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“Alastor! Al! I didn’t expect to see you around here for a while.”
“Obviously,” Alastor says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Vox is sitting in a high-backed leather chair, in a scene so blatantly staged to make him look like a supervillain that it’s almost sweet.
“What brings you here, then?” Vox sits forward, his long fingers laced together. “Just couldn’t get enough of me?”
Alastor twitches an eyebrow up. Then, with very little ceremony, he summons a tentacle to sweep Vox off of his ridiculous chair and drag him to the floor. He keeps him pinned, stalking over and jabbing his staff hard against Vox’s chest.
“Someone had to knock your ego down a peg or two!” His smile is wide and genuine as he takes in Vox’s annoyance, his struggle against Alastor’s superior powers. “Ha! Tell me, go on- tell me you don’t deserve this. You know you do.”
Vox growls as he struggles against Alastor’s control. Alastor knows he can’t hold the other demon forever, but he’s not above letting him squirm for a good few minutes.
“You think you’re so clever,” he says, and Alastor’s grin widens.
“I know I am, sweetheart.”
Vox, sad little New Yorker that he used to be, reacts to the condescending pet name with a genuine thrill. It’s adorable. Alastor watches him arch up against his bindings, and drives his staff down just a little harder until Vox’s screen briefly glitches in pain.
“Bitch,” Vox snarls.
“How quickly you lose all of your nice words,” Alastor coos. “It’s precious, y—“
He cuts himself off, then, his body jerking into a fuzz of black static as something curls around one of his antlers. It only takes him a second to identify one of Vox’s cables, but that moment of blind panic is long enough for Vox to break free and clamber up to his feet.
“Deer bitch,” Vox gloats. “How’s it feel, being prey?” He snaps his shark teeth at Alastor, seeming ever so slightly put out when the only reaction he gets is a disconsolate huff.
Because that’s the problem, really. Alastor isn’t here just to beat the stuffing out of Vox, as entertaining as it is to do that every now and then. He’s here because of some thoroughly inconvenient moments of self-discovery, and somehow, Vox is the person most equipped and probably most willing to help him handle them.
“I fear,” Alastor says, stepping back and folding both hands on top of his staff in an attempt to look as composed as he possibly can, “that I may somewhat enjoy being prey.”
Vox blinks. Alastor can practically hear the cartoon cogs turning in his mind. For a long moment, he doesn’t move a muscle. And then, predictably, he bursts out laughing.
“You- ha! You. You? You, the radio demon, high and mighty Alastor, enjoy- ha! Ha!” He’s at Alastor’s side in a blink, clawed hands resting on his shoulders. “Oh, that’s too good. Fuckin’ adorable! Little deer wants to feel my claws?” They prick through Alastor’s shirt to emphasise the point, and Alastor promptly dissolves into shadow and re-forms himself a few feet away, looking exactly as annoyed as he had before.
“No,” he says, then scowls. “Yes. No. It’s complicated.”
“Oh, I bet it is.” Vox is still laughing as he strolls over to sling an arm around Alastor’s shoulders. He is so very insistent on touch; it’s irksome, but also entirely expected. “Go on. Tell me all about it, baby.”
Alastor, stubbornly, dissolves back into shadow and reappears where he’d been before. And then, because he is terribly aware that he does have to talk if he wants to get anything out of this, he tells Vox all about it. Baby.
——
The door of Vox’s bedroom has been locked, bound with Alastor’s shadows, and had a wardrobe shoved up against it to make extra sure. He’s not risking one of the other Vees bursting in here at a time like this.
Vox, for his part, is sat on his bed, eyeing Alastor with barely-contained glee. His expression keeps glitching at the edges, his shark-toothed smile occasionally sparking pink and cyan for a fraction of a second.
“You really don’t have to look at me like that,” Alastor says dryly. “I promise I’m not doing this because I particularly want to have sex with you. You’re just…conveniently predatory and you’ve been obviously willing for years. Are we clear?”
“As crystal, babe.” Vox’s smile doesn’t drop even slightly. “If I’d known all I had to do to get you talking to me was choke you out with my claws, I’d have done it ages ago. Fuck. C’mere, then.”
