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He hadn't really imagined that Vox would be so needy.
Though it was as laughable as it was distasteful, he couldn't quite ignore the faint feeling of unease that persisted in the hollow of his stomach.
"Alastor," Vox was saying again, with so much intensity it was as though he'd been trying to get Alastor's attention for several minutes now. Perhaps he had. Alastor turned to glance down at him where Vox sat at his feet, looking almost as Alastor remembered him. The tailor really had done a wonderful job. "Why don't you use me?"
That again.
Alastor let his gaze slide away listlessly as he leant back in his armchair, swirling his third glass of whiskey absently. A good vintage, the perfect warm amber where it caught the flickering light from the hearth.
I don't want to be reminded of how things could've been. "You're useless," he said instead, just to see the flinch that distorted Vox's face—only for a split second, but it was enough. He forced his smile to sharpen as he lazily reached out to flick the side of Vox's fragile screen. "What could you possibly have to offer me?"
Everything and nothing.
The flush of humiliation that coloured Vox's face was a beautiful thing, as was the way he finally looked away, mouth downturned and tight. "I signed because I had no fucking choice," he muttered, "but you—"
"I'd be very careful how I continued that sentence if I were you, Vox," Alastor interrupted, eyes darkening as he became acutely aware that the phonograph had fallen silent, white noise in the air and his own blood rushing in his ears.
"You fucking claimed me!" Vox burst out, turning and lurching forward to grab at Alastor's legs, claws catching and sinking through the fabric to flesh beneath. "You didn't—you didn't have to do that." His voice cracked and stuttered, eyes widening. He looked faintly deranged, Alastor noted distantly, still frozen where he sat. "Why did you do that?" Vox's voice had dropped to a bitter whisper.
The answer, Alastor thought, had always been obvious; it was hardly as though Vox could ever, or would ever, belong to anyone else. All he'd done was make it official, and no one else had seen Vox since.
"Killing you would be quite unsatisfying," Alastor said, voice tight in his throat. He took a sip of his whiskey and restarted the phonograph with a snap of his fingers, the sudden burst of music a blessed distraction. It was the truth this time; the wretched fact remained that he did not want Vox dead and couldn't stand to send him away—yet his very presence was sickening nostalgia and the thought of employing him even more abhorrent.
So here Vox had remained, in stasis, dressed up like an embarrassing doll that loudly proclaimed the weakness of Alastor's own sentimentality. At the very least, Vox would never be able to tell anyone.
Vox leant forward, arms still tightly wrapped around Alastor's calves as his screen came to rest with a defeated thunk against Alastor's knees. He really was pitiful like this, knowingly and pliantly facing the rest of eternity at Alastor's whims. Oh, he'd been furious at first and full of amusing little tantrums—but he'd also known full well what he'd been signing. What it could mean. Of course, likely the reality had little in common with anything Vox had imagined.
Because how could Vox have possibly imagined the paralysis of indecision even Alastor himself hadn't anticipated?
"You're the fucking worst," Vox mumbled against his trousers, and as Alastor downed the last of his whiskey he allowed his other hand to drop gently to the top ridge of Vox's screen, idly stroking both damaged antennae. "At least let me—"
"Don't talk," Alastor said, enough, enough—it was surely the whiskey that had him grabbing the edge of Vox's screen to tilt his stunned face up. Vox could never tell anyone, after all. "Dance with me."