Chapter Text
“Hey,” Vox says, nudging Alastor’s shoulder. “Want me to teach you how to give a blowjob?”
Alastor hums, irritated at the sudden lack of petting over his ears. He’s a little drunk—just enough to have an excuse for the way his bones seem to have melted all over Vox’s lap, but not so much that he’s not able to catalogue all the sensations of this experience with acute accuracy. After the awkward meltdown he had last time he was in Vox’s lap getting his ears petted, he’s found himself a little bit more restrained about his actions when inebriated…but things have been more comfortable lately, particularly on the front of being able to enjoy these types of actions without the expectation of sex attached. There are only so many comfortable places to be after a night on the town with aching feet when Vox is shamelessly hogging the last third of the couch, so into Vox’s lap he’s gone.
Now Vox is ruining it, probably because Alastor’s face is technically about three inches from his dick.
“No.”
“Wh—really?” Dismay colors Vox’s voice, audible even with Alastor’s eyes closed. He twitches an ear up, trying to send a hint. No petting is forthcoming. “C’mon, gimme something here.”
Alastor opens one bleary eye. “I prefer it when you shove your cock down my throat so hard that I choke on it, personally.”
Silence.
“There is little technical skill required in allowing oneself to be violated,” Alastor says, and lets his eye slide back shut. He reaches out blindly for Vox’s hand, groping around for a moment, and then physically places it back on top of his head.
“Hang on, I’m trying to process the fact that you just fucking said that.”
“You said, and I quote, ‘gimme something.’”
“Yeah, no, that sure was something, Alastor.”
Finally, the hand resumes petting. Alastor relaxes, melting further into Vox’s lap. Feeling generous, he turns his cheek in, until he’s just about face to face with Vox’s dick. Yes, it’s definitely hard. Not fully, but Vox is certainly getting there.
And apparently determined to do it with Alastor, because he squirms for a moment, aborted, before wheedling again: “Okay, but—I do love doing that. Super love it. Good time for everyone. You’re very cute when you cry, and I have in fact dreamt of using those antlers as handlebars. Wait, fuck, I’m getting distracted.” A second hand joins its partner, rubbing firmly at the base of Alastor’s other ear. Bribery, clearly. Alastor shivers, pleased, and magnanimously doesn’t make fun of Vox for everything he has said thus far. Because he’s so benevolent, you see—surely not because he’s too languid and relaxed to open his mouth.
“Pretty please? I just have this image in my head, of—you’d look so pretty, trying to take it for me properly, it’s—ugh.”
Okay, Vox has officially ruined the ear-petting. Alastor twists himself around in Vox’s lap, leveraging a knee and pushing himself upward so that he can look Vox in the face—and then shoves at his shoulder, dumping Vox horizontally onto the couch with Alastor looming over him.
“Whoa!” Vox’s eyes have expanded to fill half of his screen, mouth stretching into a pleased grin. His hands land on Alastor’s hips, not quite yet tugging him lower. “Well, hey there, baby.”
“Hello,” Alastor responds, eyes narrowing over his grin. He is not interested in putting his mouth on Vox at this point—not unless it’s to take a chunk out, which he’s been told requires some amount of pre-emptive discussion. But there are other things Vox enjoys, and Alastor is perfectly up to the task of rendering him too useless to wheedle for more in other ways.
“Not complaining,” Vox hedges, “but this doesn’t really answer my question.”
“Doesn’t it?” Alastor ponders, and watches the expressions play out over Vox’s face as he talks. “I suppose it doesn’t. Here is an elaboration, then: as much as you love degrading me, it’s never quite scratched that itch for you, has it?”
Vox swallows, watching Alastor with wide, excited eyes. Alastor raises his hand to trace a claw over the exposed arch of his throat, feeling the throb of his pulse underneath.
“No,” Alastor murmurs, letting his eyes go lidded. “It hasn’t. I don’t think your little teacher-student game would, either.”
“Wh—” Vox’s throat clicks underneath Alastor’s hand, dry. “What?”
Alastor tightens his hand around Vox’s throat, and the words cut off. It’s mostly a testament to Vox’s willingness to play this game, or else his susceptibility to psychosomatic feedback. It’s not as though Alastor’s hands are over his speakers.
He leans down and presses a kiss to Vox’s throat. Right on cue, Vox’s speakers stutter back to life, a ragged gasp playing over them as his fans kick into gear, warm air puffing out against Alastor’s sides.
Alastor laughs, low and dark, and then laughs harder as Vox groans and arches up against him, rubbing his cock up against where Alastor’s knee has ended up pressed into the cushions between his legs. He’s hard, has been since before Alastor decided to flip the dynamic, and his hands are sharp little pinpricks against Alastor’s hips. He uses them as leverage, pressing the hot length of his cock harder against Alastor’s thigh, grinding down onto it. Whatever Vox is packing today, it’s larger than usual, and the resulting bulge is rather obscene—though not any more so than Vox’s expression as his mouth falls open, panting for cooling air as his systems overheat and his eyes flutter.
Alastor lets him at it for a minute or two, raising himself up just enough to watch the way Vox debases himself. It persistently surprises him that it doesn’t get old, this feeling of Vox wanting him. At least not anymore. It used to grate, a perpetually niggling reminder at the edges of his awareness, that Vox always, always wants something that Alastor has no interest in giving—but now it’s different. A heady sense of power, of ownership.
(The ever-present opportunity to decline, and not have it held against him.)
“You’re really very pathetic, my dear,” he murmurs. Vox whimpers beatifically—the sound of a prey animal ready to throw itself into his maw and thank him for the honor. Alastor feels saliva pooling in his mouth. He wants to bite, but it’s too early. “Yes, there it is—you know it, too. It’s always been this way, hasn’t it?”
He lightens his grip, just slightly—enough that Vox doesn’t have to force his speakers on to speak.
“N-Not always,” Vox manages, panting. He’s staring up at Alastor, dizzying static playing through his eyes as he struggles to focus. His pupils are nearly indecipherable from the surrounding sclera, like washed-out ink dripped into wide pools of crimson.
Alastor’s grin widens. “Oh, always, I’d wager. You were tripping over yourself for me since the day we met, weren’t you? Quite literally, too—why, I recall one particular time I had to fish you out of the gutter! You were so busy raking your eyes over what wasn’t yours to take that you stumbled right over the curb!”
“That’s not—hold on,” Vox stutters, eyes flickering blearily. “Wait. Wait—but you gave me your coat…”
“As a gentleman ought to,” Alastor allows, letting his smile soften dangerously, “when he finds himself with a friend soaked to the bone in acid rain. Unfortunately I must have erred in choosing the recipient for such attentions, as I shortly had to visit the tailor for a new one. Who knows what you did with the old one, a depraved little creature like yourself.”
