Work Text:
Vox wakes up to the unfortunate warning that there’s something wrong with his systems, flashing red in the corner of his screen, replacing the representation of his right eye and the even more unfortunate knowledge of what exactly it is, even without reading it.
His body gives him three seconds to shake off the remains of slumber before he has a full-body shiver and starts a coughing fit. He manages to crawl to the edge of the bed just as the first petals start to come out; soft and crimson-red, soft and eye-sore magenta. They pool on the floor and the nerves on his throat spasm, sparkle as the first batch finishes their travel from his lungs to the carpet.
Vox rests his head on his arm and breathes deeply. One, he grasps his bedcover and curses the one who came up with this fucking torment; two, the shivers reduce until they stop completely; three, he opens his eyes to stare at the floor, the things in there are fucking ugly.
He’s throwing up flowers, like a romance protagonist, like a teenager with its first heartbreak. The curse comes and goes, as it's expected when one has been living with it for as long as he has, bouts of chilling out from his, er, vigilance and he had been free of this pesky little inconvenience for the last seven years, but with his return–
Vox runs a quick scan of his insides and when he deems that he won’t die this time from vines crushing his windpipe or flowers overwhelming his systems until they render him unresponding, he groans and gets up. It’s a good thing for all of them that his negligence won’t kill him today. Their stocks always drop five percent during those times, because Lucifer forbade the other two V's to do things right in his absence.
He feels the second batch pushing to come out so he stumbles to the bathroom. Tremors hot-and´-cold still running up an´ down his body, head throbbing like a bad hangover.
The door is locked, because of fucking course it is. Val always leaves it open when he’s showering, the door, he means, open and inviting, but God-forbid Vox interrupts him or Vel on their twelve step morning routine. Skin clear, mind clear, dear.
So Vox has no option but to keep throwing up a whole garden on his bedroom floor. Red, red and more fucking red on his nice navy blue carpet. Red of flowers he doesn’t know the name of –has refused to learn– and red of his blood because the stupid things always come with thorns, as one would expect if one has that particular demon as their object of–
Ugh. Vox coughs some more and derails that pattern of thoughts, he actually wants to get some work done today. It should be possible, with the worst of this being in the mornings, because they’re not horrible enough, and sometimes in the afternoon, at the worst possible moment, –like when he’s giving a conference on their newest product line, the one that will revolutionize sinners lives and he coughs up a flower mid-sentence– but he has this under control, it hasn’t happened in a while.
That PR campaign was a nightmare. Thank not-heaven Velvette was already on their team by then.
The door of his bathroom opens and a shadow looms over him, where he’s crouched down to throw up in peace.
“Oh, voxy.” Valentino coos, kneeling beside him and tweaking one of his antennae between his claws. “Lovesickness suits you.”
“Thanks.” He says, drily and continues to make his best efforts to cough up his guts.
Insides half biological, half-mechanical; lungs entirely the latter at this point, he waited too long to remove the flowers manually, tweezers and scissors, and they resorted to come out in other ways. Other holes, ugh.
“No, really. No one produces prettier flowers than you, amor, and I would know, bitches are always falling head over heels for me.“ He says, picking one of the flowers from the floor. That one has a blue streak over it, the color of his claws and eyes, the color of his insides. Something broke. Damn.
Vox raises his head to look at him, he’s dressed in his fluffiest bathrobe, wings trailing behind him, puffied from the dryer. Val looks like a snack and he can’t even do anything about it right now, those thoughts unfortunately don’t vanish when he puts the flower on his antenna and smirks down at him.
He can, however, stick his tongue down his throat for a bit, until he goes back to coughing like mad, so he does just that. Grabs Val by the back of his neck, claws treading carefully on his fur but not on the skin and drags him down, Val goes placidly, mouth half-opened already and met in the middle. Vox really loves kissing him, the pheromones on his saliva make his mouth go all tingly and slack, even if the rest doesn’t have an effect on him. There had to be a downfall to his mechanical nature.
