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Long, golden beams of Heaven’s light draped themselves across the Vee’s penthouse as the wispy hallowed orb in Hell’s sky slid closer to the jagged mountains on Pentagram’s horizon- great teeth of rock which lined the fault in the Earth into which Sinners were cast down unto the end of time. Not the least of such Sinners was the self-proclaimed Radio Demon, a freelance collaborator who’d once offered his services to some upstart overlords calling themselves, “The Vees,” and simply never left them alone. Vox, Valentino, and Velvette had grown confident and dastardly under his careful mentorship. As a monument to their power- and perhaps as a physical manifestation of the thorn they presented in Lucifer’s side- the Vees built a skyscraper in the heart of town. On it, a rickety old radio studio perched precariously above the Vee’s personal penthouse, between the both of which Alastor wasted away the majority of his eternal suffering. One might assume he was hiding from something.
On this particular afternoon, Alastor sheltered from the Holy light behind the gold and purple plush wing of Valentino’s mothy chaise lounge. Enough rays glanced off the floors’s reflective tiles and the wall’s golden trim for Alastor to comfortably read his book, which he’d been happily engrossed in for much of the day- relaxing between his early morning and late evening radio shows- but, now, something nagged him.
He’d been rereading the same page for the third time, not absorbing any word’s meaning as his brain filled with the static of a radio tuned between two stations.
“ It must just be anticipation for show time…” Alastor rationalised his frazzled wires. He wondered, however, why he should be so anxious for something he’d done thirty-odd-thousand times before.
“ Perhaps Heaven is giving me a headache, ” he reasoned instead.
Alastor glanced over the lounge’s wing and narrowed his eyes at the distant orb threateningly before sinking away and turning his attention back to the book. He reread the page for a fourth time, but his focus slipped once again. Frustrated, he threw the book across the room where it gave a fluttering cry and splayed out its pages upon impact with the wall. Alastor let his eyes search the room for any clues to his unease, though he saw nothing out of the ordinary besides Heaven’s reflection glaring back at him in the living room's flat-screen T.V.
“ Ah. That’s it, ” Alastor realized.
He hadn’t heard a peep from his pet projects for hours- not even from the most annoying one- the loud and obnoxious television demon. He suddenly felt perturbed to not have been cojoled into some frayed-wire scheme or poetically serenaded by mad ramblings of, “The Future,” all afternoon.
A cold nervousness crept up his spine and tickled under his shoulders blades as he imagined all the horrible things his silly television could get himself into without Alastor there to laugh at him for it.
“ What’s Vox up to, anyway? ”
He cast his auto-recorded memory back to the last time the telehead had bothered him that day…
“Are you paying literally any attention to me at all?” Vox crossed his arms and leaned over Alastor, who led with his back flat on the lounge with the book held a few inches over his face.
“Yes, of course,” Alastor said easily to the scowling face peeking above the page.
“So what did I say?” Vox quizzed him.
“Something very important about Hell’s domination, I’m sure.”
“I don’t only care about Hell’s domination, you know.”
Alastor made a humming sound of faux acknowledgement before he rolled over onto his stomach. He lifted his torso through his elbows to drape his neck over the book on the seat and bent his knees to lightly cycle his heels in the air lackadaisically.
“Whatever,” Vox unfolded his arms to physically bat Alastor’s disinterest away from his ego.
“I’ll be in the kitchen when you remember I exist,” he said.
“…And then he sulked off like a kicked puppy,” Alastor recalled.
Alastor stared at the ceiling as he interrogated the imperfect recording.
“What under Earth could he be doing in the kitchen…?”
Vox was not a chef by any stretch of the imagination, but even his infamous jellied squid didn’t take all afternoon.
Alastor supposed he could summon Vox to him instantaneously, but the last time he did so became an awfully tiresome hullabaloo- supposedly he’d interrupted a particularly laborious “Voxflix and chill” session.
Tuning out Vox had its upsides, of course, but being left out of his loopy loop was decidedly not one of them.
“ Oh, of course , I’ll just…”
Alastor strengthened his signal, casting a net over the penthouse so as to listen in for clues to what was so important to his most-and-least-favorite Vee today.
Alastor picked up the grizzly sound of metal grinding against metal.
