Chapter Text
Vox's mood has been growing progressively more foul the whole day with each minute that ticks closer to that fucking Overlord meeting. Those pesky amorous feelings are fairly well dealt with thanks to his secret little escapade last night, but the seething anger snarls in his chest like a wild animal caged inside his ribs. The remainder of his hangover isn't helping. He's really not looking forward to walking into the same room as the smiling freak. At least his schedule is packed enough that his awful mood only has time to surface between meetings.
Actually, his schedule is packed enough that it's difficult to find the time for bathroom breaks. Usually that isn't a problem for him. Maybe he should watch how much coffee he's drinking. He pushes that thought to the back of his mind. He'll be fine; he has always been fine before. It's not like he's inexperienced with his own limits.
The meetings continue to slip by, and the assholes just keep prattling on and on and ON about the pending drop of new tech. Sure, it's important information, but it's largely information that Vox either already knows, or information that he has delegated to someone else to keep track of for him. By the last mind-numbing meeting, he can't decide whether he wants it to go faster or slower.
What ends up happening is that the presenter keeps fucking talking for 12 whole minutes past when the meeting was supposed to be over. Whatever he had been wishing for or not, it most certainly was not for this meeting to run over by this much. Vox cuts him off viciously.
"I'll thank you to keep an eye on the clock in the future, if you'd like to keep from having 200 volts of electricity pumped through the fluid in them," Vox snarls at the presenter, who startles into silence.
Vox stands. The presenter shies away from him warily. Vox smiles at him without an ounce of kindness.
"You have 10 seconds to wrap up. Chop chop."
"I'll- I'll just send a summary email with the highlights. That's all for today," the presenter says in a rush.
"Good! It had best be concise," Vox says with false cheer, and then immediately teleports via the security cameras down to the main lobby of Vee tower.
It's now 7 minutes past when he had ordered a limousine be ready out front to take him to the Overlord meeting. He had half hoped it might be late, because he could really use a trip to the bathroom before sitting through a car ride and then the fucking stupid meeting, but it's parked out front right where he had told the driver to be. Fine, he's only a little uncomfortable. He has sat through meetings in more discomfort than this and he's sure he'll have to again. He strolls out to the limo with annoyance putting a spring in his heels.
The first thing he does after plopping himself in the back of the limo is dig around in the drink cooler to pour himself a glass of bourbon. One glass, just a couple shots worth, is not going to fuck him up badly enough to affect his performance at the meeting. Hopefully, it'll loosen up the tight anger that grips his nerves and actually improve his performance. A little hair of the dog to soothe his hangover and lubricate his confidence is just what the doctor ordered.
Really, it's not even the actual meeting that he's dreading so badly. Once everyone is seated in a professional environment, Vox will be in exactly the sort of setting he's best equipped to handle, Alastor's pervasive presence aside. Business meetings are his bread and butter, and he could bullshit his way through them in his sleep. No, it's the entrance to and exit from said meeting that has his heart beating like it's trying to escape his chest. Those small interim periods are when he will have the least control over his environment, when Alastor will be the most unpredictable.
The drive itself is shorter than he would've liked, and it feels like no time at all before the limo slows to a stop in front of the towering building on neutral turf in which the meeting is to take place. Vox takes one last deep breath and steps out of the car. This is it. This is it, and he's going to be calm and collected about it, and no one but him will know that he can taste his own anxious heartbeat in his throat right now.
He sweeps the street with his gaze for any sign of that red fucker. No trace so far. That's about the best he can hope for. A deep, anxious dread settles over him. The absolute last thing he wants is to be caught one-on-one with Alastor. Every effort will need to be made to avoid encountering him in the hall, or Satan forbid getting stuck in the same elevator as him.
He proceeds inside the building, scoffing internally at the out of date decor. He would vastly prefer to just jump through the power grid and into the meeting room via his demonic powers, but transportation via demonic powers is highly frowned upon during Overlord meetings. Many Overlords can teleport in some capacity or another, and some Overlords' methods are more destructive of property than others. The only fair way to deal with that on neutral turf is a complete ban on teleportation.
Vox pulls out his phone and slips into an elevator with Zeezi, who towers over him, taking up most of the space in the small enclosure. She shoots him a glare like she had expected to have the elevator to herself. Vox completely ignores her and scrolls Vitter. She can deal with sharing with one other person. It's unlikely that a second person (read: Alastor's touch-averse deer ass) would dare to squeeze in.
