Archive of Our Own

He doesn’t mind his own company. It’s infinitely preferable to listening to Vox yapping in his ear all day, or to everyone arguing, or berating their employees. Truly, the silence is a blessing, and Alastor is only too happy to fill it with soft, crackly jazz and relax. 

Most of the day passes that way, as far as he can tell. It’s verging on what he’s reasonably sure is night time when Alastor hears footsteps outside, someone in heavy boots clomping their way towards the door. 

“Finally,” he chirps as the basement door swings open a foot or so. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d—“

Something solid and faintly soft-sounding thumps on the floor, and the door slams shut again. Confused, Alastor blinks, looking around in the darkness. It feels…newly strange in here, somehow. Different, suddenly, as if there’s someone else in the room. Or, his mind helpfully supplies, something. 

“Hello? If you’ve been dumped in here with me, whoever you are, do make yourself known! I would dearly love to make your acquaintance.” 

Two glowing red eyes lock onto his from the bottom of the basement steps. Alastor’s jazz music chokes off in an ungainly wail of saxophones as he freezes up, his body locking helplessly into position on his chair. 

From the darkness, he hears a low, ominous growl, and the part of him that yearns for the forest behind the Louisiana bayou that he knows as home kicks out and floods him with ice-cold terror. Predator, it says. Run. 

Alastor cannot run. 

He’d never actually felt the jaws of the hunting dog that had found his body. A bullet to the head had made quick work of him, and all he knows from then on is waking up in Hell. But he’d heard the dog, right before the shot; that savage bark of a predator sighting their prey. And he’d woken up in a body ravaged with pale scars, so it had been only too easy to extrapolate his fate. Mistaken for a deer, and then torn to pieces by a hound expecting a larger quarry. The hunter would have been slow to call off his beast, expecting it only to make sure that the deer had been dead before returning to his side. By the time the man realised what was going on, Alastor is tremendously certain that his body had been long since ruined. He wonders, sometimes, how long it took them to identify him from the remains. It’s not a pleasant thought. 

“Easy,” he says softly, the word popping with static in his fear. “Easy, there’s a good dog…” 

The growl renews itself. Alastor can’t see the beast beyond those red eyes, but he can picture it well enough. Vicious, sharp teeth in a jaw designed for ripping meat to shreds, a hulking body with powerful legs and claws for pinning. And Alastor smells like a deer, he knows he does. 

“Vox!” He raises his voice to a shout, pulsing his cry of alarm out through the distant radio waves to boost it through as much of V Tower as he can. There’s every chance, Alastor is aware, that Vox is the one who has left him in here with this predator. But on the off-chance that he’s not, that this is someone else’s stupid assassination attempt, he is horribly compelled to try and save himself. 

The growl turns into a staccato bark. Once, twice, three times- and then claws skitter on the floor, and Alastor hears the thump of running paws on the concrete. Horror-terror-doom floods his system; he’s filled with bitter adrenaline, his body assessing a million ways out and immediately concluding that every single one of them is impossible whilst he’s tied to a chair. His antlers stretch and grow on instinct, his body morphing and pushing at its boundaries in a desperate attempt to get away. 

Nothing works. He’s going to die. 

The hellhound collides with his side in a horrible flying leap, sending the wheelie chair lurching sideways and clattering onto the floor. There’s teeth in his shoulder, puncturing his clothes and biting deep into flesh and muscle. The pain takes a moment to hit, and when it does, it’s burning hot and tastes like his own blood. 

Alastor fills the air with microphone feedback, the whining, awful squeal of it echoing through the room, the building, probably halfway down the block. The dog doesn’t let go. 

He thrashes as best he can, but it’s as impossible to break free from Vox’s wires as it would be for a captive to extricate themselves from his own tentacles. He is bound to this chair by the terms of their deal, and it’s going to kill him. 

