Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

…

Despite popular belief, even The Radio Demon has his limits.

It is a feat, of course, to get him to break. Many have tried, few have ever succeeded, and even fewer live to tell the tale.

The searing pain of a steel blade being lodged into his bicep after he'd miscalculated the strength of one of his quarries? Child's play.

Disfigured by bloodthirsty hounds, his weeping flesh pricked by the frigid airs of winter before he'd kissed the barrel of a shotgun? He’s still here, isn't he? 

Even being hypnotized and abducted by his ex-friend-turned-obsessive-stalker he found more funnily pathetic than anything.

But being held immobile while a rivulet of uncontrollable tears wet his cheeks as aforementioned ex-friend-turned-obsessive-stalker breaks every phalange in his finger is, admittedly, a bit overboard.

“FFF– FFUCK!” He feels the very moment overextended muscle splits, revealing ghastly, meat-covered bone in wake of the gore that sputters onto the tiled floor like puke. The scene is reminiscent of a homicide, which is a truly ludicrous thought! There is no crime in Hell, only business.

“I, FUCK– I CAN'T–” He cuts himself off, harshly sucking air through his clenched fangs. If it were any other situation, he'd feel disappointed in himself for such inarticulation. But as it is, the flash-bomb of pain freezing his vocal cords is enough to preoccupy his ego.

A growl, he hears the snap of bone before he feels it. “BULLSHIT! God fucking DAMMIT, Al– y’know what? You can say bye-bye to this hand if you're going to be THIS fuckin’ stubborn!” Vox spits, dropping the finger from where it was bent unnaturally backwards over Alastor's knuckles and leaving it dangling by threadbare intrinsic muscle to ensnare Alastor's wrist, his grip wet.

Eugh.

“I can keep going like this all night until I turn every bone in that pretty little body of yours into dust.” He leans closer, sneering. “Is that what you want? Maybe by the time I’m finished I won’t have to ask for permission– maybe I’ll just rip your soul right out of your limp fucking corpse. Is THAT what you want? HUH?” 

He squints, turning away from the icy light pulsating from Vox's screen in overt disgust. This is becoming much too overwhelming, even for Alastor. In his prime, he himself had shattered many a finger, never understanding until now what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

Whether to feel guilty or proud is still out on trial.

“Is your head really so thick? I told you, even if I wanted to, which I certainly don't–” A searing pain douses his arm, a warning. “Ah! I truly can't!” 

He says it with such veracity that Vox pauses, squinting. The farthest thing from anger Alastor has gotten this entire torture session.

“What do you mean, you can't.”

Alastor's smile tightens. “You've wasted your time.”

And mine.

Vox’s eyes dart around Alastor's face, inspecting the validity of such an admission. He stands up and steps back, looking at the floor like he's trying to solve a challenging math equation. Then back at Alastor, then the floor again. Reverently puts his hand to where his chin would reside if he had one.

Half expecting his ports to start smoking, Alastor watches with impatience as Vox's screen begins juddering, producing a keening, motorized whine that does nothing to soothe his migraine. But eventually, even that stops, and the room– if you could even call it that-- a single mirror, naked walls, and one lone, sad chair fitted with restraints isn't much to write home about-- falls into silence, disturbed only by throaty, laborious panting Alastor barely recognizes as his own. 

“...no way.” Alastor must squint, his eyes again accosted by a nauseating blast of synthetic light as Vox invades his space.

“No way, not buying it. Not even for a second. The Radio Demon wouldn’t sell his soul.”

“Oh, goodie. Please do tell him the news the next time you see him,” The Radio Demon drawls. “I'm sure he'll be thrilled.” 

Vox's eyes widen, and the expression that gradually befalls his face is one that fills Alastor’s shriveled black heart with pure delight. It's the shock of witnessing a bad accident– the first tower collapsing, the nuclear bomb dropping; the pedestal crumbling. Rose-tinted glasses have broken and fallen away to reveal the true colors that had been hiding in plain sight the entire time.

It strums at something deep within Alastor's psyche– something he quickly suffocates and shoves back down.

Contracted or not, he's still the same Radio Demon as he was a century ago. Vox finding out about his little temporary arrangement doesn't change a thing– and he will learn so, all in due time.

Vox's claws are latched onto the chairback, bracketing Alastor in. He's staring into him with such intensity that for a second Alastor is convinced he's seeing right into his soul, purple chains and all, but then he steps backwards, unsteady, chuckling, smearing blood down his screen as his claws leave scratches in the glass. Shaking his head in disbelief.

Alastor rolls his eyes at the sorry display. He longs terribly to put the television out of its misery, but, ah, restraints and all. Another time.

“Even if you refuse to believe me, there's really nothing more I can do for you.” Alastor feigns nonchalance, turning over his other hand to check his nails, his skin grating uncomfortably against the metal cuff, strapped to the chair as he is. “Although, since you seem to crave my company so desperately, perhaps we could discuss what sort of background instrumentals you'd like to accompany your screams for my upcoming  broadcast. I've always appreciated a bit of cool jazz, but considering your growing track record of horrible decisions, I can only imagine your taste may differ.”

Vox has always been entitled, but surely he understands the impending consequences of crossing such a stark line in the sand as he did today. Forcing himself on Alastor was one thing– and he'd paid the price for it years ago– but blatantly hypnotizing, abducting, and torturing him is another offense entirely. To think he would be intimidating enough to scare The Radio Demon out of his soul is laughable. Alastor pitied him. But even more than the pain he felt in his (rather sluggishly) mending fingers, he is more insulted at the fact Vox had hardly even tried.

Waiting until the moment Alastor was weakened from Adam's attack to strike, Vox cornered him at the remains of his broadcasting station, doing none of the work yet taking all the credit like the vulture he is. Where was the finesse? The showmanship!

Oh, what more should he have expected from a man whose entire business model is dependent on holograms and cheap tricks. 

Luckily, Alastor has all of eternity to slip these restraints (as if he would need that long) and he would be happy to give the media Overlord a lesson in theatrics during his next show!

Suddenly, Vox lunges forward, slamming into and sinking his claws into Alastor's shoulders with such ferocity he suspects he may have hit bone. He feels the blood begin to leak from the new wounds, slithering down his back and seeping through his shirt. He hides a pained wince in the upturned corners of his smile.

Then, voice trembling from nothing short of rage, Vox utters one, quiet word:

“Who?”

Alastor scoffs, looking to the side.

“I can't say.”

Vox's claws dig deeper into his shoulders, past lean muscle– and, oh, now he's reached bone.

“Oh, don't tell me you'll throw another tantrum because you don't get to play toys the way you want to,” he spits. “Are you expecting to bleed my autonomy out of me like a leech? Dig through my remains until you find the needle?”

A nasty smile slinks up his cheeks.

“Have you tried checking under my shoe?” 

His lungs are knocked empty of air as Vox's metal first collides with his chest, something– likely a few ribs– snapping, the sound echoing off the metallic walls as loud as a gunshot. Vox buries his nails into the sides of Alastor's skull, lurching him forward before slamming him into the metal chairback so violently his eyes reverberate in their sockets. 

He groans, trying to blink away the way the tiles are swimming – and, when had he lost consciousness?-- but he is barely afforded time to process what’d occurred before his cheeks are gripped by those same shaking claws and he's tugged forward again, the restraints around his thighs digging horizontal crimps into his skin.

“You wanna play that game? Fine,” he spits. Vox's left eye activates with an infinitesimal blink, dragging Alastor in before he has time to act. “I'll play that game. Tell me who your dealer is.”

He tries, he truly does, to reel back, out of range, away from the rolling incandescent spiral. Though much like a moth to a flame, once caught he is powerless to resist its magnetic heat. The racing of his thoughts slows along with his heart, and a blanket of calm envelops him. It branches outwards from his core, soothing the ache in his bones and gently shushing his crying wounds. He floats, becoming weightless; a feather in the breeze.

With a whimper, Alastor retires his muscles.

“Oh, now isn't that a sight…” The fingers squishing his face together fall back. He misses them immensely. 

“Doesn’t that just feel so much better?” The look in Vox's eyes is nothing short of religious adoration. He directs Alastor's chin up with his index.

“C'mon, Al, you can trust me, just one name, that's all... you'll feel so much better after, hm..?”

Feel so much better. So much better. To get that weight off your chest, weight off your chest. It's weighing you down. But you can trust me. “I can trust you.” Your best friend. “My best friend.” 

 Let me help you. 

His brain is gravy pouring from his ears. Ah, he doesn't need it anymore, not here. Au revoir, burden of thought. The frigid room warms, a familiar orange light slowly seeping through the anemic florescents and encompassing him in a nostalgic glow, the plush heat of a nearby fireplace soothing him like an old friend.

His lips part, numbed as he is. Everything is fuzzy and... yes. He confides in Vox for everything. Why hadn't he thought of this before?

That's a good buck. C'mon, Al. Don't you wanna stay here, with me? Let me help you. “You know how much I love helping you,” his best friend says, looking at him so reverently with that silly boxy head of his.

“I do.”

“Me too.” 

“Her name…”

The noise ripped from his throat isn't so much a name as a gurgle. And suddenly there is green, green everywhere. Jagged green flame– hellfire– bursts into essence, twining through his lips and yanking them shut, bagging the regurgitated screams of a thousand stolen souls and forcing them back down his throat like puke. It feels like suffocation, like a ball of steel wool being shoved through a straw, Her name shaving away the lining of his esophagus as fire bakes pus-filled blisters up his throat and down the backs of his eyes, blinding him. In the span of a moment he's sure he's already lived a hundred deaths, resurrected again and again into a charred, leaking body to experience the pain anew, spasming on the floor like a worm as his skin and muscles meld together through fire into a mound of wailing flesh. 

“--LSTOR!”

Tinnitus. A flat palm striking his face, his soul sucked back into his body like a vacuum. He cries out, the phantom stitches tangled in his lips tearing through phantom skin that dangles and dances and spurts blood as they come undone. Someone grabs him by the shoulders, their own cries muffled. He reaches for them like a lifeline, forcing his eyes to roll forward from where they had glued to the back of his skull.

“ALASTOR! FUCK– WHAT THE FUCK! HEY– NO, LOOK AT ME.” 

Familiar claws grab his cheeks and he gasps, steadying him in the very real blood they prick from his skin. Though the fire is gone, his lungs are still burning, and he realizes, as consciousness returns, that he had never once stopped screaming.

His head is released and he can do nothing but succumb to gravity, chin resting against the top of his chest as he heaves for air, begging to be let off this carousel as the floor continues to spin. One eye closed, he is incapable of anything but to wallow in his own sick as acrid vomit prods at his sphincter. Drool gathers at the corner of his mouth and drips forth in a pathetic string. He makes no move to wipe it away. 

A hand comes up to his lips, relieving him of his embarrassment and wiping the spit clean. He is a toddler without a bib to catch its mess and he almost wishes the flames would return so he could fry such a thought from his brain. 

“Christ, Al. Fuck, that wasn't– I didn't think–” Finally able to see, he tiredly makes out the television pacing in front of him, hands pushing against his mouth and brow furrowed in a silent prayer, clearly distressed. What about, Alastor couldn't be certain. It's not as if he was the one burning alive only moments ago.

“God, that… was disturbing as fuck.”

So Alastor hasn't truly died and woken up in some Hell where Vox is no longer a boxy, bumbling pill? Well, all good things come with a pinch of salt!

“Please, take your time. I expect your apology to be at least halfway literate--” his throat clogs around a clot of blood. Not a good time. He forces it back down. “And preferably conferred while I am unrestrained."  Too lazy to move, he can only roll his head to the side to signal the restraints still eating at his wrists and thighs, noticing the bruising hue of purple beginning to flower across his hands, no doubt having seized and caused them to tighten.

The unpleasant whine of rubber chafing tile reverberates around the empty space as Vox abruptly halts, pausing his worrying to level Alastor with an indiscernible expression.

“Apology?”

Ah, no, not indiscernible. He's angry. 

"YOU want an apology? For THAT?” The laugh that fizzles from his speakers is grating.

“You’re so fucking– that wasn't– how about you apologize to ME? For– oh, and this is rich. The big, bad Radio Demon is fine with taking everything EXCEPT responsibility! What? You really want MORE of me, Al?? Bending over backwards for you for over fifty years wasn't enough to feed your obese fuckin' ego? No, this is so typical– all I've ever done is GIVE and IT'S STILL–”

The one, truly great thing about having cupped ears? Marvelous at catching sound and just as well at blocking it. Alastor watches the scene unfold in front of him, ears reared back, observing a man of technically over a hundred years in age throw an honest-to-goodness tantrum, whipping his hands about and kicking his feet and running a hand through his hair only to realize he has none and checking to see if Alastor had noticed (he had) before silently yelling and stomping towards the exit, absolutely livid!

Perhaps theatrics classes could wait, after all. 

Alastor does manage to catch one thing, however. Stopping at the door, Vox whips around dramatically to point directly at him, his lips writ large, making sure Alastor hears him: “You're NEVER getting out of here, Al. WELCOME TO FUCKIN' HELL!” Before childishly glaring a last time and strutting away, slipping on the blood he's been tracking with his shoes as he goes and leaving unsavory scratches in the steel doorframe.

It is the saddest thing Alastor has ever seen.

He laughs and laughs until every camera along the room falls dark. 

…

Chapter Text

…

FUCK!!

FUCK FUCK FFFUCKIN'--

The chair Vox throws does not survive

“FUCKING ALASTOR!”

He punches the wall, bits of drywall exploding from the impact like a meteorite striking the earth. His systems are burning from the adrenaline and pure. Fucking. Rage coursing his veins, and his fans scream audibly in protest, begging him to Just Cool It! He tells them to Shut The Fuck Up and resums pulverizing the drywall, the scene an ode to the set of a Kool-Aid commercial by the time he’s finished.