The elevator doors slide shut, and Vox ignores Zeezi's huff as she crosses her arms over her chest and looks away from him. He's too relieved at the absence of Alastor's presence on his elevator trip up to care about her annoyance.
The trip up is short, and when the doors open, the teeth of Alastor related anxiety bite right back into his gut. He tries to make it as casual as possible when he drops his phone back in his pocket and scans the hallway. It's lined with other elevator doors, which other Overlords step out of as their elevators arrive at the correct floor. Vox forces himself not to hold his breath as he walks with measured confidence past each one of them, dreading the mere possibility that Alastor might be the next to exit from each doorway he passes.
Rosie steps out of the doors two paces in front of Vox, and he feels the panic rise in his gullet that Alastor might step out right after. The Overlord of Cannibal Town gives him a polite nod when she notices his intense gaze fixed on her, and then she turns with grace to walk ahead of him to the meeting room. Her elevator door closes.
She had been riding alone. Thank fuck.
Vox continues his carefully casual pace into the meeting room and takes a neutral seat along one of the sides of the table, all without any Alastor interference at all. Finally, fucking finally, the deepest threads of dread braided through his gut start to unravel. That's the first half of the uncertainty dealt with, just with the simple factor that he has made it to his seat without undue attention of any kind.
As the deeply carved Alastor anxiety finally lets up, he is reminded of his own physical discomfort. Fuck. He'd forgotten to use the bathroom on his way up here.
Well, shit. Maybe there's still time to slip back out? It would look odd to take his seat and immediately abandon it, but maybe he could play it off as simply deciding that this particular chair is less than satisfactory. Yeah, that's a decent plan of action. He braces himself to stand.
Then it hits him: Alastor's ever-pervasive presence. His radio waves wash over Vox like an ocean of seltzer water. It prickles in a completely unexpected category of overstimulation. He had been expecting open, sandpapery aggression, but this is more like pointed indifference. Static pops unintentionally between Vox's antennae for a moment before he is able to swallow the feeling down.
Alastor is the last demon to stroll into the room shortly after his signal indicates his approach, side by side with Zestial. The two take their seats, and Carmilla clinks up to the head of the table in her ballerina butcher's knife slippers. No time to slip out before the meeting now. Fine. These meetings never last more than an hour or so anyway. He can easily manage an hour.
"Now, Alastor, I understand you requested this meeting be called because you had news to share regarding your new... pet project?" Carmilla asks, hands clasped behind her back.
"Yes, my dear, yes indeed! I think the present crowd would quite like to hear about this new news," that stupid radio filtered fucker asserts cheerfully.
Vox stops himself from scoffing. It's not new news, not to him and the other Vees. Pentious' arrival in heaven had been confirmed a couple weeks ago.
"Very well," Carmilla says with a sweeping gesture of one arm. "Then I cede the floor to you."
Alastor springs cheerfully out of his seat to stroll to the front of the room, stupid cane twirling in his stupid dexterous fingers.
"I thank you all for coming, a pleasure, quite a pleasure to have your undivided attention!"
Vox pulls out his phone and opens Vitter again just to spite him. The first thing in his feed is a post about an albino shark, and he's annoyed that the ocean just reminds him of his increasingly prominent discomfort.
Ok, maybe an hour will be pushing it a little. He contemplates asking for a break halfway, and then ditches the thought. That probably won't be necessary. Hopefully.
"I am here on behalf of Charlie, who bids me to share the wonderful news of her hotel. I'm sure she would have been here to share it herself had she not been so dreadfully busy!"
Alastor tosses his microphone from one hand to the other, looking into it as he says the last sentence. He sounds almost bored. Vox has known him for too long to be fooled. He wants everyone to think he's bored, which probably means that it actually took a great deal of convincing to prevent the Princess from showing up here.
"Yes, we have all heard of the hotel," Carmilla confirms with curbed annoyance.
"Yes, well, it has finally produced delightful results for the denizens of hell!" Alastor informs cheerfully.
A wave of curious muttering washes through the room. Vox looks up from his phone to feign interest and plays some pre-recorded background sound so that he doesn't stand out as being silent. Alastor pauses as he looks over the crowd, and it's so obvious that he's enjoying being the center of attention that it makes Vox incredibly eager to pull the rug from under him.
