Archive of Our Own

It is on a hideous Tuesday evening that Alastor decides nicotine and rye are overrated, tosses his cigarettes in the bayou in what is surely not a move he will regret come morning, and makes the rousingly good decision to have ill-advised sex with his lovely, pathetic little picture box.

He has been up since dawn, putting in the weekly liquor order (a difficult job at the best of times, but now with Husk mooning about with a bottle in hand at all hours of the day, it’s impossible), sending the linens out to be laundered, and checking the pantry for signs of weevils after one too many guest complaints about living bread. Which is of course when he caught sight of his cast iron skillet on the counter, the one he had in fact very explicitly and will continue to explicitly emphasize should be used by him and him alone, no matter how many threats it takes, and had to budget in an hour in order to fix what had been done. By the time afternoon rolled around, he was irritated, his chest was aching, his arm needed rebandaging, and he had decided that if the idiot in room 58 complained about the towels one more time, he would swallow the man whole.

So, Vox.

It’s been a month since the moron took on heaven and lost, and really, Alastor can’t say much of substance has changed, besides of course absolutely everything. He’s a free agent, clipped loose from the leash and left to spread his wings in pursuit of a higher power. His staff is gloriously, beautifully fixed. His chest is healing, requiring only a bandage. (Though of course, he’s traded in one pain for another, because now his arm shakes when he lifts anything above a certain weight, aches when it rains, and has a tendency to bleed if he isn’t careful—and really, it was so rude of Vox to not even fight fair. Pathetic, even.)

And of course, he’s still working at the hotel.

There are benefits, though most of them have yet to come to fruition. But he is above all things a patient man and knows how to play the long game; after all, it took only ninety years for the last one to pan out. He can wait a fair few more. He is patient.

And he is bored.

It’s the boredom that finally does him in, forcing him to give up land gained in the most rewarding game he’s played yet, if only in terms of emotional fulfillment. So after seventy years, a mass murder suicide attempt, and a glorious decapitation, Alastor ushers Vox back into his life. Such as it is. Because really, he’s at a loss.

They can’t go out dancing, because every time Vox shows his face to the general public, people tend to get angry. They can’t go to their old haunts, not even the old bar Alastor bought years ago solely to make Vox mad, robbing him of the satisfaction of wallowing in memories of better times, because the last time they did, Vox tried to kill himself. And even Alastor has a limit to how much self-deprecation he’s willing to watch before it becomes a bit trite. So for lack of any better options, Alastor has come up with an entirely new game. It’s already showing unprecedented levels of success.

It’s simple: he sneaks into Vox’s penthouse right under the noses of his little partners, forces him to heel in his own bedroom (the shame is delicious), and graciously allows the beast to rut against him until he comes. And then Alastor makes him regret the day he ever died.

There’s no deal, not really, but Vox has nothing left and would not dare to risk the scraps he’s been given. He’s a bit of a live-wire, pardon the pun, irrational, manic depressive, and untrustworthy, but above all else, Vox is a loser. So while there is a thrill of danger to the whole affair, it is a relatively safe little arrangement they’ve made for themselves. Vox gets to cry and come and beg for death. And Alastor…gets to rub one out in the man’s modern monstrosity of a bathroom, all to the tune of a grown man weeping in his own bedroom, and then go home with damp briefs and an ever-growing frustration in the pit of his stomach. Blowing off steam, one might say.

Which is why he is here tonight.

Vox has assumed his usual position, potentially his favorite, where he sits in what used to be his very important CEO chair but is now merely A Chair, and Alastor rides him to a pathetic completion without ever having to take his clothes off. Vox’s hands roam over his back and shoulders in the way the creep likes best, and Alastor puts up with it. He doesn’t complain about the bruises Vox leaves on his hips, or the cuts he sometimes finds on the backs of his thighs where Vox clawed through his trousers. He ignores the transfer stains from the nights Vox is wearing pajama pants, which means the semen leaks through and makes a mess. And he does not, above all else, acknowledge the sick perversion growing in himself, one that rears higher every time he debases himself in the name of what should have been free entertainment.

“Do you, uh—do you mind if we try something new?”

Vox’s hands are tight on his hips, claws pricking in a way that makes Alastor think he might draw blood. It’s a charming thought, one that spikes a jarring, near-painful bolt of arousal through his belly; but his hands are moving away, the grinding stops, and Alastor is gritting his teeth at the loss of friction.

“What do you have in mind, pal?”

They’ve been through this before, possibly as recently as four days ago. Vox gets a bright idea of how to please Alastor, as if Alastor wants any part of this sick little game, and then he has to shut the idiot down before he goes and ruins things. Because even after he’d explained to his feeble-minded picture box that he gets no satisfaction from this, not in the traditional sense, he still can’t seem to let it go.

“It’s for me,” Vox says quickly, as if he’d sensed he was treading dangerous ground. “Something I want to try for me.”

Alastor is already regretting having thrown away his cigarettes. “Sure, pal. What do you have in mind?”

And that’s how he finds himself flat on his back in another man’s bed, legs spread to make room for the owner of said bed, wondering how sanitary the silk sheets are while Vox moans in his ear. It’s gracious of him, really. Uncharacteristically so. He’s blaming the nicotine withdrawal.