Something in Vox’s expression shifts. “Now, hang on—the acid got it—”
“Did it?” Alastor tips his head to the side. His hair slides over his neck, revealing skin scarcely seen under the high collar of his dress shirt. “Or perhaps you kept it for yourself. I respect a demon with skeletons in his closet, my dear, but a voyeur and a pervert like yourself? Well—”
“It wasn’t like that—”
Alastor doesn’t let him interrupt, squeezing his hand around Vox’s neck again to cut him off. “Oh, yes it was,” he says, teeth sharp and bared, eyes gleaming. He wants to keep squeezing, feel the sound Vox’s neck makes when he crushes it—but, oh, a step too far, that would be. Restraint, restraint. “Yes,” he says instead, “from the very beginning, it was. Your leering eyes always on me, lingering where they were unwanted, not an ounce of respect despite all of your pretty words. Did you think you were subtle, my dear? Everybody saw. Everybody knew.”
Vox’s breath is ragged, the wideness of his eyes frightened as he tries to shake his head in Alastor’s grip. One of his hands flies up from Alastor’s hip, grabbing onto his wrist. His claws scrabble at Alastor’s flesh, drawing a hiss out as they split the flesh into delicious, stinging wounds.
“I knew,” Alastor murmurs. “I thought you were disgusting.”
“A-l-lll—”
“You made my skin crawl.”
“L-lo-ye—”
Alastor’s eyes are practically slits on his face, warmth pooling in his voice. He leans down again to whisper, close and intimate:
“I still do.”
“—low—” A blat of static, then Vox’s speakers kicking on: “Red, Alastor, jesus fucking christ—”
Alastor startles, releasing Vox’s throat—and Vox scrambles out from underneath him, shoving himself to the opposite side of the couch and scrubbing at his throat. He shoves his knees up, another barrier between the two of them, and the cool air of the room rushes in, cold against the parts of Alastor’s body that had been pressed so close to Vox.
Alastor blinks, opening his mouth—
“What,” Vox hisses, “the fuck was that, Alastor?”
Alastor closes his mouth. “What?”
“Why would you—don’t just stare at me,” Vox complains, dropping his hand to cross his arms tightly. “What’s your problem?”
“...What’s yours?” Alastor says, confused and offended by Vox’s demeanor in a way that is quickly transcending mild bafflement and shifting into genuine irritation.
“Oh, I don’t know!” Vox flings a hand into the air, gesticulating cartoonishly. “Maybe something about how my—my—” Hot air puffs out of his vents, a harsh, mechanical grind echoing over his speakers as he grinds his teeth. “I don’t even know what to call us! And maybe that’s the fucking problem—if you were my boyfriend, you’d know you weren’t supposed to say shit like that!”
Alastor’s ears pin back, flat, and he carefully maneuvers himself into a seated position. Back straight, shoulders even, hands folded primly in his lap. Head at just the right angle to peer at Vox judgmentally, a slitted side-eye through his own lashes.
“You’ve never brought up such issues before,” Alastor says, crisp. The words are vague—deliberately so. Vox has enjoyed such talk from him in the past, on more than one occasion; and he has never demanded something so kitschy as for Alastor to be his boyfriend before, either. Vox already has a boyfriend, and Alastor has no interest in a romantic partnership. That was—that was a not-insignificant part of the whole problem, originally. Vox and his inability to tolerate the one-sidedness of his own feelings.
He thought they resolved that. He doesn’t understand where this is coming from.
This is now how he wanted any of this to go.
Vox’s face stutters into a strange display of multi-colored bars for a moment before reappearing in full, incandescent glory. “You never—because I thought it was the kind of thing you said in bed,” Vox exclaims, “because it’s sexy! Not because you actually believed it! But now you’re going around pulling the past into it and reminding me about how you really felt and—and making me feel even shittier about everything, because—what?” Vox scoffs, recrossing his arms. “You didn’t want to give me a fucking blowjob? A simple no would have been worlds fucking better, you condescending prick!”
Alastor’s teeth grit over his smile. “You may recall that I did say ‘no.’”
Vox’s expression freezes—and then twists, teeth bared viciously.
Alastor doesn’t let him get a word in: “Besides,” he says, sniffing. “This is hardly a change from our previous encounters. I always mean what I say. And you always think it’s ‘sexy.’”
Silence.
It drags on for a long moment, shocking in its suddenness. And then:
“...I’m gonna go home,” Vox says. He’s quiet—a sharp contrast to the echoes of his previous rage, which are practically still reverberating about the room.
Alastor’s ears flick up and he turns back to look at Vox. “What? Why?”
Vox doesn’t answer. He just shakes his head, stumbling up from the couch—swaying a little bit, in that familiar way that Alastor knows is from standing up for the first time after having had a few drinks—and fumbles for his blazer. Doesn’t find it—it’s in a gutter somewhere, lost during their carousing.
“Vox,” Alastor says, placing his hands on the couch on either side of him. He wants to dig his claws in, but refrains. He almost reaches to offer his own coat, but shame suffuses him—and uncertainty, regarding how Vox would see such a thing. If not a gentleman, is that what a boyfriend does?
“Just shut up, Alastor,” Vox mutters, finally finding his shoes—and then sparks out of existence, nothing but a bright blue flicker-flash of electric current left to signal his departure as he pulls himself into the wires of Alastor’s radio.
Alastor doesn’t stop him.
Vox is still angry with him.
This is not a new experience. Vox is frequently angry with Alastor, and Alastor is frequently angry with Vox—perhaps more so than vice versa, to be honest, at least as far as genuine anger is concerned. Vox is an emotional person in general. He gets loud about little things and quiet about big things, and he is very, very frequently loud with Alastor.
This time, he is quiet.
Alastor leaves him a note, the next day, which goes ignored. Then he phones, dialing Vox’s phone number on the old rotary he keeps in his office. It rings once, and then cuts off halfway through the second ring. No answer.
Alastor gives him space. A week passes, and Vox does not show up to their usual rendezvous. Alastor gives him three more days after that, during one of which he visits Rosie and finds himself moderately snappish with his close friend, not appreciating her tendency to press before he’s willing to discuss something, which is how he knows that this is unraveling into a genuine problem. Vox’s fault, surely. If at least because he did not properly explain before vanishing.
Regardless, Alastor suspects that he needs to apologize. There was genuine pain scattered across that blue-tinged expression before Vox left, and while Alastor delights in hurting Vox and vice versa, it’s…
It’s not the same when it’s an accident. Alastor does not make a habit of kowtowing to the self-important, but even the most uncouth of heathens knows that you say ‘sorry’ when you’ve trod on somebody’s foot.
The issue of an apology, unfortunately, is less simple than Charlie likes to make it out to be in her little sing-along seminars. As Alastor has unfortunately overheard from the balcony overlooking Charlie’s varyingly-successful attempts at educating hell’s rabble on their own personal emotional growth, there are several key components to a proper apology. Chief among them are the acknowledgment of fault and the promise to not repeat the actions.
Here is the problem: Alastor has no idea what the fuck he did wrong.
Vox’s reaction to his words would be so much more understandable if he had not been blatantly getting off to Alastor insulting him just last month. It’s hardly the first time Alastor has said something like this, and frankly, it’s hardly the worst thing Alastor has said to him. He does not know where the difference lies—and perhaps he’s a little irate himself, at Vox’s lack of acknowledgment of his own incessant tendency to be a sex pest. It certainly inspired the direction of Alastor’s dialogue, but he didn’t expect a reaction like this.