"Indeed, we have received correspondence from Sir Pentious and the seraphim of heaven confirming his successful arrival beyond the pearly gates! Redemption is indeed possible, and Charlie and her hotel are the key to it!" Alastor reveals with a dramatic arm gesture before clicking his heels neatly together and fixing the room with his signature grin. "Although, you will have to come by yourself, of course, for further detail," he adds with a wink.
Ah, there's what he gets out of this reveal: a way to lure demons onto his turf, which is under the protection of the Princess. What Alastor might want with someone after they arrive is anyone's guess, but it's a powerful play regardless.
The volume of shocked muttering rises in the room as its other occupants are faced with the reality of redemption for the first time. Vox pretends to look shocked for a moment before jumping on the opportunity to butt in.
"Well, that's wonderful news! The Princess must be so proud," he says genially.
Alastor looks right at him, head cocked slightly to the side, and his pervasive radio signal goes from feeling like being bathed in seltzer water to feeling like a full body prickle of a limb waking up. It grates in harsh contrast to his own electromagnetic signature, like several adjacent musical notes crunching discordantly against each other. It's supremely uncomfortable, especially when stacked on top of the already present discomfort of a full bladder. Vox readjusts in his seat and disguises it as sitting up straighter.
"May I remind you that your last words to Pentious were to tell him to kill himself?" Alastor says like he has won a point in an argument.
Vox hums an affirmative little tune. "I did say that. And was his death not an instrumental factor in his admittance to heaven? It was only after he took a frontal blast of Adam's holy light that he was redeemed, after all!"
There, bombshell dropped. Let the crowd think Vox knows something that they don't about how redemption works. It's a guess at best, but if he plays his cards right, if someone breaches the right topic, he can completely steal the floor here.
The muttering in the room changes tune, and Alastor's smile pulls a little tighter as annoyance creeps into his signal. If Vox had hair follicles, he'd have goosebumps right now. As is, electricity crawls up his antennae. He always hated how Alastor's negative emotions could wrap around his whole body. It was once part of the reason he had been so eager to please.
"Alas, I do not think suicide would have had the same effect, should he have taken your advice, old pal!"
Hook, line, sinker.
Vox puts a hand over his chest. "I do hope you're not implying that victims of suicide are hellbound, unworthy of heaven simply because of their method of death. I know I'm not down here because of that!"
He pauses to let the implication sink in. It's rare for denizens of hell, especially powerful Overlords, to reference their own deaths. This will be new information to even Alastor. It's a very calculated gesture to reveal this bit of his past, and the shock factor should be worth it to turn the tides of this conversation to his favor. No one asks, no one dares to, but even Alastor's signal takes an inquisitive quality.
"It's true. I died by suicide," Vox confirms when everyone is close enough to the edges of their seats.
They don't need to know any of the other details. They don't need to know about the underlying health issues, the fact that any other option would have meant slowly losing himself to his own failing body in a completely unacceptable and permanent loss of control. He had ended himself before any of that could happen in a middle finger to death itself. He smiles confidently around the room, despite the way his bladder decides to needle him with irritable urgency.
Fuck. It's getting worse much quicker than he had anticipated. Usually he loves having everyone's attention fixed on him, but he needs to wrap this up and get the eyes off him because it's looking like he'll be having a hard time sitting comfortably still by the end of this.
"I should think better of you, Alastor, than to imply something as insulting as that. Suicide did not land me in hell, and would not have hindered Pentious's ascension."
Oh, Alastor is irritated now. Vox resists the urge to squirm in his seat. His radio signal grates so harshly on his antennae that he can feel them buzzing. That sensation of their different signals crunching and grating coupled with with his annoyed bladder is rapidly becoming very overstimulating.
He rarely does this, because modern television runs on higher frequencies, but he turns off everything but the lower FM radio frequencies, syncing his own systems with Alastor's wavelength. Suddenly falling in tune, the Radio Demon's signal immediately becomes much, much easier to bear.
Alastor narrows his eyes at him, and Vox could swear he sees an ear twitch just slightly. He can sense a distinct, sharp sense of curiosity emanating from the other demon. He wonders if Alastor had intended for the emotion to be so clear in his signal or not.
