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“You disappoint me.”
He wastes no time grabbing Alastor by the ear and tugging.
“Enough backchat, animal.” Alastor doesn’t make a sound or a face at the rough treatment, but Vox knows his deer hates it all the same. Alastor’s never liked his sinner body.
“I’ve given you far better insult material than that,” Alastor sighs like a put-upon housewife. “Seventy years to think and this is all you’ve saved up? It’s no wonder you keep around the shark you jumped.”
“...do you have a deathwish?”
“Hardly! I just prefer to spend my evenings on something a little more… entertaining.”
Vox laughs, cold and dry in his throat. “Entertaining evenings. I can accomodate that.” He reaches for a different part of his deer, and smirks when the swivel chair automatically slides from reach. Alastor’s not as unflappable as he thinks he is.
Point made, Vox turns back to his tablet. He’s got a speech to draft and less than ten hours to do it. Now, what to call the Heaven expansion project… hmm. The godcast? The immaculate connection? The apothveeosis? No, that’s too cute.
“You’re not going to finish that in time,” Alastor notes.
“Shut up, brat, before I make you.”
“Oh, pardon me. If I’m too distracting, you could turn me over to one of your little minions for the night,” he suggests.
“Not happening.”
Alastor shrugs. They’ve had this debate already, and he wins it every time. Vox (rightfully so) does not trust anyone else to keep him in check; an unattended Alastor could rip through half of Vee tower’s staff with knives before Vox can count to three. A deal to remain captive doesn’t necessarily mean a deal to remain harmless. He really can’t get much done at all with his prisoner mouthing off like this.
Hmm.
“Alastor,” Vox tries, spinning to face the other’s chair. “You’re bored, right?”
“Oh, dreadfully,” he laughs. “Try as you three might, there’s not a thing worth watching around here.”
“You haven’t taken your eyes off me all day.” He says it with a leer.
Alastor chuckles loudly to diffuse the moment. “Is this about your silly ratings graph again? I was almost impressed by your new ability to climb up to the lowest common denominator.”
“Don’t be obtuse. We both know you’re very good at turning on the TV.”
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. Alastor kicks his chair backwards, but Vox’s cables shoot out and snag it. “Oops! You almost got lost there.” Red, high-heeled boots grind into the floor as he’s dragged forwards the source of his suffering.
Alastor couldn’t honestly have expected that to work.
“Ha. What would they say if they knew the big, bad radio demon was scared of a little wordplay? I finally shut you up, huh?”
Unfortunately, Alastor feels himself fall for the bait, and the old words slip out of his mouth like a kiss to the ear: “You. Wish.”
Vox's cheshire smile grows and grows.
"Looks like you could do with a little discipline." As he says it, his left eye begins to pulsate.
"You're embarassing yourself. That hasn't worked on me in decades."
Vox leans forward and takes his chin in hand. "Then you don't have any reason to look away."
Game on. Alastor raises his eyeline directly into the spiraling, red morass of his self-proclaimed rival's hubris. "When we're still sitting here bored in about fifteen minutes, you will release me for the evening. I will expect a formal apology."
"Noted," Vox concedes. "And when I put you under, I'll have the same."
Alastor feels the (well-founded) suspicion that they mean two very different things. A little piece of his soul trembles like a leaf in the wind. He hates to admit this, even just to his own head, but he might be a bit rusty at their old games.
So far, so good, though. Nearly a minute has elapsed, and by this point, anyone else in hell who was vulnerable to the technique would be down. Alastor tries to amuse himself by counting the seconds like sheep. There's little else to pass the time with.
"Do you still remember your rules?" Vox asks, falsely casual.
Though Alastor can't frown, he does indicate his displeasure with the question plainly. "Pah. I don't have rules."
A clawed hand seizes his loose hair, scraping right into the scalp. "I said. Do you still remember your rules."
Of course Alastor remembers, but he quite likes the put-out expression on his rival, and he resolves to keep it there.
"I'm sure they were nothing important."
Vox yanks him off of the chair with more cables. Alastor lets him, and finds he enjoys moving to a slightly more comfortable position, splayed and lifted a few feet off of the ground below his attacker. That is, he does until one of those infernal cables decides to settle right at the base of his spine, pushing a tip of hard metal past his suit coattails and into his bare skin. A tingle of current travels through it and over the exposed air.
