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‘I love you.’
That’s what Vox had said.
It’s not what he’d meant to say—or, well, not in so many words. He’d meant to tell Alastor in a more roundabout way, how much he admires him, how much he wants to stay by his side. It’s all because he’s a bit of a coward when it comes to Alastor, really.
To be fair, most people are. But what Vox is afraid of isn’t Alastor’s teeth. And whoever said ‘the worst thing they can say is ‘no’’ was a fucking liar. What a stupid moment to choose to be brave.
There’s laughter spilling over those sharp, sharp teeth. “What? What? Hah!”
The back of Vox’s head hits the floor with a dull thunk and a splintering crack, Alastor’s foot kicking the stool out from under him.
Alastor’s face looms large in his vision, his grin gleaming in the low light of the bar as he stands over Vox. The other patrons are gone. So is the bartender. Vox would be impressed by the speed of self-preservation on display if it wasn’t at his direct expense.
“No, you don’t,” Alastor says, and presses the sharp point of his heel against Vox’s screen. The display distorts from the pressure, rippling across Vox’s vision dizzyingly.
“Wh-what?” Vox manages. He wants to push himself up, but his head is throbbing—the back, where the casing has cracked, and the point where Alastor has him pinned.
“‘Love,’” Alastor muses, pressing his weight harder onto Vox’s screen. Something whines, and a crack splinters across Vox’s vision. His body sparks, spasming under the unrelenting pressure. The whining might be him, actually. “What a silly thought. What does your love say to this, then?”
Vox is panting through the pain, trying not to hyperventilate. It’s hard to see. But he looks up at Alastor, then, because it occurs to him that Alastor does not want him to. He’s hurting Vox, blinding him—distracting him. A showman at heart.
Alastor’s smile is harsh. His ears are flat and back, angry, like he’s preparing for a fight. Like Vox is the one that picked it, though all he’d done is offer an open palm over a late night drink.
Vox raises a hand slowly, wrapping it loosely around Alastor’s ankle. What was Alastor’s question? ‘What do you say to this’?
“...I l-lov-ve you,” Vox says, and flushes at the interference that stutters through his vocals. It’s not from any damage Alastor did—all the relevant bits are well away from where he’s hurt Vox. It’s just Vox’s own anxiety.
Alastor flusters visibly. There’s a flush across his face from the alcohol, but it’s starting to deepen. “Are you stupid, old pal?”
Vox musters a grin, distorted as it is. From this angle, he can see Alastor’s tail flick anxiously under his coat. He squeezes Alastor’s ankle, tucking his thumb just under the hem of his pants and rubbing it in slow circles over where he can feel soft fur under the sock.
“We are all fools in love,” he quotes. Come on, he thinks. He’s almost got him.
Alastor stares down at Vox in obvious bewilderment for a long, long moment—and then tips over, flopping down to sprawl on the floor next to Vox like a drunk at the end of a long night.
Vox rolls onto his side to face him, and realizes Alastor looks terrified.
“That looked like it hurt,” Vox says quietly.
Alastor shrugs, coat dragging along the floor, and tips an antler towards Vox’s splintered screen. “Not as much as that.”
Vox laughs, breathless with adrenaline. “Touche. C’mon, Al, I really put myself out there.” He thinks that might have hurt more than the injury splintering across him, actually. If it were anybody else, he’d be incandescent—quite literally, too. He can pack a punch nowadays.
“What’s running through that deer brain of yours?” he asks, hoping Alastor doesn't hear what he really means—not deer, but dear.
“I'm trying to decide,” Alastor whispers. His eyes are big and red, gleaming like congealing blood in the dark. It’s the same color as the stuff running through Vox’s tubing, half-man and half…demon, he supposes. Or maybe all demon.
“Decide what?”
“Whether you mean it,” Alastor says slowly, and then pauses, just a hitch of his breath. Maybe he’s nervous, or maybe he’s getting ready to unhinge his jaw. Hard to tell, with Alastor. “Or whether you're trying to get the drop on me like the last three demons you partnered with.”
Vox goes cold. “What?”
“If it was just the offer of partnership,” Alastor explains with the deliberate slowness of a drunk person utterly convinced they are being logical, “I might laugh you out of the room for being a duplicitous little shit, and not even really very good at it. But this ploy—I suppose if I decide you're being dishonest, I would have to eat you.”
Fuck, you can eat me any time you like is the first thing to run through Vox's head. The second is the delayed realization that he is in very real, very serious danger right now.
Somehow, that still doesn't make it to the top of the list of things he's upset about. His vision is starting to fuzz over.
“Oh, sweetheart. Why, what's that face for?” Alastor asks, reaching out and tipping Vox's chin up with a claw.
“It really took a lot for me to confess like that,” Vox mutters. “I get now that I was just humiliating myself, but the least you could do is believe me. I thought—”
He flushes, cutting himself off. “Nevermind.”
Alastor blinks, owlish. “Well, now I'm curious!”
Vox blushes harder, his screen tinting cyan. Fuck, sober him is going to kill drunk him, but that's a problem for the morning.
“I actually thought I had a chance,” he mutters, staring down at his hands. He’s wound his fingers together so tightly his knuckles have gone bloodless, his whole body starting to curl in around them. Not too far—Alastor is laying too close for that, and if Vox is going to risk life and limb by planting his screen into Alastor’s chest, it’s not going to be on a sticky bar room floor, thanks. He doesn’t have a lot of self-respect when it comes to the Radio Demon, but he has some.
Sanguine red creeps down, sharp and thin and…winding between the pale joints of Vox’s own electric claws. A decision made.
There’s humor threaded through Alastor’s voice, then.
“Well, with a showing like that…maybe you do.”
And all of the balled up tension in Vox’s chest blooms.