The hellhound’s claws are tearing at him, scrabbling at his thighs and leaving long, bloody rips in his skin. It gets bored of chewing on his shoulder after a time, and settles for grabbing his arm and shaking it like it’s trying to kill the limb. It makes a sickening sound, the crack of a joint being wrenched somewhere it shouldn’t. The whole time, the dog is growling, and Alastor’s deer hindbrain is flooding his system with the worst chemical cocktail of panic and terror and biological despair that he’s ever, ever felt. The air smells like viscera, metallic and brutal. 

He’s still making noise, the shrieks and whines of a microphone being abused. No other sound feels possible; this just emits from him, uncontrollable, the purest expression of his helplessness. The dog doesn’t like it. A front paw claws at his face, and Alastor feels gashes open up across his cheek and down his neck. They’re minor compared to his other wounds, but they bleed. 

Something in the back of his mind snaps. Overloaded, overwhelmed, near-certainly on the edge of death, some part of him gives up on conscious thought and goes limp. He’s fought, and he’s lost. The animal on top of him is ripping at his skin, and the pain is decimating his ability to process anything. The world is white-hot and heavy and smells like old meat and saliva. He’s going to die in a dark basement and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it. 

The dog’s jaws finally find his neck. They settle for a moment, and Alastor feels deep pressure, then pain—

Something yelps, and the weight lifts. He can’t see; there’s blood dripping from a cut on his forehead down into his eyes, and it’s still so dark. He’s choking on the air that his body wants to pull into his lungs. He can’t quite make his terrified deer brain accept that he’s still alive. 

“Whoa,” comes a voice from the darkness. His vision blurred, Alastor sees the faint blue glow of a screen. Vox. That’s Vox. Vox is here, Vox has…saved him? Instinctive disgust flickers through his stomach, and is immediately drowned out by a wave of relieved nausea so strong that he’s retching bitter yellow bile onto the floor beside his head before he can even process what’s going on. 

“Easy,” Vox says, and Alastor blinks wildly until some of the blood clears from his vision. Vox’s screen swims into clearer view. His expression is one of concern; Alastor can’t tell if it’s real or mocking, can’t take cues from the rest of Vox’s body language. It’s too dark. He doesn’t know what’s happened to the dog. The squeal of feedback starts up again, echoing uncertainly around the dark basement. 

“Easy,” Vox says again. Alastor remembers saying that to the hellhound just minutes ago. It hadn’t worked on that animal, and it’s not working on this one, either. “Hang on. Lemme just…” 

The wires around Alastor retract immediately, and he slides into a boneless heap on the floor. Static crackles across his body; he wants to be alone, but he can’t leave. His right arm feels useless, and his throat isn’t working right, and he’s bleeding from a dozen places or more, and he still can’t convince his mind that he isn’t dying. 

Vox lays hands on him, and Alastor flinches instinctively. He feels himself being carefully moved- away from the chair, away from the stinking pile of vomit. He’s laid out on the floor a short distance away, and he feels like a ragdoll in Vox’s grip. 

He still doesn’t know what’s happened to the dog. 

“What- where—“ It’s hard to speak through his bruised throat, and the words come out barely audible through terrified, buzzing static. He can’t clear the radio filter at all, doesn’t have the mental energy. 

“I took care of it, babe.” Vox leans in, looking him over, and Alastor sees him grimace dramatically. “Fuckin’ hell, that thing did a number on you. You’re a mess, Al.” 

Alastor manages a quiet, somewhat manic laugh. Yes, thank you, he had noticed that. 

Vox’s hands smooth over the centre of his torso. Thanks to his wire bindings, that part of him has mostly escaped the claws and teeth. The rest of him, on the other hand, has not been nearly so lucky. 

“Fuck. If you were still human, I think you’d lose that arm,” Vox says, prodding at it with one careful claw. “I can see your bones. Gross.” 

Even the light touch of Vox’s hand stings at what feels like every single nerve on the right side of his body. Alastor can feel bite marks deep into the shoulder joint, and more lower down, savaging his skin and muscle and wrecking the tendons. Any attempt to move his arm, to so much as twitch a finger, feels like lighting himself on fire. 

Lower down, Vox seems to have discovered the claw marks covering his thighs. Alastor shivers as he feels hands slide over his hips, Vox’s eyes wide as he takes in the damage. His screen is still the only light in the darkness, and Alastor can’t look away from it. 