“Fuck, this is better than I imagined it would be.” Vox hisses under his breath, and Alastor feels an answering puff from the gills on the man’s sides. It sends a burst of condensation up Vox’s collar and over his screen, which beads over in a facsimile of sweat. Alastor can’t help but wonder how it tastes. He’s been wondering that far too often lately.

“You’re noisy today,” Alastor says, hoping to start an argument a little early. This position is doing strange things to his head, and with every slide of Vox’s clothed cock against the crease of his thigh, he feels his thoughts growing odder and odder. “Did Valentino deign to look at you earlier? Or did you throw yourself off the roof again, and it jumbled your hormones?”

“Fuck you,” Vox grunts, bending low like he’s going to kiss Alastor—what a funny idea, how horrible—and punctuating the words with a thrust that hits the hard nub of Alastor’s dick like a fucking bingo, which is when Alastor hears the stupid breath catch in his own stupid throat, loud and unmistakable.

Vox freezes, eyes darting from Alastor’s face to his groin like a metronome. The corners of Alastor’s smile tighten and strain, ears tight against his skull in a silent dare for him to say something, but to his credit the idiot doesn’t even open his mouth. He only rolls his hips again, and this time he changes the angle. It’s—better, in that there’s no real friction, and worse in that he’s missing the spot where Alastor wants him most. He nods once and almost begins to relax. And then his dear, horrible little picture box has to go and ruin it with another change of the angle, one that results in a hard glide straight over Alastor’s swollen dick.

He makes a single involuntary sound in the back of his throat before he clamps his lips shut and paralyzes his vocal cords.

Neither of them moves, and for a blissful few seconds Alastor thinks Vox will throw an old friend a bone and let the moment pass like nothing had ever happened. It’s the deal, after all.

“Are you hard right now?” is what Vox actually says, incredulous and flushed and entirely too edible for his own good, at least in certain sections.

“Well, my dear,” he begins to say, and it’s only by sheer force of will that he manages not to let the words shake. “I think that’s quite enough of tha—“

Vox doesn’t roll his hips so much that he thrusts, grinding down in a way that slides his dick between the lips of his cunt, all the way up to where Alastor wants it most, and—he moans.

“Oh,” Vox says, voice laced in the electric drone of a TV on the fritz. “Well isn’t that interesting.”

The second worst part of this is that, on his back, he can’t hide his face. His cheeks are flushing more by the second and he can feel his smile starting to wobble. He could put his hands up, but he’d look like a right idiot; that, and he’d banish any doubt Vox might have had about his hiding in the past. But the worst part? Is that Vox has decided to grow a spine.

“You know,” Vox says conversationally, even as his hands clamp down in an ironclad grip on Alastor’s hips, “I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”

“Have you,” Alastor mutters, darting a glance to the right, where the door to the bathroom is.

Vox doesn’t spare even a glance as he releases his sole, sad remaining cable. It shoots across the room and slams the bathroom door shut with a thud of finality.

“You”—this is punctuated by a thrust, one that punches another noise from Alastor’s throat—“are a fucking liar.”

He regrets dressing up for this damn idiot. His trousers are normally made from flat-panel wool, thick and sturdy and quite unyielding. They never allow for much sensation, providing a much-needed barrier between himself and his picture box. But the ones he chose tonight are made of a much lighter fabric, a satin blend that had cost quite the pretty penny. (It was worth the price to avoid that ‘polyester’ abomination.) They cling to his hips and derriere in a way that had most definitely been noticed by a certain picture box. They were made for activities of a physical nature: dancing, twisting, fighting, killing.

Apparently, they were made for other activities, too.

(He is going to eat his tailor limb by limb. Feathers and all.)

“I’m loving these new trousers, Al.” Vox either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about the way Alastor has tensed up, giving resistance to the way Vox is hitching his thighs higher, like he’s trying to wrap Alastor’s legs around his hips. Alastor refuses to give him the satisfaction. “Are they for me? Without that sock you were using, which—by the way—is the reason I know you were lying about being soft the whole time, I think I see things a bit clearer now. Like…these trousers. They really help ease the way, if you catch my drift.”

To prove his point, Vox presses in close and rests his cock between the lips of Alastor’s cunt, nestling it there in a way that reminds Alastor horribly of a hot dog in a bun. The trousers provide no cover where they cling to his skin. Vox, he realizes, has been able to see the outline of him this entire time.

It made sense now. The static fuzz of Vox’s screen every time his eyes dropped; the way his lips had parted when Alastor arrived and promptly took a seat at the sad, empty bar of his penthouse, where of course he’d kept his legs together like a proper gentleman. And since he hadn’t had time between picking his suit up from the tailor’s just this afternoon and accosting Vox in his own home, he hadn’t sewn in his prosthetic.

This is his own fucking fault. He’s given himself away like a goddamn fool.

“How ya feelin’?” Vox asks, and there’s a cruel glint in his eye that makes Alastor think Vox knows exactly what’s on his mind. “Not getting too distracted, are we?”