Things are not going as planned.

He grimaces and shakes his hands, debris clinging to his damp skin, before sulking, giving in and just wiping them off on his slacks– his favorite pair of pants ruined. Great! Just another bulletin to add to the Things Alastor Has Stolen From Me THAT I HAVE TO GET BACK list (and how the fuck is he going to get a vagabond living in a motel to buy Vox a new pair of pants? With what fucking money???).

FUCK!!

Rage re-seizes him and he gives the drywall one final punt, chalky plaster spraying him across the screen and smattering it in retaliatory pock marks.

He wipes it down with a sleeve. Reserved.

He’s losing focus.

He needs to think. Think, think, think-– strategize! Come up with a plan to sort through this whole mess. He's good at that!

Was good at that, a not-so-latent part of him supplies, the one that always gets louder whenever Alastor’s around. 

No, no. He shakes his head, clearing the thought. He’s good at this. He is. He just needs to figure out a way to remap the entire “Abduct Alastor Buy His Soul Make Him Join The Vees AndProbablyHaveSex” plan he definitely hadn’t spent an entire workweek formulating. Easy– too easy! All he has to do is focus. Needs to stop thinking about…about…

Alastor. 

Vox's fans whine.

Vox whines.

Alastor. Alastor, Alastor, Alastor. The thorn in his side. The bane of his afterlife. The thing that got away. Fuck. He's never seen him look like that before. The sheer dichotomy between the utter revulsion in his eyes before washed away by that alluring spiral; the way his ears had dropped, his body becoming pliant and soft in Vox's hands like sculpting clay. He hadn't let Vox handle him like that in years– god, fuck, he could've done anything. 

But he hadn't. At least not outside of what he thought was necessary.

He is such a good person.

Vox snaps his fingers,  a thought all it takes to activate the live security feed inside Alastor's little oasis– cameras WH_001, 002, 003, and 004 coming to life each on individual monitor screens and casting the dim space around Vox in an almost ethereal cyberpunk glow and reflecting off the surface of the dark, vast waters of his shark’s open tank below the long steel walkway that leads to his surveillance chamber; the beating heart of the Vee Tower.

It takes him a second to process what he's looking at, but upon realizing what he's seeing isn't actually Alastor having a seizure, his reverie immediately sours.

Alastor's shoulders are shaking, and he lifts one to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye.

Right there, displayed unmistakably clearly in every 24 to 96-inch 4K ultra high-definition monitor, Alastor is laughing.

He is laughing, at Vox.

“Oh, such a ridiculous notion,” Alastor chuckles, shaking his head at a punchline Vox cannot fathom. “For a moment there I thought you were serious!” He flicks the prototype business card– Vox's dreams– away, letting it flutter like a dying butterfly to the sticky floor where a passing waitress steps on it with a filthy heel. 

Vox's dreams. In Benjamin Moore White. On the floor. Being stepped on. And Alastor is laughing.

Alastor is–

Wait– no. 

No.  

He's not there anymore– not now. Not ever. It doesn't have to be that way. He can rewrite it! He was just starting out back then, but he's gotten so much better–

So then why is Alastor still the one laughing while he's standing here, watching him like a limp cock, business casual slacks covered in suspiciously drywall-colored, finger-shaped smears?

Even restrained, helpless– why is it always him that gets the upper hand? In all their years of friendship, Vox was tethered to Alastor's side like a tumor, he had at first believed he'd been an equal– his partner. His friend. But in those last, grueling years when Vox had tried so desperately to hold on, to get Alastor to just stay– to ascend with him, he'd made it very clear he saw Vox as nothing more than a disease to slice away. Interesting to poke and prod and dissect at first, but still just an ugly blemish in the end. 

It made Vox feel small.

It made him angry. 

But not anymore.

He again snaps his fingers, the monitors falling dark– all but one, concealed behind a two-way mirror to the deer's left– Vox can watch him from here all he wants when Alastor thinks the cameras are off. Yes yes, he KNOWS, he's a genius– the small, rectangular room it’s housed in acts as the perfect surveillance point to view him up close and personal. Vox's very own Nature Watching Station. 

He’s...still working on the name.

Straightening his bowtie from where it'd twisted in his (righteous) outrage, he stalks towards the desk,  swiveling his office chair around with one hand and plopping himself into it with a scowl and using his feet to pull himself forwards. With a few succinct taps on one of his keyboards, the live feed enlarges, spreading across the kaleidoscope of monitors in front of and around him like a universe.

He can really only see the side of Alastor's head and body from this vantage point. He's no longer laughing, just looking at the ground– asleep? Likely not. Probably just turning over some clever little scheme in that clever, unreasonably sharp brain of his about how he'll escape oh-so-cleverly and rub Vox's screen in his inexorable victory like it's shit– ears flopped to the sides– fuck, that's cute– his charcoal and reddish locks strewn with blood and sweat and probably snot.

He could say something about that, he thinks, index finger hovering above the keyboard. The cameras he'd installed in Alastor's room include dual microphone and speaker combos; it'd be so easy to mock him right now, especially with the way he’s always hated being perceived by anyone as anything less than a gentleman (unless he was actively devouring someone; all reservations about his carefully plucked appearance went out the window when he got hungry enough. And that's one of the things Vox has always loved about him: the beast hidden inside the man. So unpredictable, never knowing which would win out in the end.). 

But, oh, who's he kidding? Vox doesn't care about that. Alastor's hair could be falling out in clumps and he'd still find him mesmerizing. Just as he'd found beauty in the rawness of the screams he'd ripped from his throat as he'd forced his fingers back 180-degrees from the knuckles until they'd snapped like some cheap chain restaurant chopsticks, he wants to get lost in those droopy, spinning bedroom eyes, surrender to temptation and clean those savory tears from that ashen skin with his tongue and moan and bite and eat and take and take and take and TAKE just as Alastor had taken from him. He'd taken his electric blue heart and his dignity and all the naive, good things about Vox and crushed them between his pianist fingers, leaving him on his knees to scoop up the pieces, knowing full well just how badly he’d end up cutting himself in a futile attempt to fit them back together.

But not anymore. Never again. 

For the first time in existence, Vox has the upper hand.

And if that thought doesn't do something to him…

“Oh, Alastor,” he practically fucking moans, his warm breath fogging up the monitor as he leans closer over the desk– as close as he can get without sealing his face against it.

He wants– needs to get as close as possible. Wants to crawl through the screen like a ghost and haunt Alastor until he begs and screams and cries oh-so prettily for mercy, finally understanding just how many rungs of the hierarchical ladder Vox has managed to climb while he'd been absent doing fuck-knows-what. Oh, Vox would gladly show him what he's been missing– what he could have had, all these years, instead of that shitty, rinky-dink motel, if he had just chosen him.

He'd make it up to him, of course. Spoiling the buck with expensive gifts only Vox could afford and bathing him in fizzy golden champagne until the room spun and they spun with it. Dancing and singing and laughing together instead of alone– drinking, fighting– and maybe, maybe Alastor would get so drunk he'd fall without protest onto the bed as Vox pushed him and he'd lie there with his hair fanned out and his lashes low as Vox crawled on top of him and caged him in and ran his claws like a box shredder down the front of his shirt, popping the buttons off one-by-one and–

And...oh.

Vox is hard.

Oh.

He coughs into his palm and flops backwards into his chair with his legs spread, sitting properly in his seat like a very functional adult without a god damn tent in his pants and giving Alastor one final once-over before snapping his fingers, the room falling into darkness accompanied by the cavernous mechanical hum of high-power technology going to sleep.

He stares into the sleek black pitchness of one of the monitors in front of him and his own screen stares back. Flushed. 

He sighs and leans back into his chair, looking at the ceiling. It's fine. This is normal, so normal. Everybody gets hard thinking about their rival. And either way, he'll have plenty of time to handle these intrusions later.

Now is the time for preparation.

His head brightens, bathing his desk and all its many contents in an eerie turquoise glow. The surface is littered in a cacophony of half-baked sticky notes he'd written mostly while hungover– ideas for future VoxTek projects he was about forty-percent likely to actually manufacture; jokes he thought were hilarious at the time (they aren't); a stupid little inflammatory doodle of Alastor he quickly tears down and chucks someplace behind him– as well as fountain pens, and wires connected to the backs of his monitors and so many wasted cups of Roasted Souls’ coffee. All bitter and cold. Toward the back of the desk, a lone Rubix Cube sits unresolved.

Vox pauses to squint at it. It's gathering dust…

He'll get to it later.

Wheeling himself over to the far end of the desk, he flings open the topmost drawer and begins digging; fingering through old contracts and discolored documents with learned dexterity before repeating with the next drawer. 

By the time he's desecrated drawer number five he's mentally cursing himself, doubt niggling at the edge of his mind. Has he lost it? There's no way. He wouldn't let himself lose something that special…and…ah-ha! 

Victoriously, he exhumes a thin Manila folder from its paper grave, slapping it onto his desk and grinning in triumph. Usually, he'd prefer to store these sorts of things digitally, but Alastor is, as always, a special case.

Restraining himself, he flips open the cover, revealing a document printed on crisp, white paper, the first of many. On it, a long list, stretching all the way to the bottom of the page and continuing onto the next with text spaced cleanly. Headers highlight the most important sections– likes… dislikes… loves… HATES– with bullet points studded vertically below, each new major subdivision recommencing as a new list in alphabetical order.

It had taken Vox months to collect, so many sleepless nights he'd endured, systems powered solely by coffee and adrenaline, watching. Waiting for that flash of red he could target with pre-programmed precision and follow around town via a swarm of drones, harder for Alastor to fry if they worked together. 

He’d often imagined how the scene looked from an outsider’s perspective– all those drones stamped with his label– cringing. But, oh well. It was worth it in the end. His efforts were rewarded with such intimate knowledge, some he doubted even the deer himself knew. The way his upturned nose became wrinkled around tea, always forcing it down for politeness’ sake (such a gentleman) . How his ears would lower and his muscles tense whenever he'd pass a canine sinner along the street. The funny little way the bottom of his left eye would twitch when irritated– Vox saw it all. Every nuance, every pleasure and disdain, recorded and scrupulously cataloged inside the very folder he holds now, and Alastor has no idea!

It makes him feel giddy just imagining the possibilities, but the excited giggle that rises in his throat like helium dulls somewhat as, after he'd fingered through a few more papers containing various amounts of miscellaneous information that would certainly come in handy soon, he reaches the final one. 

The photograph is colorless and worn around the edges (Vox would call it vintage and Alastor would scoff). It's been torn in half, and the thought of how that happened pierces through his ribs and straight into his frigid heart like a pike. 

Vox traces the torn edge with a finger, the corner of his old head and part of an eye still visible in the frame. It had been a symbolic gesture as much as a cruel one, in retrospect. He just wishes he knew what Alastor did with the other half. 

Beside where he once was, Alastor stands proudly in grayscale, his arms tucked neatly behind his back, looking into the camera, the camera he had insisted be used to take the photo, rather than one of Vox's “dinkier” models. Vox drums his fingers beside his printed head and sighs, resting his screen in his other hand, thinking…

He's looked at this photo so many times by this point that it's become somewhat of a phenomenon. Like the Mona Lisa, he must question whether Alastor's smile here is genuine. He'd thought it'd been, at the time, but he'd been so delighted to see the final product, and knowing what he did now, he wasn't so sure.

He's never been sure about anything around Alastor.

Except for one thing. 

At the thought, some of his previous excitement returns, and he flips the folder closed, momentarily smoothing his hands along the cover before randomly selecting one of the ballpoint pens (all pens are ballpoint to Vox. He really cannot tell the difference and he doesn't care to learn.) from a repurposed coffee mug beside him and bringing it down. But just before any ink can reach the cover, he stops. 

This… this has to be perfect.

And then, like a fucking lightbulb appearing above his head, he gets it.

“Vox, you deserve a fucking raise,” he whispers into the empty room, quickly jotting down his idea before he forgets.

Oh, yeah. It’s official.

Written below the previous name (“IMPORTANT BUSINESS STUFF DO NOT OPEN”), operation “Exploit Alastor's Weaknesses Mold him Into the Perfect Partner andDEFINITELYHaveSex” is a go.

The name is perfect.

…

Chapter Text

…

Everything is going great.

No, really! The new hotel looks wonderful, for starters (hasta la vista forever, tacky bar! You will not be missed.), no godly bombs or anything have fallen from the sky since the extermination-that-wasn’t, and the other residents are actually taking Lucifer (sorta) seriously for once! About time! And– oh goodness– the best part? Charlie had invited him! To stay with her! In his own private quarters in the crown of her hotel! Of course he said yes! 

Honestly, he’da gone head-to-fist with Heaven like, ten thousand years ago if he’d known it’d get Char-Char to talk to him again!

(And maybe he had known. It's not like he doesn't pay attention to these things, as much as she thinks he doesn't. He just… it was– is– complicated, okay?)

Of course, the memory of his duckling being nearly flattered into a pancake by The First Man still makes him nearly retch when he remembers it (which is an upgrade from his previous actual retching, thank you).

And watching the physical manifestation of her dream get literally lasered in half by a beam of pure angelic energy and collapse before his very eyes is something he means to bring up in therapy.

But. Y'know. Those are minor technicalities. Everything besides that is great!

Lucifer can't remember a time he'd felt this good since-– since before the rubber ducks happened! Not that he doesn't like making his ducks, but he's noticed it's just better for his mental health if he converses with an actual real person every once in a while, instead of using them as a distraction to keep himself from thinking about his crippling loneliness and compounding failure year after year, duck after duck.