"Hmm, well, it is all speculation. It's still unclear whether second death is a necessary factor or not. It could, of course, be mere coincidence!" Alastor continues anyway.
"Ok, I'm gonna say it 'cause everyone's thinking it," Zeezi cuts in and gestures widely at Vox. "How the hell do you look like that from a suicide?"
"Oh, this?" Vox asks, tapping a claw on the side of his monitor. He supposes he doesn't mind bragging a little. "My death was televised live for the near thousand of my adoring fans who trusted me to join me in the act."
Now THAT gets a reaction from the other Overlords around the table. He notes a delicious taste of begrudging admiration in Alastor's signal, though it's quickly replaced by contempt. Despite his nearly unchanging smile, the great Radio Demon is shockingly expressive. Vox can't help but feel a little smug knowing he's the only one fluent in this silent language they share. Alastor must be out of practice at disguising his emotions from his signal. He would never willingly let Vox know about that flicker of admiration he detected.
That's right, fuckers. This isn't his first rodeo of mass manipulation.
He's abruptly hit by a pang of real desperation that absolutely ruins his moment of peacocking. Eyes are still on him, so he hopes his smug expression doesn't budge when he closes his legs tightly under the table and prays for the urgency to let up quickly.
"Hmm. It sounds to me like you lost a thousand viewers all at once," Alastor taunts.
Vox's smile falls, and it's not because of the words. He repositions his hips in the chair and leans forward over the table.
"Not really. I staked my mark on them forever when they took the same poison as me, no matter where they ended up after," Vox brags.
"And yet no contracts were forged. Are you really not worried about losing your loyal followers to the hotel, especially given that Angel is a promising candidate for redemption at our hotel?" Alastor asks, and Vox is sure it's yet another attempt to provoke him.
He grits his teeth in what he hopes comes off as a regular grin and waves a dismissive hand. He needs to get the attention off of himself; he needs to ask for that break if this is the attitude his bladder is going to continue to give him.
"Oh, Angel isn't my jurisdiction. Besides, aren't several of your own thralls on staff at this very hotel?" He pauses for a beat as the attention in the room starts to shift. "Really, if you want to talk manpower, the Overlord who has lost the most of it to this little project is Rosie." He turns his gaze to her. "Isn't that right, my dear? How many of your cannibals died on Extermination Day? Was it worth it to endear yourself to hellish royalty?"
Eyes all turn to her. Vox exhales as the discomfort returns to a normal level, but he still takes the chance to slip one hand under the table. It's looking like he'll need it. As much as he dreads the idea of asking for a break, he dreads the idea of pissing himself more. Lesser of two evils, he decides.
"Now, now, I'm no monster. My clients attended the battle of their own free will after assessing a full disclosure of risk and reward," Rosie says disapprovingly. "All I did was allow Charlie to speak, as I'm sure any of you would have!"
No, Vox probably wouldn't have, but that's irrelevant.
"Still," Vox pushes, "if you want to talk about lost manpower, Pentious wasn't soul contracted, but some of the 'clients' that died in the crossfire were. Correct?"
Rosie looks uneasy, and Alastor looks as close as he ever has to sucking on lemons at having his point turned on his friend.
"Basically, I see no reason to worry about my business partner's single soul contracted employee crashing on the Princess's couch when the threat of losing employees to Extermination is still so much more likely than losing them to redemption. But I'll concede; perhaps soul contracts should be considered for future redemption cases." Vox pauses for a beat, and then hums when no one says anything in the next two seconds. "And while you contemplate that, how about we take a 5 minute break here around our halfway point?"
He starts to stand, but Alastor laughs humorlessly, and that makes him stop.
"Ha-hah! Whatever for? I find that unnecessary, old pal! Surely we are all mature adults enough to have this discussion without slinking off mid-meeting!"
Curious and judgemental gazes all congregate back onto Vox, and he realizes he can't push for a break without looking like he's scheming something. He has no choice but to shrug and lean back in his chair like the suggestion had meant nothing to him. Fine. He can make it another 30 or so minutes. It'll just suck a little by the end.
"Very well."
"So in summary," Carmilla begins, click-clicking her way up to the head of the table again, "we have one isolated, but confirmed instance of an uncontracted sinner being redeemed at the hotel and entering heaven after his death at the hands of an angel. Is that correct, Alastor?"
"Indeed!" the Radio demon confirms, hiking his staff up higher in one hand.