(He thought Vox had promised friendship; promised a continuation of their relationship without hard feelings even if Alastor chose to never sleep with him again.)
Regardless, Charlie’s seminars have been educational in more than one way: there are other ways to apologize. Angel Dust in particular detailed them quite effectively, during one of Charlie’s less successful sessions, complete with diagrams and even citations referencing Valentino’s particular techniques, which Alastor found himself paying an uncomfortable amount of attention to purely due to their relevance to—well, he and Valentino do not have much in common, but they do have someone in common, so to say. Hardly in-line with Charlie’s methods—or, frankly, any sane person’s, but since when has Vox been sane?
The trouble with reconciliation is that now Alastor is invested in Vox’s friendship, and thus finds himself willing to make—concessions. To Vox’s preferences. Purely for the sake of maintaining their mutual good standing.
It’s a disgusting way to live, full of soft, squishy feelings, but it is what it is. If Vox proves entirely undeserving, Alastor will simply eat him. They will remain just as close with Vox’s voice as a perpetual screaming echo in the radio waves. Even closer, perhaps. Much more straightforward than Alastor’s growing fondness for dear Charlie, he’s willing to say that much.
So he gives Vox three additional days, and then dissolves into the shadows, reappearing in a dark corner of Vox’s bedroom at an hour he knows Vox is at least more likely than not actually heading to bed, assuming he is not planning on staying up all night.
He steps out of the shadows, watching Vox fold his tie on his dresser. “You promised not to vanish without a word again.”
“FUCKing—!”
Vox’s speakers crack out, a high pitched squeal of microphone feedback echoing through the room before he wrestles himself under control, whirling around as he presses backward into his dresser with his hand over his heart.
“Motherfucker!” Vox exclaims. “I’m not gonna be able to vanish if you give me a damn heart attack and set yourself up as the first demon known to hell to perma-kill another sinner just by scaring them to death!”
Alastor takes another step forward, his hip against the footboard of Vox’s bed and crossing his arms. Normally this would be the moment for him to quip that Vox needn’t flatter himself; he’s not the first person Alastor has frightened into an early grave. But... “You missed our plans this week.”
Vox’s breathing slows, and he frowns at his hands, where he’s twisted his tie into a crumpled swatch of fabric. “Usually,” he mutters, “it’s the job of the person who was an asshole to show up and apologize. If that’s not what you’re here for, you can fuck right off.”
Alastor blinks at him slowly, not letting his expression twitch. “Who says I wasn’t going to?”
“Were you?”
No. If Vox acted as though everything was fine, he would have taken it as a sign that the status quo had not been so disturbed as to warrant it.
“...I don’t know,” Alastor says. “I suppose that I didn’t realize this was so serious. But I am now.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I vanished, then,” Vox snipes, and turns around to finish putting his tie away.
Alastor restrains an aggrieved sigh, and lets his smile broaden instead even as his heart suddenly thumps a beat into the pit of his stomach. “The question,” he murmurs as he steps up behind Vox, placing his hands on the dresser on either side of Vox’s hips and pressing his lips to the back of Vox’s neck for a moment, “is whether you’re going to let me apologize.”
Vox shivers with the brush of Alastor’s lips, and Alastor can see the moment where he restrains himself from turning his head around to try to look at him. Good thing—it would have made for a very silly moment, Vox with a smarting head and Alastor with a bruised cheek.
“Oh,” Vox says instead, a grin creeping audibly into his voice. He leans forward and out of Alastor’s range before turning around in Alastor’s arms, leering at him. “Is that the game we’re doing, then?”
Alastor blinks at him innocently, and presses Vox back toward the bed until it hits the backs of his knees, forcing him to sit. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Didn’t you make a request, when we last parted? I’m simply…following up. In the interest of copacetic relations.”
Vox laughs, eyes narrowing. “Sure, Bambi. You know, this is my favorite kind of apology. Fuck flowers and chocolate—there’s nothing for making up like a good ol’ dose of dopamine or whatever it is.”
Alastor smiles, letting the corners of his eyes lift warmly and lowering his lashes until he’s peering up at Vox through them. It’s something he’s seen Angel Dust do—look both appealing and happy to be there. He’s an old hat at communicating with his eyes, but this particular expression is—new. There’s a good chance he’s mostly just managing to look eerie. Does Angel Dust feel queasy when he does this, Alastor wonders.
“Of course,” he says, and slides neatly to his knees between Vox’s legs. His hands alight on Vox’s thighs, a little higher than is proper—but then, none of what he intends to do is proper. “A littler death it is.”
Vox laughs a little, breathless, and hooks a finger into Alastor’s collar. “Well, then. Go for it, sweetheart.”
He tugs a little, until Alastor’s cheek is pressed to his thigh and Alastor can only look up at him with an expression turned plaintive and lidded by the angle. It’s not so bad, Alastor thinks. He has done this before, sort of. He’s not precisely in the mood to be—dominated, right now, but certainly Vox is skilled at getting him there. And his own enjoyment isn’t exactly the point of this little endeavor.
There’s no reason to be nervous. It’s just Vox’s willingness to speak to him hanging on the line.
That’s all.
He slides his palms up Vox’s legs, enjoying the way it makes the man above him shiver, imperceptible to the eye but so tangible under his hands, and reaches to undo Vox’s fly. Partway there, a clawed hand grabs his wrist, forcing him to pause.
“Ah, ah,” Vox says above him, leering. “I’m teaching, right? You gotta make it sexy. Use your mouth.”
For one incandescently confusing second, Alastor wonders if he’s supposed to use his teeth to rip open Vox’s pants—before he realizes that Vox just means the zipper. Is this the sort of thing that people do in pornography? He’s not entirely sure how it’s meant to be sexy, with his nose pressed awkwardly into the fabric as he clicks his teeth around the zipper and tugs it down, but Vox certainly makes a pleased enough face.
Zipper thus lowered, Vox pulls his dick out. It’s a rather effeminate sparkling purple today and half-hard already, with soft, backward-facing barbs—a little on the long side, but not excessively thick. Velvette’s logo is stamped on the side, of all things. If they were doing this the way that Alastor prefers, it would probably work well for jamming down his throat. As it is, though, he’s not quite sure how he’s meant to make it fit, not if he’s doing this all on his own.
“Kiss it,” Vox says. His eyes are pulsating, the left an endless spiral of black and red. He’s not putting his power into it, but seemingly can’t help himself anyway—greedy and cruel, his claws curl into the hair framing Alastor’s face. He doesn’t pull—just holds, softly.
Alastor leans down and presses his lips to the base of Vox’s cock. It twitches immediately, Vox’s hands spasming around his face and just barely avoiding nicking him bloody before Vox makes a somewhat broken sound and yanks them away, burying them into the blanket behind him and leaning back on them.