Ducks…

Distractions… 

Duck-stractions..

Heh.

Anyways. He's getting off track. Point is: every day that Lucifer gets to wake up in a bedroom with windows that he can actually open (and isn't that a luxury he didn't appreciate until he lost it), in a hotel that feels more like a home than his palace ever did, where he knows that right downstairs and to the left, Charlie and Co. will be waiting for him with a steaming cuppa’ joe, a room full of smiles, and enough ‘good morning’s to power the sun, is a good fucking day. 

Well, it's like that most of the time, anyway…

Like– there's always coffee (super rich blend, by the way. That bartender is crazy proficient at all things brewed.)! But sometimes, before Char-Char notices him standing at the landing, rubbing the crusts from his eyes, she looks almost…sad? More than sad, actually. She looks heartbroken. 

(And Lucifer, fuck, he thinks he knows why.)

Usually in these situations, her girlfriend– Maggie– will be there, slowly rubbing ovals into her back, lips moving with tones too quiet and gentle to decipher; consoling her, like a good partner. Like you're supposed to do for someone you love– for someone like Charlie. But Lucifer? He just... stands there, for a while, at the top of the stairs. Twiddling his thumbs. Drumming the railing. Working up the courage to tread forth and Dad! This is his shot! He has literally trained for this for like– hundreds of years!

So it only feels that much shittier when he just… can't.

Oh, Father in Heaven (pfft), he doesn't know what's wrong with him (oh gee, I wonder!).

Has he really self-isolated so long he's forgotten how to talk to his only kid?

He'd been there for all the important moments growing up. Scraped knees he'd kiss to make the boo-boos go away (angelic magic, by the way, not that make-believe stuff other dads pretend to do), noses he'd wipe clean and awkward feelings he'd seriously tried his best to explain. Even Charlie's whole ‘dyed hair and brooding’ phase; he'd been there– gotten through it all. Every moment, every step, they'd done it together, hand in hand, in hand. Him, Charlie, and Lilith, against literal Hell.

And sure, maybe he thinks the reason she's been like this is kinda his fault (it's not like he asked the red prick to fight a fucking angel , though), and maybe he feels just a little bit guilty, and maybe just maybe he hopes she doesn't realize it, but for everything it's worth, he should still be good at this.

But he's just… not. And in moments like these– the ones where his feet have anchored themselves to the floor– too scared to walk into something he's not prepared for, but unable to leave– suddenly, the Hell's Greatest Dad mug sitting upside-down in the kitchen cupboard downstairs feels like the cruelest joke in the universe.

…

“Sangria? Piña Colada? Mojito?” 

The feline sinner levels him with a deadpan stare, working on polishing the same glass with a frayed-looking dish rag he'd been at for the last hour or so.

“No, no, and– you wanna guess the answer?”

Lucifer groans, deflating into the sticky mahogany countertop and ignoring the way the cool air feels against his greasy scalp as his tophat succumbs to gravity, toppling off his head and disappearing behind the bar in a puff of golden glitter before it can hit the floor.

Maybe, if he sulks well enough, he'll be able to sink down the two rings needed to reach Gluttony. If Bee knows anything, it's how to drink (and he really, really needs a drink right now).

The bartender sighs, and, yeah, that's fair. Lucifer’s been on the receiving end of that sort of reaction more times than he can count. But since the guy hasn't outright banished him from public spaces yet, his mood is probably currently somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of sympathetic and too polite to tell him to fuck off. And honestly, Lucifer doesn't know which extreme he would prefer he land on by the end of this.

“Look, this is all Boss gave me,” he says, and Lucifer lifts his head as he brings out two bottles.

On the left, ‘Cheap Booze’ printed in a font that reminds him of one of little Charlie's homemade birthday cards, back when she still used bright pink crayon for everything. And on the right, a darker green bottle that he can't see inside of. Which, if by “Boss,” he means the potentially late hotelier, is probably for the best. He heard the guy is– was?--  a fucking cannibal, and frankly, tonight Lucifer just isn't in the mood to drink the blood of somebody else's enemies. 

“Pick your poison.”

Trying not to pull a face, Lucifer nods towards the bottle on the left, and Cat Man– really? That's the name he's going with? He should probably just ask– gets to swift work, using his tail to snag a glass down from one of the higher shelves and filling it with practiced dexterity. But as he reaches beneath the bartop into the mini freezer for some ice cubes, Lucifer gets a clear view of just how empty the cabinets in the new hotel are.

And he could do something about that, sure. Just snap his fingers and “alakazam!” enough liquor into existence to sate an entire brothel of succubi for a week (and if you know anything about succubi, you'd know how impressive that is). But he's not exactly sure he's in the best headspace– this whole unspoken thing between him and Charlie has really been eating at him– and the last time he'd tried to use his magic to conjure up something edible while in a similar mental state, well…

At least now he can veritably say he knows what misery tastes like (something harrowingly similar to petroleum and crushed dreams).

“...’s lucky any survived at all.”

Lucifer blinks. “Sorry, what?”

Cat Dude Man glances up at him. “Nobody's bothered to restock my bar after the Extermination,” he says gruffly. “Don't think your daughter is too keen on her only residents gettin’ wasted on a nightly basis in a place that's supposed to support good behavior. Think she only tolerated it for the boss’s sake.”

Cat Man slides his drink in front of him, a few misshapen ice cubes floating in a dubiously brownish liquid and lightly hitting the sides of the glass. Lucifer– he's not trying to be picky, but when you're used to getting wasted on French brands of wine you can't even pronounce the names of and sparkling golden champagne fountains, the motor oil sloshing around in front of him doesn't exactly rouse his appetite– tries not to show his distaste. 

“And that shit you ain't even drinkin’--” Cat Man points to the glass and Lucifer winces and shamefully pulls it closer. See, this is why he's never been good at poker–

“‘s one of the last bottles I got.”

“Ah, yeah, right.” The aftermath of that fucking war is why he's even in this situation. God, can't a guy drink himself into a stupor for five minutes without being reminded why he's drinking in the first place?

“Right. Hey, uh…” he coughs into his fist. “You see a lotta the stuff that goes on around here, yeah? Have… have you, ah… has anything felt… off to you lately?”

“Off,” Cat Man deadpans.

“Yeah. I mean, Charlie's just been…” He taps his nails against the side of his glass and sucks on his bottom lip.

“...forget it,” Lucifer says after a tense moment, shaking his head, bringing the glass to his mouth. “It's probably nothing.”

Cat Man huffs. 

“This is about Alastor, ain't it?”

Lucifer spits out his liquor. 

“What?! Alas– who? I mean, honestly– who even is this Alatstair?!”

“Alastor.”

“It's not– whatever-- I wasn't even– this isn't about him! It's about Charlie! And–” his boot gets caught in the metal legs of the barstool as he abruptly stands up, nearly tumbling backwards onto his ass and leaving his liquor rippling on the countertop. “God– fuck– Okay. thank you for the drink, but I need to–”

Cat Man holds out a hand, cutting Lucifer off (because now he takes orders from bartenders? Why the fuck not!).

“Look…” He sighs. “I don't even know why I'm tellin’ you this. If Boss were to disappear, who knows…” he pauses, looking past Lucifer to a faroff place that even with all his eyes, he cannot see.

“It’s not just you or your daughter who feels it. The place ain't been the same since he fucked off… again,” he mutters the last part, taking a swig from one of the dark green mystery bottles and grimacing.

Lucifer squints. “You're saying he's…”

“Bastard owns my soul, has for a long fuckin’ time. I’d be the first one to know if that changed.”

“And you're not hoping he doesn't… y'know.” Lucifer kicks an invisible bucket. Real discreet. 

Cat Man doesn't say anything, just looks into that far away place.

After a beat Lucifer hesitantly slides back onto the barstool, gripping his frayed golden locks with a hand.

“Okay. Okay. Do you…” he sighs. “Do you know where he is?”

“Na. Not unless he calls me.” He takes another swig before continuing. “Which I wouldn't count on. Fucker puts the pride in Pride Ring. If he's hurt he won't want anyone to see, not even me.”

Lucifer groans and scrubs at the place between his brows, pressing his forehead hard against his fingers as if by some miracle he'll be able to exert enough force to crack through his skull and penetrate his brain. 

God, why couldn't he have just stayed in his room? Why did he feel the need to air out his dirty conscience to the one guy who would actually make him clean it up? It would've been so much easier to just let himself wallow in his filth– he would've gotten used to it eventually! Maybe he even likes wallowing! 

He can't believe he's doing this.

He takes a deep breath.

“...what…what can I do?” Lucifer quietly asks.

Cat Man scoffs. “You’re asking the wrong questions, your majesty. It ain't about what you can do, it's about if you're willing to do it.”

And– is he getting therapyspeak from a cat?

He sighs, clenching his teeth. “...It would be for Charlie. I'm not doing it for him.”

“Never said you were.”

Lucifer scrubs his entire hand roughly down his face like it's a dirty plate.

“...do you at least know where I should start?”

He's going to need another fucking drink.

…

Chapter Text

The Night of the Battle

…

The air is suffocatingly thick. 

Alastor is upright– just barely. Filling his ragged lungs requires an effort almost as strenuous as keeping his knees from buckling. With each smokey breath he manages to steal, a fresh wave of metallic floods his tongue, and he gags around the blood, trying not to let the meaty clots choke him.

The stench his exposed intestines creates is overbearing.

As he takes another heavy step, the muscles in his abdomen jerk, and a cascade of blood begins to pour free.

Grunting, he buries his forearm into the weeping laceration until it burns, trying to keep what finite reserves of blood he has left within his body from spilling; but there is too much. Gore washes over his arm and dribbles onto his shoes, painting his fingers in a sick reminder of his own mortality.

Just as the last had receded, another tug of pain ripples through him, distorting the edges of his vision with a magnetic strength. It sends him off-kilter and finally, he fully buckles over, collapsing to his knees onto the dirt and bits of shrapnel that dig into what parts of his skin is exposed by the rips in his pants.

He can hardly bring himself to care. The pain is a drop in the ocean compared to the way each new breath tugs at the torn edges of his abdominal wall, ripping it open further like tissue paper.

“Ha-ahhh…ah…René…” he calls. 

He tries to lift his head, but the world is spinning which causes him to retch, the feeling of his muscles ripping as his body involuntarily spasms causing him to retch more. It is a fruitless, reinforcing cycle: moving. Breathing. He lets his body collapse fully into the earth, screaming as his stomach makes contact with the ground, and using what trembling strength he has left in him to turn himself over onto his back. 

“René,” he calls again for his shadow, coughing and retching. 

“Ahh… René…”

He doesn't know where he wants to go. Just not here– anywhere else but here. He doesn't want to be found here, of all places, in this state. If he could make it to Rosie's Emporium–

His throat begins to fill with blood.

He's not making it to Rosie's. He knows. 

“Oh dear, oh dear! Ah– must be all that caffeine! Terribly sorry, dear. Allow me.”

Alastor's body blinks, watching the faded memory being projected before him like a flickering picture show that had been played one too many times to retain its original quality.

The fine china is too shallow, that had been his excuse. Meant for decoration much more than drinking. Secretly, he thinks he may have done it on purpose. A subconscious act of rebellion against the wretched leaf water Rosie had forced upon him with a cloying insistence, topping him off just as he'd finish choking the last batch down. 

He supposes cup number four was the final straw.

“Oh no ya don't, mister!” Rosie says, standing to remove the wet china from his grasp as if it were radioactive and setting it atop a round table between his chair and another, not caring that it would surely leave a ring stain on the old wood.

“You're in my house, Alastor, and guests don't clean in my house, no matter how clumsy they are!” she tuts. “Ah, look at the mess ya made! C’mere.” 

Before he can protest, a cloth is pushed against the side of Alastor's jaw, dabbing it gently. He stiffens then, for two reasons. The first being that he is unacclimated to such sudden intrusions of his personal space. And the second because, as he was taught as a young boy, a gentleman always resigns his own messes and must do his best to fix them with the least amount of friction and fuss possible. It feels wrong to have a lady, even one as close to him as Rosie, treating him like this.

But, oh, it is so peculiar– as Rosie had fusses with his hair, his face– adjusts his monocle in that fruitless way of hers– that he actually starts to feel almost…oh, what’s the word?...sentimental. A part of himself he’s used to keeping on lockdown, past all the bristle and thorns, only bringing out for special occasions, as if it’s a particularly expensive piece of jewelry he cannot risk wearing out; pretty to have, but easy to be used against you. 

Rosie wouldn't use this against him, he knows that, and she has always been such a… motherly individual, in his afterlife. But still, he doesn’t say anything, just sits pliantly and lets her work. And, well, if in this moment he’s been reminded of a much more motherly figure he hasn’t allowed himself to think much of in the many years since he'd died, that is between him and his irritating sentimentality. 

The cloth is pulled back, and his reverie with it. Black sockets he'd learned to find infinitely charming gazing gently at him.

“Awh, look at you! Oh, Alastor, you should'a told me ya like bein’ pampered!” Rosie squeezes his cheek, tugging at it affectionately.

He allows it. Only for Rosie.

He is brought back from the brink of death with a pained groan when his abdominal muscles begin to uncontrollably spasm, as if looking for their better half. With his heavy breathing, he sounds much like the quarry he used to hunt, back when he was alive. The bullet didn't always kill them so swiftly, and many times he'd watched the light drain from a living being’s eyes before finally executing mercy in the form of a shotgun barrel between them. Man, deer, it didn't matter to Alastor. They had all been the same to him, in the end. But it would seem now, in a cruel twist of unluck, their tortured spirits have returned with a vengeance, ensuring his last moments are as agonizing and humiliating as possible.

