Chapter Text
Vincent doesn’t know when he decided he wasn’t going to kill Alastor.
It wasn't tonight. Tonight, their voices cut a rug on the amber air, underscored by Alastor’s precise, jubilant playing. Bathed in gold-tinged lamplight and surrounded by the vintage artefacts of his favorite bar’s back room, the Radio Demon looks absolutely ecstatic; shoulders bouncing to the beat, grinning huge, loose, fluid, eyes alight. His fine-boned fingers, curved like claws, scamper across the ivories, but he keeps his brazen gaze locked on Vincent as he sings with him, loud. He might just be showing off his ability to discard and disregard the sheet music, but Vincent is thrilled by it; by Alastor’s mischievous attention, his unpredictable but trenchant penchant for watching him with vibrant, pseudo-affectionate eyes.
Alastor makes him a better songwriter. Alastor sings duets with him and him alone.
Last note: Vincent starts it, lets it hold, and Alastor brings in the countermelody in radio-distorted harmony. He flourishes out the last chord, a perfect piano triad, letting the sound sustain itself on the air. Vincent holds his note just a little longer, then stops. The duet vibrates between them, Vincent breathing audibly; then the afterechoes of the music disperse into the warm cluttered quiet, the chatter of the patrons on the other side of the door.
"Fuck yeah," he breathes. It had sounded goddamn perfect.
Vincent bursts into applause for the accomplishments of his accompanist and Alastor dips his head theatrically at the piano bench, sending his bobbed hair bouncing. As he raises his face and lifts both hands from the keys, Vincent sees that his monocle has come askew. Alastor blinks up at Vincent blindly, happily, before giving him a few conciliatory claps in response. Vincent takes the opportunity to bow, as haughty and pompous as he possibly can, and Alastor rewards him with a small surprised laugh that he instantly clamps his palm on his mouth to smother.
Eyebrow popping up on his forehead, Alastor shakes his head at himself. He pinches his monocle with two red-tipped claws and re-affixes it, and reaches — his whole forearm is still exposed; Vincent follows the umber gradient of his arm down to his wrist with greedy eyes — for his long-forgotten whiskey. The ice has melted, so he sets it back down instantly, eyebrows flattening to display his personal derision and bafflement at the passage of time.
It’s a tiny gesture, but it’s so him, and Vincent hurts.
He hurts; it’s fantastic, it’s like his chest is about to burst open so whatever remains of his heart can leap into the air and explode. He wants to jump up and spin around and flourish out some intricate tap-moves with his shitty loafers and then fling himself headfirst into Alastor’s arms; it’s like he’s perpetually tugged on a wire toward him, to wrap around him, electrify him, hold him and clutch him to his body in a swelling mutual surge of them together — for a moment, in a dizzying loss of independence, he wants to be superimposed inside him, subatomically tied to him, irradiated and consumed by him; his.
The performances aren't over yet. Alastor stands, brushes his hands down his front, steps around to the side of the piano, and offers his hand.
Grinning, ever-eager, Vincent takes it.
Alastor sends a sly, deliberate look back at the piano, and Vincent turns to watch as his servant-shadow seeps, like teakettle smoke, out of its own wood-whittled depiction. Taking shape above the keys, it swirls in the air, thorny smile gaping, before coalescing casually on the piano bench. Alastor stretches out an arm and begins a conductor’s motions: four, three, two, one, and his shadow lengthens its spindly arms, sets its fingers to the keys, and begins to play.
Vincent almost laughs to recognize a downbeat, almost clumsy rendition of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer. But he has no time to wisecrack because that’s Alastor’s hand brushing curve of his shoulder, alighting tiny pinprick claws on top of his shoulder; that’s Alastor fixing his grip and giving Vincent’s body a little firm pull. Vincent slides into place and breathlessly reaches for Alastor’s other hand; they clasp palms out to the side, and Alastor steps forward with his right foot, prompting Vincent to step backward with his left; then Alastor’s left and Vincent’s right; then two quick steps to the side, with the music keeping pace, and they’re dancing.