“No,” Alastor says. Partly because of his instinctive drive to refuse anything Vox offers out of sheer principle, and partly because there is a small but very loud part of him that is genuinely afraid. He can recall only too well the horror of being held in place, his animal brain turning his whole body into a shrieking mess of cortisol and trembling limbs. Is this really what he wants to sign himself up for? He should just leave right now. That would be smart.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Vox says, sitting forwards a little. His eye flickers, pulsing in horribly familiar bands of red and black. “Did I make that sound like you had a choice?”
Alastor looks away on instinct. His smile turns a little strained, the red glow of Vox’s hypnotic power filling the room. He’s projecting it around himself, onto the TV in the corner and the phone on the bedside table. The longer he refuses to look, the darker the room becomes, until the only light is coming from Vox himself.
Alastor grits his teeth and makes himself look.
Light snaps back into the room in an instant, but it doesn’t matter. Shivering fear prickles up and down Alastor’s spine, even as his mind fuzzes out into static. For a moment, he feels numb, and it’s bliss.
“Come. Here.” Vox’s voice snaps him out of his momentary hedonistic daze. Alastor walks forward quite without intending to, and sits down with a bump opposite Vox on the bed.
“You could have said please,” he says. It’s surprisingly easy to speak; he wonders if that’s a conscious choice in whatever Vox is beaming into his mind.
“Ha. Very funny, babe.” Vox reaches out, shoving him back onto the bed. Alastor feels the impact jar his monocle free, and resigns himself to having to search for that later. “Why would I ask nicely when I could just make you do it?”
“Manners are a virtue,” Alastor quips.
“Yeah, yeah. So, if I want to really get in your head, all I gotta do is act like a predator?” Vox doesn’t wait for an answer before launching himself at Alastor, his eye still pulsing black and red as his clawed hand grips Alastor’s throat.
The effect is instantaneous. Alastor’s pupils shrink to mere dots, his ears pointing straight up as danger floods his body. Everything goes cold, then hot, then cold again, as Vox leans down close to shove those enormous teeth right in Alastor’s face.
“Don’t you dare move,” he says. Alastor most definitely does not whimper as he feels his muscles lock. He’d been about half a second from turning into shadow and fleeing, but now that mode of exit has been denied, right alongside all of the others.
Vox leans in until his screen bumps the end of Alastor’s nose. Up this close, Alastor’s whole world is static and that red, pulsing eye. His skin tingles, his eyes feeling hot and feverish as he stares, and stares, and stares. The hand around his throat isn’t tight. It’s not restricting anything. It’s just resting, a gentle reminder that turns his stomach every time he thinks about it too hard.
“Aww,” Vox says. “You’re shaking. Tell me how you feel.”
“Scared,” Alastor chokes out, entirely against his own free will.
“Just scared?”
“…No.”
“What else?” There’s a glint in Vox’s eyes. Alastor can’t breathe right, but he’s compelled to answer anyway.
“Terrified,” he says. “To the point where I can’t feel my legs. Or my fingers. I feel nauseated. And—“ He cuts himself off, fighting it, reluctant to cede any ground, but Vox stays silent and he is forced by the crushing grip on his mind to finish his sentence. “Aroused. Some small amount. I think.”
“Atta boy. Show me,” Vox says, mercifully sitting up. Alastor relaxes just a little once those teeth are away from his face, but it doesn’t last long. Vox looks down between his legs, frowns, and tightens his hand around Alastor’s throat. “You’re not hard. You lying to me? Wait, do you even have a dick? I ain’t never seen it.”
Alastor responds with a cough and a fizz of static, not actually capable of words whilst he’s being choked. Vox considers for a moment, then relaxes his grip.
“I do. And no, I’m not lying” Alastor gasps out. “I think…I may be too scared.”
“Oh.” Vox’s palm presses up between Alastor’s splayed legs, rubbing against a cock that is definitely still soft. It sends jitters up Alastor’s spine, shivers that are caught somewhere between pleasure and unpleasantness.