Oh, but it is poetically cruel, to die like this, buried with the remains of some bored aristocrat’s failed passion project. He knows how this will look in the papers once his corpse is discovered. Alastor, Radio Demon, the terror of the Pride Ring, reduced to some bleeding heart; a martyr who’d died failing to protect a fucking charity.

It is ironic, it is laughable. But strangely enough, Alastor doesn't feel much like laughing.

Another groan– closer to a moan– then the muscles on his neck are straining as he buries his cheek into the pebbles, letting them draw more blood from his skin. It doesn't matter now– however much blood he loses. Alastor is dying. Alastor is dying and he hates that he knows it; he hates the dread that comes with knowing.

There is no Rosie here, no one to clean his spills or dress his wounds. No one to pamper him or right his shameful mistakes. This is his doing. That damned contract, the single worst slip of his afterlife. The way it has consumed him– mind, body, and soul– so rapidly, feasting upon his freewill like a pulsating tumor of greed. An eternal reminder of a momentary lapse in judgement. It had seemed so easy at the time, so convenient to just take it. 

But there is no easy way to the top; not unless you were born into it. He has always known this. He thought he did.

Now as punishment Alastor will spend his dying moments hating himself for becoming what he's always hated in others: a brute. A crook. A sell-out, no better than the one on television. 

“René…”

Oh, Lord. He has never been a praying man, the Heavens had never done anything for the poor, colored bastard son, and they certainly hadn't grown acquainted once he'd died. 

Something much thinner than blood rolls down his cheek.

Oh, fuck it.

“Please, please,” he gasps.

“Not now, not here, not after everything I've–” he chokes. Cut short by phlegm and blood, Alastor resumes hacking, attempting weakly to turn his body over onto its side so he doesn't asphyxiate.

He doesn't even know what he's praying for– an angel, maybe? Not an exorcist, but a true one as foretold in the Bible– something benevolent he can sink his teeth into. 

“Please.”

It must not have been. Either he had prayed wrong or Heaven is wholly, cosmically evil. Because the creature that finds him splayed in the bones of the Hazbin Hotel is the farthest thing from holy.

“Holy. Shit.” 

He is Hellspawn, through and through.

He is powerless to the cables that slink forward, snaking across his body and underneath his arms as he is elevated into an upright position. Then up. Then up. 

“Vox,” he grits.

Vox's screen brightens, and Alastor is begrudgingly impressed that another sinner beside himself can even smile that wide. It’s almost comical how needy he still is for Alastor's approval after all this time. Or it would be, if laughter didn't threaten to spill his viscera onto the dirt like a sack of wet spaghetti. 

“Alastor, wow.” Vox whistles. “Look at you.” Alastor's hands are slapped together above his head, and he impotently squirms before something cold, rigid, and electric prods against the open gash in his belly, causing him to expel a vile cocktail of stomach acid and watered-down blood down his chin. 

“Whoops!” Vox laughs. “Think I pushed the wrong button.” The cherry red cable retreats behind Vox's back, leaving Alastor hanging limply in the air. It's all he can do to lift his head to stare daggers into Vox's grinning face.

He hopes it hurts.

“Aww, did I hurt you, Al?” he coos, clasping his hands in front of his chest. “I'm sorry. Say, it's been such a long time since we've last seen each other. Remind me again which one I need to press to hear you scream.”

Suddenly, Alastor is lifted higher towards the dark sky; and for a moment he can almost believe he is flying before his spine collides with the lower half of a brick wall and all the oxygen is torn from his lungs. Collapsing to the ground on his elbows and knees, his eyes are blown wide while he gasps desperately for air.

This position is harrowingly familiar, only an hour ago had he been reduced to a sniveling, humiliated peon at the feet of a different, far more powerful brute. But instead of a smarmy angel cackling above him, there now only stands an infuriatingly cocksure televangelist. Hands on his hips, he's probably waited for this moment his entire afterlife. 

Alastor wishes he could say something about that; use his silver tongue and barbed wit to his advantage in this moment. But for the first time, he finds he lacks the vocabulary to describe its utter horridness. 

He vomits instead.

“Christ! Put a lid on it, will you? You're like a fuckin' fountain.” He is lifted limply to his feet. Too exhausted to resist, he tries anyway, thrashing his legs and tugging his arms against the wires twisting around his limbs, fighting a losing battle he's in no position to fight. 

Alastor is dragged forward, his shoes leaving pronged trails in the earth, only stopping once Vox is satisfied with the lack of distance.

“Saw the fight,” he says as Alastor glares. “Saw the whole thing. You should've told me you have a humiliation kink earlier. I would've helped.”

He drags his claws along the inflamed edge of Alastor's wound, the sting from it causing him to suck in a line of air through his teeth, but he screams bloody murder when Vox decides to experimentally stick a finger in.

Vox covers his mouth, muffling his agony. “Shh, shh. Wouldn't want your little princess to hear you, now would we?”

Charlie's alive?

“You're disgusting,” Alastor sneers once Vox removes his hand and he'd caught his breath.

The barb makes Vox drop his smile, but only for a second. All too quickly is he back to looking Alastor up and down like he's a fresh cut of prime venison hanging in the butcher’s window. Still, a win is a win, and in this moment, Alastor will take anything he can get. 

“You're not exactly in the position to be calling anybody disgusting, sweetheart. Look at you.” Vox begins circling Alastor like the supervillain he believes he is. Alastor rolls his eyes. “The great Radio Demon, reduced to a coward who runs in fear when he gets a little scratch. You put yourself in this position, Alastor, not me. I'm just enjoying the view.” As he finishes his little monologue he wraps a hand around Alastor's waist and pulls him flush. Alastor grimaces and cranes his head back as far as it'll go, determined to treat Vox like the putrid odor he is.

“While I hope this little moment is vindicating for you, I think we both know it speaks more to cowardice who was willing to get their hands dirty despite the risks, and who wasn't.”

Alastor's head snaps ninety-degrees to the side when Vox slaps him.

“Oh, yeah? And maybe I'm just smart enough to not stick my hands in places they don't belong,” Vox sneers, grabbing his chin and pulling Alastor forward.

Despite himself, Alastor chuckles. “Oh, so he's a coward and a liar.”

Vox slaps him again. 

“D-D-DO YOU KNZZ-OW HOW EASILY I COULD FU-FUCKING E-END YOU RIGHT NOW?!” Vox barks, digging his claws into Alastor's lower mandible as he glitches, shuttering between his face and bright, vertical multicolored bars and dark blue screens with walls of white text running across them that include Alastor's name, which otherwise disappear too quickly for him to properly read. 

“Best hurry,” Alastor goads. “You wouldn't want to –” he hacks, making Vox release the grip he has on his face and step away as blood splatters from his mouth like viscous flecks of paint. “... wouldn't want to miss your big moment, who knows when you'll find an opportunity like this one again!”

When Vox doesn't answer, he glances up to find him looking at Alastor with wide, shocked eyes, his brows close-set, knitted together. Realizing he's been watched, Vox shakes his head, schooling his expression back into something acceptable. 

“Actually,” he says cooly, stepping back into Alastor's personal space. “I think I just thought of a better idea.” Vox uses one hand to gently push Alastor's hair out of his face while using the backs of his index and middle finger on the other to smear some of the blood on his chin away with sadistic tenderness.

“Let's make a deal. I'll save your life, if you agree to join the Vees.”

Alastor stares at him, dumbfounded.

“And I'd get your soul, of course.”

After a beat, he erupts into laughter.

“Oh, oh Vox!” It hurts. Horribly. But he can't help himself. “That's– ah! Twenty years, and it's still just as funny a joke as the first time!”

As he laughs, a static charge builds in the air like lightning about to strike wet earth, his hair standing on ends as an excited tingling spreads from his hooves up to the tip of his nose. He opens his eyes the millisecond before Vox's weight slams into him like a truck and they both go down, Alastor striking the ground back-first while Vox lands on top of him before scrambling to his knees and pinning Alastor's wrists beside his head.

“IT'S NOT. A JOKE!” Vox yells, so loud it sounds as if he's blown out his speakers, Alastor's exposed skin a conduit for the electricity sparking between his antenna with bright, turquoise intensity; painting Alastor's face in a turbulent chiaroscuro. 

His body goes rigid, unable to look away from the black and red, red and black spiral pulsating through Vox's left eye, dragging him in.

He doesn't even think Vox realizes he's done it.

“WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?! ACTING LIKE YOU'RE S-S-S-SSZO MUCH BETTER THAN ME!” Vox's fingers dig into his wrists. His hands are shaking. “I BUILT AN EMPIRE. YOU CAN'T EVEN GET MORE THAN FIVE LISTERNS TO SLEEP THROUGH YOUR SHOW. YOU WORK FOR A FUCKING HOTEL. I OWN EVERY OTHER G-G-GGGODDAMN HOTEL IN THE PRIDE RING. EVERY BILLBOARD HAS MY FACE ON IT, EVERY STREETLIGHT, EVERY PHONE, IT ALL WORKS BECAUSE OF ME. I SEE EVERYTHING. YOU'RE NOTHING COMPARED TO ME. SO WHY–” Vox lifts Alastor's shoulders off the ground and slams them down again. “THE FUCK ARE YOU LIKE THIS?!”

He laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs but it sounds more like he's crying. 

“No. No, no, no. I…I own you, just like I own everything else in this shithole city. Your soul is mine, Alastor, it was fucking made for me, you just haven't realized it.”

The energy spewing from Vox's eye increases, and Alastor begins to feel dizzy. 

“But don't worry, I'd be happy to show you.”

…

Chapter Text

…

Cold.

Everything is cold.

When Alastor wakes up, his throat is dry, his head pounding. He groans, regretting opening his eye when he's blasted by a beam of startlingly bright fluorescent light, the shock of it causing him to jerk back, his skull hitting something metal, the sound reverberating around his head like a tuning fork.

He tries again.

Much more prepared this time, he gradually opens his eyes, blinking through the moisture that springs involuntarily from his overstimulated tear ducts. And oh, he is woefully hungover, isn't he? 

Squinting, there's a door in front of him. Steel. Just like the wall it's inlaid into. There are scratches beside the frame that appear to be the aftermath of some vicious attack– bloody shoemarks underneath it that have dried and turned black. Alastor goes to stand, hopefully to figure out which wing of the hotel’s janitorial ward he's ended up in and equally to piece together the events of the night prior and why he feels he'd just endured six days of Mardi Gras in one, but a swell of panic flips inside his belly when he realizes he can't. 

Held in place, metal restraints dig into his wrists, thighs, and ankles. 

The floodgates open.

The events of yesterday– last night? How long exactly has it been?-- come rushing back to him in a dizzying tsunami of nausea, cables, and lights. The tang of blood, the slimy cables wrapping around his body, the panicked agony of being unable to breathe before his brain had filled with cotton and he'd woken up here to repeat the previous cycle of torment with the added bonus of getting his fingers broken– which seem to be mostly healed when he flexes them, save for a few bruises and residual soreness.

He didn't say so during, not wanting to give Vox any of the satisfaction of breaking him, but he had been exhausted afterwards, and shortly after Vox had stormed out of the room, his body must've cashed in its long-overdue check for proper rest that wasn't the result of extreme blood loss or hypnosis, and he'd fallen asleep.

“Sloppy work,” he thinks groggily. “Vox could've done anything to you while you were unconscious.”

At the thought, Alastor takes a second to look his body over, but no new areas of duress reveal themselves– thank goodness. Why, if he still had his coat and autonomy, he'd be in tip-top shape by now!

Sloppy work, Vox.

He’ll have to give him some notes on the proper way to interrogate and torture an enemy after this whole thing blows over. Or perhaps a live demonstration! “Fingers are good,” he'd tell Vox, punctuating the declaration by pulling his index backwards and snapping, Vox’s screams filling his radio tower as the red ‘On Air’ light blinked. “But have you ever experienced the transcendent sensation of holding another man’s beating heart in your fist and squeezing?”

Vox.

Vox. 

Where is he?

Alastor scans the room, seeing nothing but cameras and one very long one-way mirror, which he can see his disheveled appearance in. If Vox thinks Alastor doesn't know he can see him through it, he is a fool.

But, the cameras are on, indicated by the asynchronous blink, blink, blinking of the pinprick cyan light on each, much similarly to how Niffty does when she becomes nervous. Since they're all trained on him– a rapt audience holding its breath, waiting for him to begin his performance, surely– he chooses one and stares into it, hoping Vox gets the impression there is no glass or distance to separate them and that Alastor is actually looking deep into his soul, because a man as vile as Vox must be hiding some shameful things in that soul, and– frankly– a little peeved for everything he's gone and done, Alastor wants him to squirm. 

“Vo-ooox,” he sing-songs. “I know you're watching. Have you been watching me all night?”

He waits for a beat, ear flicking as he listens, but continues when he receives no answer.

“How very pathetic of you, and entirely predictable!” He tilts his head, and the camera he's looking into tilts theirs, which makes him snicker.

Oh, the sneaky little voyeur.

“You know, it's in quite bad faith to keep your company waiting!” Alastor jiggles the restraints around his wrists. They do not budge. “And bound, especially considering the show I've already given you! Why don't you come down and we can have a chat, picture box?”

Frankly, Alastor is in less than a talking mood, but he realizes it will be much easier to rile Vox up in-person where he can view and gauge his reactions. He's gotten him angry enough to overheat the city-wide central power-grid (or, more colloquially, the CPG) a few times before, and doing so again shouldn't be more than a little simple. He's not sure if the shackles Vox has used to bridle him are powered by electricity, but knowing him, there's about an 80/20 chance in his favor that they are.

