Chapter Text
This comic and this comic were my two main inspirations from ashlikesnow2, go check them out!
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Alastor slid unseen through the shadows, traveling swiftly like an invisible spectre across pentagram city. Normally he was happy to make his presence known; he would revel in the fear of sinners who scream and run at the mere sight of him. But right now he must remain concealed for he is carrying something special, something he insists on keeping secret.
The radio demon made it to the Hazbin Hotel and slipped right up to his tower. Not even the hotel residents—no, especially not them—could know what he was up to.
Once safely inside the seclusion of his private room, Alastor apparated out of the shadows and into the flesh. In his arms he held a large, greyish cube. Not a perfect cube, one side was domed and black, made of glass, while the other sides were tapered and made from thick grey plastic. It was a monitor. An old CRT TV model from the fifties.
It hadn’t been easy to find one the right size and in such good shape, but Alastor had his connections. Specifically, he knew a network of dealers across the pentagram who he normally went to to acquire vintage radio equipment.
This particular dealer, of whom he was a frequent customer for, was shocked Alastor had come looking for something of the visual medium instead of audio. It was widely known how much the radio demon loathed TV, afterall. So the deer demon had paid generously for his silence. Plus some graphic threats of violence, just for good measure. His reputation was on the line, of course.
Setting the old monitor on his table, Alastor began to mutter to himself as he examined it, “Hm, not a bad find for my purposes. It almost looks just like I remember… But it will need modifications, of course.”
Then, removing his coat and rolling up his shirt sleeves, the red haired demon set to work. Using a variety of tools and parts he carried in his studio for radio repair, Alastor began to take apart and reconstruct various sections of the TV. The whole time he worked, he filled the room with swing music and hummed cheerily to himself.
Most of hell has been quiet since the attempted attack on heaven with the ‘Might of Lilith’ weapon failed. Everyone, with the exception of Charlie it seems, was laying low, settling down and licking their wounds in the resulting quiet after the storm.
Alastor found all of it excruciatingly boring. This new project was the first thing to genuinely excite him since then. He was nearly giddy at the prospect that his hard work was almost complete.
A few hours passed and then the radio demon was satisfied with the modifications. The CRT looked mostly the same, just as ugly and boxy as before, but it now also sported a variety of chords and wires sticking out from a hole on the underside. He also had to replace the antennae, as he could not quite get the kinks out of the last pair.
With the monitor prepared to his liking, Alastor carried it with him to the living room of his suite.
“Wait no longer, old pal! I have finally prepared a head that will suit you quite better than the last one! The hideous, flat thing it was,” he called out cheerily as he approached the couch.
Sitting slumped and lifeless on the furniture was a body. The body of Alastor’s nemesis, his rival. The dead body of Vox.
Well, most of his body; his torso and limbs were all intact. The only thing missing was his head. Instead, the neck of the corpse was nothing more than a stump with a few wires and titanium bars sticking out.
Aside from the obvious decapitation, the body was actually in rather decent shape. Alastor had dragged the thing back here in secret after Vox’s failed war against heaven. And one of the first things he did was use his powers to fix up all the battle wounds. Burns, scrapes, cuts, and lacerations of all sorts magically healed or stitched back together.
It honestly wasn’t too different from sewing voodoo dolls or taxidermy animals, both of which the deer demon prided himself in being quite skilled at making. Although, for this project he didn’t even need the formaldehyde because, as it turns out, the mechanical aspects of Vox’s body kept it from rotting as long as Alastor kept it charged with power.
The suit that Vox had worn the day of the battle was not in nearly as salvageable shape. Alastor had removed it and promptly burned it almost immediately. The suit was tacky to begin with, but with the sleeves torn clean off and with how much blood and soot it had been stained with there was no saving the garment.
Instead, the radio demon went through the trouble of having his personal tailor create a special outfit. He dressed the corpse in a woolen yellow turtleneck, smart suit jacket, and a matching pair of slacks. The whole thing screamed sixties fashion, which Alastor also felt was tacky, but it was a massive improvement over the modern garbage the body had usually been wearing as of late.
And if the choice of clothes had different, more sentimental meaning to Alastor, well, no one had to know.
The only thing he couldn’t make on his own, though, had been the head. It wouldn’t have looked right if he had just conjured up a replacement with his magic. Hence, the recently acquired CRT TV.
Alastor carefully began to connect each of the wires from the body’s neck to that of the monitor, one by one. Then he connected the new head to the titanium supports with an audible click.