Carmilla starts saying something else, and Vox doesn't listen to it when a wave of desperation makes him glad he had thought to slip a hand south, because it's very helpful for cramming between his legs now. How much longer is this meeting going to last? He had hoped to get a few more good points in there, but he's wary of drawing attention in the state he's in now.
He's usually pretty good at reading his own body, but he could swear this is getting worse much faster than he's used to. He had been so confident on the car ride here that all he'd experience would be discomfort, and here he is squeezing himself under the table. He'll still be fine, he tells himself. So it's a little worse than he had bargained for, but it won't be that much longer.
Carmilla is still talking. She has been talking for the past few minutes. She adds another bullet point to the board displayed behind her. Vox disregards her prattling and tries to read what she has written while ignoring the incessant needling from his bladder. It's at a point where it's impossible to not think about how much he has to piss.
Her bullet points essentially outline that very little is actually known about the process of redemption. She has a category for speculation into whether or not method of death could affect a sinner's possible redemption, which itself is marked with a question of whether death is a necessary factor. There's another category for speculation about how different types of soul-binding contracts might have effects, and Vox is really having some difficulty bothering to care about reading another word of it. He resists the impulse to hiss aloud when his pelvic muscles seize up in another urgent reminder.
He glances at his watch. Maybe 20 more minutes left to endure if this meeting is anything like the others he has been to. If it runs past 20 minutes, he decides, he'll just leave anyway and cite a busy work schedule. They can't expect him to stick around forever.
Radio static prickles uncomfortably over his skin. Vox looks up from the seconds ticking by on his watch to realize that Alastor is watching him curiously. He shoots the other demon a 'the fuck do you want?' look. Alastor's smile relaxes into its smug, default state, and he looks back to Rosie, who posits a counterargument to whatever Carmilla had last said.
The two women have a stiffly civil back and forth that Vox ignores. Zeezi cracks a joke that draws a round of laughter from nearly everyone. Vox belatedly plays an audio clip of a talk show audience laughing, even though he absolutely had not been paying attention to why whatever she said was funny. He looks at his watch again.
Fuck. Only 3 minutes have passed. He crosses his legs. Alastor's attention keeps intermittently pulling at his antennae. He can feel it when the Radio Demon is watching him without having to actually meet his gaze. Normally he'd love thinking he was worthy to be a point of interest for Alastor, but right now he can only resent the fact that the other demon won't just ignore him and focus on the stupid meeting while he focuses on holding back the flood. Vox isn't even participating in the meeting at this point. There's no reason to pay attention to him.
Alastor's attentive signal tingles with amusement. Vox has no idea why and refuses to meet his gaze to find out.
The intensity of his radio waves diminishes some as Alastor starts talking again. Vox doesn't hear a word of it as his cooling fans switch from mid speed to high drive. Holy fucking shit he has to piss so badly. He checks his watch again. 10 more minutes will be an hour since the start of the meeting. 10 minutes is not a long time. He can handle 10 more minutes. Fuck it, he can handle more than 10 measly minutes!
He uncrosses and recrosses his legs the other way, hand trapped between them with all the crushing force his thighs can muster. He doesn't dare remove it, not when the waves of intense urgency are so close together. Zestial says something for the first time in ages, and suddenly at least four people are talking over each other. Vox glances around the room without really seeing any of it until he accidentally makes eye contact with Alastor, who is not part of the argument.
The radio demon is watching him with narrow eyes, an expression almost like a challenge. Vox tears his gaze away. Every ounce of his focus is already taken. Alastor can take whatever he's thinking right now and shove it up his ass. Vox doesn't have the bandwidth to deal with it.
He glances at his watch yet again. 5 more minutes will be a round hour from the moment the meeting started. They're still fucking talking. He bounces his leg in small, tight movements. He's beginning to think he won't make it to the end of the next 5 minutes. Maybe he should just cave and leave early.
He really might have to. He's concerned, actually, now that he thinks about it, that he has waited past the point where he'd be able to walk without it being incredibly obvious that he's on the verge of pissing himself. Staying seated is a saving grace right now.
Well, that's not really a permanent solution.
A panic settles over him as he realizes that he has cornered himself with the options of sitting here until he wets himself or standing right now and trying to walk out of this room without getting too much attention. Only one of those is a real option. He braces himself to stand.