Then, he looks up again. Alastor meets Vox’s gaze, doing his damnedest not to flinch at the cold, triumphant steel in those eyes. His hindbrain kicks out, telling him to run, and his useless legs give a brief tremor before stilling again.
“Eh,” Vox says. “Like I care. I could just order it. Make your heart beat faster.” His eyes flash, and Alastor feels the pounding in his chest kick up a notch. It hurts, driving the scared animal in the back of his mind to near desperation.
“Or you could not,” he says, the words coming out a little strangled even though Vox is barely choking him anymore.
“Where’s the fun in that, babe? Get…ooh, get nice and hot for me, too. Sure that won’t have any unforeseen consequences, yeah?”
Vox is pathetically obvious. Alastor has always thought so. Everything he does can be seen from a mile off; he crashes through life like he’s fifty feet tall and carrying a billboard stating his next intention in bright red letters. It is a damn miracle, as far as Alastor is concerned, that no one has managed to depose his little media empire thus far.
Although, given that he’s a good enough hypnotist to command Alastor’s very nervous system, perhaps his place at the top of the infuriating dung heap of this city is understandable.
Sweat prickles on Alastor’s brow. He feels it under his skin, his body suddenly seeming too small for him. He finds himself panting for breath like he’s just run a marathon, the combination of elevated heart rate and sudden intense heat tricking his mind into flight mode.
“You look a bit uncomfortable,” Vox points out.
“Gee,” Alastor says, wicked smile gritted firmly into place. “I wonder whose fault that could be.”
Vox laughs. Quite suddenly, he’s larger than life, his hands turning from sharp to deadly. His newly elongated claws rake down the front of Alastor’s shirt, cutting it to ribbons. It’s over and done with in less than three seconds, and he’s back to his normal size just in time for Alastor to realise he’s now whining and cringing away from nothing at all.
“I like that noise outta you, baby.” Vox’s hand brushes aside Alastor’s tattered shirt, pushing his coat off of his shoulders as well. He’s left with his torso fully exposed, bare skin covered in a sheen of sweat. He twitches helplessly as Vox lays a palm over his heart, claws pricking delicately at the surrounding skin.
“Satisfied yet, Vox? I’m not sure you’ll be able to—“
“Shut up,” Vox interrupts. He drags his hand down Alastor’s torso, petting his skin. It would almost feel nice, were Alastor’s nerves not metaphorically shredded already. As it is, he can’t relax, his body flinching at the slightest suggestion that the next touch might be the deadly one. Still, he can’t quite resist the urge to run his mouth.
“That’s not very—“
“Shut up.” This time, the command is accompanied by another flash of his eyes, and Alastor’s mouth snaps shut.
He blinks, making an effort to speak, and finds himself utterly muted. He can’t even pull from the airwaves anymore, can’t summon any of his usual favourites. No laugh track, no applause, no quiet jazz. Oh. He doesn’t like that.
“Better,” Vox says. He drags his hands down Alastor’s torso again, and the skitter of sharp claws across his ribs makes Alastor’s head spin and his muscles jump in a desperate surge to get away. Adrenaline thumps through his body, driven higher by his artificially pounding heart, and he can’t do a damn thing about it.
Vox unfastens his trousers, tugging them down. He yanks Alastor’s feet free of his boots, and the trousers follow them to the floor seconds later, along with his underwear.
Alastor can’t quite remember the last time he was fully naked in front of someone else. He far prefers to remain clothed, even just partially, during whatever sexual activities he feels inclined to try out. This level of nudity around another person may not actually have happened since his mortal childhood, he realises. And, of all people, Vox is the one who gets to gloat over his body.
“Babe, I don’t know why you keep all of this hidden,” he says. “Fuck. All those layers. All that prickliness and pretending you don’t like being touched.” It’s not pretending, Alastor thinks to himself, and does his best to make that clear with a vicious glare. Vox cheerfully ignores it.
“You’re pretty. And you’re still not hard. Hey,” he says. “Touch your fucking cock. Like you mean it. Like you wanna make yourself cum.”
