Work Text:
Vox was sitting on the couch, in the middle of annotating a screenplay, when he felt Alastor’s frequency appear behind him.
“Hey, Al,” he called, not bothering to turn around.
No response.
Okay. It seemed like someone was in a mood.
After about thirty seconds of feeling Alastor’s stare piercing through the plastic backing of his monitor, Vox couldn’t take it anymore.
“What is it? I know I didn’t break any of the rules this ti—”
The rest of Vox’s sentence died in his throat as he turned around and laid eyes on Alastor, who was covered in red. Not his normal red, though that was probably somewhere in the mix. No, the red that coated Alastor was undeniably blood in various stages of drying. Smeared across the radio demon’s face and splattered down the front of his clothes were also bits of, um, something (someone?) that Vox didn’t really want to think about at the moment.
“. . . What the fuck?”
Suddenly, Alastor’s shadow swept across the room, procuring an envelope from within one of the overlord’s many books, sliding it toward Vox’s feet.
‘VINCENT,’ the envelope read. Ugh.
With no small amount of resentment, Vox opened the envelope to reveal a letter:
Vox: Included in our deal is a clause which I will henceforth refer to as the ‘cuddle clause.’ The cuddle clause tasks you with providing emotional support to me as soon as possible whenever I return from a hunt (the signs of which will be obvious, as you have likely bore witness to; no, there will be no time for you to clean me up beforehand, nor would I want you to do that, anyway. I can deal with the mess later). As the name entails, your main responsibility during times when the cuddle clause applies is to cuddle me until I fully return to my sinner form and regain total control of my powers. Just to be clear: the intent of this touch is to be purely platonic, not sexual in any way. Believe me, this is just as humiliating for me as it is for you—perhaps even more so.
Vox gave Alastor an incredulous glare, but the deer just continued to stare at him with pupils shaped like radio dials and a smile coated in blood.
Then, he felt the weight of their deal wrap around his right wrist. He looked down to see Alastor’s creepy green symbols orbiting around it. So, they were really doing this, huh?
Vox made his way over to Alastor cautiously, like one might a wild animal. A very temperamental, humanoid animal.
“Okay, Al. I’m just gonna move us over to the couch. Um. . .”
Vox hesitated, his claws hovering over Alastor, unable to bring himself to voluntarily grab onto his bloodied coat.
It wasn’t like Vox wasn’t used to blood—he was a murderer, afterall—but it was the sort of thing that he dealt with out of necessity, and the walking crime scene in front of him seemed a little excessive. But, a deal was a deal.
From an outsider’s perspective, it probably looked like Vox was miming that Al had a forcefield around him, which, given the deer’s usual touch aversion, wasn’t too far from the truth.
Fuck it. He was taking off Alastor’s coat.
Vox carefully reached out to undo the top-most clasp, frequently glancing up at Al to ensure he wasn’t about to lose a hand. (In retrospect, starting with the clasp closest to Alastor’s mouth full of razor-sharp teeth probably wasn’t the brightest idea he’d had.)
At the sound of the clasp coming undone, Vox let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. For some reason, that made his vents whir a little louder, and he felt his screen flush with embarrassment. Why did this feel so intimate?
God, he hoped Alastor wouldn’t remember this part. Vox would never be able to live it down.
When Vox finally freed the last clasp on Al’s coat, he made quick work of slipping it off, still conscious of where on the fabric he touched. He then tossed it unceremoniously to the other side of the room where he wouldn’t have to look at it.
Fortunately, Alastor’s dress shirt was significantly less soiled, so Vox didn’t have any reservations about touching it. That fact also confirmed that none of the blood on Al was his own, which was a good thing, probably, if Vox didn’t think too hard about the implications of him being doused in blood that wasn’t his own.
“Alright. Take two, Bambi.”
Vox gave Alastor a gentle push toward the couch, but the radio demon didn’t step forward. Another push yielded the same lack of result.
Vox scoffed, drooping his shoulders dramatically.
“Are you gonna make me carry you, too? Ugh!”
In one swift swoop, Vox scooped Alastor up into a bridal carry. He was surprised at just how light the deer was as he at last moved them over to the couch.
Now, he faced another test: how to position Alastor and, subsequently, himself.
As he hemmed and hawed, the radio on the mantle crackled to life, making him jump.
“For goodness's sake, Vincent, it’s not rocket science! Even I know how to spoon someone,” Alastor’s disembodied voice tutted.
Again, Vox felt himself flush.
“You— I— Of course I know how, it’s just. . .”
Vox’s rebuttal puttered out as he finally started to process just what was being asked of him. Spoon Alastor?
Admittedly, the thought of getting to be that intimate with Alastor had crossed Vox’s mind a few times (not in a weird way—-he wasn’t a homosexual—just. . . Well, how could it not? Alastor basically acted like his wife), but no scenario his imagination cooked up came anywhere close to the one he found himself in now.
Right. He had to focus.
He laid Alastor out in the middle of the couch, making sure his abandoned work was out of the way and didn’t end up annotated with blood instead of ink. Then, he carefully shimmied and squeezed himself behind him.
He was suddenly very self-conscious about the whirring of his vents. At this proximity, Al would likely be able to feel the hot air expelling from his system.
Of course, the more he thought about it, the hotter his system became, so he instead tried to focus on wrapping himself around Alastor in a way that wouldn’t result in one of his limbs getting chomped off. He lay behind him, stiffly, unsure where to put his hands or his shame.
Vox put an arm around Alastor’s waist, gently pulling the deer back toward him so that their bodies pressed together. At the same time, he let his own frequency envelop Al’s, his (mostly) steady waves absorbing the excess energy of the other’s still-frantic ones.
After that, it was surprisingly easy for Vox to let himself relax into the contact. Though Alastor didn’t make for a great body pillow with all his sharp edges, he was warm, and he was his. Not just for the night, but for the duration of their deal.
Soon, Vox found himself drifting off to sleep, lulled by the harmony of their frequencies in sync.