"Rule number one. Respect." The pulsing red light of Vox's eye widens, broadens, and now his entire screen is red.
Alastor squirms a bit in his bindings, particularly trying to angle away from the minor sparks ghosting along his sensitive back. He's still unaffected by the pulsing lights, but the tiniest, smallest, most insignificant piece of his brain is on hyperalert. That was always the first sign something was amiss.
"Say it back, now."
"I don't have to tell you anything," he grunts, just to prove the satisfaction of staying unaffected.
"I’m going to make you regret that," Vox reminds him, calmly. All of his rage and emotion ebbs from his body and into his sockets. Scenes like this have always narrowed his focus, thanks to his rigorous practice for showbiz.
"Rule number two. Obedience."
Another wire curves around Alastor's body, this time encircling his neck in a snug squeeze. This is a new development, but he takes it in stride. At least, until two cold prongs connect to the edges.
"You're counting your corpses before they expire," Alastor gulps. There's an uncomfortable amount of saliva in his throat that he's only just now noticing, since it's less painless to swallow.
"Oh, we’re playing like that, huh?" Vox flicks a few volts into him, and bless their damned souls, Alastor smiles through it. Arcs of blue shoot off his hair and skin like raindrops. He briefly loses vision.
In the moment of self-recollection it takes him to come back to center, he notices that Vox did not spend the time idly, has upped the game. A whole wall of holographic screens surrounds the pair in a sphere, every single one of them angry red and blazing. The sensation pooling low in Alastor’s gut is a mix of dread, anticipatory instincts, and a swooping feeling most scientists call "misattribution of arousal."
A rose by another name, to be sure.
"Needed help again? I didn't know you had such difficulty getting it up in your old age," Alastor tsks. The resulting growl he receives shoots straight to his stomach, and he closes his lips around the taste of victory.
Vox scents it instead as weakness. "Go on, don’t stop on my account, it just means more punishments later. What's your second rule?"
Alastor takes a deep breath in. It's slow, measured, and he really isn't quite ready for the spark of pain across his back that interrupts it. He coughs wetly, spitting onto one of the monitors by accident.
"I didn't hear you clearly. Do you want me to continue?"
"How much longer on the clock?" Alastor asks, nonchalant. It's the wrong question, as the resulting pride on Vox's face reminds him.
"Why don't we have me worry about those kinds of details, kitten? Tell me. Do you even remember the last time you recited your rules?"
Alastor hisses at the demeaning nickname. "I wouldn't tell you if we were the last sorry fuckers in Hell."
"Wrong answer!" A stronger bolt lances up his back, connecting to the prongs at his front, just below his jaws. He still doesn't scream, but his body starts to spasm in places, until the feeling grounds out back through the cables.
"It's the only one you're getting," he grits out. A pleasant buzz has set in by now, both in his aching body overloaded by their shared wavelengths, and in the forefront of his mind. It's like the soreness you get after a good day at the gym; painful, but delectable. Vox's hypnosis is instant on everyone else, but for Alastor, it's like wading into a warm bath. Perhaps a better descriptor would be being swallowed by the ocean at high tide, but the problem with that is, the ocean eventually recedes.
"This one's my favorite," Vox grins. "Rule number three: satisfaction. Go ahead and guess. Am I satisfied yet?"
Alastor finally screams out when the next bolt travels down his body. The voltage is too high and the effect too pervasive for him to stay composed in the face of it. It's liquid fire, it's sharp and tingling, it's... it's... exactly as good as he remembered. The post-adrenaline feeling of a nerve injury leadens his limbs and dulls his mind. Alastor feels himself on the verge of something, feels that telltale glee of inner voices he oh so rarely ever exercises reach up for it.
"No," one of them calls out using Alastor's mouth. "Not yet."
Vox laughs. "I didn't think so. I'm not going to be satisfied for a long, long time yet. I can't wait to use you."
Alastor's still got plenty of fight in him, and he makes it known. Two long shadows, knotted up by the effects of their owner's euphoria, wind around the cord at his neck and tug.
"Ap bup bup. That's a no can do. Put those away before I take them, Al." A blue beam of light writhes around Vox's antennae, just waiting for an opportune moment to release.
Alastor blinks hazily.
"Aha! Look at that! Struck dumb. You have no FUCKING idea how long I've- ahem. The tentacles?"