“So fuckin’ weird seeing you bleed this much,” Vox murmurs. “Shit, Al, it’s kind of beautiful.” 

Before Alastor can think of what to say to that, he feels Vox’s claws fit themselves gently into the tops of the long wounds on his thighs. Vox drags his hands down, so careful to stay within the cuts, and Alastor feels the raw nerve pain like fifty thousand volts to the base of his spine. He jerks against the floor, eyes wide and shocked, breath hitching in his chest. He thinks he might be sick again, but it never quite comes. 

Vox’s eyes flick back to his face. There’s something dark in them, something hungry. Out of the frying pan, Alastor thinks suddenly, and straight into the fire. 

“Vincent,” Alastor says, his smile gritted into place quite desperately. He needs to be anywhere other than here. He needs to be left alone to heal; even the worst wounds will be gone within a week or two, but for now, he needs to be alone. It’s the only thing that will quiet the kicking, shrieking deer in the back of his skull, he knows it. 

“It’s okay,” Vox says. “I’ve got you now.” 

“Please get me out of here!” His useless arm burns, his savaged legs too shaky to stand on. Alastor needs help, as utterly loathe as he is to admit it. There’s a line to walk, here; he knows Vox is manipulatable, eager for any scrap of adoration. But, with that dangerous look in his eyes, Alastor is only too aware of what will happen if he gets the balance wrong. 

“I will,” Vox says, not moving. His hands are still on Alastor’s thighs, claws at the bottom of the wounds. He lifts one of them, now, studying the blood painting the tips of his own talons. Alastor sees it in light and shadow, Vox’s hand a dark shape against the backdrop of his glowing face. 

“Please,” Alastor tries again. He’s already Vox’s captive, and his mind still thinks he’s dying; a little begging is nothing compared to that. Humiliation is for people who aren’t sick with adrenaline and pain, who aren’t stripped of half their powers and bleeding in dark basements. 

From the corner of the room, a low growl. Alastor’s animal heart seizes in his chest. 

“I said, I will.” Vox’s eyes flash, and his shark grin turns horribly menacing. “When I’m done with you, baby. That’s all. You can wait.” 

Alastor still doesn’t know whether it’s Vox who set the dog on him, or if Vox is simply a shameless opportunist taking advantage of someone else’s clumsy attempt to kill his rival. It’s a brutal, messy plan, ugly and full of risk, with far too many variables to be reliable. And, Alastor realises with a terrible, cold, sinking feeling, he’s completely trapped by it anyway. 

He lifts his one working arm to his face, scrubbing the blood from his eyes. Before he can put it back down, there’s a cable around his wrist, and Vox is pinning the limb above his head. 

“Hold still while I’m looking you over, Bambi. Be a good little deer.” 

Alastor’s smile falters, but remains. He considers struggling; his eyes dart to the corner of the basement, where he can just about make out those two sickeningly vicious red eyes. The hellhound must be restrained, held in Vox’s wires. Vox can release it any time he likes. 

Alastor holds still like a good little deer. 

Vox’s claws hook into his shirt, ripping it open and pulling it off. The dim green glow of Alastor’s own stitches holding together his chest wound join the blue of Vox’s screen, still too feeble to illuminate anything more than their immediate surroundings. Alastor can’t even see the extent of his own injuries, but he can feel them, pain throbbing through him with every frenetic beat of his heart.

“Fear looks good on you, babe. Anyone ever told you that? Your eyes are all…fucked up, your pupils look wrong. Ha. Surprised you didn’t fuckin’ piss yourself when it got your neck. Heard that animals do that sometimes. You’ve got bruises…” 

Vox’s hand smooths up his chest, fingertips grazing the bloodied red fur near his right shoulder. Alastor feels himself melt around the edges, radio waves overcoming him for a moment as he fizzes into static. It doesn’t last long; he doesn’t have the energy for it. He can’t drag himself out of here. 

