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Vox is different now that he is dating Valentino.
Not that this is entirely surprising! Alastor is familiar with the ways in which relationships change people. Why, every time Rosie finds herself a new husband, she develops a completely different palate! The most recent one has her prone to heavy fare with few spices; not up Alastor’s alley at all, yet he must stomach it nonetheless when he visits. Perhaps he will start ferreting away some hot sauce in his pockets, rudeness be damned.
The thing is, though—it is the way in which Vox is different.
He isn’t different in his day-to-day. Not by much, at least. He seems a touch less, ah—manic, at times, which Alastor is attributing to him regularly getting his dick wet and not thinking about any further. He’s not any different with Alastor, either. Actually, those two things are the crux of the issue, especially taken in combination with the fact that…Vox is very different with Valentino.
He wines him, he dines him, he even fucks his new boyfriend in rented limos that Valentino doesn’t know don’t actually belong to Vox’s company. (Technically Vox and Alastor’s company, but this distinction is in Alastor’s opinion largely nominal and reputational—the prime benefit, in his opinion, being that Vox takes care of the paperwork and organizes ad runs for his broadcast, and subsequently deals with the fallout on the occasion Alastor looks down at the script at the last minute and decides that he’s not partial to a particular one; Vox has swiftly gotten quite good at determining which ads Alastor will actually read on air.)
Alastor is peripherally aware that Vox has sex, of course. He simply didn’t realize he likes this much of it. After all, they’ve never—
Well, Vox has never really made a move, has he? Which is all well and good as far as Alastor is concerned—he isn’t much interested himself—but it’s difficult to see a dog chase a car with such vigor and not wonder if he’d been hoping for such a creature to come by all along, and never truly been content napping in a sun spot by the door.
This metaphor is getting out of hand, Alastor decides, even as mutt-like as Vox often is. The point is, they’ve been dating for nearly a decade now, and Vox has never so much as kissed Alastor, nevermind tried to get into his proverbial skirts. And now he’s getting into Valentino’s very literal skirts (and sometimes his pants, and occasionally simply his underwear, which is a touch excessive—or, rather, insufficient—in Alastor’s opinion) nigh-on daily, and Alastor is starting to feel like—
Maybe he should have been offering?
“Eugh.” The thought forces an involuntary shudder down Alastor’s spine as his hackles re-settle, and he resigns himself to the fact that if Vox wants to fuck him, then Alastor is most certainly about to get dumped.
Which is…fine.
Probably.
(It’s not fine. It’s not even a little bit fine, and Alastor sort of hates himself about it.)
He so rarely allows the opportunity for this degree of attachment on his own end, let alone invites it, but Vox had wormed his way into Alastor’s affections with the perfect formula. Firstly, he is pathetic. Overly dependent, occasionally calculatedly obsequious, happy—no, excited—to pet Alastor’s ego. Secondly, he’s a manipulative, evil little shit. Alastor’s awareness of the sheer number of dead bodies that Vox’s steady rise to power produces was made significantly greater once Vox realized that not only does Alastor make a rather convenient corpse disposal, but that using him as such will win Vox brownie points. And thirdly, he—
Well, he’s been rather respectful about the whole thing, hasn’t he?
Not obnoxiously so. He’s no trembling waif, too nervous around Alastor to avoid tripping over his own words. But he hasn’t pushed, not past the point of getting his fingers nipped for it.
And so they’ve gone on, meeting up for their little dates, their dinners, their murderous outings. Alastor has spent many a night at Vox’s abode, and Vox has spent a significantly larger number at Alastor’s, largely attendant of Alastor’s place of residence possessing reliable hot water. The limo rentals and expensive hotel rooms really do cut into Vox’s budget for, say, utilities.
The point is, he can’t even be overly upset about the whole thing. Vox has played everything perfectly. Alastor is perfectly satisfied.
…But Vox isn’t.
Alastor sighs.
“Okay, what is your problem?”
“Speak of the devil,” Alastor murmurs, “and he shall appear.”
Vox blinks at him from across the table, bright red lights shuttering for a split-second that leaves the space between them bathed in lonely cyan.
Then Vox’s eyes open and he starts looking about the restaurant, bracing an arm over the back of his seat to twist around. “What? Where?”
“I meant you,” Alastor says.
“I’ve been here the whole time. You’re the one on fucking Saturn. What are you sighing and ‘eugh’ing about, Al? The meat can’t be that bad. It’s wagyu. Like, actual wagyu, from Japan, on Earth. Do you know how much actual wagyu costs down here?”
Alastor pouts dramatically, pushing the beef around his plate idly with a fork. “I think Niffty has cooked this before. It’s not chewy enough. Nothing to sink my teeth into.”
