Chapter Text
Vox was getting the closest he got to relaxing most days by reclining on the couch with a finger of whiskey and going through a script for “How I Killed Your Mother”. Things were fairly quiet, and he was making decent headway in his editing before he was distracted by Velvette giggling beside him a little too loudly.
“Hey, Vox, check this out.”
Before he could accept the offer demand, Velvette thrusted her phone between Vox and his computer and replayed the video. On it, a disgruntled male sinner was trying in vain to wipe a red smear off a countertop while the person recording it snickered behind the phone. The sinner on screen, meanwhile, looked to be somewhere between crying and destroying the countertop.
He heard Velvette giggling with a cruel delight beside him.
Vox paused, blinking, but not quite understanding the joke. Sure, the guy on screen looked miserable, yeah, but where exactly was the joke? Was this just pure schadenfreude?
“Just look at how fucking incompetent he is,” Velvette cackled.
“Sooooo, that’s it? He can’t clean the countertop?”
“I mean, yeah, but like, it’s sort of a trend right now. See, you remember weaponized incompetence, right?”
“Vaguely,” Vox grumbled. It was honestly kind of hard to keep up with all these weird terms brought down by new sinners. Snowflakes. Gaslight. No Cap. Flex. High Key. Clap Back. Vibes. On Fleek. Slay. Lit. Girlboss. Tea.
Honestly, Vox didn’t know how Velvette kept up with all so seamlessly.
“Okay, so with that, a lot of guys were revealed to be not just be fucking useless, but fucking useless on purpose just so they wouldn’t have any responsibilities, yeah? So then this is a kind of offshoot of that, where people are having their boyfriends do simple things and laughing when they can’t do it.”
Vox looked back down at the phone, which had moved on to another carbon copy of the previous video. This time, a vaguely insectoid sinner was getting frustrated by the mess he was making worse and short, irritated chirps were punctuating the girlfriend’s unabashed laughter. It actually kind of reminded him of Val a little, which was the only shred of amusement Vox got from the video.
Though, he had a distinct feeling that wasn’t what was making Velvette laugh so hard.
“Right,” Vox replied to both Velvette’s ‘explanation’ and the video itself. He still didn’t quite get it, and couldn’t really muster any enthusiasm, phony or not, just to please Velvette.
His punishment for this apathy came with a swift punch to the arm.
“Tch, fine then. I’ll go show Val. He’ll get it.” Velvette huffed before standing from the couch and storming away.
“He would if he were anything close to competent himself!” Vox shouted this back at her, and the only sign that she’d heard him was the middle finger she threw over her shoulder without turning back.
Vox settled back onto the couch and tried to refocus on the script, but found himself generally unenthused about it as well. Fuck. It was like that dumb video had sapped any and all interest in anything from him. A tangential mood killer, as it were.
Hmm, well, at least there was one thing that never failed to entertain Vox.
Or rather…one person.
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“What was that?”
“I asked if you could give me a hand in cleaning up,” Vox said from where he was ‘washing dishes’ in the nearby sink. “I made a bit of a mess cooking.”
“You don’t cook,” Alastor retorted, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
Vox tried not to look too caught out in his lie. “There’s a first time for everything.”
The silence between them stretched like a rubber band. Vox squirmed, fearing for the fallout of when it inevitably snapped, and decided to regain control by breaking the tension first.
“And…and maybe I wanted to surprise you.”
Alastor’s expression didn’t change, but his head bent sharply in confusion. There was a crack from his contorted vertebrae and an oscillation of static as he took in Vox’s words.
“You cooked…for me?”
His voice was as doubtful as his gaze, but the faint edge of something Vox hesitated to call ‘hope’ made Vox feel just the smallest bit like shit for what he was planning to do.
So he just decided to avoid the question like a fucking champ.
“Look, can you just help me clean up already?”
Alastor hummed, his voice crackling with a static that had Vox’s receivers buzzing at a low frequency, and capitulated with a shrug. “Very well.”
“Great,” Vox smiled like he was hosting a game show. “How’s about you start on the counter there.”
Alastor turned his head before his body followed. “Ah, you mean the island here?”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Vox replied, willing to ignore Alastor’s usual pedantism for the sake of the ‘prank’.
Which Alastor was currently facing down with a closed lipped grin and blank stare. He was either calm or confused, Vox wasn’t sure, but Vox tried not to make his staring too obvious as he watched how Alastor would react to the ketchup spilled across the counter.
Alastor stood there, facing down the condiment. He dismissed his cane with a wave of his hand and stepped towards the kitchen island.
Vox leaned forward in anticipation. One of his many cameras was recording the entire event, but he was just too damn curious to see how Alastor would approach the problem to wait and watch the recording. Was he going to use a paper towel like most of those men in the videos? Would he use a kitchen rag or a sponge? Would he use his own sleeve like one especially stupid sinner had? Or maybe he-
Alastor bent down at the waist and with one stroke of his long tongue licked up the mess.
Vox wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be turned on.
Alastor straightened back up and licked his lips, considering the taste with a low hum that Vox was only half ashamed to admit when straight to his groin.
“That wasn’t blood,” Alastor concluded with a glare, like Vox had even fucking said it was.
“No. It wasn’t.” Because really, what else was there to say?
Alastor hummed again, the faint ‘boo’ of an invisible audience echoing his disappointment, and turned back to Vox. “What else needs to be done?”
Fuck. As weird as Alastor was, he was still trying to help? Even though Vox didn’t even really make him anything. And the prank was an absolutely fucking dud. Great. Awesome. Way to make him feel like the biggest fucking piece of shit in the room.
“Um, nothing, that was, you know what never mind.”
Alastor quirked a brow. “Is that so? Well then, when are we eating?”
“We’re not.” Vox stated. “Because, uh, I fucking burned the shit out of what I was trying to make. Sorry.”
Alastor blinked before his smile grew to reach his eyes. “That’s quite alright, my dear. It happens to the best of us. I appreciate you trying for me.”
“Yeah,” Vox inexplicably felt like crying just a little. How. How the fuck was a cannibalistic serial killer so kind? “I’ll, ahem, I mean, let’s go out to eat then, my treat.”
“Oh! Well in that case there’s a new restaurant down in Cannibal Town that-”
“Not there.”
Because…yeah Vox felt bad. But not that bad.