One fingertip on his neck presses against a series of small spots in turn, each one pulsing with the dull ache of a bruise. The dog’s jaws half-crushed his windpipe- Alastor can feel it in every laboured inhalation, damaged skin and blood vessels now swelling his throat to the point where it hurts to breathe, to speak, to scream. It’s getting worse. 

His eyes dart again to the corner of the room. Vox catches his stolen glance, grins even wider. 

“I won’t let it go. Promise, babe. You have my word, that thing’s staying in the corner.” He pauses there, leaves Alastor hanging for just long enough to make him sick with a sudden lurch of hope. “Unless! You decide to misbehave. Then, I dunno, all bets are off. Who knows what might happen? We clear?” 

Alastor tries to answer, but it only comes out in a swollen, staticky hiss, and there’s no speaker down here that he can project his voice into. He nods, slowly, just once. 

“Good.” Vox leans down, and Alastor feels the thick, tentacular muscle of his tongue dragging through the cuts on his thigh. His trousers are shredded beyond repair; there’s plenty of room for Vox to press closer, to nuzzle at the wounds. Every time he ducks his face too low, the room goes completely dark. 

Alastor’s hand flexes in the cable holding it tight. His fist clenches and releases, and he hisses a long, pained sigh through his teeth. Vox’s tongue is bitterly unpleasant, and worse, it’s reminding him of the damned dog. It’s that same harsh, hot breath on his skin, the same slick saliva smeared across his raw, injured flesh. It’s making his heart rate pick up harder, and there’s not a thing he can do to stop it. 

Vox makes a soft noise, something like a moan. Alastor thinks, frantically, that he’s never related more to Vox’s bizarre selection of perversions. This, he can understand. The thrill of the hunt, of captured prey pinned down and bleeding and afraid at your feet; it’s the closest he comes to sexual pleasure on a regular basis, the thing that curls pleasantly through his mind as he drifts off at night. 

His understanding does not, under any circumstances, mean that he wants to be on this side of the equation. 

“Baby,” Vox murmurs, his face pressed against Alastor’s bloodied thighs. “I think I get why you eat people, now. Does it always taste this fuckin’ good?” 

Alastor can only wheeze bitterly into the air, a sound comprised of radio static and sad flickers of jazz. What a time to discover that they have something in common, even if he strongly suspects that Vox’s fixation on blood goes no further than when it belongs to Alastor himself. Alastor knows Vox’s own little obsession better than Vox does, he’d stake his life on it. 

“Yeah…c’mon, let me take care of you. Fuck, Al, can’t help myself when you’re laid out like that all…sexy and scared and vulnerable. Shit. I need you.” Vox pulls back, and there’s blood on his screen, small parts of the blue dimmed by smears of the stuff in a grotesque chiaroscuro. 

This is exactly what Alastor had been afraid of. His gaze flickers along his own body in the darkness, the bloodied parts of it stained black in the harsh cyan glow from Vox’s face. The pain in his right arm is so bad that he can’t keep his attention off of it for more than a few seconds at a time; his focus rises and falls in a wave, reminders of his situation crashing over him again and again. 

Vox is ripping the rest of his clothing to shreds. He brushes aside what’s left of Alastor’s trousers and underwear, leaving him fully exposed to the dingy basement air. For a moment, he sits back, and Alastor sees nothing but his smug face, the rest of him retreating into sinister darkness. 

Then, without the slightest regard for the way that Alastor’s thighs are ripped to bloody shreds, Vox grabs his legs and forces them up and back. The sudden pain of being folded practically in half wrenches a hitched scream from Alastor’s swollen throat, the sound of an injured deer, his eyes blanking out into dizzy static. 

“Easy, Bambi,” Vox murmurs, shuffling back until he’s practically lying on the floor. “This’ll take your mind off things.” 

The long, thick tongue dragging up the crack of his arse and prodding at the tight hole does not take Alastor’s mind off things. Frankly, he’s not sure that anything would save for perhaps an actual Biblical miracle, and those are in short supply down here. 