The order flows like syrupy molasses through Alastor. He decides to keep it that way, slowing his movements to goad Vox into a reaction.
He can’t hold on much longer, but he’s got to be at the 15 minute mark by now. Surely at least 10. 5?
Two deft hands lower him, positioning his body in a way he cannot see. He's still wrapped up at the limbs and neck, suspended in the air in front of Vox.
"Repeat your rules for me," Vox orders, "Or I'll get impatient. Skip ahead. You don't want that, do you? You don't want to miss your favorite part."
It is not his favorite part. He hates that part, it's the one Vox likes, its the one the broken voice on the inside of his head merely acquiesces to and that if he's lucky, Vox makes sure he doesn't fully remember. Sometimes, if he's been bad, Vox keeps him awake during it. Tells him he's broken, but that Vox can fix him.
A hand snakes along his body, attaching like iron to the delicate curve of his waist. Vox clings to his afterlife preserver greedily. Wanton moans of desperate sinners fill the room that they're occupying, but Alastor can't be certain whose they are.
"God, you were made for me. Why do you always act like you don’t like this, when you melt apart at my touch? Don’t you want your reward?"
Alastor's voice, in Alastor's throat and everywhere except his mind, keens. Something touches him from behind, pulls away the wire at the small of his back. Hatefully, the touch dips lower. His pants slide off to his knees gracelessly.
"Hisssss.”
“Oh, none of that. Give me what I want.”
It’s hard to remember what that might be, even as the glowing walls in front of him shout the right answer. Instead of listening to that, he hears a zipper spring free, a lens-screw cap open and click. Vox must be putting himself on onehanded.
“Come on. Come on. Come on,” Vox snarls. He must be fumbling with the thing in his haste for pleasure, the cur.
A pressing hand dances cold jelly at the burnt small of Alastor’s back. It glides cleanly along the skin, then inches lower. He scrambles away from the feeling. Vox must be extra desperate to take the last step overboard now and skip the etiquette this way. A smirk paints his lips.
“Ah ha. Ha. You-“
Vox slaps a messy hand over his mouth.
”For once in your goddamn life, shut. Up!”
”Mm, hmm hmm.” Alastor licks at the glassy substance. It’s flavorless. “No.”
Another zap ricochets through him. Then another.
”I am going to pull that insolence out from your whore mouth until all you can say is my name.”
A hand tangles between his legs, grasping at the anatomy there. A radio screech fills the room.
”Too early-!”
He tries to punctuate his displeasure with a curling shadow tendril, it would fit so nicely around Vox’s neck, but one of the voices stuffed in his head causes it to fizzle away. Vox notices.
“Look how you’re begging for me already.” A claw capped finger dances along his rim, sizing up the best angle to summon Alastor’s full displeasure.
”You know the deal,” he hisses. He cants his hips away from the unwelcome touch. “Not ‘til you finish your work.”
”Well all work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy.” An A/V cable curls over the tuft of one of Alastor’s ears, brushing it back tenderly. It quests around for a place to insert itself, much like its impatient owner.
”I’m still me,” one of his voices cries up at them. The sound warbles, tellingly. Vox delights to see one of Alastor’s eyes has started to take on the faint pulse of black circles. “And I don’t want this.”
“Not for much longer.”
Vox redoubles his efforts, squeezes more lubricant along their bodies and the critical orifice. Something that isn’t a finger presses at Alastor’s lower abdomen.
”Mmm. Soft belly,” Vox sighs. “Be a dear and turn it up for me.”
Tied as he is, Alastor’s body cannot hope to comply, but they both shudder when he tries halfheartedly.
”That’s it. Don’t fight me anymore. Rule two. Obey me now, Alastor. Show me you can be a good boy.”
A wordless garble shatters the tension. The other eye’s gone red and angry.
”I think you might need a countdown. Do you? Do you need a reminder of how much I’m going to enjoy taking this from you?”
”Nnn.”
”Hot.” Two scraping hands stretch and present Alastor. The feeling of sharp clawpoints on skin grounds him somewhat. He can’t feel any sensation at all when his head’s swimming.
”Ten swats should do it. When I get to zero, you will submit. Can you handle that, Al? Do I have your consent?”
”…nn.” He hates the petname. He hates the implications. He loves that for once, he feels something other than sheer vitriol. Fog twirls between his eyes and ears.