The man is not difficult to rile up, but Alastor already knew that. Nonetheless, he suspects that at least some portion of this speedy…’awakening,’ so to say, is thanks to Vox’s mechanical nature.
“Again,” Vox says, hoarse.
Alastor looks up at him for a moment, and kisses it again. And again, and again—he trails his way haphazardly up the shaft, scattering kisses along the way while Vox tries to control his breathing. By the time he gets to the tip, it’s leaking—mostly clear, tinged a dark, unnatural magenta.
Vox smiles weakly down at him. “Cherry lime?”
Alastor raises an eyebrow. “For little old me?”
“Fuck.” Vox gives up on clutching the blankets and uses one hand to take the base of his own cock, pressing it down until the flavored lubricant is smearing against Alastor’s lips. “Always for you, baby. Fuck, you’re so pretty on your knees. Stay still. Show me how sorry you are.”
Alastor blinks once and stays still, obedient. It’s an easy enough task, even if his ears won’t stop twitching as he watches Vox—do whatever depraved thing it is he’s interested in doing. Mostly it’s pressing a thumb into Alastor’s mouth, prying his teeth apart until he’s sitting there like a baby bird waiting to be fed by its mother. He rubs the pad of it over Alastor’s tongue, and then pinches, drawing it out of his mouth.
Vox presses the tip of his cock onto Alastor’s tongue, and drags it forward, until Alastor’s upper lip is pillowed against it. Then he draws back, just a little, and repeats the motion, back and forth, back and forth. There’s not much fucking to be done, like this—just a few inches, even with the inhuman length of Alastor’s tongue—but Vox still stares down at the picture of it all with wide, wide eyes.
Cherry lime blooms across Alastor’s tongue, and he closes his eyes, letting the rhythm of the motion soothe him somewhat. He doesn’t mind this more passive role. There’s less pressure on him, fewer opportunities for him to make a mistake and render his apology void. Vox seems like he is enjoying himself. That is, in the end, the goal of this endeavor.
“Fuck,” Vox says again eventually, and Alastor’s eyes flutter back open. “I’m gonna be honest, Bambi, I could absolutely come just like this. Kinda want to, just to watch it go all over that face of yours.”
Alastor can’t speak like this, so he shrugs, turning his palms upward in a why not?
Vox hisses, squeezing a hand at the base of his own cock. “Wanna watch you, though. Wanna make you work for it.”
The pit of Alastor’s stomach clenches, and he fights to avoid doing the same with his hands as they turn back down to hold Vox’s thighs. He is the one that suggested this, knowing full well what Vox’s preferences are. It seemed like a chore, when Vox first suggested it—just not something Alastor was interested in. Now, though, it’s—
If it’s an apology, then he’s meant to get it right. Do it well. Vox wants him to work for it.
(He doesn’t like this.)
Vox finally shifts his hips back, dragging his cock off of Alastor’s tongue. Alastor draws it back into his mouth and blinks, making a strange face at the taste of it all.
Vox laughs at him, and reaches down to rub a stray droplet of—saliva, lubricant, who knows—from the corner of Alastor’s mouth. “Cute. Wanna get unbuttoned, then, Bambi?”
He reaches for Alastor’s collar, and—
(He doesn’t like this at all.)
—before Alastor realizes what he’s doing, he catches Vox’s wrist. They both freeze for a moment, before then Alastor wagers to himself that this is part of Vox’s request, and lets his wrist go.
Vox retracts his hand, shaking his head with a grin. “Weirdo. Just don’t get upset if it gets dirty.”
Alastor’s tie stays on.
The rest is—
Difficult. For multiple reasons.
Chief among them is that Alastor cannot simply tune out. There are many acts he’s ambivalent about but willing to submit to, when Vox is involved, and he’s developed a habit of letting Vox simply get on with them while Alastor more or less embodies the old saying, ‘Lie back and think of England.’ Except instead of some island on the other side of the ocean, Alastor usually just amuses himself by watching the ridiculous faces Vox makes, and occasionally interrupts to thoroughly ruin the mood by pointing out precisely how ridiculous they are. It’s not a bad way to spend the time, and he’s started taking Vox’s ‘pillow princess’ comments as a point of pride.
This, however, is antithetical to his usual process. Firstly, he has to pay significantly more attention to what he’s doing and the directions that Vox is giving him than he usually prefers to when it comes to his own participation in explicitly sexual acts. Secondly, he has to endeavor to do it well, even though he’s never been interested in the activity before, nevermind had practice at it. If he fucks it up badly enough, Vox will not enjoy himself and entire point of offering this as an apology will be moot, and then he’ll have to do this whole thing all over again, and—
Alastor does something right, then, which immediately segues into doing something wrong as Vox’s hips kick in pleasure and Alastor’s throat hitches painfully at the sudden and unexpectedly deep intrusion.
Apparently choking is only sexy when Vox does it to him on purpose. When it’s just Alastor, unsure of himself and unable to fit more than half of his cock into his mouth, it’s apparently hilarious, which is enough to make heat flush miserably across his face.
That doesn’t stop him from bending over, coughing into the back of his own hand.
Vox coos at him with barely-suppressed laughter. “Aw, Bambi, you’re really not made for trying at this kind of thing, are you?”
Alastor lowers his lashes, rubbing away some of the saliva that spilled over the edge of his mouth when he gagged with the back of his wrist, and faintly hopes that the gesture looks more coy than humiliated.
The heat is pooling in the pit of his own stomach, too. Alastor shifts on his knees to gather himself and soldier on, pulled along by the motion of their activities. Somewhere between Vox finally winding a hand into his hair to tug and the second time he chokes and ends up sputtering, he realizes that he is hard. Not to the point of aching, yet—but enough to feel it, his cock pressing up against the fly of his pants. It feels like a heaviness between his legs, an incessant reminder of his own body’s interest. He drops a hand down, pressing the heel of it between his legs, and sparks of pleasure skitter up his spine.
Then Vox groans above him as the sudden pleasure makes Alastor swallow compulsively, and the sparks are chased away almost immediately by the gelid trickle of anxiety. Alastor moves his hand back up to Vox’s leg. He doesn’t—he’s not in the mood. It would be better if he wasn’t hard at all, but there’s nothing to be done about the fact that he is. At least, nothing that he’s interested in doing. It’s a vulnerability he doesn’t want to explore right now, not when he’s on his knees in an apology that he just wants to get done with so that things may return to their usual. Vox’s claws are carding through his hair with a clinical coldness that feels nothing like—like being pressed into his own couch, electricity skittering through his veins; or held close by large, greedy hands, no escape as the clack of a predator’s teeth clicks by his ears; or even the tentative pressure of Vox’s thighs against his back, eyes gleaming in the reflection of a mirror and all of his want poured only into the lascivious words curling through the air.
(Is it really different? Likely not—Vox is hardly behaving abnormally. If anything, he is being kinder than usual, as a particular brand of cruelty in bed is typically Alastor’s preference. He likes being treated like a thing, usually. It’s novel. Fun.)
(When he’s not using himself as one.)
