Chapter Text
Vox got to the bar early.
He told himself it was incidental - that the meeting had wrapped faster than expected, that traffic had been good, that the city’s power grid had been restless all afternoon and he’d needed somewhere to bleed the excess energy off. Those explanations were neat. Reasonable.
None of them were the truth.
The truth was that he’d missed Alastor with an intensity he’d learned, over decades, to file down into something survivable. Want like that couldn’t be indulged raw. It had to be managed. Contained, the way you contained a live wire.
He slid into their usual seat at the bar, the one angled just enough toward the door that he could catch Alastor’s reflection the moment he arrived without ever having to look like he was waiting. Thirty years and Vox still hadn’t shaken that habit. The bartender noticed, of course - everyone noticed Vox - but said nothing, only set a glass down within reach.
Routine mattered. Ritual mattered.
Thursday nights had started long before they’d ever put words to what they were doing. One drink after meetings that ran too long. One bar that stayed open late. A pattern that stuck because neither of them ever bothered to break it.
This bar. That stool.
It was the seventies now. Everything louder, glossier, more obscene than it had been when Vox and Alastor first shook hands and agreed to become partners all those decades ago.
Technology bled into everything now - onto screens, into homes, into people. Vox was at the centre of it, dragging the future kicking and screaming into something that could be packaged, sold, and consumed.
Alastor, infuriatingly, enthrallingly, remained untouched by any of it.
Same posture. Same immaculate tailoring. Same smile that never quite reached his eyes. As if time were something that happened around him rather than to him.
Vox loved that about him; he hated it too.
Loved that there was something in Hell that refused to be improved, optimised, rewritten. Hated that it meant Alastor didn’t belong to the world Vox was building, no matter how long they stood side by side in it.
Vox leaned forward, forearms resting on the counter, his screen dimmed to a low, steady glow. He talked to the bartender because silence had teeth, because if he stopped filling the space his thoughts would circle back where they always did.
He complained about equipment failures, about censors, about networks still too stupid to understand what he was trying to build. His hands moved as he spoke, energy snapping faintly at his fingertips.
He was wound tight. He knew that.
He hadn’t seen Alastor properly in days. Not just passing in their building, not just the low hum of him through the walls. Properly. Sitting together. Talking. Existing in the same pocket of space without obligation pressing in from all sides.
It mattered more than Vox liked to admit.
Meetings that slid into drinks; drinks that slid into Valentino’s mouth and hands and teeth. Val had shown up a few months ago, during Vox’s push to bring on a full-time pornography producer, and the chemistry had been immediate. Valentino was easy. Sex without consequence. Desire without the dangerous weight of love. He wanted Vox with a hunger that demanded nothing beyond attention, and Vox - pent up, starved in ways he was careful not to name - had accepted that gladly.
It didn’t mean anything. That was the point.
Valentino was a release, not a replacement. A pressure valve, and a solution to the problem Vox had no intention of laying at Alastor’s feet. Alastor didn’t like being cornered; didn’t respond well to expectation. Vox had learned that early and taken it seriously.
He loved Alastor too much to risk him.
The door opened.
Vox’s screen brightened instantly, betraying him before he could stop it.
Red coat. Familiar static. That impossible smile that always seemed to bend the room subtly around itself when Alastor entered. Something in Vox’s chest loosened with a sharp, unwelcome relief, like he’d been holding a breath for far too long without noticing.
Alastor crossed the room with unhurried grace, staff set carefully against the bar as he took the stool beside Vox. His sleeve brushed Vox’s forearm as he settled, a fleeting point of contact that lingered only because Vox didn’t move away.
The space between them closed without effort, without negotiation; thirty years of proximity had made it instinctive.
“Evening,” Alastor said.
Vox turned fully toward him, pleasure flaring bright and honest before he smoothed it into something warmer, steadier. Their knees knocked lightly beneath the bar as he shifted, neither of them bothering to correct it. “There you are. Thought you might’ve decided to be late for once.”