“I assure you, my friend, if it's another show you're after, I am far more entertaining when I can use all of my limbs!”

He stills, blinking.

The cameras wordlessly mimic him. On, off…on, off…on…

Alastor huffs. “Well, if you've gotten bored of me already, the least you could do is show me the door.”

He pauses.

Radio silence.

His smile abruptly loses its shine, wilting like a dying flower into a barely upturned grimace. He cannot remember the last time he'd such a stale audience!

It really is unlike Vox to keep so quiet. He has always been the garrulous sort, fluffing conversation with needless chatter as if afraid the silence would bite him like a frightened dog. Alastor had found himself irked by it initially; the type of man who looked through other people rather than at them. Why, the first time they'd met, Vox had been so busy preening himself he'd nearly forgotten to ask Alastor his name!

“My dear,” Alastor interrupts, turning away from his whisky to meet the eyes of this strange creature. His head is most peculiar, like a packing box, but instead of a lid on top there is only a set of metallic antennae, tipped with two bulbs that are a red much more lurid than his eyes.

“Do you ever shut up?”

The man sputters, those red eyes widening, fascinatingly animated. His face is so large, it’s like looking through a window, both because of its size and dually because how unwittingly easy he makes it to read every insignificant thought that passes his mind, which has been a boon for Alastor thus far, if he disregards the two separate times he had caught him ogling ladies’ behinds as they'd strutted past without slowing down or pausing in his speaking.

Blues filter through the bar like a soft veil of rain, filling the space between them with the cool reverberations of individually plucked bass strings and layered tenor sax.

The picture box deflates, making himself smaller by the way he folds his hands into his lap, eyes flickering away to inspect a ring-stain coloring the bartop a darker shade of wood.

“Yeah, I… sorry, it's just…” When the man glances back at Alastor, Alastor raises a brow, bringing his glass to his lips while leaning with an easy confidence against the bar.

“...you weren't saying anything and you…y'know, it seemed like you were enjoying… what I had to say,” he says, using a hand to gesture vaguely at the area around his mouth. 

When Alastor realizes what he's getting at, he nearly spits out his drink.

“Dear! Oh, oh my–” he's laughing so hard he can barely breathe. “No, no! Oh, I hardly understood a single word of that hoopla!” 

The other man's brows are pinched like a scorned puppy dog. This only makes Alastor laugh harder.

“Oh– oh, something about “free market” this and “Cinerama” that. I was afraid if I let you pop one more neologism I’d suffer a self-induced stroke! Ah,” his eyes crinkle with mirth. “No, no, my dear, it's nothing to do with you at all. This smile stays on. ”

The picture box blinks. Once. Twice.

He looks baffled. Offense had flickered across his screen maybe twice while Alastor was eating into him, sure, but he is appraising Alastor now, almost as if he is seeing him for the very first time, despite having sat with him for the last half-hour. Like he is discovering that he is a real person with his own opinions and worldly observations and not some nameless wall to bounce his ideas off.

They sit like this for a while, just listening to the ambiance of an overcrowded bar. Eventually, a live band swings a new number, causing an ebb and flow to erupt, the heads of demons like a tumultuous wave as they start to push their ways to the front, some faceless elbows poking and prodding Alastor as they bully by.

They will never know how lucky they are that this place serves good drinks. 

Set up on a proud wooden stage in front of them illuminated by warm stagelights, the band kicks a rhythm up. Drums are the first to clock in, mostly the tinker of cymbals, followed closely by a set of cool, easy trumpets. It's Avant-garde, Alastor notices, a new genre of ‘50s jazz that has been making one hell of a splash in his inner scene.

The tune they play is at first mellow, mid-tempo, but quickly getting excited and gaining momentum– rough around the edges like the gritty tang of a cup of freshly ground black coffee.

A colored woman's voice joins the double bass, rich and full as cream.

“Your head is like a yo-yo,

Your neck is like the string…”

Alastor lowers his eyes to the floor, appreciating how her voice mixes smoothly with the background instrumentals.

“Your body's like Camembert,

Oozing from its skin, yeah…”

His shoe makes contact with the floor, tapping in time with the rhythm, and he cannot help the whiskey that follows, soothing his throat with its warmth like a favorite coat. His muscles relax, entranced as he is by the atmosphere.

All the while, he pretends not to notice the other man staring at him.

“Do you…” One of Alastor's ears swivel around. This seems to surprise the man.

He clears his throat. Apprehensive.

“...do you… want me to go..?”

It is not truly a question.

It is Alastor's turn to stare.

“...why, that's quite alright, my friend.” He rises from his stool, offering an open hand.

“Would you care to dance?”

…

Alastor tries to cajole Vox out of hiding a few more times– taunts, threats, flattery– but goading produces ineffectual results, and eventually he gives up when it proves a futile cause. 

The silence is deafening. It makes him question the picture box’s true motives behind his sudden absence. 

With nothing left to do and having already played his currently available hand until the deck’s next shuffle, he falls into a less-than-ideal state of reverie, compelled by the regret and mostly confusion of recent events he blames with a childlike pettiness for being the cause of his present predicament.

It had been a miscalculation, of sorts. Alastor still cannot understand exactly what had happened. His staff was thrumming with demonic energy, more than enough to block that First Brute's “musical” attack-- rock and roll had always been on thin ice, but now he is beginning to suspect the whole genre is nothing more than a monkey repeatedly bashing two lids of a metal trash can together and calling it art– from striking him at all.

He'd thought he was being strategic. But in those moments between the electric build-up of angelic energy and when it'd barreled towards him like an arc of concentrated lightning, Alastor had felt an almost imperceptible shift.

It was like the ticking of a watch, changing hour. The snap of a radio dial switching stations. And then his magic was gone. Drained. The preternatural shadows and entities he'd summoned to distract Adam– his souls– being sucked back into himself like he was the eye of a great vortex, the cacophony of their shrieks weaving around him as shrill as the wind while clawing haplessly against the concrete, leaving long scratches of void as they’d evaporated. 

It was the distinct feeling of two very powerful soul-binding contracts held at the leash by the same hand, fighting for dominance.

But one had been stronger than the other.

That's how he had been “found” by Vox: torn open, his staff– his power’s conduit– gone. There was nothing more he could do.

But what had happened after?

How had Alastor survived? 

Alastor had… no. Vox had… no. No, that hadn't happened either. 

But Vox had clearly done something.

Try as he might, it will not come to him. As he concentrates, snippets of images come and go like a slideshow trying to play smoothly despite the film being badly damaged. The memories of after Vox’s interception are warped and the projector has lit itself on fire out of frustration and the film has burnt through, and somehow he is sat in someplace he doesn't know where, left to wonder how his own movie ended.

Ended… no, that isn't right either.

It hasn't ended, because it is not over, and it never will be, not if he can help it. 

Whatever Vox had done to him had likely saved his afterlife but Alastor does not owe him a thing. He had done it out of cupidity, he had tried to buy his soul afterward, played Alastor’s fingers like a parade of Thanksgiving wishingbones when it'd been conceded there was nothing left to buy. 

And now he is going to find a way out of this.

He raps his fingers against the arm of the chair, feeling the material underneath. It is sturdy, enduring. If it wasn't, Alastor would've already gotten out of here by now, tout de suite. But for once in their long, withered history, Vox seems to have actually prepared.

For all his teasing, Alastor thinks he prefers when the television plays the dimwit.

Trying his magic had been one of the first things Alastor had done, in-between his calculated fire of verbal subterfuge, but it's one thing to reliably control his magic without his staff, and another challenge altogether to do so while he's cold, hungry, exhausted and confused. 

Sparking an idea, he shuts his eyes tight, concentrating on calling not upon his magic as a monolithic entity, but rather a single, individual part of it. One he's more tethered to than any other.

“René,” he whispers, then again with a bit more volume. “René…ah, blasted– it's not like you to…”

And suddenly, instantaneously, the world flipping on its head so fast it leaves him spinning, Alastor realizes he does not feel anything.

No magic, no René. Just a gaping, black, insensate void where his powers used to be. 

No. No, no, no, no. His heart begins to catch up to his galloping mind.

Where is his magic?

He's been weakened, severely perhaps, yes. But it can't just be completely gone, he made a deal! A shitty, regretful deal but he'd signed the contract for fuck’s sake; his magic isn't truly autonomous no matter how scattered, it can't just decide to pack its bags and hop on the next train to nowhere when it wants a vacation! Even René, no matter how sentient, is bound to him, It doesn't make any–

His eyes snap up to one of the cameras.

Blink…blink…blink…

Alastor laughs, but the sound grates against his ears.

“Vox… ” A muscle in his jaw ticks.

“What the hell did you do…”

Displeased is an understatement. This game is quickly losing allure, and he needs to get back to the hotel– back to Charlotte, to Niffty and Husker, back to his contracted obligations.

He begins tugging at the restraints, balling his hands into fists and trying to tug them through the metal cuffs, his claws digging into the flesh of his palms and drawing blood. He tries a different angle, then another. Twisting and pulling, tugging and bleeding, but no matter how hard he tries he cannot slip either hand through. The holes are just small enough by sadistic design to make him believe he has a chance. And the more he struggles, the more they seem to squeeze tighter, biting into his wrists like candy.

When he finally drops his head in acceptance he is breathless and his hands have both turned a pale shade of asphyxiated purple, tingling as if covered by insects. Despite the cold, he's begun to sweat. 

He pulls at a leg, tries to angle his foot in a way that would make it possible to slip it through the bracelet at his ankle. He even tries to take off his shoe! But it is useless, his laces tied much like his metaphorical hands. 

His calls again for René.

Something on– no, inside his stomach aches, a distant burning, one he hadn't noticed before.

He will find a way out of this.

He has struggled for so long with his hands that instead of tingling they have now gone completely numb, turning a concerning shade of plum.

It hurts.

There is something wrong with his abdomen.

There is something wrong with Alastor.

He will get out of this.

He will…

His eyes are dark, but they catch in the light as they find a camera.

He does not remember there being so many.

“So this is your…” he forces his ears to stay upright. “Your grand plan then, hm?”

A pearl of sweat rolls down his temple, cold by the time it reaches his jaw. 

“This is what you’ve been after, all these years, hm? This is your marvelous idea of…of getting me to stay? To fulfill your fantasy of getting me to join your little team?”

His eyes narrow.

“I don’t think you understand exactly the sort of dangerous game you’re playing here, television.”

…

…On, off...on, off…on…

The fire in his eyes dies low, replaced by something colder.

“I…” His chest rises.

“I've made it clear…”

“You know that I cannot…” Alastor has rediscovered the tiling. Squares repeating. Shiny and newly installed despite the blood that'd dried there. It is sterile white– psychiatric ward– perhaps ivory if someone were to tone down these dreadfully bright lights.

“...that I cannot give you…what I know you are truly after, Vox...”

The blood in the grout between the tiles reminds Alastor of tar. Motor oil. It reminds him of the concrete floor in the garage he owned when alive. A rustic shack of a thing, fashioned mainly out of hand-sawed wooden boards of varying color and stages of decay. It had been where he’d kept his very first automobile: a Ford model T in zucchini yellow– used and repainted– his “Tin Lizzie,” he liked to call it.

Oh, Alastor had saved for forever and a day to afford it, would’ve preferred to have gotten a new Winchester with that sort of money, too, but Mimzy had been rather happy.

He thinks it had made him happy, as well, in a different sort of way.

Alastor blinks.

He has been staring at the ground silently for the last two minutes.

In fact, he had been so taken with himself that he had failed to notice the cyan light that had sparked from across the room; one of the cameras in the corner jolting with a flare and a tortured sound before falling limp.

He also had not heard the chink of leather dress shoes against the tile as their wearer languidly approached, and he hadn't noticed he wasn't alone until they were standing directly in front of him.

He really hadn’t known Vox was there at all, until he spoke:

“And what is it you think I want, Alastor?”

Alastor steels his brow. He looks up.

…

Chapter Text

Entertainment District, 1950s

…

Vox has always been greedy.

“Wait!”

He pulls his hand free, drawing it back into his chest as if he'd kissed fire.

The other man’s head snaps around a full 360-degrees, a series of wet, putrid pops making Vox internally squirm. Devil-red eyes burn as if two lit coals in the dim, halved under lashes like the legs of a widow spider, seducing him to speak.

They've stopped just short of the dancefloor– a segment of the bar beside the stage where all the tables and seats have been haphazardly pushed back, leaving the floors bleached and clearing a space for the rowdy nightlife. In front of Vox, if he looks past the man’s shoulders, Sinners of every form caper about; an ocean of playful, cavorting figures, lifting one another in the air, clasping hands as they spin, their silhouettes intermingled in dark bronze light that highlights the fog of their own sweat; the aroma of malt and drugstore cologne oppressive. 

Some of the wires in Vox's head rattle in-beat with the jazz.

“I don't– I don't know how to dance!” he yells through the bass.

Vox is not telling the whole truth. He’s danced before, of course, many times– who in the ‘50s hasn’t?-- and he is quite good, too. But it’s different now. He hasn’t dared so much as toe the floor since his death, too ashamed by the bulky carton riding his neck to give it a shot. His strong jawline has been replaced with pulp plastic, his face made of glass, but when he considers it, he finds the embarrassment from falling would be worse than breaking.

But it’s not entirely about that now. He knows it's not.

One of the tufts on the man’s head flicks to the side– piano somewhere– and something in Vox’s stomach does a somersault.

Vox, in all his essence, is hoping to be wanted. 