He never quite manages to fall into the rhythm of things. Part of is is because Vox keeps directing him to do new things—swallow, use his lips, use just his tongue, suck, relax his throat, oh my god Alastor are you okay I swear I’m not laughing at you again—and part of it is because even he can tell that he’s just—not doing very well. There are many things Alastor is good at. Oral sex is, apparently, not one of them. Sure, he’s managing passably—but he’s overcome with the growing certainty that while Vox is apparently very invested in the idea of teaching his ‘virginal’ (hah!) partner some depraved sex act, his standards for the actual results were probably quite a bit higher.
Not that Vox complains. He’s vocal and enthusiastic, for the most part, but not quite to the same degree as…well, as usual, as much as it galls Alastor to realize that they have a ‘usual’ for depraved indecency. And he does orgasm, eventually. Not across Alastor’s face, like he’d originally intended—he asks Alastor to pose with his mouth open, tongue out, and pumps himself to completion directly into his mouth instead.
“Just—just hold it,” Vox says, panting. “Just like that, holy shit, if I could just take a photo—”
Alastor’s claws dig into his thighs.
“A polaroid! I’ll find an old camera.”
Alastor’s eyes narrow, ears pinning back. Vox’s already fuzzy screen flushes harder. “Okay, okay—fuck. You look even hotter when you’re pissed, Bambi.”
Hands press to Alastor’s cheeks, thumbs tugging at the edges of his smile. Saliva is starting to pool in his mouth, mixing with the come that’s cupped in the hollow of his tongue.
“Fuck,” Vox whispers, wide-eyed. “I’m gonna—don’t kill me. I’m gonna…”
He leans forward, looming over Alastor, and cups his hands under Alastor’s jaw, turning his face up toward him. Then he opens his mouth and spits, slow and dripping, straight into Alastor’s mouth.
Feedback spikes through the air, cutting off with a short screech as Alastor realizes he’s lost control of the airwaves, but the hands around his face manage to contain his flinch, and the way Vox stares down at him is downright reverent. The cold apprehension is gone, it seems—but the familiar warmth itches at him now, too. He wants this to be over already.
“Okay,” Vox says. “Okay, fuck—you can swallow. Let me watch you swallow.”
Alastor swallows, blinking rapidly. He hiccups, just once, as his ears twitch at the disgusting texture. Vox is finally beaming at him, unabashed in his delight, and drops his hands to start tugging Alastor up and into the bed, where he promptly notices that Alastor is still hard. He fumbles for the catch of Alastor’s pants as Alastor is shuffling to kick his shoes off.
Stray static trickles into the air again. Alastor panics.
“No,” Alastor blurts, batting Vox’s hands away from his waist. “No, no thank you.”
Vox frowns, eyes narrowing in a sort of way that indicates he’s displeased, which should be fine—shouldn’t be something Alastor cares about—but it sends another renewed swoop of anxiety through the pit of his stomach. He understands the confusion—Alastor is clearly worked up, physically speaking, visibly interested—and he does desire to resolve the feeling, wants it to go away. But he doesn’t want to make it—more—right now, doesn’t like the nauseating way it’s blending with the incessant apprehension roiling in the pit of his stomach, into an uncomfortably heated, sick mess of feeling. No. No, he doesn’t want that right now. He needs to—get over himself, first. He’s done. Vox liked it. He came. Things are fine now.
“I don’t want to,” Alastor repeats. He wants to sound firm. He tells himself that he does.
Regardless, Vox doesn’t push.
“If you say so, sweetheart,” he says, swiping a claw down Alastor’s inner thigh. It makes him shiver—uncomfortable. Too much. But Vox doesn’t do it again, instead letting Alastor go and leaning back in bed, relaxed and lounging on the mattress. He shucks his pants off and flings his shirt off the side of his bed, undressing properly until he’s naked and relaxed in the haze of the afterglow.
Alastor scoots up slightly, shifting on his knees. He would prefer not to lay down right now, but he’s not sure if he’s finished apologizing yet, so he does it anyway. Vox likes the afterglow and all that. He ends up pressed against Vox’s side and front, Vox dragging one of Alastor’s legs over his hip and winding a hand under and around his waist, claw tips playing at the waistband above his tail. His other hand strokes up the side of Alastor’s neck, a gesture Alastor…has enjoyed in the past, at least, and tugs him into a kiss.
“C’mere, baby,” Vox murmurs. “You’re so fucking good, you’re so good to me—”
Alastor kisses Vox. He starts to tune out the way he usually does when Vox decides that he’d like to ravage his mouth without any particularly satisfying amount of blood involved, and then forces his screaming brain to pay more attention. He’s gotten better at kissing over the past months, according to Vox—not that he’d really noticed or been trying, simply moving his mouth in response to Vox’s—and now he tries to move his tongue more in the way that Vox has just taught him, guessing at what would bring the other the most pleasure.
Vox groans in his mouth, static flashing between them, sharp and biting, and pulls Alastor against him. Alastor exhales sharply through his nose, but doesn’t complain when the motion incidentally grinds his stiff cock up against Vox’s hip. It’s a mild discomfort, in the larger scheme of things. He tries to keep kissing Vox the way that he seems to like. The technicalities of the process help to calm him down, but the way Vox’s hands stay on him—running through his hair, though blessedly staying away from his ears; squeezing his hips and threatening to tease at the tuft of his tail; cupping his jaw, tender and soft; thumbs dipping under the hem of his shirt, tracing gentle circles into the soft fur of his belly—
It puts ants under Alastor’s skin. It’s not long before he’s buzzing, squeezing his eyes shut the way he never really bothers with when they kiss, just so he can concentrate on what he’s doing. He puts his hands on Vox’s shoulders and does his best to stay still.
Eventually, Vox lets him go.
He’s smiling up at Alastor as he does, eyes soft and mooning. He looks sappy and soft, and he parts with one last lascivious lick of Alastor’s swollen lower lip before he reaches up to press his thumb against it, swiping away the spit. He won’t stop staring at Alastor’s mouth.
“You’re outta this world, Bambi,” Vox murmurs. His eyes flicker into hearts, for just a moment. He’s happy.
Alastor sighs, shuddery and relieved. Well—not relieved, per se, just—pleased. There’s nothing to be relieved about. The process was hardly an ordeal, or anything all that far out of the usual. He succeeded. Apology complete. He has no reason to feel so strangely about it.
He slips out of Vox’s arms, shifting himself a foot away on the bed despite Vox’s ensuing pout.
“Thank you,” he says politely, and tries not to frown when Vox blinks at him quizzically. “I am going to lay down for a little while.”
“Oh, uh—okay?”
Alastor rolls over until his back is to Vox, dragging a pillow down from the head of the bed to stuff the corner of it under his cheek, and does his best to breathe.
His mouth feels strange. Bruised, maybe, and slightly disgusting with the taste of it all. He’s hot and cold at the same time, and his arms feel tingly. He wants to pant, for some reason, like he’s been running, even though all he’s doing is laying there. He doesn’t let himself do it. It would be too—strange. Too obvious. It would spoil the mood. He just needs to lay down like this for a few minutes and then he will reconcile the strange sensations he is experiencing, and—and say something biting but amusing, and Vox will bite back, but it will be humorous and gentle and Vox will not be upset about it like he has been for the past week. Because Alastor has apologized.