He begins a slow, horrible grind that has Alastor vacillating wildly between all-encompassing nausea and an even more encompassing hunger, and what’s worse is that he’s getting wetter by the minute. His briefs are thin cotton, form-fitting in a way that he suddenly loathes, and he can already tell he’s leaking through them. If he’s not careful, his trousers will be next.

“There we go,” Vox says, tilting his head back with a groan. “Fuck, Al. This is so much better than what we were doing before.”

It is better. Alastor wants to throw up. The heat of Vox’s cock is intense and unavoidable, almost like a brand. Alastor can feel the ridge of his head bullying against his dick with every thrust, dragging the fabric of his trousers back and forth over his cunt in a way that feels—good. Too good. He wants. More. He wants more, wants Vox to—to do—something. He wants hands, he wants—he wants.

“I—“ He bites off the rest of the sentence, but Vox’s eyes, which had been half-closed and glazed over in pursuit of his own pleasure, have already snapped up to meet his.

“What?” he asks too eagerly. And there’s Alastor’s silly little picture box, all fluster and blushes. Gone is the mean smugness and superiority. “Do you want me to…?”

Vox puts a hand on Alastor’s stomach, and he clenches it without meaning to. The smile on his face feels less like a grin and more like a snarl.

“I think”—He wets his lips—“I think this has gone far enough. I don’t know what sort of preconceived notions you’ve got rattling about that box of yours, but you’re mistaken. I want no part of your degeneracy.”

“Really?” Vox says, quirking a brow. “Your shadow doesn’t seem to agree.”

Alastor tries to sit up, but a hand splays over his chest to keep him on his back. It doesn’t matter, though, because all Alastor has to do is glance down, where his shadow is practically salivating at Vox’s feet.

“So like I was saying,” Vox continues, oblivious to the fury building in Alastor’s chest, “I’ve been thinking. I know you said this was all about me, right? That you were just here out of pity, you aren’t getting anything out of this, that you’re—what did you say that one time—soft as a schoolboy? Totally disinterested? And sure, maybe you were at first. But lately I’ve been noticing something. You have been spending an awful lot of time in the bathroom after I’m done, old pal. You won’t look at me anymore, either. What, are you embarrassed? Can’t stand showing an actual human emotion?”

Alastor opens his mouth to speak, but Vox holds up a hand to stop him.

“Hold on, let me finish. Please. I swear I’m almost done.”

He debates ripping Vox’s jugular out. “You have twenty seconds.”

“Right, right. So I was thinking, you’ve been so uncharacteristically sweet about all this. So generous. How weird, am I right? Hell, I’m not even the one who started all of this. You offered!”

“Ten seconds.”

“And such a display of generosity should be rewarded, riiiight?”

“Five seconds.”

“So I think you should drop the whole frigid thing and let me make it up to you. Preferably with my—“

Alastor has him by the throat before he can finish.

There is an instant of resistance before the skin of Vox’s neck yields to his claws. Vox doesn’t cry out so much as groan, scrambling for purchase on his disgusting silk sheets as he rears away and starts to tip backward. Alastor follows him, rising to his knees and planting his free hand on Vox’s chest as they fall together, Vox’s back meeting the mattress and Alastor straddling his unguarded, vulnerable stomach.

He used to stab white men to death like this. It wasn’t sexual, never sexual, but even a defect like him could see the innuendo of it all.

“Here is what is going to happen,” says Alastor. He’s back in control, voice steady and expression tame. “You are going to sit in your chair like a good boy, hands by your sides. You will not touch me in any way. I am going to sit on your lap, I am going to give you what I came here for, and then I’m going to give you something to cry about. These are the rules, Vincent. This is the deal.”

“You should sit on my face,” Vox blurts out. His screen is teal but he’s smiling, and when Alastor squeezes his thighs tighter to cut off airflow to his gills, he glows even brighter.

“Excuse me?”

“It’ll be so good. You can just sit there, hide your face even, I don’t care.” Vox tries to sit up, but Alastor digs his claws deeper to dissuade him of the motion. “And, you know—demon and all? It’s prehensile.”

To Alastor’s horror, Vox opens his mouth and unfurls his tongue. It’s candy blue and long, pointed at the tip, but the further it goes, the thicker it gets.

“Just imagine.” Vox’s mouth is open but he’s still talking, using the speakers on the sides of his head. He’s curling and uncurling his tongue, and his eyebrows pump. Just once. It’s hideous. “It would stretch you so good, Al, and I could use my fingers too. You wouldn’t have to do a thing. And, and—do you, uh? Do you have a cervix? Do you know if—? Anyway, I—um, some people are into this whole, i-it’s, uh—cervical penetration. You’d heal, and honestly the pain would probably get you off, and if you don’t like the idea of me being in your, well I don’t know what you want to call it, your pussy maybe, but we could always try your ass?”

“What sort of vile—”

“Oh, you’re blushing, Al.” There is glee in Vox’s eyes. He’s still talking through the speakers, and the words come out tinny and strange. “You can try to play it off like you’re unaffected, but those cheeks don’t lie, baby!”