He wants to be protested. He craves to be guided into the spotlight by a beautiful stranger's cold, dead fingers, taken where the floorboards are lacquered and excuses go to die. He wants to bathe in it like he’s back in the sun, back in his own skin– yearns to be touched, held, spun weightlessly if only to pretend for a night it isn't truly the end of their lives.

‘Ask me again to dance– prove to me you want it. Want me.’

The smile in front of him widens, coiling upwards into a wicked Cheshire grin from some joke he must've missed, backlight turning yellow fangs deep gold.

But Vox has always been so fucking greedy.

“Suit yourself, dear!” The stranger pumps a shoulder.

No– wait.

“A disappointing development, indeed. However, I suppose I’d never refuse a larger audience!”

Wait– I didn’t mean it–

“Wait–”

With a wink, the red pinstripe coat vanishes into shadow, lost to a sea of shifting, cackling faces, leaving Vox standing alone like a lead balloon.

His fingers curl around nothing.

The emptiness is staggeringly cold.

The butterflies in his stomach have been replaced by venomous welts, and he looks around, does a full twirl as if he’s practicing some shitty ballet routine in shittier saddle shoes. Couples meander past him in arms, holding warm, frothy drinks, practically phasing straight through him as if he’s the world’s least intimidating phantom– spilling booze and half-melted ice over his shoes without so much as an excuse because Vox almost forgot he hasn’t already been pissed on enough.

Everybody’s smiling– none of them bottled for him.

His teeth grind behind nonsense lips.

Why does he always need more?

Vox’s hand is embarrassingly naked so he shoves it into his pocket where he retreats to the bar, one antenna hung low. His usual seat is still available, marked by the elm chipped off at the sides– nasty habit– and probably still warm. Immediately, he’s drawn to the figure sitting next to it– their unassuming back to him– somebody new.

His left foot tap-tap-taps exactly four times against the floor before he slides in, grimacing as the glass of abandoned alcohol he wraps his claws around is warm and wet with condensation. It’s a woman, he sees. She has wavy, obsidian hair that rolls down her exposed back in tsunami spirals; all legs and purple luminescent scales that envy her eyeshadow, and plump, cherry red lips like pure fuckin' sex. Her eyes are observing him under long black lashes, anticipating Vox to court her– the exact sort of woman he used to rail absolutely stupid when alive, going ‘til their eyes rolled so far back into their skulls they saw their brains, before coming, and starting again. That is, when he had the money or the status to afford her.

Vok chuckles, shaking his head at the table, his shoulders bobbing.

His fist slams and suddenly there is glass everywhere, spilling over his pants in soggy splinters. When he looks back, the woman has vanished.

Suddenly, whisky smells like shit.

Vox decides to just go home.

He keeps his eyes low, elbowing past a dam of bodies while trying not to lance himself on any horns or whatever other freakish accoutrements might egg his screen for the fourth time this month, ignoring the way his sweater donuts around his elbows as he fills his coat sleeves.

Could it be the way he’s dressed?

He looks down at his outfit. His usual honey sweater is clean for the most part, besides a few stray poufs of dryer lint, which he tries to pick off. The leather on the toes of his shoes is cracked and dull. He hasn't gotten a new pair since he'd died, but Vox wouldn't be counting dimes if he could afford it. Who could have imagined the median rent in Hell, even for a moldy apartment with a perennial roach problem, would be so exploitive?

The status quo down here is gonna eat him alive if the alcohol doesn't outrun him first.

Really, he shouldn’t even be out tonight. He has work first thing in the morning. But it'd been so long since he's done anything for himself, and besides, what’s Hell worth without a little sin?

God, fuck…he misses his Bentley.

Vox pulls his jacket tighter.

Just as he’s almost to the door– a cool breeze trilling through the frame and licking his fingertips– a wave of noise erupts behind him. Hoots and whistles, cheering and clapping loud enough to be heard over the vibration of brass trumpets. He whirls around just as two ghost-eyed demons careen past him, knocking into him as they rush to the door and throwing it open, one of them tripping over their feet as they scramble outside where the harried patter of their footfalls are lost to the night. Vox swivels around, confused. 

Through the dim, warm light, he can see that a crowd has packed in a tight ring around the dance floor– the rest bar is abandoned, and practically every patron is on their feet as they stare in either awe or abject terror at something he cannot see past the rise and fall of their heads. Vox furrows his brows and tentatively retreats from the tantalizing safety of the exit, trying to get a closer look at what's happening.

The music jumps faster, running on its toes as he squeezes through the crowd, determined to bully his way to the front. His head is like an excavator, and he uses it to exhume a trail through the stubborn wall of bodies that are obstructing whatever polarizing scene must be on the other end, his heart beating quick enough to remind him of survival instinct but not enough to expunge his intrigue. 

On the loud side of the music he pops out, whack-a-mole style, catching himself on the sticky floorboards because his shoe gets stuck between someone's leg or something– he really doesn't have time to check because out of absolutely no-fucking-where something is tossed onto his head and suddenly he can't see.

“Hey!” Vox panics, bungling with the net or whatever the hell is stuck to the corners of his titanic skull until it's suddenly whizzed away and light exists and he can breathe again. And how that even works when his head is a literal commodity, he'll never know.

Actually, as a myopic, borderline-alcoholic white man in the 1950s (does the color of his skin upstairs really matter anymore if it's rotting, though?) Vox, admittedly, doesn't know much of anything. Except maybe for three things:

One: Coffee is better dark,

Two: What a standing ovation sounds like,

And three: He’s straight.

Oh, also,

Four: Vox is a filthy fucking liar.

“Oh-ho! Change your mind so soon, friend?”

He blinks.

What?

“What?”

The man's eyes narrow, flickering like a candle above a smile that never falters. His head is tipped to the side, a few locks of red and black-tipped hair falling over his cheek; curious housecat or predator toying with its next meal, it's far too charming for Vox to give much of a shit besides how fuckin' pretty he looks, especially with his sleeves rolled up like that.

Vox's eyes reverberate in a way only a television can experience when the man's fist raps a few times against the side of his head. “Testing! Is this thing on? Oh, now, don't tell me you've gone deaf! Is that how you explain that egregious dancing of yours? Flopping on the ground like a fruitcake with a coat strewn over your head? Well, at least you weren't fibbing earlier! That was terrible.”

He grins, big and wide. large and mean and yellow, and something behind Vox's ribcage trips.

His tongue goes dry, every letter in his vocabulary getting lodged in his throat as they jumble forward in a colorful horde of displaced consonants and vowels, elbowing each other as they rush to be the first word out of his mouth.

He knows he really should say something , but, oh well.

Televisions aren't supposed to have mouths, anyway. Talking is meant for radio stars.

“All that earlier gab, and now you’ve nothing to say? Hm,” the prettier one of the two chuckles, and Vox could even call it charmed if he didn't know any better.

“Tell you what, I'll make it easy for you, my friend.” The bottom of Vox's screen is tilted up and from this angle it must look like he's praying.

“Let's make a deal. Oh, now don't look so impressed, just a simple one: You get up off this loathsome floor and accompany me in the rest of this swing, and– if you so decide to stick around– I shall buy you a drink afterwards, hm? I think what with the way you interrupted me, it's only fair!”

“Um, I don't–” I don't drink? I don't dance? His mind turns itself in a knot as it scrambles to make sense of what he's trying to say, and only now does Vox realize the tension thrumming through the room. They're trying to act discreet, but it's unmistakable that the crowd’s eyes are on the two; him and this man. It's as if the entire bar is holding its breath, waiting for somebody’s face to get mauled by a bear– or maybe a deer.

“Oh, now don't tell me you can't do it!”

The man grabs his wrists, and then Vox is whisked to his feet.

Well, more like dragged with the rims of his shoes squealing against the floorboards until he gets his act together, but he says potato and tomato or however that idiom goes. He's too shocked right now to figure it out.

The lights are even more bright and hot here than from the bar. They reflect in his eyes, making him squint, and the other man is holding his hands, the tips of his claws prickling Vox's knuckles in the best way; lodged perfectly between that intoxicating hatchet of pain and pleasure, like scratching a mosquito bite.

He swallows, praying it can't be heard above the sound. 

“It's really not so hard once you find your rhythm!”

Vox nods before, without forewarning, the music leaps and he's pulled into a spin, his coattails flapping behind him as the man releases one of his hands and he's thrown towards the edge of the swelling crowd before being pulled in again.

The man smiles deviously, and Vox can't keep himself from laughing as they go in for round two, and now that he's prepared he works overtime to keep up, joy fizzling out of him like golden champagne as they use momentum and gravity to throw the weight of their bodies into a full arc, gaining speed as they push themselves to keep up with the music– or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe the music is chasing them. 

The crowd has started clapping now, adrenaline and electricity surging through Vox's blood like a drug cocktail. And in a moment of uncharacteristic frivolity he tosses his head back to look at them upside-down, his heart freezing once he realizes his mistake. But instead of the sharp, retaliatory blade of chastisement he expects to feel in his spine for pulling such a reckless stunt, Vox realizes with awe as he pulls himself up, that for the first time in his afterlife, his head is completely weightless. 

This must be a dream, he thinks as the other man actually lets Vox grab him in a dangerous move and swing him between his legs. Just some extraordinary, unreachable dream. It’s the only explanation; Vox must be dreaming or passed out, drunk and concussed and bleeding away in some gutter on the corner of 10th and 12th right now– the wind on his back probably just somebody’s piss– because, despite realizing its impossibility ever since his proverbial dick could recognize ‘Evan Cary Grant’ in the Hollywood tabloids, he's fantasized a-million-and-one hopeless times about this exact moment with a man– and sin-sucking fucks like Vox don't win any jackpot realities like these– they just don't.

They pull together, Vox clutching the man's hands so tightly he's afraid he might draw blood, holding onto his partner the same way the sole survivor of a shipwreck holds onto a piece of driftwood.

“Keeping up alright?” the man asks as they move their feet in sync, some of his hair sticking damply to his forehead and reminding Vox he should not remove his coat after this because he is dripping–

“Yeah,” he says, nearly bursting into giddy laughter again when he squeezes the man's hands to check if they're real and the man squeezes back. “Yeah, this is… this is perfect. It's really–”

The crowd exclaims as Vox's body is flung out like an activated parachute before being pulled back in just as quick.

“Good,” the man finishes for him, and Vox needs to know:

“What the hell’s your name?” 

“Ah! How terribly rude of me!” The other grabs Vox’s palm, pushing it against his chest, a corpse with a heartbeat.

“Alastor, and what a pleasure it is!”

Vox fumbles through an introduction, he thinks. It’s all he can do to keep himself from salivating.

Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. Alastor. 

“Vox? What a curious name! Quite pithy, isn’t it? Well, Vox, my dear, I hope those dancing shoes of yours don’t have quite as many holes underneath as they do upstairs, otherwise, this may burn, I’m afraid.”

“What do you–”

And for the umpteenth time that night, Alastor– fucking Alastor– leaves him speechless.

Before Vox can finish his sentence his forearms are gripped and his entire body is flung in an arc so fast– and he swears on this next part– a series of sparks blaze from his shoes like fireworks where they chafe the floor, leaving caustic leather smoke in their wake. He's brought to a complete stop at his partner’s side just as the music peaks, and– time crawling on its hands and knees– the crowd erupts in an explosion of beer-spilling applause as Alastor lifts his and Vox's intertwined hands above their heads to the noise as if they're the winning team of some great championship. 

It's Vox’s second standing ovation. The only one that will ever matter.

Chest heaving deep, deep breaths and pulse drumming in his head, from the corner of his eye Vox trails the length of his arm, up, up, only stopping once he's reached where his hand is indelibly interlocked with Alastor's to squeeze his a little tighter, push their skin a little closer. 

Alastor isn't looking at him though. His eyes are closed and he's looking towards the Heavens, the golden light shooting pinprick stars off his teeth.

At the sight of his partner, something zaps Vox behind his ribcage like a defibrillator.

He has never wanted to eat a heart so badly.

…

Alastor may as well eat his own heart at this rate– what with how hungry he's getting.

He shivers, stomach growling around the absence of. It is so very cold, and sometimes, honest to goodness, he thinks he can smell roasting venison coming from somewhere– from the unusually large space underneath the door, perhaps, or maybe from that large window to the side of him; someone he can sense the presence of but cannot see just on the other side.

He knows his resolve is being tested.

The sound of a fingernail against glass has awoken him before. So quiet but, in a room like this, every sound is gunfire. He had looked over to that pane of glass and– really stared through it like he could see who was on the other side– it had all but abruptly ceased. Silent. Almost like a rabbit bating its breath in the scope of a hunter– except Alastor no longer knows which of the two is bearing the rifle.

When he had realized he was being watched despite the lack of active cameras, a shiver different from the ones caused by cold and hunger had crawled up his spine. He has never had many qualms with having a rapt audience before, but frankly, Vox was just getting creepy.

Oh, but that was many days ago now. Likely was, anyway. Time is not entirely calculable in a room like this. There are no windows to socialize him with the world outside. There is no dawn and there is no night wind. Only the grease piling on top of his hair and sterile light, light, light. All of the time.

That’s another thing– perhaps the most unbearable about this gilded cell– the overhead lights in this room never turn off. 

So much for ivory tiles. Ha!

Because of their artificially generated intensity, Alastor is forced to lower his head for most of the day in lieu of any prescribed comfort. His poor neck has been begging for a massage, or any touch at all, really, and he promises it he would, if only he could reach. 

His bones are tired, his ears itch, his muscles ache from disuse, everything is wrong, wrong, wrong; and without access to his powers, so is he. It makes him sick. Not the nauseous kind of sick, just, this feeling of inferiority blooming throughout him like a blotch of ink on soggy paper, and…

And…oh, right.

Alastor is also dying.

