn't intend to do anything that required leaving the top several floors of Vee Tower. That knocked the list of potential activities down quite a bit, his to-do notepad automatically filtering out the now-taboo work orders. He wasn't going to go out and visit any sets, he wasn't going to go take a walk to get some Hell-shine, he wasn't going to the in-house production studios to kick some interns around. Nope, all of that was below him, literally and figuratively.

So what did that leave? Left him with back pain from sleeping weird. And left him a coffee machine, lets get that one on the docket right away, thanks. Vox pulled the plug out of his head and sat up, finally allowing the visual input from his cameras to chug through his processors and fight for importance through the sea of Memory he was currently chewing through. Didn't seem like he pulled any bodies out of dumpsters last night, just had an absolutely humiliating cry-session in front of his coworkers about his wife. Ex-wife? Too early to concern himself with semantics. Pants needed to happen first.

Pants did not happen. The siren's song of coffee won that battle, but while it was brewing, Vox did get around to getting dressed at last. He didn't intend to go anywhere, so he could get away with something casual. He traded his sweats for a fresh pair of athlesiure ones and a band t-shirt so faded that he couldn't even tell which promotional stunt it belonged to, or what color it originally came in. His pants were black though, couldn't go wrong with black, great color, the best color, it was the most color actually, that's why it was the best. Vox doused his servos in coffee after that thought, he knew he was a businessman but come on, he could at least try to sound smart. He wandered past the television and turned it on with half a thought, setting it to the news and listening to Katie Killjoy kill Tom Trench live on air. Those were the best-worst anchors he'd ever seen, that's why he kept them on the payroll. Everybody loved a good old-fashioned decapitation with their bagel and bean-brew, right? Right, two fingers on the pulse of the media world, that was him.

Carrying his mug of piping hot lucidity with a sugar content high enough to kill a horse, Vox meandered away, leaving the TV on for noise. Ordinarily he would make a brief pit stop to his shark tank to stick his hand in the water and pet his lovely fishies on their adorable snouts, but he wanted to hurry up and start wasting his time already, so he skipped the glass floor where they circled and headed to the back room. The last door in his apartment, one with a biocoded lock. The one only he was allowed into, the one that contained his Inner Sanctum, his special place just for him, where his most treasured possessions were kept and his brooding could stretch long into the night.

Did it really matter if the room was the size of a broom closet?

The door creaked as it slowly slid aside into the wall, accepting Vox's palm print and RFID chip as he pressed his hand to the scanner. It was cramped in here, to be sure, but it was the only place in Hell Vox could really call 'his own'. He hosted small cocktail parties in his penthouse and the rest of the tower was shared by the other Vees and their subordinates, but this place? This place was just for him. His old guitar hung on the wall, along with a smattering of posters and photographs. Most of them were of the Vees, but now and then he'd torn a page from a magazine he'd liked and tacked it up to the drywall with a bit of tape, uncaring about how terrible that was for the paint. The rest of the room was mostly occupied by industrial cooling equipment that kept it frigid, just how Vox liked it, along with a small mountain of gaming controllers, a haphazard pile of mechanical keyboards in all shapes and sizes, scratch paper, pens, a few TekDeks, and to top it all off: a high end desktop PC that probably cost more than a small car, with all the modifications Vox had made to it over the years.

Spinning his absolutely-not-a-gamer-chair around, Vox placed his coffee cup on the wraparound desk that took up what space wasn't already taken by tower fans and vents and sat down, sweeping aside a pile of absent-minded doodles. His Vouyer Scope sat on a purple pillow, powered down, with six new legs still bearing the rough marks of a quick weld job. Vox had gotten halfway through primping up the mini-Vee before he'd gotten distracted, and the realization that it still needed work was shunted down the list of priorities. Nope, he didn't feel like doing anything with his hands right now. He powered his computer on, fed it his decryption key when prompted, and waited on it to slowly rumble through its boot-up cycle. Then he plugged in the second encryption key that actually connected it to the internet via the cable that linked it to a private modem, and even if the whole process was slow as dirt, this was the securest PC in the entirety of Hell. Which counted for something. Too bad he didn't keep much work on it.