He could kill Vox. He could punch straight through his screen, rip out his soul, and end his miserable little existence. It would be merciful; it’s not as if Vox hasn’t been actively, enthusiastically suicidal this entire month. Alastor would be doing him a favor. He’s been ousted from his own company, he has no power, and if this farce is all he has going for him? Why, it’s a wonder the man hasn’t already begged him to end it all.

Vox is still talking. Alastor digs his claws ever deeper. Any more, and he might actually kill him.

Perhaps Vox would bleed out. Alastor could watch him die, and as life drained from his eyes, Alastor could…he could just…do it. Sit on his face. Give him one last hurrah. It probably wouldn’t last more than a few seconds, so it wouldn’t be as if he was actually giving into the debauchery. It isn’t his idea, isn’t his own plan, and that means he wouldn’t be a degenerate.

He wouldn’t even need to take his clothes off.

“Al? You okay?”

Is he seriously entertaining this?

Pull yourself together, man, he tells himself, taking a deep breath. He’s got a hand in his hair, pulling out strands by the dozen, and knows he must look ridiculous. His ears are practically flat-ironed to his head. Pathetic and ridiculous and disgusting. His dick is hard and his cunt is soaked, because he always produces a truly absurd amount of wetness in the rare times his gears get going, and it’s all for this waste of electricity. It’s all for Vincent. And sure, he and Vox had been chums, or as much as one could be in Hell, but he doesn’t like him enough for this. He doesn’t like anyone enough to degrade himself like this, to put himself down to their level. He was only supposed to let Vox rut against him until he came like a filthy animal, reduce him to tears so he knew in his core how pathetic it made him, and then—and he feels—stupid.

“Hey.” Vox puts a hand on his shoulder, featherlight, like he’s trying not to startle a spooked horse. “Alastor, hey. It’s okay.”

“What?” Alastor’s head feels blank. The room is bright around the edges and his chest is rising and falling too quickly, like he’s panting. 

“Do you want to stop?”

“Do I—what?” he says again.

“Shit, okay. I thought you were just playing, like it was part of the game, but—okay, hang on.” Vox shimmies out from under him in a way he most certainly should not be capable of doing, considering Alastor had had him pinned like a butterfly only moments before, and then he’s gone.

He’s alone for a few seconds, or maybe an hour, before Vox returns holding a towel. Alastor stares at it uncomprehendingly—and reels back when Vox shoves his face straight down into it without warning.

Chloroform? he thinks wildly. Then his brain catches up and he registers warmth, dampness, and. It’s nice.

“Hot towel treatment!” Vox declares. “Here, take it. Need another? I’ve got plenty, just say the word. I used to get them back when I was alive, you know? A fresh cut, a clean shave, and a hot towel. I treated myself every time I scored another kill or a promotion.”

He should get Niffty on this. If anything, guest complaints would go down by half.

“Another,” he says when the charm begins to wear off with the ebbing heat, and without a word Vox hands it over. Alastor buries his face anew.

Vox is speaking, but the ringing in Alastor’s ears is still a little too loud to allow him to properly follow. 

“—and then he told me I should try lithium, even though he knows I don’t run on batteries, and I just don’t see where the fuck he gets off on trying to run my life, and now my fucking company, you know? And then he got Vel on that lithium thing, too, and it’s like, do either of you even know how my body works? It—oh, hey, are you okay? How are you feeling?”

Alastor doesn’t know what his face is doing, beyond its smile (keep smiling, always smiling, grin and bear it, grin and bear it), but Vox has shut up and that’s enough for him. “The towels were greatly appreciated.”

“Okay, good, and you know—there’s always more where that came from, baby! Val won’t even notice if you want to start using them too. I’ve been going through at least a dozen every day, I mean, considering I don’t have anything else going on I might as well, right? And he’s getting a little pissy about it, because now we’re always out of clean towels, and—well, anyway.” Vox clears his throat and rearranges his expression into complete professionalism. “Do you want…to…?”

Perhaps there were drugs in the towels, because Alastor is ready to make a truly idiotic decision.

“I. Want.” He has to choke the words out one by one, dragging them out kicking and screaming. “You. To…Touch me.”

He sounds strangled, almost rabid, and the tension in his body is nearly enough to dislocate every joint he has, plus extra. He presses on.

“Take your…trousers off.” He thinks he might vomit. “And mine.”

“Are—are you s—” Vox doesn’t finish the sentence, likely because Alastor spits out a truly grating bit of feedback and lets his antlers expand just enough to send a message. “Yes. Okay. I’m taking my pants off.”

Alastor never said anything about his shirt or underwear, but he supposes it’s a night meant for reckless decisions, because Vox tears them off without even a hint of shame.

It’s strange, seeing him laid bare. For an entire month, they’ve been having sex (after a fashion), but they’ve never actually undressed for any of it. Only once in over seventy years has Alastor seen him so barren, so naked, without even a pair of socks to cover him. He almost doesn’t want to look. But that is ridiculous, because of course he’s seen Vox naked before, even if it had been against his will. (What was worse was that he’d seen Valentino naked, too.)

“My shirt stays on,” Alastor says. He feels confident in a way he hadn’t since this night began. He’s in control here, even if it hadn’t felt that way for a measly few minutes. He is the master in this situation. He is the master, and Vox is his plaything. That is the deal. “Take off my trousers.”