Alastor doesn’t have a choice but to obey. He wraps a hand around his cock, stroking it with a firm grip and some special attention to the sensitive head. He doesn’t exactly do this often, but he knows what feels good. And it does feel good; he’s slowly starting to harden, in spite of the sickening fear that still curls in his stomach.
“Perfect,” Vox says. “Hey. You still can’t speak, but I’ll let you make noises. Whatever noises you want. Sounds fair, right?”
Absolutely not. Just to be spiteful, Alastor locks eyes with Vox and summons a booing studio audience from the airwaves.
“Stop that.” Vox scowls. “Fine. If that’s the way you want things, bitch…”
He vanishes into a crackle of electricity. And stays vanished, for just long enough that Alastor starts to get concerned. He’s already scared out of his mind, on a purely instinctual level, but this is different. Vox could be doing anything. There are perfectly legitimate reasons beyond silly deer brain to be concerned about the fact that Vox has simply disappeared into thin air and left him lying immobilised and half-hard on a bed.
Two hands grab his antlers from behind.
Alastor shrieks, the whining sound of a radio gone horribly, horribly wrong. His body dissolves on pure, hot instinct, and then re-forms immediately, unable to disobey Vox’s order to stay still. Blind terror makes him insensible, illogical; he struggles uselessly, his every thought stuck on what must surely be his immediate, impending death.
“Surprise, bitch.” Vox’s face looms into view, and Alastor does not calm down in the slightest. He’s still fucking stroking his cock, and he can’t stop himself. Pleasure curls one way up his spine and meets the terror slinking down the other way, and they clash in the middle like some horrific science experiment that turns into ice-cold bands around his ribcage.
Vox yanks his head up and back via the antlers, leaving Alastor’s throat bare and exposed and his shoulders strained. His entire body feels like it’s jarred, somehow, shunted into the wrong shape and left there at the mercy of whoever wants to hurt him.
There’s a long, thin noise coming from the air around him, hitching with every one of his panicked breaths. Alastor feels Vox’s grip leave one of his antlers, and it’s almost reassuring for a moment until the hand reappears at his neck.
Slowly, Vox draws one cold claw across his skin. It feels like a knife, like it’s taking him apart. Alastor can’t take this. He can’t fucking take this for one second longer. He’ll do anything, agree to anything, he just needs it to end before he dies.
He’s dimly aware that his antlers are stretching, growing in Vox’s hand. His world has gone dark around the edges, his limbs twitching and jerking as radio static fuzzes up and down the length of his body. Vox’s finger finishes its long, agonisingly slow journey across the centre of his throat, and his claw lifts and taps the newly-appeared glowing red cross directly in the centre of Alastor’s forehead.
“Bang,” he says, and lets Alastor’s head thud back down onto the bed.
Alastor doesn’t have the words to process what his body is doing. One hand is still obediently stroking his cock, which, defying all the odds, is somehow still hard. The pleasure is a strange background hum, a twisted baseline amidst whatever the hell else is going on.
He feels like a live wire. He’s trembling uncontrollably, his skin five sizes too small even with his body half-transformed. His neck jerks one way, and then the other, twitching on instinct, all while his eyes stare helplessly at nothing. The only thing running through his mind is fear, urgent and desperate, conscious thought given way entirely to the scared little fawn that controls his basest impulses.
“Shit,” Vox says. “Uh…go back to how you usually look? You're all…filling my whole fuckin’ bed with antlers and legs.”
Even delivered as a question, a command is a command. Alastor feels his form shrink again, leaving him feeling even more cramped in his skin. He wants to be nothing at all, just static in the air, untouchable. He tries again and again to dissolve, but Vox’s grip is absolute.
“Look at me, babe.” There’s something approaching actual concern in Vox’s voice, which is a new one for sure. Alastor does as he’s told, shivering under the headlamp glare of those enormous pulsing eyes. “D’you need to stop?”
Fuck. He wants to stop so badly. He’s terrified out of his mind, delirious and desperate and overexposed. Stopping would be a mercy. He could disappear and lick his wounds in peace somewhere private, and then come back here and spend some time humiliating Vox live on air. It would be perfect.
But it’s not a need. He needs to know what this will do to him.