Alastor smiled - that smile, the one Vox never saw directed at anyone else - and something in Vox ached in a way he’d long since stopped trying to fix. “Perish the thought.”
The bartender slid Alastor’s usual across the counter without asking. As Alastor reached for it, his fingers brushed Vox’s where they rested near the glass; a brief, absent contact, easily mistaken for coincidence. Vox didn’t pull back. He never did. He watched Alastor take the first sip, watched his shoulders ease and his ears sag, tension draining away as though the world had finally slipped back into alignment.
They talked the way they always did; work first, comfortable and familiar. Broadcast delays. A new piece of equipment that had nearly driven Vox feral that afternoon. Alastor’s dry dissection of an ad campaign so aggressively dreadful it bordered on parody. At some point, Alastor leaned in to be heard over a swell of noise, his arm resting lightly against Vox’s, the contact unselfconscious and unguarded.
Vox laughed too loudly. Too freely. He didn’t care. Alastor was here. That was enough.
This - this - was what he had learned to treasure. The easy rhythm. The shared language. Thirty years of drinks shared shoulder to shoulder, joint meals with plates passed across counters without ceremony, elbows bumping as they reached for the same thing. Nights spent working late in their building, Alastor’s static humming through the walls even when they weren’t in the same room, occasionally materialising close enough that Vox felt him before he saw him.
Dancing, when the music was loud enough and the room crowded enough to pass it off as coincidence; Alastor’s hands light but certain at his shoulders, his waist, guiding without ever gripping. Drunken nights where arms looped around Vox’s shoulders and stayed there longer than strictly necessary, where bodies pressed close in lazy, unselfconscious ways that made Vox ache and smile in equal measure. Long evenings on the couch, legs draped over Vox’s lap without comment, Alastor sprawling across him as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Affection, freely given - so long as it wasn’t asked for.
They'd never done more.
Vox had stopped treating that as a personal failure long ago, though he’d agonised over it enough in the beginning to last a lifetime.
Alastor did not date. He did not have sex. There was no one he was as openly affectionate with as he was with Vox, and Vox was fairly certain now that this was precisely because he didn’t push.
Alastor didn’t like to be touched- something it had taken Vox far too long to recognise. Once he had, he shaped himself around it: wanting without reaching, offering without asking, staying meticulously within boundaries Alastor had never bothered to name but always enforced.
Alastor was his business partner. The co-owner of their building. Vox’s one constant.
That was the exchange, unspoken but consistent: Vox would not ask for more, and in return, Alastor would stay. Would choose him. Would offer the affection he was willing to give.
Vox had taken what he could get and made it enough, because the alternative was unthinkable.
He shifted on his stool, tugging absently at the collar of his turtleneck. The movement brought his shoulder briefly against Alastor’s arm again, familiar enough that Vox barely registered it. It was an ugly yellow thing; he’d picked it up on the way when he’d spotted marks dotting his neck after getting a bit too enthusiastic with Val. The fabric was soft and still managed to itch.
“You’re restless,” Alastor remarked, tone idle, eyes still on his glass. His elbow nudged Vox’s in a faint echo of the earlier contact, not a correction so much as an acknowledgement.
Vox gave a short laugh and rolled one shoulder, dismissive. “It’s the jumper. Cheap thing won’t sit right. Feels like it’s trying to crawl off me.”
“An unfortunate struggle,” Alastor murmured.
“Mm.” Vox tugged absently at the collar, fingers hooking the knit and pulling it away from his throat. Alastor’s gaze flicked briefly to the movement; his hand shifted on the bar, close enough that Vox could feel the warmth of it without it quite touching. “You’d think with the money I throw at clothes they’d stop trying to suffocate me.”
“Fashion has never been known for comfort,” Alastor said. “Only presentation.”
“Tell me about it.” Vox leaned into the opening, voice warming as he found the familiar rhythm. His hand settled back on the counter, brushing Alastor’s knuckles as it did. Alastor didn't move away. “Same with studios. Networks. People. You dress them up, polish the edges, and suddenly they’re unbearable to be inside for more than an hour.”