With the last cable plugged in, the box suddenly came to life. It was subtle, no bright lights or loud sounds. But the black screen seemed to lighten to a shade of dark grey. And if Alastor leaned in close, he could hear the faint buzzing of the cathode rays thrumming with power inside the plastic box.
Pulling the turtleneck up a little to hide the crude points of connection, he stepped back to admire his work.
There. The figure on his couch looked almost exactly like he remembered. Almost.
“Ah! I almost forgot!” Alastor said suddenly, moving to grab something from the back of his closet.
He returned with an old black cap. He shook it out a little, trying to bring back its original shape from where it had once been squished inside a forgotten shoebox. Then he moved to place it over the corpse’s boxy head, carefully pulling the antennae through the small holes that were already poked into the top of the hat.
This final article of clothing was not a replica like the rest of the outfit. Alastor doesn’t even know how long he’s held onto it for. He’s surprised he even remembers he still had it, given he typically refuses to think about his memories of the era where he had gotten it from. But now the hat was back with its rightful owner. Sort of.
Alastor surveys Vox’s lifeless body again. It’s better now with the hat, but still something feels off. His nemesis is always so… expressive. His face can animate into almost any facial expression, broadcasting his every emotion with a dramatic clarity that normal, fleshy faces are incapable of.
And his body is always moving, legs restlessly pacing or jumping about, unable to sit still especially when he gets excited about something. His arms gesticulate wildly as he talks about his ideas, punctuating every word with theatrical movement. And his hands would occasionally brush against or rest on Alastor’s shoulders, arm, or back. Like he just can’t help but to touch.
Alastor remembers hating it at first, being touched by the man like that when they had only just met, but the one thing that kept the radio demon from killing the young sinner was that Alastor was intrigued. No other man dared to touch one of the most powerful, ruthless overlords in hell. No one but Vox.
And then, Alastor had stopped hating it. He almost found his companion’s need to be so physically, casually affectionate endearing. It was clear Vox hung on his every word back then, desperate for any scrap of attention Alastor was willing to give him. The devotion, the near worship; it made Alastor salivate.
The fact that he was the only thing on Vox’s mind, the thing that motivated the rising overlord more than anything, it filled Alastor with a hunger, a satisfaction. So he grew to almost enjoy the innocent touches from Vox, Alastor’s ego eating its fill every time.
Until everything happened. Their fallout. Their acquaintanceship that morphed into a heated rivalry. The trust they had so precariously built up, evaporated into smoke. Alastor stopped enjoying the touches, reeling from them as if Vox’s familiar hands on his shoulders burned him.
But regardless, the corpse in front of him could not touch the radio demon. It couldn’t do anything but sit slumped there, utterly motionless. All that lively, emotional expression, gone entirely from Vox’s screen and body.
Alastor could just pretend his rival was asleep, but that seemed unsatisfying. Then he has an idea.
The deer sinner left the room for his desk, then returned and abruptly slapped a yellow square onto the center of the monitor’s blank screen. It was a sticky note, and drawn crudely on the little paper was a simple happy face. Two dots and a single line, curved upward.
Pleased, Alastor commented with a chuckle, “There! You’re never fully dressed without a smile, as I always say! And, if I do say so, you’re looking the best you have in decades!”
The sticky note doodle was a very poor imitation of Vox’s face, but the humor in it was enough to satiate Alastor. The TV had power now, but it was merely a receiver with no transmitter and thus could not display an image of its own. The paper would have to do for now.
Alastor spent the rest of the evening in his room with his newly repaired lifeless companion.
He cooked himself dinner, chatting small talk to Vox as he did. Using his shadow tentacles he even positioned the cadaver into the seat across from him as he ate, for better conversation, of course.
Then he moved the body into the lounge chair opposite him beside the lit fireplace and enjoyed a tumbler of bourbon. The radio demon recalled a story from his past and regailed it to the inanimate Vox with animated nostalgia.
“And, do you remember how you used your hypnotism to make him act like a fool in front of the whole bar? Well, a bigger fool than the dolt already was. When he finally snapped out of it he puked out of pure embarrassment! Actually vomited, right on the dance floor!” clipped audience laughter sounded as Alastor threw his head back in mirth, “My my, I was simply going to disembowel the fellow, but you had turned it into quite a show! I was impressed!”
The drinks, the music, the memories, and especially the company, had the radio demon sighing in reverie. He missed this. Before, it was something Alastor would never admit, not even on his death bed. But here, in the safety of his room with no one but a dead man to witness his softness, Alastor allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy of the two of them spending an evening together, like they used to.