He shakes his head.
“Atta boy.” Vox’s hands slide up and down his torso, stroking his skin. Alastor’s wide, watery eyes drift shut, and he resolutely ignores the tears that spill down his cheeks as they do.
He’s almost calm after a minute or two of that. Or at least, close enough to his baseline level of abject terror whilst Vox is controlling his body that it doesn’t feel too bad. The touch is oddly soothing, a sensation that’s unfamiliar enough to him that it keeps his mind pleasantly busy. For a little while, at least.
Eventually, Vox’s hands drift lower. They wander over his thighs, grazing his arm where it’s still stroking his cock. Alastor feels like he might be getting somewhere approaching close, although it’s hard to tell.
“Shit,” Vox murmurs. “Look at you, all hard and needy like that. Looks like you really need this. Bet you’d hate if I made you stop.”
There it is again, Alastor thinks. That giant obvious handheld billboard with the bright red lettering. Fuck.
Vox’s hands grab him by the hips and roll him over, then yank his hand free of his cock. Alastor lets out a muffled groan of protest into the sheets, since he still isn’t allowed to talk.
“Oh, you were enjoying that? Oops,” Vox says, unrepentantly. “Wait, maybe I got something just as good for you.”
Alastor feels him shift, and then feels a hand full of claws run down the entire length of his spine. He shudders, and feels his tail twitch quite firmly upright. Bright white for danger.
“Fuckin’ adorable,” Vox breathes. “Look at that.” He laughs, batting the tail back and forth between his fingers, rubbing it, petting the soft fur. It is deeply undignified and, more importantly, Alastor’s deer brain despises it.
He hopes for a second that being moved might somehow remove Vox’s order to keep still, but that clearly isn’t the case. All he can do is lie there and take it as Vox toys with his tail, alternating between gentle petting and swatting it like it’s a cat toy until even the lightest touch makes Alastor twitch full-body.
“You really hate that, huh?” He doesn’t stop, even as Alastor desperately nods his head. Vox laughs, pulling him up by the hips and grabbing his cock with his free hand. “Does this make it any better?”
Alastor shakes his head this time. It does not. He’s still twitchy and terrified, utterly on edge even as Vox jerks him off like he’s got a fucking time limit. He’s rough with it, so rough that it almost hurts, the stimulation riding the line between perfect and too much and then veering wildly into absolutely fucking awful every time he takes it upon himself to lightly tug the tail.
“Aww. Poor little deer doesn’t know which way to squirm,” Vox coos. “Fuck, I want you like this all the time. Ass-up right next to me so I can just fuckin’ play with you. Fuck you when I’m bored and watch your tail twitch. And you can’t even talk back to me! You’d be so cute as my little bitch forever.”
It is an utterly unappealing image, and Alastor is almost grateful for the icy terror running through his veins, since it means he doesn’t have the brain space to think about it. He’s trembling, close to the edge, his heart fluttering like a trapped bird.
“Babe,” Vox says, in that infuriating giant obvious billboard tone of voice again, “you know you aren’t allowed to cum until I let you, right?”
The pleasant ramping up of sensation plateaus rather abruptly, and Alastor growls against the sheets. Vox keeps stroking his cock, and nothing happens. It keeps up for one minute, then two, and then stops. Vox laughs, drawing his hand away and groping the tail once more just to watch Alastor jump.
He’s deeply tempted to summon the booing audience again. Only the bone-deep fear of what had happened afterwards last time keeps him from doing it. He lies still on the mattress, his entire body buzzing with unspent arousal and abject terror.
“I think I’m gonna have you suck my cock, now. You better keep those fuckin’ teeth well out of the way, or else.”
Vox drags him vaguely into a sitting position, and Alastor watches him settle comfortably in against the pillows. He unzips his trousers, pulling out a cock that is rather fascinating. It’s almost human in appearance, but tinged greyish-blue, and glowing ever so faintly in the dim light.
“Go on,” Vox says. “Suck it.”
And, entirely against his will, Alastor clumsily crawls close enough to open his mouth and take Vox’s cock. He does keep his teeth out of the way, because he’s not that sort of sadist.