“ Well. That’s not concerning at all, ” he thought.
Alastor’s hooves clicked on the floor as they found themselves swung over the lounge.
Some heavy thuds down the hall were soon accompanied by telltale spin-up of some mechanical torture device.
“ Why should I care what Vox has gotten himself into this time? ”
His feet hurried carried him across the main room and down the hall.
“ He can take care of himself. He’s not that incompetent. Usually. ”
Alastor forcibly slowed his quickly clicking hooves before cooly gliding into the kitchen with an air of repose- as though it was nothing more than coincidence to find Vox hunched over the countertop in front of an overengineered espresso machine, surrounded by a litter of limp espressos cooling all about the kitchen.
“What was that horrible noise?” Alastor asked in a relaxed way which made it seem as though he didn’t care for any answer.
“Oh, Alastor!” Vox turned around with a bright smile that always threatened Alastor with a small heart attack- so open and vulnerable as Vox was towards him, Alastor was forced to keep his guard up- lest he regrettably crush the television’s squishy heart for some fleeting amusement.
“It’s probably just this old hand cranked coffee grinder,” Vox explained as Alastor collected himself.
“You? Doing manual labour?” Alastor chuckled.
“Well,” Vox became instantly, predictably defensive, “The beans know how much effort you put into it.”
“Into what?”
“Into making the perfect espresso,” Vox gestured around the room to his seven or eight dozen failed attempts.
“This time I’ve got it, through,” Vox placed his clawed fingertips together and gave a dark chuckle,
“Exactly 100 grams of Arabica beans imported from Earthside, roasted evenly over a charcoal flame, hand grinded for a rustic flavour, evenly distributed over the portafilter basket with 30 needles, and extracted with thrice-distilled water heated to exactly 200 degrees- but not before being tamped with the company’s logo!”
Vox shoved a portafilter under Alastor’s nose to show the AVee logo embossed into the fresh grinds.
“Lovely,” Alastor drawled unenthusiastically. He’d never been a fan of his inclusion in the team's marketing and branding- not exactly one for commitments- but over the decades his power imbalance over the Vees had lessened to the point he was rather unsure he could defeat Vox in a fair fight, so adding his emblem to the team helped quash rumors of the Radio Demon being relegated from an Overlord of Overlords, to Overlord Vox’s strange, precious pet.
Unbeknownst to Alastor, however, that was exactly how the other Vees interpreted the Radio and Tevlevision’s relationship: they’d often rolled their eyes as their fearless, witless leader went through great pains to tame the Radio Demon. Some improvement had been made over the decades, though, of course: Alastor had almost stopped biting him. Almost.
“Why put so much effort into such a small reward?” Alastor asked.
“Because I care,” Vox told the espresso machine as it pushed boiled water through the portafilter, extracting perfect espresso crema into a tiny cup.
“About… coffee?”
“It’s not about the coffee,” Vox shook his head.
When the extraction finished, he took the perfect coffee into his claws and walked over to place it into Alastor’s. As Vox’s claws grazed his own, Alastor suddenly felt the static in his mind become tuned to Vox’s calm, ecstatic frequency, as though Vox’s closeness soothed all his frayed wires.
“I made this for you,” Vox smiled at Alastor with big, hopeful, pleading eyes- like a shelter puppy begging to be loved.
“Oh,” Alastor thought he understood. He broke his gaze with Vox and looked down at the espresso.
“I like coffee, too,” Alastor said lamely, like a child confessing to their school crush.
“I know.” Vox gave a short chuffed laugh.
“Do you?” Alastor raised his head and cocked an eyebrow.
“Yeah; you don’t drink anything else,” Vox shrugged, “I mean, unless “coffee” is some bullshit metaphor for something else today.”
Alastor’s eye twitched. He gently placed the untouched espresso on the side, and bid his tentacles to slip out and wrap around Vox’s arms and legs.
“You’re not even going to taste it?” Vox complained as he was lifted up and carried out of the kitchen behind Alastor, towards some comfortable, sunny place where Alastor could squeeze the unliving daylights out of him.
“Only if it behaves,” Alastor promised.
Vox quickly forgot his complaints.
The espressos cooled on the countertops for the rest of the afternoon.