It’s old-fashioned, this one, but simple; backward, backward, sidestep quickstep; forward, forward, sidestep quickstep. Then Alastor is tugging him into a turn, the music slow enough to match them, and then a coupled promenade; then back to the original forward-and-backward pattern. The music picks up in pace and tempo, becoming jaunty and familiar; Vincent feels his heels get livelier, his knees higher, and Alastor, who can pop a hip like a madman, matches every flourish. Faster they go, and closer together: forward, forward, sidestep quickstep; backward, backward, sidestep quickstep. For the second promenade, Vincent steps in and pulls Alastor close, hip-to-hip; taking a risk, he squeezes Alastor’s hand as an indication and raises his arm. Alastor takes his cue and allows Vincent to spin him, knees and elbows twirling neatly, his silhouette beautiful as it slots back into Vincent’s ready arms.
And even faster! Backward, backward, sidestep quickstep; forward, forward, sidestep quickstep, close enough to feel each others’ warmth; this time Alastor spins Vincent out, way out, and Vincent is laughing by the time he returns, blurry and forgetting himself enough to put both hands on Alastor’s chest, Alastor’s arm back around his waist like it belongs there, and before he can remove himself, they’re sway-stepping to the beat together.
The song winds on, and they’re both easily bored, so they improvise. Alastor separates from Vincent to bounce out a couple complicated kicks of the Charleston while Vincent claps to the beat; then, not to be outdone, Vincent starts in on a vigorous Twist while Alastor hunches forward and snickers.
The song winds back to that first, iconic melody; they clasp hands to promenade a final time, and Vincent lets Alastor start to spin him again. He’s daring enough by the time he comes back around. He reaches behind Alastor’s neck, splaying his palm across his spine and arching backward. Alastor’s smile widens as they move together in a half-turn; he dips Vincent deeply as the final notes land.
They hover in that position, nose-to-nose, arms wrapped around each other. Vincent stares up at Alastor.
He’s haloed perfectly beneath the circular light.
Vincent doesn’t know when he decided he wasn’t going to kill Alastor, but he knows when he decided he loved him.
He almost blurts “Holy shit, I love-”
“Don’t drop me!” he demands instead.
Alastor’s grin widens and he moves his arms as if to drop him. Vincent braces for impact but Alastor tightens his grip again, laughing, that idiotic huhuhu: “Only teasing, my dear!"
Vincent rolls his eyes and pulls away with a staccato jerk, expecting Alastor to instantly retreat and fold his hands away, but Alastor gentles his touch and holds onto him, keeping Vincent’s body against him, keeping them face to face as they come upright.
It's intimate.
Vincent’s eyes flick across Alastor’s, trying to read his expression. That barbaric smile — he can’t get anything out of it. But Alastor’s eyes are — Vincent’s heart, or whatever he has left, contracts painfully at how intense Alastor’s gaze is, how heated his are while fixed on Vincent’s face.
They’re all the way across the room, nearly back where they started. Vincent’s back is brushing the side of the piano, just where he’d stood to sing before, and his chest is almost against Alastor's.
Alastor’s eyes narrow, and his hands begin flit across Vincent’s body in tiny, minute motions. A moment of confusion; then Vincent relaxes. Alastor is fixing his tie for him, thumbing down his collar, adjusting his vest. When there’s nothing more to tidy, Alastor’s hands go back to center, and he rocks his weight back. Then one hand ventures out again, parting the air between them, curls, and lands on the side of Vincent’s face.
Then the other hand to match. Then Alastor is caressing his face. Touching him. Stroking down the front of his screen with tender fingertips, feeling the static thrum. The places where he isn’t human, where he isn’t — Vincent can’t feel the touch, and Alastor knows this. But Alastor is gentle anyway, and Vincent knows this.
It’s electric. Vincent can’t breathe.
The wood digs into his back, and Alastor pushes even closer, his hands on Vincent’s face going still.
Vincent stands completely motionless as Alastor cups his inhuman head and leans in.
The space between them narrowing — narrowing — gone. His hands on Vincent’s face, his face on his face. And — an exhale. Vincent imagines it, the puff of breath right at the corner of his mouth. The slightest, slightest pressure of Alastor’s lips.
Alastor pulls back. Stands in front of Vincent, hesitant. Uncertain.