Vox presses closer, that alien tongue pushing forcefully past the tight ring of muscle, and the room goes dark. There’s nothing, no light except for the faint stitches holding his scarred chest together. And, Alastor remembers, the glowing eyes watching him from the corner. 

The hellhound has been awfully quiet. Animals aren’t given to speech, Alastor is aware of this (and equally, painfully aware of his own current lack of voice), but that thing had been panting and barking and growling to no end when it had been busy trying to rip him to shreds. Now, bound by whatever Vox has done to it, it sits in silence and just watches. 

He wonders, for a moment, just how much control Vox has over the infernal beast. 

And then, before he can bring that thought anywhere more interesting, Vox shoves his tongue deep. Alastor jerks on the floor, his body jolting in a way that is entirely and unpleasantly out of his control. He hisses, struggles, and is rewarded with nothing but the intense, burning pain of his ruined arm twitching in ways that it really shouldn’t be right now. He feels like a marionette, helplessly dancing on strings, or perhaps like a too-small creature caught in a bear trap. 

Vox hums, wrapping his hands tighter around Alastor’s thighs. His claws are digging into the deep gashes in Alastor’s skin, and every point of contact feels like it’s burning and electrified all at once. The pain of shredded muscle, flesh, and nerves is so startlingly, exquisitely raw; Alastor feels it full-body, so intense that he wants to cry out. He can’t, though, his voice temporarily stolen from him by the crushing grip of canine jaws around his throat. It feels like it’s somehow still swelling, his breaths coming in increasingly ragged gasps. 

There shouldn’t be enough blood in his body to produce a physical reaction to sexual stimuli, Alastor is sure. He’s covered in the stuff, can feel it sticky and cold on the floor beneath his back, the air rich and heavy with the metallic scent of it. He is a mess, and he is weak with the extent of his injuries. 

Still, as Vox fucks him open on his tongue, Alastor knows his cock is getting hard. It’s unwelcome, and very literally dizzying, but infuriatingly biological. He loathes being beholden to his body, has taken every step to become a creature who rarely ever has to be, and still, Vox finds new ways to bring him low. Alastor would be impressed if he wasn’t so busy hating every second of this. 

That long, blue tongue continues to writhe. Alastor can feel it curling through his insides, stretching him open, bringing a bizarre kind of pleasure-pain that jars and snags up against the straightforward agony that the rest of his nerves are producing. Adrift and unmoored in space by the endless darkness, this strange, sharp war inside his body is rendered all the more disconcerting. 

Vox pulls his tongue out, and light returns to the world. The light is, unfortunately, red and blue and hungry, Vox’s eyes enormous and glittering. His screen sparks magenta around his mouth, glitched pixels glowing brighter than the blood that’s still smeared across his screen. 

Alastor watches his hands disappear into darkness, hears him fumble for a zipper. Moments later, a second light source emerges, the veins of Vox’s cock pulsing a soft cyan. The damn thing is huge, and Alastor knows he’s nowhere close to being properly prepared for it. 

“Vincent…” He gets the name out barely above a whisper, his gritted smile tensing harder at the pain of speaking. He can’t manage another word; all he can do is shake his head. 

Vox raises an eyebrow, wraps a hand around his cock, and glances towards the corner of the room. He doesn’t even have to speak; the silent message is clear enough to make Alastor's remaining blood run cold all by itself. 

He blinks up at Vox, terrified, and nods his head. Fine. If it’s between this or the dog, he’ll take this. Every time. 

“Thought so,” Vox says. “Poor little deer’s all at my mercy, now, aren’t you? Fuck, you’re so hot in a pool of your own fuckin’ blood. Al, baby, I am gonna make you scream.” 

He pushes forwards, bullying his way closer between Alastor’s bleeding thighs, and lines his cock up to shove it all the way inside. 

Having Vox’s tongue inside him, Alastor realises, had been a mercy. For one thing, it had kept Vox quiet for a blissful few minutes. And for another, it had hurt so, so much less than this. 