Nope, this was his fuck-around computer. This was the 'play modded Minecraft' computer, this was the 'illegally download media' computer. Downstairs, the Tower of Techno-Babble was the impressive monstrosity of wires and monitors that looked cool to investors who didn't know fuck about shit. This one had three monitors, each with a different section of a lovingly rendered artpiece by Val for the background, one mouse, and one keyboard. No need to overcompensate here.

Vox navigated his mouse to his encrypted work folder. Hey, there wasn't much on it, but what was here he wanted to keep extremely, absolutely, 100% safe. He couldn't even remote into this computer, nobody could, not through electrical manipulation nor through good old-fashioned cracking. Two layers of passkeys, a bio-lock, and a literal, physical, thick steel door made this the Fort Knox of gaming computers, a hacker's eternal white whale. The folder popped up, containing small dossiers on every other Overlord and strong enough sinner, blackmail against the other two Vees, insider trading knowledge, and, to top it all off,

Overlord.exe.

Nothing was normal, for Vox. Not even the most natural part of being an Overlord. His superpowered killing-machine form didn't just happen, he couldn't just call on it when he needed to paste somebody. If he wanted a boost, he needed to install the new body's schematics manually, and pray that when he had to use it, it would function properly on the first try and wouldn't need significant debugging. Going into Overlord form was such a resource drain that it put him on his ass for at least a week afterwards, so it wasn't a party trick he could practice when he got bored. The safest way to interface with the program at all was off-body, contained in this PC, where it couldn't start cracking and growing his bones against his will and manipulating his flesh like putty. In here, he was the master, and the program was just that: a program. Utterly harmless, as long as he didn't jack into the computer and download it onto his internal drive, and that was pretty difficult to do 'by accident.'

He opened the executive. His computer's fans immediately began to spin at top speed, so Vox bumped the air conditioner with the toe of his slipper, forcibly cooling the room by ten degrees and by extension, chilling his overdramatic PC in both senses of the word. Whirring mutinously, and giving him about three frames per second, the executive opened to a wall of white letters on black background. Complete gibberish, binary mixing with C++ and a dash of Java for added complexity. Computers seemed to grasp it just fine, though. Vox was thankful all that information got parsed by his mechanical half, and he didn't have to actively think on it to make it work.

Vox then opened Blender.

More dramatics. Another blast of cold air. More angry clicking. Vox finished off his cup of coffee as he waited for his computer to be done with it's fit.

"We done now?" He asked it condescendingly, well aware it couldn't hear him. He almost thought it could, Blender turned white and threatened to crash, but eventually settled down and allowed him to begin using it. He dragged Overlord.exe to Blender, and saw his Overlord form pop into the program after another brief bout of bitching. It was... Outdated, to say the least. He wasn't quite so into the multiple cameras look, how clunky it appeared overall, and the shark tail? No, that had to go, goodbye, the furry allegations on Votter were bad enough last time. Bah, imagine hating furries in Hell, half the population was some flavor of bait.

Vox manipulated his ball of digital clay back into a vaguely him-shaped... Shape, then sat back in his chair. Sipped his coffee, bleh, it had gotten cold while he worked, disgusting. That was what happened when you put hot coffee in a 50 degree box, but still, if only physics would bend themselves to his will more often. Begging for powers aside, he wasn't quite certain where he intended to go with this. His Overlord form needed a revamp. He'd gotten stronger in the decade it had been since he last used it, amassed more territory, far more souls than he'd dreamed of on initial drafting. He didn't need to go for big and bulky anymore, his power was well-known and absolute. Something more svelte was in order, stylish. Modern and with the times.

... Nada. No ideas. Vox opened Minesweeper instead to help clear his mind as he tumbled some rough drafts around. He liked the shark idea, so the teeth could stay, but that tail was one massive target, even if it was solid hard-light muscle. Multiple cameras were multiple weakpoints, and he needed to address the power surges that fluctuated around Hell when he powered up. Maintaining a steady flow within him would be key, otherwise, he might get too hopped-up and burn himself out. The best way to do that would be to negate how much electricity he actually needed flowing through his wires to use Overlord.exe, and then still keep a surplus so he could zap whatever needed zapping with the force of a mule's kick. Extra capacitors, he'd need those for sure, and a shit-ton more vents to make sure that the initial surge didn't just turn everything in his skin into a liquid slurry of various metals, cooked fibers, and plastics. He might even need to invent a new composite to cut down on weight.