“Fuck,” Vox says, almost immediately. And then, in a move that Alastor really should have seen coming, he grabs the antlers and uses them to force his cock all the way into Alastor’s throat.
The reaction is immediate and awful. Alastor’s body squirms and thrashes, his head wanting desperately to buck away. He can’t, though- he’s still compelled to suck, to close his lips around Vox’s cock and drag his tongue along the cool, staticky length of it. He whimpers, his breathing picking up speed, and Vox pays him absolutely no heed.
“Fuck, yeah,” he sighs. “Not often you get a cocksleeve that comes with handles…”
Alastor wants to protest that he’s far from the only demon with antlers, horns, long hair, or other interesting attachments, but the thought is gone as soon as it appears. Things swirl through his mind like leaves through a storm- complaints, panic, plans, random snatches of pure fear. He’s shaking, feeling like his arms and legs are going to simply give way from under him.
Vox must see it coming. He shifts, jamming one leg up against Alastor’s body to keep him in position. The leg also presses quite significantly against his cock, lending sharp jolts of pleasure to the delirious mix of emotions he can’t stop feeling.
“Here,” he says. “If you can cum like this, I’ll let you have it. On the house.”
Alastor whimpers. His own orgasm is the furthest possible thing from his mind. All he can see is the glint of a rifle barrel in his imagination, the flick of a hunter’s knife, the sharp white of a predator’s teeth. Every time he looks up at Vox, he sees that smile, and his stomach lurches with fear. Every time he looks away, all he can see is darkness and skin, and his mind dissolves back into spiralling terror.
Vox is pulling his head up and down, still using the antlers. He’s also rolling his hips, bucking up into Alastor’s throat hard enough to make his eyes water. The tears spill out freely, and there isn’t a damn thing Alastor can do about it.
The world feels like it’s melting. He’s not a real person anymore; he’s a collection of terrified noises and animal instincts and strange, cacophonous pleasure, a tangle of limbs and organs that just so happens to be connected to a brain that’s being squeezed and melted and wrung dry. Time loses all meaning, his adrenaline sky-high and his body incapable of movement on its own terms.
It hardly even registers at first when he orgasms. It feels like nothing through the static, and then it feels like everything- a bright clash of pleasure, a strangled, lewd moan around the cock in his throat. Alastor’s eyes roll back in his head, his body useless except for Vox’s brutal puppeteering.
“Fuck yes, babe,” he growls. “Gonna take it for me. Gonna fucking take my cum. Take it, that’s right…”
In any other state, Alastor would have had a comment about the sheer pointless redundancy of that dirty talk, when he’s hardly got any other choice aside from fucking taking it. As it is, he just moans, feeling Vox’s cock throb in his mouth and spill cum directly down his throat. He swallows, because it’s either that or cough it up, and he doesn’t have the energy for that.
When he’s done, Vox lifts his head by the antlers. Alastor stares at him, dazed and delirious, that wicked shark grin the only thing he can see.
“Shit,” Vox says. “Hey, I know. Cum again, but, uh…whatever you were feeling? All of it, dial it up two hundred percent.”
Alastor’s back arches with a wrenching cry, Vox’s thrilled laughter echoing in his ears as a second orgasm rips through him. His brain whites out with panic, incomprehensible fear turning his every thought to static and coming head to head with pleasure in an implosion that feels, briefly, like it’s going to kill him.
It doesn’t. It ends, and he slumps, wrung out and boneless as Vox holds him up. He feels like a hunting trophy, something beheaded and stuffed and on display.
“Oh, baby…okay,” Vox breathes. “Again, but without the fear. Just pleasure. You can do that, yeah? Cum.”
Alastor does, helpless to resist. His body feels raw from pleasure already, but it washes over him, crashing waves of endorphins that mingle and melt into him until he’s moaning.
“Fuck…” Vox is clearly no more eloquent than usual when he’s in his afterglow. Alastor blinks at him, and the utterly evil glitter he sees in that screen makes his blood run cold.
“Once more,” Vox commands. “Put the fear back with the pleasure. At a thousand percent.”