He feels something pushing against his throat and separates just in time to start coughing, more violently than last time and when the damned thing doesn’t come out Vox has to grab the flower and drag it out, thorns scraping against his throat and the insides of his mouth, he gags and he’s pretty sure that even with all of his improvements his screen is pixelating. Val pats him on the back.
A single rose lies between them, black thorns sprouting from its equally black stem, stained in more red.
Vox groans and swats blindly at Valentino when he starts to snicker.
“You’re late. Don’t make your whores wait.”
The princess’s hotel is as chaotic as ever. Residents have been flying there like flies to shit since they proved that sinners can be redeemed and enter heaven to get their eternal peace and rainbows and never have a bad hair day, whatever.
There’s also, more interestingly, the protests.
Minor soul-dealers terrified out of their stupid little heads, pissing themselves for the possibility of losing the few souls they possess and with that the insignificant amount of power they managed to gather. The heavy-hitters, on the other hand, still have a pending meeting with the princess and their very own King, if he finally deigns to grace them with his presence. The V’s are not counting on it.
Right now, though, there’s a group of demons outside the hotel, causing a mess and trying to get inside by any means necessary. What they hope to accomplish, when the last two groups were dispatched rather brutally, is beside Vox.
His smile turns sharper and his screen glitches when Alastar finally comes out, static filling his monitors, crimson-red and eye-sore magenta behind the distorted wall. He distantly notices the spear-wielding girl running after him, shouting something before terrified screams take over his speakers.
It is truly a sight to behold, the way the tentacles come into action and limbs go flying, heads rolling. Alastor may be an old fuck that refuses to get on with the times, but he sure as hell knows how to fight– or slaughter, rather.
That’s when he notices it.
Vox possesses enough self-awareness to know that his smile goes manic, his eyes widen and pulsate, sclera circling itself. Electricity cracking between his claws, dying for an outlet.
It’s a split second motion, something that nobody else notices, not even the princess bitch who is now screaming at someone inside, but it’s there: Alastor falters, just before he touches the ground. The static that his cameras show, the distortion he puts on himself to look like a fucking cryptid stop for a second and it wasn’t intentional, he knows it wasn’t.
The wound hasn’t healed yet.
He crackles; laugh echoing in the monitors surrounding him, absolutely delighted and high on the feeling until it dissolves into coughs and he paints his console in a black and red-magenta gradient. Fitting.
“I still don’t understand.” Velvette says that afternoon, raising her eyes from her phone for the first time since they arrived.
Vox hums, signaling for her to continue. Talking with his mouth full is bad manners, even if these two have never heard of them.
“You are torturing yourself for nothing.” She says, drawling her syllables for full effect and, as usual, narrowing on the completely wrong part of the information he just handed them. “Just go through the procedure. Forget him, move on. Date cuenta, amiga. ”
Valentino chokes on that horrid salad of his, the one he insisted on because he’s on a diet, whatever that means, and starts a fit of laughing-coughing like a dying hyena. Velvette slaps him on the back and when he gets himself under control they high-five. Doll learning Spanish was a mistake.
Vox, for his sanity, ignores the little display and thinks instead that he would have shot her in that pretty little head of hers if not for the fact that she did, in fact, go through the procedure. Forgot her paramour and moved on with her life never looking back once.
He still reduces the budget for her next show by twenty percent, though.
“That’s none of your business, my detachable friend and I wouldn’t consider it torture, just an inconvenience.”
There’s a vase at the center of the table. It has flowers on it, the very red ones with black thorns Vox was throwing up this morning with Valentino in town. He resists sighing again, if only to not sound like a broken record. Val winks at him when he notices this.
“Besides, forget The Radio Demon ? The one that is currently shaking hands with the Morningstars? Yeah, alright. We need the data I have on him if we want our plan to succeed.”
“You’re pathetic.”
Fifty percent.