Damn, mine, game over. Vox put his chin in his hand and refreshed to a new board.

For a moment, he felt himself reaching through his archives, and mentally slapped his brain for even daring to approach the collection of Alastor's broadcasts. With how things were going, it was likely that Overlord.exe would be used on him, so putting on one of his broadcasts would be the opposite of relaxing. He skipped his claws over the keyboard to open VoxTube, Techno Beats to Rule Hell With, yeah, sounded like a good mix, put that bad boy on the speakers. There, maybe now he could actually lock the fuck in and get some work done.

He... Tabbed back into Minesweeper. Blender sat in the background, eating Memory and CPU usage, and every now and then Vox poked at it with his mouse to sculpt then delete various additional parts. Maybe he could try splitting his screen? Not between Minesweeper and Blender, no, but the one sitting on his shoulders. He had no mouth ordinarily but glass was sharp, he knew that from experience, if he could replace his plasma screen with a solid glass one, then add a partition so he could open it up? Hard-light teeth? Yeah, baby, now he was cooking! His non-existent jaw ached with phantom pain with the very concept. Steel cabling over his muscle groupings, some thicker skin, maybe bring that shark motif back to make it sandpapery around the easily-grabbable spots to deter such grabbing, and if he was going to add cabling he might as well rip a page from Alastor's book and give himself some tentacle-like bunches sprouting out of his shoulders, extra limbs never went amiss. There, that was a start! Of course he would need to go through several more drafts before he came up with the final design, but he liked what he had, so far. A decent foundation to build something absolutely kickass off of. The very idea of it excited him, making Vox wiggle in his seat and dance his claws across the faux-wood desk.

Engrossed in his work, it took a few minutes for the warning pings coming through his camera system to actually crack through his casing. Vox zoned back into his body to find that his motion sensors had been triggered. Somebody at the door. Starling, he shot up from his seat, hit save on Blender, "Don't you fucking crash you motherfucker I just spent two hours on that you piece of shit ass program- See? Was that so hard? Coming!" He shouted, kicking his computer tower to shut it down before he made a hasty exit from his little man-cave. Computer cave? Did he count as a man? He sure hoped so. He slapped his hand against the bio-lock and jaunted towards his front door, nervous, jittery energy cropping up inside of him as he went. "Comin', comin', sorry, was caught up in something," he apologized to nobody.

"'s okay," came Cam's reply, oh, right, yeah, she said she was coming over this morning. Vox sent a quick command to the front door so the electronic deadbolt would unlatch and hit the smaller handle-lock himself, yanking it open.

His assistant blinked up at him, shuffled in place, looked away. She looked a bit frazzled from the night before, with dark circles under her eyes and a blouse-skirt-leggings combo instead of her standard suit. Cam didn't seem to want to focus on him, clearing her throat and glancing at the small box in her hands. It bore a bakery logo, didn't take a genius to guess what was in there.

Vox glanced down at what he was wearing, and, yeah, he saw the hesitation. She hadn't really seen him outside of work context. He smirked, snorted a small laugh at her expense. "Wow, Cam, did you think I lived in a three-piece all the time?"

"Kind of."

"Well, sorry to say, they get constricting after a while. Come on in," he invited, waving a hand at her and retreating back inside. He opened the cabinets and fetched a pair of mugs, popped open the top of his automatic coffee maker and fished out a breakfast blend pod from his carousel. "You want two sugars, right? If you've got something sweet in that box, you ma not want 'em, breakfast blend really can't be beat."

"Sir," she said mildly. "Is it perhaps... Appropriate for me to do so? I was thinking we could eat on the run."

Vox cast a glance over his shoulder, and there she was. Standing there. In the hallway. Looking about as out of place as an emu in the arctic. Still trying not to perceive him too closely. "Girl," he said, almost exasperated, then thoroughly annoyed to find he'd picked up that particular vocal tic from Velvette. "Just... Get the fuck in the apartment. I'm not going outside today."

"Do you want to... Get dressed first, sir?"

Vox marched over, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her, yelping, into his penthouse. "Yeah, Cam, lose the shame. I may be your boss but I can't be in work-mode all the time or I'll just flat-out die. Those donuts or what?"