A sterile truth, really. He had thought it wouldn't come to this, when he first arrived; that he would be able to slip free from Vox's clutches before the threat of his impending demise would begin to poke its head through the door of his sanity. Frankly, he doesn't know exactly when it will be prone to strike, but soul binding contracts are just that– soul binding. And if his dealer gets the impression he's attempting to shirk his side of their written covenant, well…

He’d tried to explain this facet to Vox the last time he’d been around– use the television's sentimentality to his advantage– but that conversation went just about as well as being trapped in a compromising position in front of a possessive ex-friend-turned-obsessive-stalker would for just about anyone.

…

“And what is it you think I want, Alastor?”

Alastor steels his brow. He looks up; meets the source of new light in front of him that's bathing his nose in turquoise because far too close than necessary.

The edge of the chair's metal-plated backside cuts coldly into the nape of his neck.

“Vox…” He sets his chin.

“Where are… what did you do to me?”

Vox smiles, which makes Alastor shiver.

“I asked you first.”  He grabs Alastor’s jaw and pulls him forward.

“I want you to tell me what you think I want. Maybe then we can actually get somewhere.” 

Alastor’s left eye twitches, which only makes Vox smile wider. It takes all his restraint and a little extra from charity not to tear into his fingers right there and then like a steamy shrimp Po-Boy.

He settles on biting his tongue until he tastes blood instead.

“...you already know, you vile–”

“Tell me.” Vox squeezes his jaw tighter, then whispers with no unrestrained licentiousness: “I want to hear you say it.”

For the sake of his own dignity, Alastor chooses not to answer. By the time his face is released, his cheeks are dappled with blood and he now knows the left eye on Vox’s screen is about eleven millimeters higher than the right, which is forbidden knowledge that will surely not return with a vengeance to haunt him later.

Vox steps back to stand at full height and sneers down at Alastor like he's the flattened paste of a bug he'd just accidentally stepped on and gotten stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

“Your pride is gonna kill you one day,” he spits. “And you better not come crawling back to me when it finally catches up with you…because next time I won't be so nice.”

He turns for the exit.

“I’ll come back when you’re serious about getting out of those restraints,” he says without looking back. “‘Cause I think we both know you aren't–”

“I think what we both know,” Alastor interjects, sparking an idea. “Is, despite your melodramatic threats, you've had plenty of opportunities to kill me. You need me to stay breathing; otherwise this little fantasy of yours wouldn't be as enjoyable, would it?”

Vox freezes. 

Got you. 

“Tell me, how would you feel if someone else were to take that opportunity from you?”

Vox turns his screen and glares at Alastor over his shoulder. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Alastor's eyes crinkle.

At that, Vox derails his path to the exit and quickly approaches, grabbing Alastor roughly by the shoulders and making him wince. “Oh no, you are NOT about to do this to me, you cryptic asshole! What the fuck are you talking about?!”

“All I'm saying is that it may be in your best interest to return me to the hotel.” In lieu of meeting Vox's burning eyes, he picks at his nails, blasé.

Vox stares at him, searching his face like an increasingly concerning transmission of Morse code he's struggling to decipher.

“Do you recall what you'd asked me on my first night here, chum?”

“I recall you screaming like a–” 

“Ah-ah, just a little further back. I believe you had been interested in learning about a certain, hm…business transaction, regarding…”

“...your soul,” Vox breathes.

“Atta-boy. You see…” Alastor lowers his ears, taking on a more uncharacteristically soft appearance he knows will tug at all the right strings, and looks with sincerity into Vox's eyes.

“If I do not make it back to the princess’s hotel soon, I'm afraid I will...ah. Well, you're a sharp man, you know how these things are. I'm really not allowed to disclose much. But it is a very imperative and unfortunate situation, and one I cannot remedy while I am stuck here. I'm sure you understand though, yes?"

Vox is squinting, staring intensely at Alastor.

Then, his eyes widen.

“You're saying you're…”

“Mm, yes.”

“The hotel, the princess. You're…oh, oh no way.” Vox releases Alastor's shoulders and takes a wobbly step back. 

“It's all coming together now, isn't it?”

“No fucking way.”

Alastor furrows his brow. Is it really so surprising? “I'm…afraid so. So if you wouldn't mind–”

“Charlie Morningstar owns your fucking soul!” Vox yells, pointing. 

Alastor stutters, shellshocked. “P-pardon?” 

Vox is laughing maniacally. He tucks his screen into his forearms, grabbing the top of it with his claws as he folds over, squatting on the floor and laughing.

He's laughing so loudly, in fact, it's hard for Alastor to get a word in, but he tries anyway. 

“Now hold on, that's not– Vox, you ninny, she isn't– that’s not what I– Vox!”

Vox is on his knees and banging on the floor with his fist, still laughing. 

“Vox!” 

He's hunched over and his shoulders are shaking.

Something in Alastor pulls taut and snaps.

“VOX, YOU CAD, CHARLIE DOESN'T HAVE IT, IT'S–” He chokes around his own spit. Oh, blast you, non-disclosure clause! He'd been a fool–

“Ah– ahahahaha! Oh, this is just too GOOD.” Alastor involuntarily flinches when Vox slams his fist against the back of the chair, right beside Alastor's head. 

“Sure she doesn't, and you're not a pain in my ass. Who the fuck ELSE would make YOU work for some shitty little charity project?…unless you've gone soft.”

Alastor growls. “It doesn't matter, as I told you, I can't stay here or else I'll– Vox you need to let me get back–”

“Alastor, Al…” Vox brackets him in with both arms beside his head, leaning closer.

“You can't pin this on me, not this time. I'm through falling for your cheap tricks. None of this would have ever happened,” too close, “if you hadn't sold out your dignity to some little goody-goody bluenose in the FIRST place. Now would it?”

Suddenly, Vox's face drops. 

“Wait. Are you fucking her?”

Alastor blanches. “Vox…”

Vox's face shifts into something mad. He stands back, looking at Alastor for all the world as if he wants to spit on him. He shakes his head.

“No. No! Don't ‘Vox’ me,” he sneers, poorly mimicking Alastor's voice. “You did this to yourself. And I'm…”

A funny expression crosses his face, like somebody has just shot his grandmother.

“...I'm not about to fall for your bullshit again.” 

He scowls at Alastor over his shoulder as he storms out.

“NEVER again.” 

…

So, Alastor had tried.

Now, here he is: stuck between a rock and a hard place. For each hour that passes a new excuse is added to the roster of why it would be a grand idea to give into Vox’s barely-disguised demands, if not to get out of this chair than perhaps to fill his aching belly. He wouldn't actually have to do anything. Once free of this room with his strength back, he could find a way out from there, slip past him when he wasn’t looking and make a dash for the door. Television isn’t known for its impressive attention-span, after all. 

And if he gets caught, well…

Alastor really isn’t too sure what to expect from turbulent Vox were that to happen, but he knows whatever it may be would be better than sadly keeling over in this chair like a limp sack. A horrible stain on his legacy, to be a sack. And he knows he must try.

The only problem is how long it is taking him to find the right words.

He really is doing his best. It's just, every time he opens his mouth, he meets a new flavor of stomach acid he hadn’t known existed. Again and again, going like this for hours. Who knew there were so many unique varieties? Certainly not Alastor!

“Vox…” he grumbles at the floor, practicing. “Vox, I will be your… I will join your… Vox… Vox, I shall…”

“Fuck.”

Ha. Definitely not.

An odd, strained noise escapes his lips. What he needs– what he needs is some good and old-fashioned motivation! A concrete reevaluation of his situation to remind himself of what is at stake.

Alright. He has many options.

“Alastor,” he says to himself. “Alastor, you are dying.” 

He waits for his motivation to strike.

Waits for a good while.

Jarringly, he remains unstricken. 

Well then! He tries again.

“Alastor… you are dying, powerless, hungry, and… and your coat is gone.”

“...your coat is gone, and– and– and Husker is probably…running low on alcohol. And, little, sweet little Niffty is probably filling your new room with– with sacrificial beetle tributes by now, the poor thing– bless her soul– and Charlotte is…is…oh, Maman wouldn’t wish you to go in such a way, she really…Vox.” He locks eyes with the first camera he sees. 

“Vox, listen to me. I will only say this once, television, so listen well.” Suddenly, the back of his throat burns. He swallows; shoves it back down.

“Vox, I will… join you. I will…be your… business partner, Vox.”

“Do you hear me? I– Vox, I will join The Vees.”

Alastor’s ear twitches.

He thinks Vox hasn’t heard him, until something in his peripheral changes. Alastor looks over– some sort of light coming from behind the mirror– then a lichtenberg cluster of cyan lightning sparks in front of him, and suddenly Vox is standing there, too close, far too close.

“Oh, Alastor, ” he says, looking on the brink of digital tears.

“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to hear you say that, Al.” Vox bends down to his level with his hands on his knees, as one might do when speaking to a toddler who is shoving a fascinating crayon drawing into their face. He reaches for Alastor's hair and begins to card his fingers through.

“I– god, you’re adorable. Listen,” Vox moves his hand down to Alastor's chin, using it to direct his face gently up. 

“I've thought about it– thought about it a lot– and you...you don’t have to join The Vees…” Alastor pinches his brow, confusion rewriting itself as disgust as he is pulled closer.

“You don't have to join The Vees, ‘cause…”

“I think I want you all to myself.”

And then his face is pulled into a kiss. Alastor’s second ever in Hell; both performed by the same man, and both equally out of his control.

Except, this time, he cannot fight back.

…

Chapter Text

Hello, OttrPop here!

Quick announcement (mostly for my long-time readers).

Because I have personally felt dissatisfied with the way this fic was originally handled, mostly in regard to prose and pacing, I have decided to do a full re-write. So to my long-time readers, or anybody who has read any amount of HDIYL before 7/26/25, I recommend you re-read or at least skim the previously posted chapters to avoid confusion, as they have all already received rewrites on the aforementioned date. Don't worry! The original plot between Alastor and Vox remains mostly unchanged, but some minor plot beats (especially those in chap. 3) have been re-written or cut / moved entirely, and I just don't want to blindside anyone when they come up again, or when any of the characters mention something from these updates my old readers might be confused by. 

But because AO3 is, first and foremost, an archive, instead of deleting them entirely, I have decided to migrate the original, unedited chapters of HDIYL into a separate fic, where they will remain in all their unfinished glory should anybody wish to read them, which you can find by navigating to the second part of the series this work belongs to.

That's about all for now! The story should continue as normal from this point onward. Thank you so much to all the lovely people who have commented or left kudos on this fic; your encouragement goes a long way, and I hope to post the next chap soon! 

Ottr

Chapter Text

…

Sniffling the ground, the small white mouse cuts through Cannibal Town’s populated streets on four stout, pinkish feet; Cat Man's words replaying vaguely in the background of Lucifer’s head all the while. A distant, incessant mantra.

“Cannibal Town. Find Rosie's Emporium— it's in the middle of the square, always busy, ya can't miss it. Two are close. If anybody knows where that sonovabitch went, it's Rosie.”

Lucifer dodges the underbellies of ginormous, vintage shoes and frighteningly sharp heels that strike the weathered brick like kitchen blades as he cuts diagonally across the square, lifting his head and sniffing the air out of animal instinct more than necessity. He's already been scouting this street for a good twenty-five minutes, silently cursing himself all the while for not opting for a more advantageous form, like a bird, or possibly a snake— and, okay. Maybe being a snake wouldn't have been that much easier, as opposed to a mouse, but they're, like, his brand. And he just really likes them and prefers the ease of slithering, sue him— but no matter how diminutively inconvenient his current form is, there was no way he was about to waltz into Cannibal Town of all places without some sort of disguise.

Even if he can protect himself it's still…gross.

Just he's about to call it quits— wondering whether or not his halfhearted attempt at finding the frustratingly-elusive bellhop will be enough to sate his gnawing, scraping conscience or if he'll still be forced to endure more restless nights of gut-twisting guilt; tossing and turning in his bedsheets, searching for a spot on his pillow cool enough to finally banish the image of Charlie's tear-streaked cheeks that's somehow managed to superimpose itself onto the backs of his eyes— a sign comes into view; a lengthy, rectangular magazine cut-out of bright red against an aged-wine sky.

Franklin and Rosie's Emporium, it reads, relief blooming in Lucifer’s chest as he stands an imposing two-inches on hind legs to ascertain a good look. Although the first two words are crudely crossed out in dried black paint, the matte residue forever frozen in a dripping tableaux, and it's not nearly as busy as described (in fact, it looks completely empty), it's unmistakably the right place. It has to be. 

He hurriedly scuttles to the french double doors, zig-zagging through foot traffic with practiced dexterity until he emerges in the less populated area in front of the building. But before he can squeeze his little dumpling body through the crevice, he notices a paper taped to the inside of the door: a note.

One modest plume of golden glitter later, Lucifer emerges no longer a mouse, but a white-shelled Ladybug with matching umbrella-red spots. Using his newfound wings to hover level with the note, he begins to read.

My loyal patron, it begins. And despite never having met the woman, from the tone and gilded, sprawling cursive alone he can almost hear her honey-rich dulcet through the expensive, textured parchment.

As an urgent situation outside of Cannibal Town requires my immediate and undivided attention, it is with utmost apologies that Rosie's Emporium will remain closed until further notice. Please come back again soon!

And at the bottom in smaller writing: If you have any outgoing orders, please write to me through postage for a full refund, otherwise, delivery may be delayed.

Rosie

“Well… fuck.” Is what Lucifer would say, if he weren't an insect.

…

Although his shoulders hang heavy with defeat as he returns to the hotel, he immediately perks up upon reaching the entrance, a pang of surprise striking his belly.