Vox’s cock feels like a knife. It feels like a chainsaw. It feels like any number of damned awful large sharp things jammed all the way up into his intestines, rutting back and forth in short, dragging thrusts because there isn’t nearly enough lubrication down there to fuck all the way in and out each time. The deer in the back of his head takes it all and is exhausted, half-dead, still so bitterly afraid. 

“Fuck, baby,” Vox is moaning, and Alastor hears it even over the way the pain and blood loss is making his heart pound in his ears. He can feel his physical form crackling into dark static around the edges, and it’s such a strange sensation in his ruined arm that it almost distracts him from how much everything hurts. 

And fuck, everything hurts so much. Alastor feels it in metronomes, a half dozen of them at least, all swinging to wildly different metres in this strange, clashing music of agony. His heartbeat is the fastest pulse, a constant thump-thump that spikes the raw, sharp pain that’s assaulting his every nerve. Each injury has its own unique rhythm as well, his throat and legs and arm and face all sparking and throbbing and aching on beat. Vox’s cock inside him is the only external pulse, each and every off-tempo thrust jolting his body and making him feel like he’s being vivisected, opened up right down the middle and flayed little by little. 

“God, you’re so tight.” Vox spits in his hand, uses it to lubricate his own cock, and it helps for a whole few seconds before the pain returns again. “Fuck. You ever taken cock like this before, Bambi?” 

He has, believe it or not, out of curiosity. It had been much more pleasant than this, if not exceptional enough to make it a particularly frequent habit. Alastor stares at Vox, and hopes that his tight, tense smile conveys every word of that sentiment. This is the worst sex he’s ever had, and Vox is the one inflicting it upon him. 

Vox doesn’t seem to get the message. He groans, grabbing Alastor’s hips and rearing back to pound into him all the more fervently. He looks, from Alastor’s point of view, like some sort of strange, looming ghost; a rectangular screen high above him, hints of a body occasionally flickering into view in the dim light. 

He casts his gaze over to the corner again. Still, those two red eyes watch tirelessly. Alastor finds himself wondering what the hellhound is thinking; it is, itself, an animal, but it’s not the creature getting fucked on the floor in a pool of its own blood. That, to his eternal distaste, is all him. 

He tips his head back, straining his bruised throat, and closes his eyes. Amidst the pain, there’s a thready pull of unwanted pleasure, a sharp line going straight from the brutal head of Vox’s cock to his own. He’s going to orgasm like this sooner or later, a creature in its own filth, ruined and savage and helpless. He feels terrifyingly like he belongs in a cage. 

“Fucking look at me, Bambi,” Vox snarls, his voice as low and threatening as the growls of his dog. Maybe his dog. Alastor still isn’t sure, and it hardly seems to matter anymore. He opens his eyes again, meets Vox’s feral gaze. 

“There you go, babe. That’s more like it. Fuck. You wanna cum? You look like you do. Who’d have thought you were such a fuckin’ masochist, huh? Ain’t that cute?” Vox really, truly, never shuts up. Half of his words wash straight over Alastor like water, just another grating irritation to add to the pile of deep, sickly pain. 

Alastor is tired, he realises. It’s the blood loss and the shock, it must be; everything hurts and his cock is hard, he has no physical reason to be tired aside from the fact that so much of a substance meant to be inside him is now outside and drying stickily on the floor. It’s getting more difficult to keep his eyes open, even as Vox fucks him harder, faster, chasing his own pleasure with a desperate intensity that hurts, hurts, hurts. 

A thin, weak sound escapes him; maybe a moan, maybe a mewl. He can’t tell. Vox hears it, though, and those hungry eyes flare and flicker bright with the predatory thrill of the chase. 

“That’s it, baby,” he coos, reaching up a hand to stroke Alastor’s cock. His touch is rough, but absurdly pleasurable, and Alastor’s overworked nerves scarcely know what to do except fire more of everything they’ve got all at once. “You gonna cum for me? You can do it, c’mon. Let me take care of you properly. Show me what you look like when you lose your fucking mind.” 

Alastor’s nearly-spent deer hindbrain kicks out at him in a warning a second before the rest of him sees it. Like a viper poised to strike, the flash of a sparking cable catches his eye in the darkness, and it’s already too late to do anything about it. 