“Sounds like I do! You’re right in the palm of my hands, cutie. Okay! Here we go!”
There isn’t a moment longer to waste. He cracks across Alastor with enthusiasm.
”Ten!”
A counter appears in the corner of the screens.
”Say it with me, now!”
Alastor roars, but the red eyes only get closer, only crawl out of his mouth. His body responds, even as his personal ability to dribbles away.
”Nine!”
He bucks in his bindings, bared bottom scraping across the top of Vox’s lower attachment.
It’s too much. With twin paintbrushes, the pair of them sign away any shred of self control. Vox takes both of them in hand and begins to pump in sync, letting his wires handle the remaining counts of discipline and positioning. A radiating point along his deer’s back shoots lighter electric force along the path of jellied skin, current burrowing into every part of him, counting down the buzzes with the marker on screen.
Fluids of every persuasion dribble between them, splatter and drip on the floor, to the point Vox pulls one of his sleeves to wipe built-up steam off his screen. Alastor has nothing to say about it when Vox reaches around to return the courtesy to pull the hair from his eyes. They’re devoid of all resistance, now.
”That’s it- that’s it- yes. Yes!”
It only takes a passing glance to verify that the deer is down before Vox begins chasing his pleasure. He foregoes any further preparation, relying on the slick coating the two of them, and he sinks in like a missile destroying a city block.
“Goddd-“
Alastor, who isn’t really Alastor anymore, cries up at him in complaint. Vox breathes heavily, pulsing like a metronome as he adjusts. He didn’t fully prepare the two of them, and the pressure of Alastor’s clench is painful to both of them.
”I know, I know. You’re too fucking tight. Mmm.”
Reality hangs in the balance between microseconds. Despite his position, Vox feels like his mouth is the one that has been rendered stupid. Was Alastor always this warm?
His little radio station chimes a bell tone up at him, even now impossible to fully silence.
“Oh? Do you want something? Where’s all that pride now, huh?”
His deer wiggles gently, like he may be trying to steal some unearned friction. Vox laughs at the picture he paints, then remembers he can in fact take a screenshot. Alastor’s so far gone that his digitized likeness isn’t even blurry, although Vox doesn’t quite think the camera angle does him justice.
He takes another. And another. He gets close into Alastor’s face for a fourth, a fifth. He ignores the whining of his subject, shoots a stream of chiding electricity along the collar prods until he has Al right where he wants him (and he’s not letting go.)
The pleasure of staying still drags him to twitch. The screenmarker ticks down achingly slow with lightning pulses. Three. Two.
One.
“Zero.”
Alastor’s throat makes a piteous noise when he’s rocked into. It’s a shame he won’t remember that in a few hours. He might even appreciate the sight, too.
Hmm.
”Smile for the camera,” Vox grins, turning several of his hypnotic windows into videofeeds. Alastor looks delicious from every angle he picks, and it’s all Vox can do not to finish early.
“What are your rules, brat?”
Alastor foregoes his words entirely when he answers, bowing his head low.
“Respect?” Vox checks. “Show me how good you can respect this.” He stops moving on his own, even as it makes him shudder. He wants Alastor to put in a little work for a change.
It takes agonizing seconds for them to start up again. Without any traction on the floor, Alastor has no leverage, but he thrusts dutifully back into his position anyway. Each exertion only teases them.
With a stroke of inspiration, he tries grinding back, hilting Vox completely and rotating in a slow circle. Rainbow emergency bars propagate and flicker off Vox’s monitor as he does.
”Ffffuck, Al, you’re crazy, hhhhaaAA-“
In a stutter of frame perfect inputs, Vox skips to rule three. For his part, Alastor keeps demolishing him, chasing a feeling his hypnotized body won’t allow him to achieve.
Vox just sits back emptily as Alastor milks him for all he can. Whispered un-words tumble out of him to meet empty air, thoughtless ears, broken static. It’s too much stimulation. They come apart with a sickening -thwop-. Alastor swings from his bindings, a feral creature gnashing with a primal force, starving for what’s been left behind.
Vox moans, quietly devastated. Then he unscrews the base cap at the front of his groin and locks in another, still full receptacle.
”Don’t worry,” Vox croons. “Be patient. I know I’m the only one who can satisfy you.”
He sinks back in with the new model tenderly. They have all evening to finish their feedback loop.
He’ll just have to improvise something for the speech in the morning.