Then Vincent watches it happen in real time. Alastor’s ears stiffening. His smile curling, pinching. His eyes widening in cruelty, in burgeoning rage, in another emotion Vincent knows the Radio Demon isn’t supposed to let himself feel.
He knows they haven’t drank for shit that night, too intoxicated by each others’ creativity, but Vincent doesn’t want to end the night shit-stamped into the floorboards. “You’re drunk,” he announces quickly, in his bright presenter’s voice, sweeping forward to catch Alastor in the way one friend supports another’s weight. He steers him toward the door, strangling his panic. “Come on; let’s get you home.”
Alastor is stiff beside him; too stiff to be sloshed. But maybe he is still tipsy, with the way he had Vincent dance with him, handle him. But he can’t be, because as they start to push through the door together, Alastor shoves away from him with a snap and strides across the taproom, a dead even line that carries him straight to the door and silences every patron in the bar, and Vincent can only grit his teeth and march after him, painting the same pathetic picture every barfly has seen so many times before.
He should be able to catch up easily, but the time he bursts out the door, Alastor’s gone.
It’s cowardly. And it's so goddamn predictable he almost doesn’t bother snarling “Fuck.”
Vincent stomps back inside alone, slamming the door behind him. He doesn’t want to walk home in the dark, not yet, not now, not willing to deal with brightness of his face-screen bouncing along on the pavement in front of him, a literal headlight seeking its fucking deer.
He sits himself back at the counter, in his usual seat, and broods.
It does feel, sometimes, like Alastor, with his attentive closeness, with his acquiescence to the obvious intimacy between them, is trying to semi-surreptitiously court him — but then Vincent will be just a little too fast or too loud or too something, stomping stupidly across some invisible line Alastor had never even hinted was there in the first place, and Alastor will freeze and scoff at him, or worse, dry-casually remark on how “incompetent” and “puny” and disgusting Vincent is and always has been, and — well. “You certainly have a lot to learn!” and some canned fuckin’ laughter. Yeah, yeah.
Vincent knows he has work to do if he wants to keep pace with the Overlords’ Overlord, the eldritch force of violence famous enough to be every superstar Vincent had ever killed rolled into one. Alastor’s really good at making him chase! And someday, of course, Vincent’ll figure out enough about Alastor to take him down and smash him, and then he’ll be top of the heap, and everything will be just perfect.
Probably.
Oh, who is he kidding. He’s never met anyone so much like himself. He’s never liked anyone this much. Like hell he’s ever, ever letting Alastor go.
And the kiss. Almost-kiss? It… it makes sense. Slowly, Vincent feels himself smirk. A scene partner, a fellow showman, a selfish gleeful murdering bastard sporting a ghastly grin. It’s nothing he hasn’t thought about. He knows what he and Al are: two freaks, one frequency. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that if Alastor were to partner with anyone, it would be him.
He brings a claw to the corner of his mouth, as if he could feel Alastor’s breath, Alastor’s kiss, there. His smirk widens. It’s not out of the realm of possibility at all.
Alastor might be sweet on him. Alastor might fucking want him.
And Vincent? He’s never been frightened of emotions; they’re the easiest tool. It’s not an admission that he wants Alastor, it’s a fact.
Because even though Vincent would have to give up so much to become like Alastor — his visuals, his mastery of modern materials, the medium he spent a whole life building and a whole death being — sometimes he wants to. In recompense for Alastor removing his coat, he could imagine removing his head. He’d place his transmitter aside; then, what remained would be human-shaped enough, flexible enough, for Alastor to take into his arms.
God, he’s a sap. He’s not drunk enough to have an excuse for this.
Alastor probably won’t do it again. Alastor probably was drunk. Alastor isn't a queer. Alastor hates having a television screen too close to his head. Vincent can’t blame him for that one! Having a television screen too close to his head is what got him into this mess. He knows he has to take Alastor at a distance, when he gets to take him at all, and watch, usually with his fists clenched so hard his claws push painfully into the meat of his palms, as the Radio Demon lavishes something as precious and rare as a full-body hug on a cretin like Mimzy.
Vincent tugs his claws out of the bar counter. Shit, he's done it again. Deep gouges in the wood, and the bartender, who is one scary dyke, glaring at him.