The front doors are open.

That's weird… he thinks, peeking his head inside.

Inside the newly renovated lobby, past the dried-up bar and to the left where the couches are; their red, faux velvet upholstery still bearing a faint chemical scent, stand all the hotel's current occupants. Gathered around a tall figure Lucifer can't quite make out, Charlie stands at the helm, her back to him. Her body language is restrained, placating, and she gestures supplicatingly with her hands, saying something Lucifer can't quite decipher from his position just outside the doorway. Tentatively, he makes his way toward the group. 

“I know it isn't like him, but we just haven't found— Dad!”

“Heyy, Char-Char!” Lucifer greets, sensing a tension in the air, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “What's up? Who's your friend?”

The woman Charlie had been talking with gasps, manicured hands reverently covering lips colored a darker black than her nails as she stares wide-eyed— or wide…eye-socketed? Those are definitely the absent features of a cannibal, fuck— at Lucifer.

“Your Majesty!” Scooting politely past Charlie, she takes his hand between both her own, oversized hat eclipsing the light above him like a planet. Her skin is jarringly cold. “It's a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance!” Smiling, she reveals two rows of what must go for teeth in Cannibal Town, but what Lucifer would less euphemistically call daggers.

Compared to the last time he'd the misfortune of meeting a cannibal though, the introduction is jarringly…pleasant.

So definitely not that friend of Alastor's Cat Man had spoken of. No way someone so gracious would associate with him, of all demons.

“Ha-ha!” He stutters awkwardly. “Yours…yours as well, um!”

“Dad,” Charlie says, stepping beside their still-connected hands while clasping her own to her chest, a tell Lucifer had picked up on in her younger years and an indication she's feeling nervous despite the polite smile. Maggie comes up beside her, resting a supportive hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder. “This is Rosie! She's Alastor's friend. She helped us during the last Extermination.” 

“We wouldn't have been able to win without her.”

Rosie ‘owh’s, looking fond.

Rosie.

Oh. 

Owh…

Oh!

“Rosie?! I was just looking for you!” he says a little too quickly.

Rosie's eyebrows shoot up, and she pulls her hands away, startled by Lucifer’s sudden enthusiasm and conspicuous confession. 

“Now why would his Majesty be looking for little ol’ me?” she asks a little tensely, anachronistic Brooklyn accent thick behind a strained smile.

“Well,” Lucifer’s eyes briefly skitter to Charlie, “y’know…I just heard that you were…close with the bellhop. And— and now you're here! Wow! What are the chances, right?” He laughs.

Rosie’s hands are clasped in front of her and she shakes her head, expression tightening. “I'm afraid I don't follow.”

“‘The bellhop?’” Angel Dust pipes up, coming to stand beside them, his top set of arms crossed. “You still callin’ him that, short king?” He whistles appreciatively. “Snap! Devil's got no respect for the double-dead. I like it!”

“How many times do I gotta tell you?” Cat Man chides exhaustedly, coming up beside the lanky spider and giving him the stink-eye, the cyclops maid hanging off his head on her back between his ears while kicking her feet in the air. “Alastor ain't dead. We wouldn't be in this fuckin’ mess if he was.” The maid cackles.

“Wait, Dad,” Charlie’s incredulous voice cuts through, her eyes boring into him, “you were looking for Alastor?” 

Rosie squints, looking at him with more scrutiny than before, and Maggie, and, fuck, everybody's looking at him now, making him itch to pull his hat over his head like a magic trick and disappear—

He sighs, his shoulders wilting. Fuck it. 

“Charlie,” he starts, twisting his wedding ring over his finger in an unconscious bid for self-soothing.

Charlie, your overambitious yet frustratingly unlikable friend who I didn't even know you cared about this much may be seriously injured or nearly dead somewhere and I didn't even want to help but the guilt is fucking obliterating me and I can't help but feel it's my fault because I'm the guy who agreed to these Exterminations in the first place because I wanted to protect you but now I feel like everything is backfiring and all your other friends may be in danger and I can't believe you haven't blamed me for all of this yet or maybe you have and you just haven't told me because you're so sweet but I don't want to bring any of this up because then we'd have to go into it and I thought if I was just able to find him myself it would go away but it's not and God look at you you've grown so much but you're still my little girl and I don't want to lose you again and I feel like our relationship is hanging by a fucking thread and I know you'd put your friends first if you feel like I'm a danger to them but I'm here now and I'm trying to fix it and find your friend so hopefully everything will be alright now, right?

“...I just want to help,” he says.

Charlie's eyes begin to glisten. “Oh, Dad,” she chokes, pulling him into an unexpected hug which after a startled moment he gladly returns, her button nose bowing into his shoulder. 

“I'm so glad you're finally stepping up for the hotel,” she murmurs into his suit. “For Alastor. I thought you hated him and I'm…I'm so worried…” Lucifer can hear her choking up again and he gently removes her, holding her paternally by the shoulders, the tears already beginning to fall.

“Hey,” he coos, wiping her wettened cheeks with the backs of his knuckles, “it's okay, Charlie, I'm not giving up on you, or this. I'm ready to help, we're going to find him.” She sniffs and nods her head, though her lip remains quivering.

“...I don't mean to interrupt,” Rosie says softly after a moment. Anxious to get the conversation back on track, but still clearly trying to be respectful. “But unless you've got some special insight we don't know about…”

Lucifer pulls away from his daughter, giving Rosie an impotent shrug while solemnly shaking his head. “That's why I was looking for you, actually. It's the darndest thing…it's like he just—” he sharply snaps his fingers for emphasis, a humble cloud of iridescent glitter puffing from the point of contact before sprinkling to the carpet in a diamond trail— “disappeared.”

Rosie sighs, putting a contemplative hand to her chin. “Well, that isn't possible. Alastor is flighty at the best of times, and prideful as hell, but he’s a fighter. He wouldn't just let himself buckle over and die, at least not without sendin’ me a farewell card and some flowers first.”

She turns to Cat Man, but Lucifer is hardly listening anymore, scrunching his brows as he turns over the pieces in his head. “You said you aren't able to feel where he's at?” she asks. 

It's not like he could just disappear…it's not like he could just…

“Wait!” Lucifer’s head shoots up, cutting Cat Man off, his mouth still open as everyone turns their attention to him. 

“We may not have any leads yet… but I think I know where we can start.”

…

“I think I want you all to myself.”

Alastor inhales sharply when Vox presses their mouths together, his digital approximation of lips oddly pliant— much unlike the first time he'd done this, he notes, back when his screen hadn't yet discovered the capacity for all these meaningless, compensatory upgrades. But at least back then, driven by misguided feelings and misinterpreted signals, his actions had made partial sense.

Now there is no excuse. 

Even the acerbic, metallic tang of his person smells different. It needles Alastor's nose— his eyes scrunched shut against the intense pixelated light of Vox's screen— a much more biting, mechanical scent than the citrus of days past, when Vox's charmingly unkempt mustard turtleneck smoothed down the cutting silhouette of his shoulder pads like aged riverstone and the light in his eyes was real and filled with endless hope and his box head made him appear much more boyish. Trustworthy.

Maybe that had been Alastor's mistake all along. Trusting.

With his head sandwiched between the unyielding metal chairback and Vox's screen— his talons prodding into the flesh of Alastor's cheeks like needles, though soft enough to not break skin— Alastor can do little else other than grit his teeth and ensure his lips stay sealed; airtight, refusing to give Vox even a pinch of leeway he could use to slip his tongue inside. The drab metal body of a submarine submerged in deep waters groaning against the pressure and threat of drowning— his only solace found in counting down the nauseating seconds until Vox will inevitably pull away and his nose will be freed from where it's being scrunched up against his screen from how close he's pressing.

Finally, mercifully, after another prolonged moment of forced contact that stretches impossibly long, Vox shifts back enough to give Alastor room to breathe. He blinks, immediately assailed by the sting of fluorescent lights he's learned to hate. But more than that, so much more, the way Vox is looking at him with such utter… reverence. A crude parody of how he used to look at him. Such awe that if one squints they could possibly mistake it for genuine affection.

Choppy waves of undiluted stomach acid roil in Alastor's gut, burning up his esophagus, sickness biting his tongue. He yearns to take an iron sponge and scrub his lips off.

He thinks he might puke.

Vox smiles, gazing at Alastor for all the world like he's just managed to bottle the stars.

“...Let's get you out of these,” he says softly, already working at the manacles around his wrists. And despite himself, Alastor releases a sigh of shuddering, thrilled relief at the prospect. Freedom.

As soon as his restraints are undone, however, an urgent, almost primal urge— a thought that has been building reservoir in his subconscious ever since the first night he'd been taken prisoner, kept dammed up at the back of his mind— breaks free of Alastor's hindbrain, the reality of it flooding his awareness with visceral intensity:

Escape. Run. Run now. 

His gaze bolts to the door. The closed door. 

Vox extends a blue-tipped claw, waiting patiently for Alastor to take it.

The domestic, almost kind gesture sends another pang of anger and disgust through him. After all this time, after all Vox has done, he thinks he can just sweep everything under the rug with a few feigned niceties? 

A growl slips past Alastor's teeth, revealing his blackened gums. Play nice, he has to remind himself as he restrains the urge to bite through the sinew and bone of Vox's wrist on a frayed, barely-maintained tether. Play nice play nice play nice play nice. And then you can free yourself from this wretched perdition and burn it and everyone inside to the ground.

Instead of using his teeth to solve the problem as he so desperately longs, Alastor glares half-heartedly and uses the chair's arms as crutches to shakily push himself upright, forcing space between him and the media Overlord as he stands.

Vertigo. He's slammed by the power of it; a wave of roaring static that drills tunnels of black into his vision, forcing him to shut his eyes against the light that suddenly feels confusingly too little and too bright all at once, lead weights tugging his brain down like a fishing line hooked into the backs of his eyes, the immediate disorientation of the conflicting sensations sending him stumbling. He reels forward and hardly has time to snap his arms in front of himself in the hopes of breaking the bone-cracking descent when, before his jaw hits the harsh ceramic tile, he's caught around the waist by a pair of cool, strong hands. 

“Woah there, Al!” Vox laughs, though his voice is swimming and sounds far away. 

“You gotta be more careful. I'd hate to see you break that pretty face of yours just as we're starting to get along.”

He feels himself being lifted, a headache already beginning to set in from ischemia. He hadn't realized how horridly, revoltingly weak his body has become, not being fed for what feels like days, confined to a chair where the only relief he could provide his aching muscles was shoving his nails into his palms, the tremors forced upon him by cold and hunger the height of his physical activity. 

He groans pathetically, and Vox shushes him.

“I know, I know…I’ve got you, Al. It'll be over soon.” The light filtering through the blinds of his eyelids dims considerably as they begin to move, shifting to something warmer and less potent. Alastor hears the sound of Oxfords on concrete, Vox's voice echoing more from whatever seemingly empty space they're traveling through rather than any lingering symptom. He dares to crack open his eyes, the bottom edge of Vox's screen bobbing vaguely above him, vision still clouded. 

“...A real bed, some good food, and then you'll be back to your old self in no time. All that bite…all that spitfire.” Vox chuckles; a deep, magmatic sound that rumbles against Alastor's ear. “Can't afford to have any partner of mine withering away on me, now can I? What would the papers say?” he mocks, sounding far too amused.

Alastor is barely listening. Ears ringing, he's craned his head back, looking upside-down at the room they'd just exited as it bobs further away from him and trying not to vomit. Like a staircase in an open pasture, it stands jarringly out of place, as if built as an afterthought; a mirage of white tiles among the barren concrete walls and floor, a rectangle of icy light filtering from the door ajar. They may be in some sort of unused garage, he thinks, or possibly a warehouse.

Either way, it doesn't belong. He feels almost a pang of companionship looking after it, growing smaller and smaller.

“I really didn't want to have to do that to you, Al.” Vox says, still prattling. “But you just…you're so stubborn, when all I'm just trying to do is help…”

He feels himself slipping, the darkness pooling into the edges of his vision.

“Are you listening to me?” Alastor’s attention snaps up to where the Media Overlord is now eyeing him, a faint smile playing on his screen.

“Aw, someone's tuckered out, aren't they?” he coos as if speaking with a child. Alastor scrunches his nose, throat too dry to respond with a blow from his own biting repertoire. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. We’ll be there soon.”

The sound of an elevator dinging, doors sliding open as Vox steps inside a pristine, modern interior. Alastor, though the room is spinning, scans the rows of floor numbers quickly, the pull of exhaustion creeping up on him as he squints through the throbbing agony of rebound blood pressure. At the very bottom of the list, below even the ‘L’ with a star symbol beside it, for ‘lobby,’ or ‘P’ for ‘parking,’ and the button he assumes could only be assigned to an underground level such as a basement or dwelling, is one button unmarked, seemingly less worn compared to the others and appearing newly installed.

Is that where Vox was keeping him? This place, this grave, below foot traffic or pedestrian curiosity, an insurance he remain unfound, undisturbed? That room, had it been for him?

He watches as Vox presses button number 66, the doors sliding closed to reveal a glossy, mirror backside. 

Alastor nearly wretches when he sees himself. This emaciated, pallid thing being limply carried bridal-style; stark red against strong blue. His own rich colors only serving to make him appear that much more gaunt.

Surely this pale apparition, this disorienting, twiggish figure who would be more suited in a hospital gown than formalwear, doesn't belong to him?

Vox sighs, smiling softly at this stranger in the mirror as if he should know him. 

“We look good together, huh?” he says quietly, possessively tightening his grip.

Something hot thrums in Alastor's gut. A deep burn.

Escape. Run. Escape. Soon. 

…