“How do you want me? Or, you?” Vox looks desperate, but in a way that makes him seem like he’s trying to remain composed. “On your back again?”

He doesn’t want to think about how much he liked it, so he doesn’t. He only nods.

There’s blood drying in a necklace around Vox’s throat, and as they settle back onto the mattress, Alastor entertains the thought of sucking it from his skin. But that’s a bad idea, even if it feels like a good one. He doesn’t want Vox crying just yet. He wants Vox focused. He needs control.

When Vox’s hands drop to his belt, Alastor doesn’t stop him. He raises no objections when Vox pulls it free with a rasp of leather on satin, nor when Vox thumbs open his trousers to reveal his briefs. He’s expecting a jab at his Y-fronts, which by Vox’s standards must seem archaic in the eyes of progress, but he doesn’t breathe a single offending word; in fact, his eyes dilate at the sight of them. Or rather, at the sight of the way they cling revoltingly to him, soaked through from ass to pelvis with his own slick. It was no wonder his trousers gave away the game, with his last stand having lost so thoroughly in advance.

“I cannot believe,” Vox says near-reverently, “that I didn’t notice until now. You’re practically a river down here, Al.”

A polluted one, perhaps. He is a degenerate like all the rest of them. He’d always thought himself above the common man, void of base pleasures and sick perversity, defective in all the ways that mattered and happier for it. Yet here is the proof that he is no better than the men he loved to kill. He is disgusting. There is no going back.

So he says, “Get on with it, then, pal.”

Vox’s screen is teal from end to end. His fingers are shaking (pathetic), and Alastor realizes his are too. (Pathetic. Pathetic.) He expects Vox’s hands to be cold, but they’re fever-hot where they dip into the waistband of his briefs, pressing into the swell of his hips that had never quite starved away no matter how little food he ate, even during the height of the Great Depression. The sensation is a shock, one that makes arousal burn low in his belly, and when Vox untucks his shirt to reveal a stripe of skin unseen by any but his own mother, he holds his breath to stop himself from whining. He is in control. Vox is weak, he is strong, and he is in control.

Vox skips the trousers and moves straight for the briefs, pulling them down as one passed Alastor’s navel, then his hips, his pelvis, until he’s exposed to the air and Vox’s reverent gaze, and there is nothing left to cover him. He doesn’t need to look down to know he’s glistening with his own wetness; he can feel the cold of it on his skin, sharp and jarring and wrong. He forces himself to breathe.

“Can I touch?” Vox whispers, eyes locked on his newest prize.

Alastor nods.

When Vox touches him, it’s with a gentleness Alastor had long forgotten people were capable of. There is an instant of reflexive fear at the sight of claws so close to a place so vulnerable, but the caps Vox fitted onto the ends are visible even in the low light, and he forces his ass to unclench. And then he clenches it again, because there is a finger running over his mons, dipping low to trace along the inner creases of his thighs, where his fur grows short and wiry. It tickles, but it’s not bad. His ears are flat against his head but he doesn’t feel nearly as feral as he might have.

“Fuck,” Vox is whispering. He’s drooling out the corner of his mouth. “Oh, fuck, Al.”

He moans when Vox touches his dick, shifting his hips away from the sensation, then back to where he wants it most, like even his body can’t decide. Vox doesn’t look offended; he looks like he’s found religion. And when he tries again, it’s with two fingers, one on either side so that he can pull back the foreskin, revealing the sensitive head that even Alastor can’t bring himself to touch straight-on. Which is all the warning he needs to take his own arm in his mouth and latch on, because Vox breathes out a moan of his own and brings his thumb down in a way that Alastor can’t see. He’s too busy wailing into his own flesh and blood.

His legs are shaking by the time Vox sets him loose and the breath is shuddering in his throat, and although he’s still smiling (always smiling, keep smiling, grin and bear it), it’s a small, fragile thing. His arm (right arm, the good arm, not the one Vox’s shark gnawed to the bone and left crippled) throbs as it heals.

“Shh,” Vox soothes, like he, Alastor is the goddamn animal here, instead of an unwilling participant swept along a tide of debauchery. Fuck, he needs to fish out his cigarettes. “Shh. That’s good, there you go. How’s that feel?”

“I want—“ Control. He’s in control. “Like before.”

“Fuck yes.” It’s quiet, but Alastor hears it all the same. His picture box never did know how to shut his fucking mouth. “Fuck yes, fuck yes. Okay, let me just…”

Vox grabs his hips and pulls Alastor down to meet him. It’s effortless for him, even without his overlord powers, almost like Alastor is his toy. But Alastor is nobody’s toy now. Not now, not ever again. This means nothing.

The warm of Vox’s body is good, but the hot brand of his cock against his cunt is even better. They both moan, though Alastor will deny it. He will also deny the way he mouthed a silent ‘please’ when Vox reached down to line them up properly, and the way he choked on Vox’s name when the head of his cock caught on Alastor’s hole, pressing in almost enough to scare him before Vox rushed to pull out. There’s less fumbling from there as they fall into grinding and clutching.