“Oh, don’t be so harsh, muñequita . ” Val says, throwing one of his arms over his shoulder and squeezing him. “I think it’s cute. Oh, the tragedy, el romance, the sensuality ! Having someone inside you in that way, bitches love this genre. ”
Vox rolls his eyes, well aware of the success this particular malaise has on porn.
“If you two are quite done, we all have to go back to work.” He says, knocking down the last of his coffee. “Chop-chop, make those dimes and stop getting your noses on my personal shit.”
“Right ahead of you, grandpa.” Velvette says, flashing him the finger with one hand and waving her phone with the other. “Those watches that we launched last week are making the rounds, but we could improve the numbers. I have a presentation ready.”
Hmm. Maybe she can have back a ten percent of the reduction.
On his way out he remembers their centerpiece and debates with himself for a few seconds, before retracing his steps to grab the vase from the table and now he goes out, ignoring the bitchy looks from his colleagues.
In spite of his body, he actually manages to finish his work for the day. He delegated some of the minor tasks to his assistant, yes, but that’s why he’s in the position, isn’t it? And he didn’t throw up flowers in front of anyone that would make a fuss about it! So, that’s a W for him.
Vox turns on his screens, changing cameras until he finds his objective. Alastor is returning from that Town lost in time, a bounciness on his step that wasn’t there before, but always gets after visiting the Cannibal Overlord.
The bastard pauses to smile at one of his cameras, distortion light enough to make him out and Vox bares his teeth back, aware of the red trail falling from his mouth. Then he starts to cough up a lung again, because of course he does.
It goes and goes and he has to repeat what he did in the morning: help the fucking flower to come out, grabing it from the petals and dragging the stem and thorns all along his throat. Fun times.
He overestimates his strength on the last pull and yes, he gets out the flower, but he also knocks over the flower vase. He hisses and thanks his foresight to throw out the water first. When he finishes putting them into their place Alastor is already gone and it doesn’t matter how many cameras he looks through, Vox can’t find him anymore.
Alright.
Time to fix the mess in his systems, he’s been getting alerts all day.
Vox presses his index finger on his torso, against the second rib and the panel that gives access to his chest cavity opens. Revealing the mess he already knew was in there: flowers intertwined with cables, vines weaved through his nerves and thorns breaking against the tubes that contain half of the liquid that acts as his blood. He grimaces.
There’s a pair of scissors, tweezers and pruning shears for the more stubborn vines lying on his console.
He grabs the shears and sets to work, cutting stems and trying to not make the petals fall and get stuck on his more sensitive cabling. Untangling the thorns and he even notices a few seedlings. Cute.
If he doesn’t take the things out in the early states they start to grow and climb into the cables connected to his limbs. Rendering him unable to move correctly, until he can’t, at all and has to wait for them to squeeze his heart until it gives up.
Val has offered to help, mostly for the shit and giggles of having his hands on Vox’s insides, but he’s too fucking blind and impatient to do it correctly; Vel doesn’t want to “encourage him” whatever that means, and the last person who actually helped him, well. This is his fault in the first place, isn’t it? He owed him that. Still does.
Alastor–
He cuts another vine, using the tweezers to separate it from one of the cables that act as his nerves. It’s delicate work and he grits his teeth through it, wishing he could just disassemble his pain receptors, but alas, not everything is possible and if he does that he wouldn’t know if he fucked up something.
Flowers pile up on his console, surrounding the vase, falling on the floor. A garden indeed, it’s such a shame he couldn’t keep anything alive.
He closes his panel and is done. That’s all he can do today.
Vox closes his eyes, replaying the memories of the day to decide which one goes to the long-term archives and which ones he can discard. Once that is completed and while he’s on his Alastor Files, he thinks why the fuck not and decides to replay his carefully selected memories:
Al blinks at the flower on his hand, the one he picked up from the floor where Vox coughed it, before breaking in a delighted smile.
Vox stops breathing, “Do you– do you feel it too?”
