Work Text:
““And now, for-””
Vinciane growled into her receiver.
“Alastor! What the hell are you doing here? This is supposed to be my half hour on this frequency!”
“No it isn’t! I signed up for it weeks ago!”
“I signed up for it weeks ago too, bitch! That’s how signups work!”
“Why don’t you come over here and work this out in person?”
“So you can have the half hour before I rip those curls out of your head? I don’t think so!”
“Will you really take so long getting here? I thought those long legs would be faster, but I guess I can’t expect so much of you.”
“Don’t try to taunt me into it! I’m not fucking twelve!”
The frequency crackled with yet another intruder, and oh hell no, they’d team up against this loser first and then hash it out-
“Girls, girls, you’re both pretty!” Valentino shouted. “It was my fuckup, ok?! I double-booked you!”
““What!?””
“You incompetent imbecile-”
“Val what the hell-”
“Calm down, I didn’t screw up that bad! Nobody has the half hour after you two, so you’ll just have to work out who goes first! Can you do that for me, sweetie pies?”
““Fuck you!””
“Love you bitches too. Over and out.”
Vinciane shut off her receiver and collapsed against her chair, yelling with wordless frustration. Alastor did it on air to set the mood for their listeners.
Not that either of them had a lot. Both of their amateur broadcasts had acquired some listeners, but not many people even had radios. That probably accounted for why nobody had noticed they were scheduled at the same time and called in to save them before disaster struck.
But the clock was ticking. Vinciane couldn’t spend all day in her garage no matter how much she wanted to, and neither could Alastor. It sucked since none of their listeners had planned to stay on past five-thirty, so the following half-hour was undesirable. They couldn’t waste time arguing, and there was no way Alastor would agree to the second half of the hour. It’d be a wonder if that conniving prude would even compromise, but she’d have to know that fighting on air would get her the 5:30 slot anyway. Whatever. Vinciane could compromise. It’d look good to her listeners if she was reasonable and Alastor threw a fit. It was annoying, but she’d win no matter what.
“Alright, we’ll switch off. I’ll take weather, world events, and sports; you take entertainment news, racing results, and politics.”
“Why would I have racing results?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t care about horses. Include that in your sports and give me world news.”
“You don’t have my world news.”
“You don’t have mine!”
“Fine! We’ll do world news on the half hour and take turns. What did you have instead?”
“I was going to sing.”
“Oh.” She’d kind of… like to hear that. Not that she liked Alastor’s voice or anything, but ham radio wasn’t usually that high-quality. Not that she thought Alastor was high-quality, no, definitely not, anyway- “Alright then, you close out with your performance, I’ll lead with sports.”
Noise increased on the channel, an open line broadcasting nothing.
“...If we must.”
Vinciane smirked. It was a good goddamn plan and she knew it, especially to come up with on the fly. Nobody wanted to miss Alastor’s singing. They’d retain at least three-quarters of their audience for the whole hour with that promise.
“Sorry about that, folks! Without further delay, allow me to relay the most exciting moments of this week’s tournament games!”
She didn’t care all that much for sports, if she were being totally honest. She pretended to. She knew all the rules and how they worked and didn’t hate the numbers involved, but a part of her she labeled too girlish was deeply uninterested. Alastor’s entertainment news was always on point, and she’d never let anyone find out, but she always tuned in for it. She should’ve caught the goddamn overlap, but her radio had been disassembled for upgrades during Alastor’s last show and she’d missed the timeslot announcement. What the hell was Val doing? It was high time she took some initiative and helped manage the broadcast schedule. By force, if necessary. This could not happen again.
Even if it was kind of nice.
No! It wasn’t nice! She didn’t like the breaks, or Alastor’s melodic, charming voice, or the little quips at each handoff. Wouldn’t you like to know, weather girl, wasn’t going to be coming to mind by accident whenever she had her fingers wedged between her legs. She didn’t want to taste the strawberry chapstick she could hear on Alastor’s lips like she did when she saw it in person. She wasn’t a freak.
She wasn’t.
She caught Alastor’s song announcement by virtue of infatuation alone, though she’d never admit it.
“What?” burst out before she could stop it.
“Why are you still here? We had an agreement, Vinciane.”
“Yeah, but that’s gonna be real hard to perform alone.”
“Maybe for you, but I’m quite capable.”
“Fine, if you wanna burn your voice out and be hoarse for the next show, be my guest.”
A pregnant pause. What would Alastor look like pregnant? With Vinciane’s childre-... she needed to go outside and stare at the sky very hard after this. Preferably while lying on grass. Nice, cool, grounding grass that could impart sanity.
“What do you suggest instead!?”
The solution to Alastor’s problem was much simpler than the solution to her own, at least.
“It’s meant to be a duet, and we’ve already combined everything else,” she muttered into her receiver, trusting that Alastor could understand her through the AM degradation. “I’ll take the tenor.”
“That was extremely popular.” Said Valentino, his waggling eyebrows and tone hinting at something neither of them wanted to think about, then, “Do it again.”
““No.””
(They did it again.)