“How’s that?” Vox keeps panting into his shoulder, hips moving steady, then slower, like he’s trying to find a rhythm. “Is that good?”

He hates himself. He’s so wet the insides of his thighs are slick, and he doesn’t need to look in order to know Vox’s cock is soaked with it. There’s a heavy ache growing in his cunt, ticking like his pupils in beat with his heart, and when Vox drags a finger over his dick, Alastor lets out a sound like he’s dying. He moans when Vox glides his cock up the length of him, pressed between his lips like he’s hoping to fuse, and squeezes his eyes shut when their dicks slot together, catching and sliding until he’s burning with it. It’s good, almost painfully so. He clenches down on nothing and feels a fresh surge of wetness ooze out of his hole, paving the way for another slow thrust.

Vox is whimpering like a dog above him. Alastor pries his eyes open to watch the way his lower lip quivers, almost as though he’s near weeping. Fuck, not near; there are tears crowding the corners of his mismatched eyes, barely visible past the static and the glitches.

“C-ca-aaaaaaaaa—an I go faster?” Vox begs. It’s only years of experience that allow Alastor to understand what Vox is saying, even through the audio distortion. “Alastor, can I—?”

He hates himself. It cannot get any worse. He lifts one leg off the bed and hitches it around Vox’s hip, horrified and thrilled and intensely aroused by the way Vox’s face immediately dissolves into rainbow bars, and raises the other to join it.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Oh, my god. Fffffffffffuck. Can—can I?” Vox is crying. Alastor wants to ruin him.

Their joining is much closer now, hips flush together with skin against skin, and it’s—good. It’s so good it almost hurts, like Vox pressed a finger to his pelvis and shocked straight through his skin and into the core of him. He wants more. He wants Vox’s hands on his hips, on his dick, on his throat, on his chest, fuck, his chest, even though he’s still, ridiculously, wearing a shirt. He didn’t even take off his bowtie. Perhaps he ought to, but even as he thinks it the thought dissolves like newsprint in the bayou, because Vox has slotted them together slick and hot, and when Alastor tightens his legs to drag his picture box in close, Vox starts up a fast, rolling pace like he’s actually fucking him.

The sound Alastor makes is beyond humiliation, and Vox’s hips stutter so badly that Alastor wonders vaguely if the idiot shocked himself. Then he wonders if he should let Vox fuck him for real, if that’s the sort of reaction he’d get. He wonders if it would feel good. He wonders if it would hurt.

“Fuck, that’s so hot, I don’t—I don’t even—oh fuck, Al.” A tear drips down the pane of Vox’s face, and before his mind can catch up with his cunt, Alastor slings an arm around his neck and drags him down close enough to lick away the salt.

And then Vox comes.

It’s unexpected, almost funny in its spontaneity—right up until the moment Alastor realizes what it means for his own orgasm. Or rather, lack thereof.

“You deplorable, disgusting—“ Alastor bites off the rest of the sentence, too furious to give the insult the creativity it deserves.

“Oh fff—uufffuuu—uuck, I’m s-s-s-ssssssssorry!” Vox is glitching wildly, like he always does when he comes. A fact Alastor knows intimately, considering he’s made him do so at least a dozen times over the course of the last month. (Fourteen, really. But who’s counting?) “Thhhhhhhhhis doesn’t u-u-usually happen!”

“Selfish,” Alastor spits, even though he’s made it very clear he never wanted any of this. He doesn’t even know why he’s so angry, which only infuriates him more. He realizes Vox is still hunched over him like a slavering beast, cock going soft and cum drying cold on Alastor’s fucking stomach, on his shirt, and it’s disgusting, he hates it, he hates himself— “Selfish, narcissistic, piece of shit. You are a waste of space, Vox—Vincent. Your mother was right and you are a failure, you—“

“Narciss-is-is-is-istic?” Vox splutters, and he is still between Alastor’s legs, so Alastor kicks him away. Vox barely even fights back, letting himself fall to the side with nary a glare. “You’re a fffffffucking hypocrite, Al, are you kiiiiiidding me? And bringing my fucking mother into this? I don’t want to think about my mother right now!”

Well done, Alastor thinks sarcastically, furious with himself now. He can’t even think straight, head still swimming with perversions he’d never thought himself capable of. His thoughts don’t sound like his own voice, or maybe they do, but in an accent he’d shed years ago. Thoughts of his mother are gonna be a great help in gettin’ him hard again.

He needs to leave. Whatever happened here can be left in the past where it belongs, and he can forget it even occurred. He’ll go back to the hotel and give himself the saddest orgasm he’s ever experienced, put it up as a loss, and comfort himself in his defectiveness.

“Wait—Alastor, where are you going?” Vox sounds panicked, and even as Alastor begins to make his shameful, unsteady way to the edge of the bed, he can hear the bastard start to follow.

“I have work in the morning, unlike some people.” It’s a low blow, but that’s okay. Vox likes those. Or at least, he cries over them, and that’s probably the same thing.