“Of course I don't! What a silly notion.” Alastor laughs, making a dismissing motion with his hand. Vox winces, shrinking into himself. “Now, don’t look like that. It’s not the end of the world.”
It certainly doesn’t feel like it, but if it doesn’t bother him, then–
“Have you died from this?”
Vox shakes his head and Alastor hums, sounding disappointed and that’s what prompts the next thing that comes out of his mouth.
“But it’s not going to take long, now! I’m pretty sure I'm in the final stages.”
Alastor tilts his head, like a curious bird and Vox may be delusional, losing it from the vines on his lungs but the look on his eyes and the turn of his lips is fond. So, so fond.
He smiles.
Vox replays the memory:
“Don’t worry! It's not an imposition at all.” Alastor says, waving the tweezers at him, one of his widest smiles on his face, the one where he only needs one second of Vox making a fool of himself before falling apart in laughter.
Vox is drunk on it, receptors going highware. He’s vaguely aware of its physical manifestations; a spark on his antennae, a vibrant hum in the airwaves they –and only they– share, a frizz on his fingertips. Alastor has always said he needs more control, to learn restraint, but when these displays occur there’s always a turn of his mouth, a raise of his eyebrows that speaks of delight, so Vox doesn’t put much effort into it.
“Now, let’s see the state of you.” He says and Vox complies, opening the panel on his chest that gives access to his insides, the mechanicals ones, at least.
He replays the memory:
“You are a most unique specimen, did you know that?” Alastor says, twirling one of his antennae, looking down at him. “You are dying, because of me, and still want me here.”
“Of course I do.” Vox answers, voice rough from the last batch. “And this is hell, it’s not like I’m gone for good. They’re flowers, not angelic steel.”
“Well, that’s true.” He hums, eyes going a little distant. “Still hurts, doesn’t it?”
Vox thinks for a moment, and something possesses him to blurt out the next thing, even if they say to never ask if you don't want to know the answer.
“Do you want me to get the procedure?”
Alastor stares at him in the eyes and says: “Yes.”
Vox’s eyes widen as panic seizes him, how can he– he can’t– he’s not going to forget Alastor, there’s no possible way, he can’t, but–
He snorts, derailing Vox’s spiral. “You make the most wonderful expressions. No, my friend, I don’t want you to get the procedure, but that’s not for me to decide, is it?”
Vox closes his eyes and feels himself falling again.
“It is.”
It fades, not to black, but to the set of connections and numbers in between. The soft blue of the space only he can understand and inhabit.
Vox opens his eyes and feels tremors on his hands that aren’t for his illness, a squeeze on his throat that is not for thorns, a weight on his chest that has nothing to do with the garden inside him.
That’s why the fuck not.
He snarls and throws the vase to the wall, breaking it into a million pieces, petals scattered and flowers already half-withered. That suits them better, nothing down here should be alive.
Vox drags breath after breath, trying to regain his composure even when all he wants in that moment is to get his hands inside Alastor’s wound and cut deeper, tear it until it gives and finally get a look on his insides, looking for something he knows he won’t find. But– he used to hunt deers when alive, field dressing him shouldn’t be too different.
He breathes.
Yeah, that red motherfucker still owes Vox.
He needs– he’s done for the day. He needs to sleep and allow his systems to rest from the stress from the day. He needs–
He goes to lay down on his bed, the softest covers money can buy and tries to make his body relax before remembering he has codes for that. Vox disconnects the input from his lungs so he won’t wake up coughing, advantages of his mostly mechanical body, but he will find flowers and thorns intertwined in his cables in the morning. Tedious, he’s still working on a way to make his body purge itself and derail their growth, he already managed to reduce to almost zero the times he throws up.
Problem for another day.
For now, though, he will suspend his consciousness until morning and Valentino will join him in bed when he finishes shooting, covering Vox in all his limbs because the man is more octopus than moth.
All in all, today was an uneventful day. Same as yesterday, same as tomorrow.