If only Vox hadn’t pushed… Hadn’t asked for more than Alastor could give. Maybe they could’ve still had this. This is why he loathes change, all it ever does is ruin everything.
Maybe Alastor is outdated, stuck in the past. Clinging to old technology, old fashion, old language, old relationships. But it’s easier to keep the good things frozen in time than to let them decay and wither away.
The hours pass and night eventually falls. After Alastor has cleared away the dishes and the bourbon, he rearranges the cadaver back on the couch in a comfortably relaxed position. He goes through his nightly routine, feeling both light and heavy at the same time.
His mood is good, feeling accomplished at having recreated his old companion so perfectly. But the memories that have resurfaced as a result are bittersweet. The whispers of a deep, longing pain he had pushed into the deep recesses of his mind have begun to creep up on him.
“Goodnight, old chum,” he says quietly, flicking out the lightswitch in the living room before climbing into bed.
The radio demon lies there for quite a while, trying to fall asleep. He’s always been a bit of an insomniac, but usually a few fingers of liquor have him out in a few minutes easy. Instead, he tosses and turns, feeling as if something is missing.
After maybe an hour, Alastor finally gives up and gets back out of bed. Afterall, he reasons begrudgingly to himself, there’s no point in keeping up his meticulously controlled facade of dignity now. Not when no one is watching. Not when he’s already done something as vulnerable as parading his ex-aquaintance's dead body around in a poor mimicry of old times. Sometimes Alastor fears that Vox is not the only one who has become more pathetic with time…
The demon uses his tentacles again to retrieve the body and brings it to his room. The corpse is carefully placed in Alastor’s bed, on the side that is usually empty. After primly draping and tucking the covers around the TV demon, Alastor then slides under the sheets next to him.
“Ahh. That’s better. Afterall, you could get quite the crick in your back sleeping on the couch like that! You’re lucky I’m so nice,” Alastor jokes, as if the humor will justify his piteous actions.
Still, embarrassing or not, he feels a little better with the weight of someone resting on the mattress a few inches away. Closing his eyes, he reattempts to fall asleep.
Many minutes pass. Alastor is still awake. He sighs and tilts head to look at the man beside him.
He really does just look like he’s sleeping now. Alastor misses the constant whirring sound of Vox’s fans and the ever present static hum of his television signal, the palpable signs of life, but there’s not much he can do about that. Those things are very distinctly Vox, and there is no replacement for the real living thing.
Looking at his enemy lying peacefully beside him, Alastor feels undeniably soft all of a sudden. His chest clenches at the mushy, sentimental feelings that pass through him like waves. All of it washes over him and draws out a different kind of hunger. Something less aggressive, less manic.
It’s another thing he would never admit to anyone, not even with a gun to his head. But he knows the name of the feeling, he’s felt it too many times in the last several decades. Yearning.
Finally letting go of the last weak threads of his dignity, Alastor gives in to an impulse he doesn’t quite understand.
He shifts on the bed, closing the gap between himself and the other under the sheets. His body curls around the cold cadaver and he lets his arm drape over Vox’s stomach, head resting on his chest.
Alastor can’t help but to nuzzle his cheek into the dead man’s soft sweater, sighing blissfully at the feeling. Vox’s touch is cold now, but it has been so long since Alastor has allowed himself to enjoy the contact of his old companion that he doesn’t even care. He lets himself relax completely, snuggled in between his limp arm and torso.
The radio demon isn’t even sure why he is doing this, holding the body against him like this. He and Vox never had this kind of contact, never shared a bed even before their fallout. And it’s never something Alastor has ever really wanted either. But something about the comforting presence of someone else—a specific someone else—in his bed, keeping him company and holding him while he sleeps, is suddenly all the deer demon craves.
He wonders what changed. When did he become so weak? And why now?
There’s mostly silence for a while as Alastor simply allows himself to indulge in this rare desire. The only sound is the barely audible buzz of the TV still powered on, like a sort of soothing white noise. Alastor only wishes he could turn up the volume.
Eventually he does tilt his chin up to look at the square head resting on the pillow above him. His ever-present smile turns genuine at the sight of the silly little sticky note still stuck to the screen.
It doesn’t take long for Alastor’s body to grow lax and heavy with oncoming sleep. His mind slipping into a dreamy haze. Before sleep takes him completely, Alastor whispers one last thing to the unmoving Vox underneath him.
“It’s good to have you back, old friend. I’ve missed you… Goodnight, Vincent.”