“Please, Al—Al, no, don’t move. Don’t get up.” Vox is on his hands and knees, drooling and snotty and putrid. He chases Alastor to the edge of the bed, blubbering all the way. “I’ll die if you go, please, I have fingers. I have a tongue. I’ll make it so good, please, I’ll kill myself if you don’t have a good time. God, Al, please—“

“For God’s sake, you animal, pull yourself together,” Alastor snarls. His legs are shaking too badly to bear his weight, and in this state he doesn’t trust himself to teleport through his shadows without losing a limb (the last time he tried it, he left an entire arm behind). So with no escape in sight and a desperate need to finish himself off before he decides eating Vox’s innards are a suitable substitute to an orgasm, he comes to an executive decision. “Get over here, then. And no tongue, that’s vile.”

Vox rushes over without a hint of shame but with more joy than anyone ought ever to hold in their body, looking for all the world like a cherub, if cherubs were tall, toned, pathetic, and bearing a penis Alastor suspects Vox picked out himself, though he may never be able to prove it. It’s stupidly large enough to be an ego purchase, at any rate, and he’s fairly certain it’s changed sizes at least once over the last four weeks. If they are interchangeable, his only hope is that this isn’t the same one Vox used to fuck Valentino with.

Desperate to rid himself of that train of thought, Alastor lays down and spreads his legs. Control. Take control. “Vox, make yourself useful. No tongue.”

“Can I finger you? I mean, actually put them inside?” Vox asks. He looks manic.

Already regretting it, Alastor says: “Yes.”

It’s less gentle when Vox touches him this time. He has his thumb on Alastor’s dick before he can bite down on his arm again, massaging in tight circles. It’s so intense it feels like he’s coming, and he must have made a noise because Vox is whispering, “God, please do that again. You’re so good for me, Al.”

He thrashes his head to one side, tearing at the sheets. He’s speaking without even meaning to, a litany of no no no no no falling from his lips, even as he lifts a hand to dig his claws into Vox’s wrist so that he can’t stop, can’t pull away. He’s hot all over and his skin is crawling, and he thinks he might come from this alone, he might—

“Shh.” Vox stops moving, lifts his thumb away from where Alastor needs him. “Deep breaths. You’re getting all freaky on me.”

His antlers have expanded to their full width without his noticing, and when he drags in a lungful of air he realizes he was hyperventilating. “I—shit.”

He’s ruined the sheets, which can only be considered a positive, but the headboard has gouges dug into it and that is much harder to hide from certain business partners.

“I think that was too much.” Vox looks chagrined. Alastor wants to devour him wholesale. “I’ll stick to fingering you for now.”

His breath is still coming too quickly, but Alastor isn’t about to stop now. He’s getting frustrated with how long the night has dragged on for. He hasn’t made Vox cry in any way that matters, nothing that will crush his ego into dust, and without Vox’s post-coital meltdown, Alastor has most certainly not had time to rub out his own sad little bathroom consolation prize. “Then get the fuck over here,” he hisses, grabbing Vox by the shoulders and forcing him close, “and fuck me already.”

It’s almost anticlimactic when Vox finally slides a finger in his hole, because Alastor is so wet the friction he needs is entirely unattainable. He didn’t know what he was expecting from having another person inside of him for the first time, but never in his life or afterlife had he entertained the idea of it being an incessant demand for more.

The second finger is better. He can feel the stretch, almost a burn, and when Vox presses deep and crooks against something inside him that aches like nothing he’s felt before, he asks for a third. And that—that is good.

“You’re so wet and hot around me,” Vox moans, flushed so deeply it’s as if he’s the one with three fingers stuffed inside of him, pressing and probing and curling. Alastor can’t stop moving his hips like he’s riding Vox’s hand, and when he reaches down to touch the place where Vox has him stretched tight and wet and aching, he cries out something that almost sounds like Vox’s name. “I wanna fuck you so bad, Al. I’d fill you up so good. I want your pussy, your ass, stretch you out until you come screaming…you think this is me fucking you? God, just wait. Just wait. I’ll make you forget your own name.”

“I want it,” Alastor cries like it’s a confession. His eyes feel hot and his chest is heaving. He wants Vox to touch him, to fuck him. He wants him so deep he can taste him. “I want you.”

He’s close, so close. His mind is blank beyond more and good and please. He thinks he might be crying. Vox is chanting something, maybe a prayer, but Alastor doesn’t care anymore. He’s nothing but sensation now. He knows only the way Vox’s fingers move inside of him, pressing and curling like he’s searching for God. It hurts. It’s good, and it hurts, and he can feel his breath pitching higher, and higher, each exhalation little more than a moan. Vox forces his thighs open where they try to close and drives a forearm down over his chest to stop his back arching, so that he can’t shy his hips away. Alastor bites through his bottom lip. His thighs are quaking and the insides of his knees are sweating. Vox adds another finger, and the stretch burns like the fire of a thousand suns, pressing deep, all the way to where he’s aching the most. He’s so close he can taste it. And he still can’t get over the edge.

“Look at me.”

He can’t understand the words, doesn’t know English.

The arm leaves his chest, a hand sliding up his throat and to his face, forcing his chin down. Alastor can barely get his eyes to focus enough to meet Vox’s teary gaze.