He let go of her arm. Rubbing at where his hand had been, gently, though the fabric of her jacket, she nodded slowly. He hadn't hurt her, he wasn't tugging or gripping all that hard. "B-Bearclaws, sir."

"Set 'em up on the counter and pick a stool. Now, it is two sugars, yeah?"

In the time it took for the coffee to be suitably doctored up to both of their likings, Cam had gotten comfortable at his island. Vox slid her cup over the countertop and leaned on the quartz with one arm, taking three long pulls of his own. His eye twitched as he noticed the craters left by Alastor's claws, which Cam had already seen and politely declined to comment on, delicately covering them with her napkin. Was it really last month that he'd woken to find that the Radio Demon had slithered out of his house and returned to that ratty-ass halfway house? Hmm. Time sure flew. It was a weird feeling, given that it was more or less meaningless to him now that he was dead. God, he was having a lot of existential thoughts as of late, he'd have to run a virus scan later in case there was a Trojan horse injecting something like 'nostalgia' into him.

Cam selected her preferred bearclaw from the small box of baked goods on some unknown criteria, then offered him the other. He pulled a face and pushed the container back. "Nah, I'm good."

He saw the surprise flit over her face at his refusal, but wisely, she said nothing. Vox thought it was weird himself, but donuts carried a weird association with them now, after Alastor. He really hated how much of his life still revolved around that skin-walking motherfucker, but if he was really splitting hairs, he wasn't the biggest fan of any of the other Overlords, either. That was why the Vees were the Vees, and everyone else was... Everyone else. "So, what did you wanna do today?"

"It should come as no surprise that Carmicheal has cancelled another meeting."

Vox didn't even know about this one, it had slipped wholly under his radar and off his internal calendar. He shrugged and tapped his claw on the ceramic of his mug, adding it to the slow-growing tally of all the times Carmicheal had inadvertently given him a few hours peace without realizing. Maybe he should send them a gift basket, rather than a tongue lashing.

... Nah.

"Figured not." Was that a small note of self-satisfaction he detected in her voice? It was hard to tell, Katie Killjoy was running a diet fad segment on the news, and her chainsaw-revving screech of a voice tended to squash any nuance of tone of all speakers present. "I had intended for us to take a trip to their set to, ah... Ease our fears," (Read: yell at them), "but-"

"I'm not doing anything that requires real pants."

"Noted, sir." Cam produced her vPad from the tote she'd set on his floor, powered it on and did a small dance of her fingers across the screen to navigate to her get-shit-done programs. "I did have a concern about some of our launch event staff."

"Oh yeah? I think Desmond had a list of pre-approved companies to work through, we use so many of them at this point that it's good to keep shit like that around. Couldja not find it?"

Cam swiped her fingers, sending a scrolling list flying downward at a speed that made the text it contained almost unreadable to an un-augmented eye. "No, no, that's not the problem. The issue is that all of our reputable bartenders are out of town for a conference of some kind in Imp City, and therefore, unable to work week-of. We've already placed several non-refundable deposits on other services, and while money tends to be no issue, I would prefer not to move the event to avoid disrupting Count Malphas' schedule."

Ah, yeah, that seemed a fine way to piss mister feather-britches straight off. He touched his mug to his lips while he thought about it. "... So, every single bartender we have a good rapport with?"

"Unavailable. I checked, and the ones that bothered to pick up explained the situation. We'll have to find an alternative, sir, one that isn't allowing guests to free-pour, given the potential for rampant theft and debauchery."

"Mm." Vox set down his mug and paced the kitchen while he thought, lacing his fingers together behind his back. Down to the end of the island, then a return trip, eyes focused on nothing as he thumbed through alternate plans. Cam nibbled politely on her breakfast as he did. She was right, open bar was out, Valentino would get sloshed instantaneously without a doubt, and Velvette wouldn't be much better off. He could pull some bean-counters off their desks to do it, or look through CVs to see if anyone he employed had experience, but minimal training and maximum rust also spelled disaster. Cancelling or moving the event wasn't on the table, Malphas was a bitch and a half to get ahold of even with the open communications they had going, and if he flaked out on him now, the deal was as good as dead. Strippers might be the best he could do given the circumstances, the tits and ass would distract from the terrible service. Angel Dust especially, if he could get Val to part with-

Angel Dust. Val. Al.