He presses his palms against his cheeks and tries to figure out if it’s his hands that are too hot or his face that has gone cold. He tries to take a breath, but it’s too deep on the way in, panting and strange. He holds it instead. He doesn’t actually need to breathe, but for some reason the act makes him dizzy. It’s ridiculous. He’s not even moving.
Something brushes against his shoulder, and Alastor jerks away.
“Alastor?”
“Stop,” Alastor bites out, curling inward. He can’t. He should leave. He thinks if he tries to get up right now then he may vomit. “I’m done. I don’t want you to touch me anymore. I’m done for today.”
The hand retreats, but Vox’s weight stays behind him on the bed, dipping just enough that the indentation threatens to make Alastor slide back. He can feel the heat of Vox’s cooling system, warm air fluttering against his back to the rhythm of Vox’s breathing.
“Alastor, are you okay?” Vox asks quietly.
Alastor pulls his hands over his ears, grinning madly even though nobody can see it. He could let the shadows take him and just throw up at home where nobody can see him, maybe. “Just fine, chum! A fit of pique, you know me!”
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m cold.”
There’s a pause, then some shuffling. After a moment, a light blanket drapes over his shoulders. It’s a pale purple color, just barely in-line with the aesthetic scheme of Vox’s quarters, and very soft.
“Is that better?” Vox’s voice is still quiet.
Alastor nods against the pillow, not turning back to look at him. It is, actually, better. Somehow. The weight of it is welcome—as is the fact that Vox doesn’t touch him.
“You’re really pale,” Vox says, worried. “You’ve got at least a little bit of, uh—human color to you, normally, but you look like ash right now.”
Alastor pulls the blanket over his head. “It’s fine,” he gasps. He can’t even try to make it sound believable. “Just leave it, Vox. It’s—”
He runs out of air before he can finish his sentence, wheezing. Vox, mercifully, doesn’t comment on it. There’s more movement on the bed, which Alastor definitely cannot see now, and then Vox gets off of it. Alastor sort of thought that that was what he wanted—some more physical distance—but he still can’t relax despite it all, and so he just fists his hands in the blanket, deliberately clenching them so hard that his arms shake for a moment. It helps a little bit with the tension.
There’s a quiet pop in front of Alastor, suddenly—the familiar snap-crackle of Vox bending his knees into a crouch, and then a very slight dip as Vox presumably leans his arms onto the edge of the mattress.
“Bambi?” he asks.
Alastor doesn’t reply for a moment. Then: “One minute, thank you,” he says, hoarse.
Vox waits. This makes Alastor wish that he had requested more than one minute, but conversely he’s not sure Vox would have waited ten, or even five. When his sixty seconds are up—presumably, Alastor doesn’t actually count—there’s a tugging at the edge of the blanket, and Vox flips up the corner of it just enough that he can look at Alastor’s face.
Alastor smiles at him. At least he still has that.
“This isn’t really how I hoped makeup sex would go,” Vox admits. The light of his screen is shining into the little alcove Alastor has created with his blanket, illuminating the way Vox’s claws are wound tight against each other, one thumb fiddling restlessly with the other. He has boxers on, now, and his unbuttoned dress shirt.
The words go a decent way towards making Alastor’s smile falter, but he’s practiced enough that it doesn’t so much as twitch.
“In what way?” he asks, instead of, What more do you want from me?
Vox eyes him, mouth a flat, single-pixel line on his screen. “The part where you’re still upset at the end.”
“I’m not upset.”
“I’m usually pretty game to not call you out on your feelings, baby,” Vox says, “but you’re hyperventilating.”
Alastor stops breathing again and bites down on his tongue viciously. Blood pools in his mouth, a familiar and soothing taste, and he sucks it down.
Vox reaches out, tentative. “Can I…?”
Alastor stares at his reaching hand. “That depends,” he says slowly, after taking a very careful, not hyperventilated breath. “Have I apologized adequately for my words?”
Vox stares back at him. “What happens if I say ‘yes’?”
“Then I would prefer that you not touch me right now, thank you.”
“...And what happens if I say ‘no’?”
Alastor’s smile wobbles. He goes back to holding his breath, and reaches his hand out of the safety of his bundled up blanket cocoon, aiming to place it into Vox’s open palm—but Vox flinches back, yanking his hand away so quickly that he reels backward and falls down on his ass.
“What?” Alastor asks, frowning over his smile. He’s been asking that a lot lately, he feels like.
“—We shouldn’t have done this,” Vox says in a rush. “We shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have—”
That sends a spike of irritation through Alastor, which is surprisingly helpful with clearing away the cobwebs that seem to be weighing down his mind. All that, and Vox has changed his mind? “What?”
It seems to be Vox’s turn to be taking quick breaths, shallow and short. He scrambles up to his knees, clutching the edge of the mattress, and peers at Alastor desperately. That satiated, golden afterglow is entirely gone. “Did you even—did you even want to have sex?”
Alastor does not like the direction this conversation is headed. He scoots back slightly, reeling his hand back into the blanket, and shoves himself up to a seated position. He feels less like verticality is going to make him vomit now, and the added height…helps.
“It was my intent to apologize to you,” he says.
Vox laughs weakly. “Bambi, that is so far from answering the question.”
Alastor shrugs. “I wanted to apologize. Sex seemed to be the best way to go about that. Ergo, I wanted to have sex.”
Vox buries his face against the mattress. After a moment, he winds his hands together behind his not-inconsiderably sized skull and rocks back and forth a few times, taking deep breaths. Alastor’s mouth twists, and he contemplates reaching out to pat Vox on the shoulder, but decides against it.
“I don’t understand the problem,” Alastor admits.
“Maybe you were right,” Vox tells his knees, miserable and hoarse. He’s slid back enough now that the bed isn’t muffling his words, but he’s gotten smaller, too—hunched over, digging his claws into his own legs. “I’m disgusting. This is—fucking awful. I don’t even know what to—what am I supposed to do?”
Vox lifts his face. His eyes are bordered with red, not quite tearful. Somehow it’s worse this way. “I don’t know,” he tells Alastor. “I don’t know anymore. What am I supposed to do?”
Alastor shifts, uncomfortable and still so very confused. “I was…hoping things would go back to the way they were before,” he says softly. “Now that we’ve—hashed things out, so to say.”
Vox barks a laugh, then claps a palm over his mouth. “Oh my god,” he says, eyes wide. “You actually think that? That’s—why? Why would you want to?”
Alastor swallows. “I don’t understand, Vox. What is—why are you still upset? What did I do?”
“What about what I did?” Vox asks, voice cracking. “You didn’t even want to—do you know how awful I used to feel, about liking you?”
Alastor’s ears twitch sharply, flicking up.