“You’re doing so good.” He rolls a thumb over Alastor’s dick, and it’s so intense he nearly sobs. “Let go, Al. It’s okay. Let go.”

The thumb is moving in circles now, tight and hard and perfect. His hips rise to meet it. His mind is gone, just more more more. He’s—he’s—

His eyes flutter, flooding black even as they roll back in his skull, and a hot wave pierces through him, building and building and building until he comes with a cry entirely consumed by radio static.

-

His lip is bleeding, lending a metallic tang to the water he’s desperately chugging, but even though he despises the taste of his own blood, he’s too thirsty to stop. His throat is raw like he’d been screaming, tongue a dead fish in his mouth. Even his teeth feel dehydrated.

“You need another?” Vox asks, watching in vague bemusement, or maybe horror. Or arousal. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Alastor drains the bottle and crushes it so violently Vox winces. “Yes.” Even his voice is hoarse.

He thinks he blacked out after coming, but his head is spinning too much to know for sure. He feels wrung out. His thighs are still shaking, hips already bruising where Vox grabbed him, and there’s a part of his cunt that won’t stop twitching, almost like the frantic beating of a heart that doesn’t yet know it’s been unearthed from behind a set of ribs. The fur from his tail to the apex of his thighs is sticky. It feels akin to blood in its partially dry phase, tacky and easy to pill, almost like sandpaper in its roughness. His skin complains when he tries to pick away some of the more dry pieces, scraping at it with his claws.

“Here, I brought you a washcloth.”

Vox taps his wrist with a single finger before pressing a warm cloth into his hand. In the other, he holds a fresh water bottle, so cold it’s almost frozen. Alastor takes both and presses the bottle to his neck, balancing it between his jaw and shoulder as he lifts himself on one knee to wipe away the worst of the mess. It’s rough going when his limbs won’t cooperate and his balance is all wrong. The mattress is so soft he can’t seem to get the position right.

“Would it be okay if I helped you?” Vox is back on the bed, and even though he’s technically more than a foot away, it still feels too close. Alastor imagines killing and eating him. He doesn’t know if he’d regret it. “And maybe you should eat something, you seem a little…”

Fifteen minutes ago, Vox had four fingers buried in his cunt, nearly drove him to the brink of insanity, and gave him an orgasm so intense he lost consciousness. Alastor supposes he can allow the humiliation to continue a few minutes more.

He rolls onto his back without a word and lets his thighs fall open. Vox moves to sit between them so fast it’s almost unnerving, eyes bright and hungry as though he didn’t just finish having sex. But even in his visible greed, he’s gentle. Alastor has never been kind to him after he comes, has spent the last month delighting in doling out verbal evisceration as Vox spends in his pants like a schoolboy. It would be only fair for Vox to return the favor; quid pro quo. But Vox is careful as he dabs away the lingering wetness, ignores the way Alastor moans when he parts the lips of his cunt to wipe down his hole and soothe his sore dick. It’s all very embarrassing for Vox, really. It almost makes Alastor want to try for another round.

“What time is it?” he asks before things start getting too heated. Vox is hard and leaking, and even though Alastor knows he’s critically low on calories, blood sugar, nicotine, and sanity, he’s starting to think a second orgasm really would be welcome. He needs to shut this down before it (he) can spiral further.

“Just after three,” says Vox. His face is flushed but he’s rather professional in his administrations. Well, almost. Alastor very graciously did not bite his head off when he tried his luck tracing the tip of a claw around the base of his dick, or the way he dipped that same finger a little too far into his hole right after. But it was a near thing. “You probably have to get going soon, don’t you?”

“Don’t sound so glum, dear,” Alastor says. He moves the water bottle onto his cheek and tries to make it seem like an accident when he drapes a wrist over his eyes, hiding his face. He’s going to regret having ever come here by dawn, when he has to get up and go to work. “You know I’ll come back.”

Because he will. He will come back. Possibly even tomorrow.

“Yeah. I-I know.” Vox sounds downcast, but when Alastor dares to check he sees a fragile little smile on his face. “It’s kind of the only thing I’ve got going for me right now.”

“How embarrassing.”

“Between that and wanting to die, I think I’ll take the embarrassment.” He sets the washcloth aside at long last and sits back on his heels, which Alastor takes as his cue to stop sprawling on another man’s bed like a whore. It’s a profession like any other, but the less association between him and sex, the better.

His legs hold him steady for the most part, so he gets to his feet and begins casting about for his trousers. His briefs are a loss, if only in that the idea of Niffty seeing the state he left them in makes him want to throw up his own spleen, but it’s a hard choice. A walk of shame back to the hotel in nothing but his trousers, especially ones that cling to his cunt like a second skin, sounds like a lovely way to break his own ego beyond repair. The thought of putting on a pair of underwear so drenched in his own wetness that he could have wrung it out over Vox’s flat face is even worse. Caught between a rock and a hard place (ha ha ha), he decides it’s a day of magnanimity.

He's halfway through stepping back into his trousers as he says over his shoulder, almost as if it’s an afterthought, “You may keep my briefs, dearest Vox, if it pleases you.”

And if he has to hold his breath not to laugh when Vox lets loose a truly pathetic arousing whimper, well. No one has to know.