Oh he knew exactly what he'd be doing. But, his brilliant solution produced another problem, and he charged back to the counter to slam his hands down upon it, rattling both mugs and Cam's empty plate. The lizard glanced up at him, cautious but not yet frightened, through her lashes.

"Okay, side thought, but don't ever get in the way of Alastor and I again," he demanded. "Just... Don't, okay? What we've got going on is between us, and he will hurt you."

"But not you?"

"... But not me," Vox sighed, looking at his distorted light in the last few swallows of the coffee. Cam was the only employee he'd ever had go to bat for him like that. When Alastor was still around the second time, Desmond would always run screaming the second he heard a pop or crackle in the air, nevermind if it was a popcorn stand or a food truck selling burgers. Anything even remotely radio-y, he would be down the street in minutes, and Vox preferred it that way. That meant he could whip ass in peace, didn't have to concern himself with something like 'collateral damage' or 'finding a new assistant'. To have someone pick up a gun for him and actually shoot it at Alastor... It was an uncomfortable change. Part of him liked it. A lot of him didn't, somewhere through the tangle of wiring and cage of metallic bones. Having dogged loyalty like that was scary. It was a liability.

Silence reigned for a beat or two. Cam gently nudged the second, unwanted bearclaw with her finger, like she was debating on if she wanted it, or was going to leave it in the hopes it would eventually find its way into Vox's mouth instead. "... Sir, if I may ask-"

"I'd prefer you didn't."

"-what actually happened? Between you and the Radio Demon. Seven years ago. You seem pretty wound up about him, sir, and I feel I would be able to better perform my job if I was aware of the circumstances. I can't get a straight story about it from any books, and I'm aware you aren't above scrubbing footage from the web and... Killing witnesses."

That last bit was said quietly, but said all the same. Vox fixed her with a look. Cam held her ground, even as the frill at her neck flicked with anxiety and her blunted nails gripped the countertop. Vox made an internal memo to get a quote for a repair job on Alastor's damage. "When did you die?"

"Three years ago, sir. I spent two months on the streets before I was hired on by Miss Velvette. I asked around here, but either nobody knew or they were soul-bound not to tell."

"Three fucking years and she didn't know you could turn invisible, god." Vox muttered, making another memo to at least send Velvette a strongly worded email about proper employee vetting. His mouth going pixelated at one corner as he frowned, deeply, vents whirring with a clot of pent-up rage finding an excuse to bubble up to the surface, like a Cola can sent down an escalator. Just building and building and building until the precipice of a stair finally pierced the metal and sent the contents spewing out. "You wanna know what happened between Alastor and I? Fine."

Vox slammed the rest of his coffee, angrily, and deposited the mug on the counter with perhaps a few iotas less of care than he should've. "Fine. I offered him Hell on a silver platter and he laughed in my face about it, back in the early eighties. After that we stopped being friends, and then he just... Dipped out, in the middle of a big fight. He didn't explain why, he said he 'had to go' in that fucked up radio crunch, pinned me to a wall with a bunch of needles, and escaped. And then I didn't see him for years, years, until he fucking showed back up at that flophouse with his close-lipped cat and the lobotomy patient! He wouldn't even explain why when he was here, just put holes in my countertop and ruined my carpeting and fucked back off!" Vox roared, picking up his coffee cup and throwing it to the wall, as it was the nearest chuckable object and the nearest vertical surface at which to throw it.

Coffee dribbled down his drywall. The latex paint had only barely cured enough from the remodel to not go with it in deep grey-brown streaks, like gunk fished out of a rubber doorjamb. He huffed, shaking with energy that didn't have a good outlet that wasn't more violence, and he'd traumatized Cam enough for one day. Vox set a hand to his face and laughed, mirthless and dry, not wanting to see what he'd wrought upon his company nor his crenellated trim any longer. "Thirty years, Cam. Thirty fuckin' years of friendship, and he just tossed it out because I was 'too volatile' and 'didn't know what I was doing'. Well one of us is a washed-up clown and the other one has all of Hell under his feet, so who really came out on top here?!"

He cackled. Cam laughed back, nervously, and he knew they could both feel the emptiness in it. She slid off her stool to the paper towel rack and approached the mess he left. Vox sat down in her place and closed the bakery box. He didn't want to look at anything sweet, anymore.

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