His hands moved as he spoke, energy bleeding into gesture, the collar tugged again without conscious thought.
Alastor’s gaze flicked to the motion, then back to his drink. “You could remove it.”
Vox scoffed lightly. “And let it win? Hardly.”
He laughed at his own joke, then winced faintly as the fabric scraped over tender skin. He adjusted it again, sharper this time, irritation spiking just enough to cut through the haze of comfort.
“These hickeys are gonna have me stuck in turtlenecks all week,” he muttered, distracted. “Damn it, Val-”
The sound of breaking glass cut him off.
Vox turned just in time to see Alastor’s glass smash in his hand, dark liquid spilling across his glove and the bar in slow, almost graceful drops. For a heartbeat, nothing moved. Not Alastor. Not Vox. The bar noise dimmed, warping like a signal losing coherence.
“Oh- shit,” Vox said quickly, the words tumbling out as instinct took over. He reached for Alastor without thinking. “Hey. You alright?”
Alastor stood.
The movement was too smooth. Too precise. Like something carefully decided rather than reacted to.
Vox’s confusion spiked hard enough to sting.
“I should be going,” Alastor said lightly, as though this were nothing more than an early night, a minor adjustment to routine.
Vox stared at him, disoriented. “What? Al- wait. Where the hell are you going?”
He caught Alastor’s arm without thinking, fingers closing around familiar fabric. The contact felt wrong the instant it happened. Vox rarely did that anymore. Rarely assumed permission.
Alastor stilled beneath his hand.
The contact seemed to register all at once, like a delayed signal catching up to itself. Vox felt it in the sudden rigidity of him, in the way the space around them pulled tight.
“What’s wrong?” Vox asked, the words tumbling out now, unfiltered. “Did I say something wrong?”
Alastor didn’t answer.
He just looked at him.
Vox had seen every version of Alastor that mattered - amused, sharp, distant, indulgent, furious. He had seen him smile with teeth bared and laughter threaded through static. He had seen him bored enough to be cruel and pleased enough to be dangerous.
He had never seen this.
The smile Alastor wore was still there, stretched thin and taut, like something forced into place by habit alone. It didn’t reach his eyes. His eyes were wrong - bright with something tight and raw, something that looked too much like pain to be mistaken for anger.
Oh.
Vox didn’t know how he’d misstepped so badly, only that he had.
He never wanted to see that expression on Alastor again. Never wanted to be the reason for it. The thought alone made his chest seize.
“…Vox,” Alastor said quietly. “I think I may have misread our relationship.”
Static roared in Vox’s head.
For a moment, the world collapsed into noise - feedback and whiteout and the shrill, distant scream of someone on the street - until there was nothing left but Vox standing there, staring at the man he loved, with no understanding of how he had managed to hurt him without ever meaning to.
“What?” he breathed. His voice sounded wrong in his own ears, thin and fractured. “Al- what do you mean?”
“I thought we were… together, as it were.”
The words were like a dropped feed - sudden, deafening, impossible to filter out.
Vox’s glow dimmed without his consent, panic surging fast enough to short-circuit thought. Confusion folded in on itself, sharpening into something cold and desperate. “No- wait- I mean- we’re partners, but-”
The words tangled and failed him.
Alastor nodded once.
“I see.”
There was no anger in it. No accusation. That was what made it unbearable.
And then he was gone.
The shadows took him cleanly, efficiently, as though he’d never been there at all, leaving Vox with his hand still half-raised and a hollow opening in his chest where something vital had been ripped free. The space Alastor left behind felt wrong, like a channel cut mid-broadcast.
I thought we were… together.
The phrase echoed through him, sickening and clarifying all at once.
He stared at the empty space where Alastor had stood, heart hammering, thoughts scrambling to realign around a reality that had been there all along. He'd just found out too late.