Vox laughs again, a scattered and broken sound, and drags his hands down his face. “God,” he says. “It was so fucked. I was—you were, like, this perfect gentleman. I couldn’t figure out if I wanted you, or if I wanted to be you—it was both, I think, but I just couldn’t—you’re right, I stared, I couldn’t stop staring, but you kept acting like you didn’t notice, and you were so touchy, always—my arm, or fixing my tie, or—” He takes a ragged breath, hugging himself for a moment before dropping his hands into his lap to wind his fingers together. “I used to play a game. Try to figure out what would be worse—if liking you meant I was a fag, or if it meant I was just a girl after all, crossdressing because she has daddy issues. That kind of thing’s easier when you’re a woman. It doesn’t count. Women are just—but men, no. Men don’t. So when you started saying those things—”
Vox takes another breath, this one slower and deeper, wrestling himself back under control. He looks up at Alastor finally, a wet, wobbly grin on his face. “Guess I’m a fag after all,” he says, wavering. “Not that I didn’t know that by now.”
“That is a very ugly word,” Alastor says softly.
“It’s true, though.” Vox sniffs sharply, and looks down at his hands. “‘Disgusting.’ You were right. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t believe you.” Vox sniffs again, hiccups. “I don’t think you even know what I’m sorry for.”
Alastor’s mouth twists. That is not untrue. “That does not mean I don’t forgive it.”
“Can I—” Vox cuts himself off, biting his lip. “Fuck. Nevermind. I can’t—” He hugs himself again.
Alastor can hazard a guess. “You want comfort.”
Vox shakes his head, frenetic, and hunches in on himself. “No. No, I—not like this. God, not like this. I should—go see Val. He’s—hah. He’s excavated all of my self-deprecating 50s bullshit before.”
Alastor jolts. “You’re leaving?” You’re leaving me? Here? Like this?
(Doesn’t he want to be left alone?)
“Don’t you want me to?” Vox echoes Alastor’s thoughts, and Alastor flinches.
“No,” he says, and realizes that he means it. “Stay. Vox. Stay.”
“Okay,” Vox says quietly. “But you can’t keep saying mean shit just to punish me. Even if you believe it.”
“I wasn’t—” Alastor’s ears flatten for a moment, his lips threatening to draw back into a snarl. “I wasn’t punishing you, I was just changing the—the game! You have always liked it when I humiliated you in the past.”
“Why would I like it,” Vox asks, bewildered, “when you mean it?!”
“I’ve always meant it! I don’t understand what changed this time!”
Vox flinches at his words, and moves to stand up. Alastor outright hisses at him, shadows writhing out of the corners of the room, which prompts a startled blink, Vox freezing.
Vox sits back down.
Alastor reaches a hand out, placing it at the edge of the bed. Vox stares at it like a drowning man stares at a lifeline. His eyes flick to Alastor’s, then back to his hand.
He takes it.
Alastor shifts closer, crossing his legs to sit at the edge of the bed where Vox is kneeling, and winds their fingers together. It doesn’t make his skin crawl—not if it’s only this. He squeezes Vox’s hand, hard, and does not let go. Now if he wants to leave, he will have to choose between that and keeping all of his fingers.
Vox winces slightly as the bones of his knuckles grind together, and the next smile he attempts to produce comes out a touch more genuine.
“Do you really think I’m disgusting?” Vox asks. “Still?”
Alastor hums. The genuine answer is ‘yes,’ but Alastor doesn’t think that Vox should be offended by it. Alastor thinks a lot of things are disgusting, and furthermore himself does many things that others find disgusting, chief among them slaughtering and eating other demons on live air during extended broadcasts that leave their screams echoing in the ears of all who were subject to hearing them. Vox, on the other hand, has sexual appetites that involve getting damp and the desire to stick his cock up orifices that Alastor rightly does not think anything should be entering, thank you kindly. That is simply the way of things. Finding one another’s idiosyncrasies off-putting doesn’t mean anything.
It means a lot to Vox, clearly.
“Not as a person,” Alastor says, rolling the words around in his mouth.
“You said you meant everything you said. You’ve—you’ve said a lot of things, the past few months. I thought—like, it was roleplaying? You know?”
Alastor tips his head to the side. “Sort of. I was playing a role when I said those things. I said them to humiliate you, because you enjoy being humiliated.”
“As a sex thing,” Vox says, wrapping a second hand around where his and Alastor’s are already linked. “I enjoy it when I think it’s kinky. Not when—not when you really feel like that about me. That I’m disgusting, and pathetic, and—” He swallows. “And you hate it when I look at you, and think I’m just a completely worthless person.”
“I like that you’re pathetic,” Alastor says. Vox startles, looking up at him. “It’s one of my favorite things about you, actually. Particularly that you’re largely very pathetic any and every time you’re around me, like you can’t help it, while demonstrating a rather exceptional degree of competence in most other aspects of your life that my mere presence apparently renders you incapable of accessing. Frankly,” he goes on, smile spreading, “if you weren’t pathetic, my dear, I don’t think I’d have bothered sleeping with you in the first place.”
Vox is staring up at him, a tinge of pink starting to color his cheeks. He hiccups. “Bambi, you’re so fucking weird. D’you mean that?”
Alastor grins. “In its entirety.”
Vox lets out a breath, shaky, and swallows as he attempts to gather himself. “I guess it’s stupid to think that if you—really felt those ways about me, that we’d have gotten this far. I just—” His voice cracks, and when he next looks up at Alastor, his pupils are blurry. “I love you,” Vox says, claws digging into Alastor’s hand like a lifeline. “I love you.”
Alastor’s smile softens, and he reaches out with his free hand, tracing a claw over the edge of Vox’s screen. “I know, my dear.”
Visible relief washes over Vox’s face. “I just—it’s so much, sometimes. And you’d think I’d have learned with Val, that love isn’t—it’s not enough to stop you from hurting someone, but you’re the fucking Radio Demon, it’s not possible to hurt you, except—”
He cuts himself off again, looking faintly queasy. Alastor can relate.
“—Except—tell me you liked what we did,” Vox practically begs. “Tell me it didn’t make you feel sick.” Tell me I’m not disgusting, he doesn’t say, but Alastor hears the echo of it in his words.
Alastor fights not to cringe. “I take it you would prefer that I not lie to you.”
“Why would you do that?” Vox bursts out. He tries to pull his hand back, and Alastor doesn’t let him go, claws digging in until Vox, wincing in surprise, stops trying to get away.
“I’ve already explained,” Alastor says, exasperated. “And you accepted my apology! So all is well, as far as I understand, and—”
“You didn’t want to blow me,” Vox interrupts. “That first time, when I—when I first said it. You even got pissy that I tried to, um. Push it. And I was so—I wasn’t even nice about it, today. So why didn’t you just pick something else?”
Alastor is quiet for a long moment. “It was something you wanted,” he says eventually. “And abasing myself seemed an adequate way to communicate my apology when I cannot—I can’t apologize, with words, when I don’t understand why something is wrong, Vox,” Alastor says, frustrated.
“I don’t like hurting you,” Vox admits.