The change in position immediately fractures his control in the form of a small leak. Ass hits chair again right away. Shit. He can't stand up without losing it.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Alastor is looking at him again. He can feel the unique prickle of his gaze without having to look.
No, no, no, NO this is not FUCKING happening. He's a matter of seconds from losing it in a room full of people that he needs to respect him. Alastor is looking right at him like he knows something. Vox digs his claws into his thighs, teeth gritted in a frantic, manic grin. Teleportation is heavily frowned on, but in an emergency like this--maybe--
He sucks a sharp breath in. Nope. The charge he had been contemplating as escape whips off his legs under the table. His underwear is too damp for the grid to let him in.
He's not going to make it out of here dry, he realizes.
Fuck. Fuck. Damage control mode. He's going to piss himself right here in this chair, so what can he do to mitigate the damage? It's so hard to think.
Stay composed above the waist. Keep his screen under control. That's what he can focus on. No error messages, no change in expression. Let what happens happen under the table and schmooze his way into being the last to leave. Set the sprinklers off to disguise his mess if he has to.
There's nothing he can do to stop his fans from buzzing, but he composes his upper half as much as possible into the most casual position he can. The second he redirects even the smallest lick of focus, his control splinters and fractures into back to back leaks. The only thing he can hear is his own frantic heartbeat backed by a buzz of static, and he can't even tell if that originates from him or from Alastor.
His screen may be displaying a smile frozen on like a screensaver, but the only thing he's thinking right now is a mantra of 'OH FUCK OH FUCK' on repeat as the stain on his pants spreads until he can feel it dripping off the chair.
"Oh, HONESTLY, Vox!" Alastor's voice exclaims abruptly, interrupting whatever conversation had been happening in the room and Vox's frantic train of thoughts.
The surprise of hearing his name right now ends whatever pathetic semblance of control he'd had left. He relaxes his thighs in admittance of defeat and tries to position himself to best mute the sound of flowing liquid. For a brief moment, the relief is enough to override the panic, but only a brief moment.
He lifts his gaze, which clicks onto the Radio Demon. Alastor's ears are tilted back, smile taut. Vox can read the disgust and entertained contempt rolling off of him loud and clear, in more ways than just recognizing his expression. His radio signal positively oozes his emotions.
"Wh- huh?" Vox says intelligently.
"Don't play ignorant with me after the personalized play-by-play you've been sharing with me since about halfway through this meeting."
Vox's blood goes as cold as liquid nitrogen. After the WHAT!? Oh fuck. He rewinds the past hour mentally, scouring it for when he could have fucked up that badly.
When he had tuned himself to match Alastor's signal, that had to be it. The link went both ways. No wonder he can read Alastor's emotions with such crystal clarity. Alastor has been able to read his just the same. He's been essentially broadcasting his desperation to Alastor the entire second half of this meeting.
He's gonna kill himself a second time.
In the span of a split second, he runs a killcode he rarely uses, which cuts all connection he has to any external device or network. Doing so is dangerous because it severely limits his demonic powers. Right now, he doesn't care. It's the only thing he can think to do to make absolutely FUCKING certain that whatever he'd been broadcasting is completely cut off at the source.
"No, no! No use now!" Alastor continues cheerfully. "In fact, I think you should share with the class what has got you out of sorts enough to disrupt us!"
Alastor waves a hand, shadows flicker, and then the chair Vox had been sitting in is gone, dumping him backwards onto his ass in the middle of his own puddle.
Normally, Vox likes having all the eyes in a given room fixed on him. Usually he's a bit of an attention whore. Now, though, as every Overlord in the room looks down at him on the floor, covered in piss, he's pretty sure an actual raging inferno would be preferable to the raging inferno of humiliation that causes error message after error message to pop up on his flushed, glitchy screen. He frantically clears them as quickly as he can, closing his legs as if that'll hide anything.
"Don't look at me!" he tries to command, left eye whirlpooling hypnosis, but of course it doesn't work.
These are Overlords; even if Vox was at full power, their wills would be incredibly difficult to alter with hypnosis. Besides, his little killcode earlier has his power at limited capacity.
The first person to speak after that is Zeezi, whose snort turns into a guffaw.
"Why'd you tell him no to a break if you knew he was gonna piss himself?" she asks through laughter.
"My dear, I knew no such thing! I had no idea he was so eager to obey my instruction that he'd debase himself like this."