Alastor’s body convulses immediately, his back arching to an unnatural degree. His limbs twitch and jerk out at angles they should not, the air around him filling with an unholy shriek. He can’t scream, but the airwaves do it for him, filling his head and the room with endless, overwhelmed noise.
He’s not real. He’s an animal. He’s nothing at all, and he’s going to fucking die.
By the time it ends, Alastor is utterly incapable of thought. His body flickers and dissolves, then immediately reappears, his antlers still trapped in Vox’s hands. A thin whine escapes him, radio interference, and he flickers again, desperately.
Vox lets him go.
Alastor melts into the bed, becoming shadow entirely without meaning to. He doesn’t go anywhere, just sits, a dark pool on the sheets as Vox sits up and eyes him a little helplessly.
“Al…?”
He doesn’t respond. Vox reaches out towards him, and the puddle of Alastor on the bed neatly doughnuts itself to avoid his hand. Vox gets the message, and leans back to wait.
It takes some time for him to re-form. Vox’s eye has stopped that infernal hypnotic pulsing, and the pressure lifts slowly from Alastor’s mind. His body comes back glitchy at first, his head not entirely sure whether it wants to exist, before snapping back fully into place when he shakes it slightly.
“You good, babe?” Vox leans down, looking sincerely concerned. Alastor lets out a slightly choked laugh, not remotely sure how to answer that.
Vox, for his part, neither panics nor gloats. He reaches for the blankets, tugging them up and over Alastor’s naked, curled up form. And then he sits back, and waits some more.
Slowly, Alastor pieces himself back together. Now that his brain has stopped screaming, it’s easy enough to compose himself, little by little. He can remember that he’s the most powerful sinner in hell, and not a frightened fawn in the woods. There’s no hunter. He’s perfectly safe.
“I,” he says, carefully sitting up, “am never doing that again.”
Even as he speaks, he’s fairly certain that it’s not true. He can feel it, somehow; something in his psyche needed that. Nothing is a fucking challenge down here, but that…
“Well,” Vox says. “I mean, it’s your choice, but…fuck, babe. You’re so fucking hot when you scream like that. You shoulda seen yourself.”
“You’re not doing yourself any favours saying things like that, you know,” Alastor says. He looks over at Vox, and feels the strangest compulsion to nestle into his arms. He does not do that, because he is better than that.
“I can say anything you want me to say, baby.” Weirdly, Vox looks like he means that. Alastor stares at him, slightly thrown, and settles for drawing the blanket tighter around himself.
“I think I lied about never doing that again,” he admits. “But if you dare ever ask me for it, or mention this around anyone else, I will shred you and feed you to your pet shark. You have my word.”
Vox takes the threat on the chin.
“Fair enough. Look, if you need anything…”
Alastor considers it. He shifts a little closer to Vox, taking his hand. He turns it over in his own, examining the claws, then presses it gently against his chest. He leaves it there for a long moment, breathing steadily against the weight of it. He’s okay. He’s safe.
“I think I’ll take my leave, now.” He dissolves from the bed, reappearing standing up so that he can pull on his clothes. His shirt is wrecked, but everything else is in decent working order, and his coat will button up well enough to cover him until he can get something less shredded.
“If you’re sure? Look, I know I was laughing at you about this earlier, but I actually—“
“Spare me,” Alastor says, walking back over to the side of the bed. He bends down, tilting Vox’s chin up just a little. “You’ve done quite enough today, I assure you.”
He melts into darkness, taking a moment to allow his shadow form to shove Vox’s wardrobe back into place before he leaves.
And then, five seconds later, he comes back. Alastor rematerialises in front of Vox, not quite able to make eye contact.
“Thank you,” he says, inclining his head just slightly. Manners are a virtue, after all, and…well…it doesn’t matter why else he feels the need to say thanks. It’s fine.
He melts back into the shadows before Vox can reply, leaving him stunned. Alastor doesn’t see his reaction, but he can imagine it well enough, and it’s enough to turn the smile on his face from perfunctory into really, truly genuine.
Not that he would ever admit such a thing to anyone else, of course. Especially not Vox.