Alastor rolls his eyes. “You like hurting me very much.”
“Not like this,” Vox says. “It’s—it’s the same thing, Alastor. There’s saying kinky shit in bed because it gets me off, and then there’s digging up old wounds. And there’s giving you a dose of Love Potion because you get off on feeling powerless, and then there’s—this. Tell me you liked this. Tell me you’d wanna go again, if you didn’t feel guilty.”
Alastor doesn’t say anything. He wants to protest—deny his guilt—but the thought of going through all of this again twists his stomach. Maybe he would have enjoyed it some day, in another context, but he rather thinks he’s ruined this particular act for himself.
Vox leans forward, hooking a hand into Alastor’s collar just as he had when they first started. “C’mon,” he demands, halfway manic. “Let’s go again, Bambi, since you liked it so much—”
Alastor twists back, panic sending his tail flashing, and sinks his teeth into Vox’s wrist.
“—FUCK!”
Electricity pops through the air, though thankfully not into Alastor’s teeth. Vox’s other hand is still caught in Alastor’s grip. There’s blood pooling in Alastor’s mouth, now, chasing away the taste of—of come and spit and fucking cherry lime, which is a flavor he genuinely has a fondness for, when he’s inclined towards sweets, probably tainted forever now through what is apparently entirely his own fault—
He releases his teeth from Vox’s wrist.
“I’m sorry,” Alastor says.
Vox is panting, pale with pain, and holds his injured hand close to his chest. Blood oozes from the semi-circle of puncture wounds. His other hand is bleeding slightly under the pressure of Alastor’s claws, too, but Alastor refuses to let it go.
“I—” Vox stutters, wide-eyed. “No, I—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—that was a fucked up thing to do.”
Alastor doesn’t nod so much as incline his head, smile thin.
“Why would you have sex with me if you didn’t want to do this?” Vox whispers. “Why wouldn’t you just—talk?”
“You didn’t let me talk,” Alastor snaps, not realizing until the moment he does that he’s—
He might be a little bit upset about that, actually.
“You promised,” Alastor says, parroting his first words to Vox in over a week. “You promised you wouldn’t disappear, and then you did. And you didn’t listen the first time I told you I didn’t want to do this, either. You pushed. Talking didn’t work. This did.”
Vox makes a sound, small and broken. He looks like he wants to hide away—but Alastor isn’t letting him leave, and he’s wisened up enough to rethink burying his face into Alastor’s lap. So he just sits there, half-naked and guilty.
“I’m sorry,” Vox rasps. “I didn’t—I harp on you about talking things out, but you’re right, I wasn’t—letting you. Or listening to you when you did. And now you’ve—it hurt you, and that’s on me. I won’t do it again, Bambi, I’ll listen—if you, uh. If you feel up to giving me another shot.”
“Hm.” Alastor is pretty sure that hit Charlie’s ‘Four As of Apology!’ on all points. He supposes that means he is to accept. “Very well-spoken. I don’t care, Vox. I really would prefer to just put all of this behind us.”
“I—okay, but—”
“What?” Alastor asks, exasperated.
“Why?” Vox whispers.
There are several things Alastor could say. His relationship with sex is nebulous—his reasons for having it are never quite the same as Vox’s, even when he enjoys the process of it. Having sex as an apology doesn’t, inherently, seem any more out of place than doing it because he wants to keep Vox’s company and sex is another way of spending the time.
He can admit to himself that saying any of those things would be disingenuous. He has never in the past, after all, forced himself through the process. In fact, Alastor has always been spectacularly free with his mercurial and picky nature on the subject of intimate relations, but—
“I don’t feel that I rightly had the high ground to demand much in the way of consideration in this particular instance,” Alastor says quietly. “I am typically quite firm about my boundaries, Vox, but—”
“Boundaries aren’t just for when you’re on the high road,” Vox says, hands tightening over Alastor’s for a moment, seemingly unconscious.
Alastor’s expression twists.
“And—and I’ve joked about it before,” Vox says, “but you really let people walk all over you sometimes, when you like them enough.” He presses a palm to his mouth, giggling nonsensically. “God, you really do like me. I knew that. I do know that. You remind me in the worst ways. Fuck. I’m sorry I said that thing about being my boyfriend. You’re right. Please let’s never do that again, okay?”
“Which part?” Alastor asks, raising his eyebrows.
“The part that makes me want to throw myself off of my own tower,” Vox says, voice ragged, and starts clambering back onto the bed. “So all of it. Budge over, my knees hurt. Fuck, I feel awful. Like I’ve been run over by the royal fucking limousine. How do you feel?”
“Your blood seems to have done the trick. I no longer think I am going to vomit.”
“Oh. Great.” Vox leans over to thunk his head down on Alastor’s shoulder—then flinches back up, spine ramrod straight…and promptly yelps when Alastor rolls his eyes and uses his free hand to tug his head back down. “Ow, my face. Does this mean you’re good for a cuddle?”
Alastor grimaces. “I’m all cuddled out, my dear. But this is alright.”
“Okay.” Vox squeezes his hand, and offers up his other one. “More blood? Chicken soup for the cannibal’s soul?”
Alastor is tempted, but he’s rather done with putting parts of Vox’s body into his mouth for the day, he thinks. He shakes his head.
Vox drops his hand back into his lap. “How about dinner? I think we should—talk more, maybe, but—I could go for something super unhealthy right now. Bribe myself with carbs and butter to get through the conversation. Wanna go to Cannibal Town?”
Alastor perks up. “You want to go to Cannibal Town?”
“Somewhere with vegan options, please.”
Alastor wilts again. The ‘vegan’ options in Rosie’s district are largely not actually vegan—frankly, vegans have a very difficult time finding anything to eat at all in Cannibal Town—and the term is merely slang for meal options that don’t include, ah. The Cannibal Town special, so to say. “Spoilsport. Perhaps you can try some of my meal nonetheless.”
“Absolutely not.”
“We can visit Rosie!” Alastor suggests.
“We probably shouldn’t.”
This time, Alastor’s frown is more genuine. “Whyever not?”
Vox lifts his head, looking awfully judgmental about Alastor’s dear friend. “Tell me you genuinely believe she wouldn’t clock whatever the hell is going on between us today in, like, two seconds flat. Tell me you actually want to talk about it with her. Right now. Today. In like an hour.”
Alastor cringes. “There’s a nice Italian place on the corner of Mulberry Street.”
Vox’s judgment fades into excitement. “Oh, hell yeah. I can go for some pasta.”
“No, no,” Alastor says, “they just serve Italians. The vegan options are largely French, actually. The place is run by a delightful French couple—they died during the Great War and were from a lovely little place called Menton, which is located on the formerly-French side of the Franco-Italian border. I’m afraid they haven’t quite let that go. Absolutely fantastic chefs, though, both of them. They make a delightful Italian Onion Soup.”
Vox gives Alastor one very slow blink. “Isn’t it called ‘French…’”
Alastor grins.
“Right.” Vox laughs. “Fuck. Why the hell not. It’s a date.”
And so it is.