The expressions regarding Vox right now range anywhere from amusement to sympathy to disgust, and he needs away from them right fucking now. He scrapes himself up from the floor, scrambling to his feet to grasp at that last little thread of dignity.
"Fuck you, this is your fault!" he snarls at Alastor, and then turns tail to book it out of the room.
He's not even sure where he's going. All he knows is that it's away from the eyes, away from Alastor, away from his own shame. His legs carry him down the hall, down the emergency stairwell, and into the first unoccupied room with its lights off.
He needs out of here. Back to Vee tower.
He's going to have to call someone to come fetch him.
He'd call Valentino to come get him, except that Val would tease him and try to make this a sex thing. He can't take that, not right now. Velvette will give him a ruthless verbal lashing, but at least he'll deserve that.
He dials her phone number into his cellphone. He NEVER calls her this way.
She picks up before the first ring is done.
"What's wrong?"
"Send someone to pick me up."
There's a beat of silence on Velvette's end.
"How soon?" she finally asks.
"Five minutes ago."
"Done."
The call goes dead before Vox can get his finger anywhere near the button to hang up. He releases a staggered sigh and shrugs out of his suit jacket to tie the sleeves around his waist for some modicum of privacy, even though the wet streaks go all the way down his pant legs. He tries his best to tuck the soaked coattails he'd been sitting on up and out of view.
To Velvette's credit, it's mere minutes before a limo pulls up out front. Vox steels himself for the walk of shame, squares his shoulders, and steps out of the room he had hidden in. His shoes squish with each step.
Fortunately, the public gives this building a wide berth when meetings are in session out of fear, so there's no one around except the car. He grabs the handle and pulls, but the door doesn't open. Instead, the window rolls down, and his stomach drops.
Velvette is glaring at him from the backseat. Fuck. Why'd she have to come in person?
"What did I EXPLICITLY warn you not to do at this meeting?"
"Velvette-"
"Fuck it up. The answer is fuck it up. And what did you do, Vox?"
"Velvette, please," he says, and his voice cracks.
Her glare softens just a tiny bit, and she heaves an irritated huff. The car door clicks, and then is immediately thrown open by a strong kick from Velvette's designer heels. Vox climbs in and flops heavily into the seat across from her, yanking the door shut behind himself.
Velvette's intelligent gaze picks apart each aspect of Vox's current appearance. He knows there's nothing he can do to stop her, so he doesn't try.
"You pissed yourself," she states, matter-of-fact. "In front of Alastor?"
"Because of Alastor," he corrects. "He wouldn't let me take a break."
"And-- and what, you just LISTENED TO HIM? Instead of fucking standing up and leaving? It's not like they superglue you to the chairs!"
Vox flinches. "I thought I could-"
He finds himself unable to complete the sentence when his throat goes tight.
He thought he could make it. He'd been wrong, and it burns him up with so many different emotions, all of them bad. He tries to swallow around the lump in his throat and it doesn't go well.
Oh, FUCK no, THIS is not going to be the first time he has ever cried past the age of 10 while sober. He is not going to cry over this. He's not.
Velvette seems to sense that he's genuinely distressed in a way she has never seen before from him, and her demeanor softens.
"Ugh. Alright. It's just a fuckup. We all fuck up. We'll do some damage control and it'll be fine."
Vox looks at her with a slack jaw as his vision goes abruptly very blurry. Fucking hell, he'd called Velvette because he wanted to be ripped a new one for his stupidity, so that he could rebuke it with anger. He hadn't expected to be treated like glass. He fucking hates it. A choked sound leaves his throat without permission.
"Oh, and now the pissbaby's crying," Velvette huffs with an eyeroll, but her tone lacks venom.
"Don't- don't fucking look at me right now," Vox mutters thickly, making a halfhearted attempt to turn away and hold a hand up between them.
Velvette huffs an amused exhale. "Don't really want to anyway. You're a mess."
She takes pity on him, or maybe on the seat of the car, and snaps once, replacing his wet clothes with dry ones. This done, she props her chin on the heel of her hand to look out the window, leaving Vox to his own devices to pull himself back together for the rest of the ride back to Vee tower.
Chapter Text
Thank you so much to AO3 user cobracorpse who made this beautiful fanart for this work!!
RIP Vox's dignity.