"I'll tip," he lies, and she goes back to polishing glasses.
Whatever. It’s not enough, but it’s some comfort that Alastor tolerates him in a way he tolerates no-one else. That he gets to see Alastor less guarded; more gracious, more graceful, more sweet.
He really is sweet, the Radio Demon. Vincent shakes his head: who’d have thought? Not sugar-sweet, saccharine, but… affectionate nonetheless, in his terse and audibly awkward ways. Precious moments when his smile becomes a private picture-show for just the two of them; when his eyes go lidded and languid and — if Vincent kids himself a little — friendly.
Just a little bit, maybe.
And the kiss…? Was it a kiss?
There are other behaviors, too, that make him question what Al wants from him. Alastor doesn’t enjoy being photographed, but he made an exception for Vincent, with Vincent. They stood side-by-side for the countdown till the camera flashed, Alastor trim and debonair and dashing, impeccably poised with his shoulders straight, and lopsided-eye Vincent looking, well, okay. The final image resembled nothing so much a high-school couple at prom.
Happy.
And significantly less kiddy things. Showing him the picture; Vincent was sitting right where he is now. Alastor tucked beside him, bathed in warm light, curling one delicate hand to frame chin. Alastor holding eye-contact with Vincent, half-lidded and deliberate, and beginning to swirl his forefinger around the rim of his glass. It was enough to make Vincent stop mid-sentence and stammer like a child, his hand floundering in midair. Vincent had played the leading man enough times to know what want was, but it surely — it couldn’t — Alastor didn’t like men.
Vincent had recovered and pushed on with the speech he’d prepared, and Alastor, lapsing back into legato silence, had signalled to the barkeep and dug himself two drinks deeper.
Vincent digs himself two drinks deeper -- he can't actually consume the liquid, but there's just something about the ritual of buying and paying and having -- and lets the memory montage go on.
“Such a romantic,” Alastor had observed wryly once Vincent’s monologuing had wound to a close. His eyes had flicked to the photograph and back. “These little — visuals — mean so much to you.” He’d laughed, then, meanly: “Strange, then, that you talk so much!” He’d flicked Vincent’s antennae at that, causing his whole face to spaz, and added, without much heat, “Bash-ears.”
Even that light barb spoke of affection. It was slang from Vincent’s era, not his own.
“Total chatterbox,” Vincent had agreed, and thumped his chassis with his fist. “Literally. But you know what they say about pictures?” he winked obnoxiously. “Worth a thousand words.”
And then he’d trailed off. They both had. His eyes, magnetized, had gone fixated once more on Alastor’s circling finger. Circling, circling the rim... Alastor’s ever-hungry hooded eyes on him, a smile that looked downright coy curling up his cheek. The claw, as Vincent watched, as Alastor watched him watch, edging just slightly inside the glass. Vincent had been going crazy. It had looked outright indecent to him; by Alastor’s standards, it was fucking obscene.
Yeah. Vincent tries to get calm and orders — let’s try something new! — six more shots. Alastor’s behavior tonight, and that night — Alastor’s behavior often — is absolutely, categorically sensual. But then comes the casual, cruel indifference, like he’s switched the station, and the softer, sultrier Alastor fritzes out, gone.
Vincent has no idea what to make of it.
It’ll fade, yeah? Whatever he’s — whatever they’ve — maybe it’s just one of those limited-series things. Nighttime dreams, swimming in a pool of money while feathered whip-thin showgirls all chant your name in lights; then waking up broke and busted and hungover in your Baltimore rowhouse, and the music’s gone ’cause now it’s just another siren speeding by, and the camera flashes blazing against each angle of your face have faded to the shit weak daylight filtering in through the paper-thin curtains, and it’s pouring fucking rain.
That’s when you’d turn to the television. That’s why you’d turn to the television. Or the fuckin’ radio, or a book, or a doll, or a bottle, or whatever you had, to screen over and escape whatever you didn’t want to be feeling. Plug in, change the channel, and run.
In a moment of uncharacteristic foresight, Vincent wonders — only briefly as he closes his hand around his glass — how far Alastor will go to run from him.