The plug at the end of the wire plunges into his ruined shoulder at the very moment his orgasm hits. Vox discharges enough electricity into him to make the air smell like ozone and burning, to turn the inside of Alastor’s eyelids blinding white. It’s like no pain he’s ever felt, infinitely worse than dying could ever be; he does scream properly, then, and it’s not a human noise. It’s all deer, the anguished shriek of a helpless prey animal, every nerve in his body alight with cold-hot-nothing. 

Somewhere in the midst of it all, his orgasm tails off with a helpless shiver of pleasure. His head spins, and the world lurches impossibly sideways. There’s a long, deep growl, and he’s not sure if it’s Vox or the dog, whether he’s being fucked or torn apart or what the difference between them even is, whether any of this is real. He sees blue, and then black, and then even those vague impressions slip away into the same nothingness as his bodily sensations. 

The world is empty, or perhaps he is no longer experiencing it, and Alastor cannot tell the difference anymore. 

——

Alastor wakes up tied to a chair. For one brief second, he is free of pain, and then it hits him with the unforgiving solidity of a brick wall. He coughs, the sound ragged and hacking and full of sizzling static. 

“Careful, babe.” Vox’s hands are on the sides of his face before he even opens his eyes. Alastor blinks dazedly up at him, finds that he’s no longer in the basement, that he can no longer taste his own blood in the back of his throat and scent it in the air. 

He’s been bandaged up, Alastor realises. His shredded thighs are wrapped tightly in VoxTek-blue dressings, and his entire right arm is immobilised, stabilised, and thoroughly un-gory. Underneath the wrappings, he can already feel it starting to heal. There’s even a neat little set of butterfly stitches on his slashed cheek and forehead. 

Someone has taken their time looking after him, and they’ve done it well. He could have done this himself, cleaned his ruined arm little by little, gritted his teeth through the pain and stitched up his own wounds, but someone has beaten him to it. 

Alastor looks up at Vox through clearer eyes. 

“You did this?” 

Vox actually blushes. 

“Yeah, you get attacked in my basement, ‘course I fuckin’ look after you. Who do you think I am?” 

The man who set the dog on me in the first place, Alastor does not say. 

“What did you do with that…animal?” 

“Got rid of it.” Vox turns away; Alastor can’t see his face as he answers. When he turns back, he’s holding a glass of water, and he carefully pokes the straw against Alastor’s smiling teeth. “Have some?” 

Alastor drinks obediently, because his throat feels like sandpaper. He remembers electricity, an orgasm, feeling like his soul had been wrenched clean out of his body. He’d screamed, then, just as base and animalistic as the dog that had mauled him. 

“Who let that thing loose?” He looks up at Vox. “I hope they know I’m going to eviscerate them!” 

Vox turns away again to set the glass down, and Alastor hears him laugh softly. He can’t tell if it’s guilty or bitter or angry, or some combination of all of the above. 

“I don’t doubt it,” he says, looking at Alastor again. “If I find ‘em, I’ll bring them to you, babe. Promise.” 

“Good.” He holds Vox’s gaze for a long, heavy moment. The promise of evisceration holds just as true if it was him who had procured the dog. Alastor wants that to be incandescently clear. 

Vox doesn’t break the eye contact. He reaches out, though, smoothing down a wayward strand of Alastor’s soft hair, and the tip of his claw scrapes just gently against one of Alastor’s antlers. Electric fear jolts through him, just for a millisecond, and his breath catches helplessly in the back of his throat. Prey. He is prey, and he is scared. 

“Get some rest, Al,” Vox says, and turns towards the door. 

Still wrangling his skittish heart rate back under control, Alastor sinks down in his chair. He still doesn’t know how to feel, what to think, but Vox is right. He does need to rest. 

Alastor looks down at the tight, careful bandages wrapped around his legs, and breathes out a shuddery sigh. He’ll figure this out later, and in the meantime, he will do his best to excise every last trace of glowing eyes and sharp teeth from his poor, frayed psyche. 

It’s going to be a long night.