That gets Vox’s attention back to the table. If his eyes could bulge, they’d be falling out onto his plate. As it is, they overtake more than half of his screen, causing his equally-outraged mouth to clip off of the display as he gapes at Alastor. “Not chewy enough?”
“No.”
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Vox says, but his spirit clearly isn’t in it. Alastor pushes his plate across the table and Vox eyeballs it like he’s expecting Alastor to take a bite out of whatever hand he reaches out to take it with. Not an entirely baseless concern, but silly nonetheless. Alastor wouldn’t do that to Vox. They’re partners!
For now.
“You are welcome to try,” Alastor says. “Besides, don’t you write these off as a business expense?”
“How would you know?” Vox says, finally snatching Alastor’s plate and setting to cutting off a piece of the meat with the practiced technique of a man who would definitely prefer to be eating a steak. Vox’s own plate is practically licked clean—he’d gotten some rabbit food, a new fad he’s been chasing in an attempt to obtain the current popular silhouette. Something Valentino set him onto, Alastor is certain. Alastor had told him he didn’t see the point, and Vox’s only response had been ‘of course you don’t,’ whatever that meant. “You don’t look at the taxes.”
“Why would I look at the taxes? You always do them.”
“I am going,” Vox says, “to fucking kill you—”
Alastor sticks his fork in a cut of the wagyu, and then sticks that into Vox’s mouth.
The noise that follows makes him wrinkle his nose, embarrassed to be in the vicinity. “Vox. Manners.”
“I love you,” Vox moans, and Alastor sighs, settling back in his seat as Vox sets into the steak.
What a rude thing to say to someone, Alastor thinks, that one is planning to dump. He sighs again, looking out the restaurant window.
(Steak forgotten, Vox stares at him pensively.)
It takes three weeks before Alastor (...breaks?) gets fed up with dealing with this nonsense.
This is not an invitation, reads Carmilla’s sharp, utilitarian cursive on a note advertising, of all things, a gala for overlords, because you never attend anyway. I am simply notifying you out of courtesy, so that you don’t show up on my doorstep like a scorned fairy godmother.
So, obviously, Alastor shows up. He brings Vox with him, because the poor dear is an overlord now, but not enough of one to get all the good party invitations. Sometimes he wonders if partnering with Vox wasn’t a disservice to him, the way that the larger overlord cohort treats the man more or less as Alastor’s secretary.
(So does Alastor, in a way, but that’s different, of course.)
Of course, when he had accepted, he had meant it to be a disservice. A conniving little weasel like Vox, as charming as Alastor finds those traits, could only have been asking for a business partnership if he had a plan in place to dispose of Alastor and take his place. It couldn’t have worked, of course—thanks to powers entirely out of Vox’s knowledge—and Alastor was very close to laughing Vox out of the bar, but…
Vox had been blushing, is all. A charming fuzz of teal stealing across that boxy little screen of his, and Alastor realized that he had fully misunderstood Vox’s meaning with regards to the word partners.
Well, Vox always had been more forward-thinking.
As for gala, he starts suspecting about ten minutes into the thing, when Carmilla doesn’t look nearly as annoyed to see him as he’d expected, that he’s been rather handily tricked into attending and is not being as much of a nuisance as he’d hoped. The joke is still on her, though: she clearly hadn’t expected him to haul in a plus one—and in fact the option hadn’t been provided by the invitation—and so therefore Alastor has succeeded at being at least somewhat of a nuisance.
Night not entirely wasted.
Vox is clearly having a ball; pun intended. He’s on his third glass of imported champagne, which is just enough to make Carmine’s eye twitch as to the cost but not quite enough for it to be polite to cut him off, which is exactly the suffering he wishes upon someone who hasn’t provided anything better at her open bar. Alastor has been having to get by via matching Vox drink-for-drink and then some, and the carbonation is making his stomach feel a little funny.
Vox, meanwhile, has greased the wheels and is schmoozing with the best of them, even as he keeps trying to catch Alastor’s eye with an eager grin from across the room. Half the overlords he’s walked up to in the past forty-five minutes have not actually recognized him, but he weedles his way in so skillfully that by the time he leaves them, waving down another potential networking connection like they’re old friends, at least one in three have succumbed to an “informal” (there is no such thing) handshake deal with the man. Simple things, for the most part; but Alastor knows best of all that all Vox needs is a foot in the door. He will be climbing the ladder more swiftly after tonight, as Alastor intended.
It’s quite impressive, if Alastor is fully honest. At least it is until Vox ropes Alastor into it.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Alastor murmurs past his grin. Vox has an arm hooked through his, and Alastor is not calling what he’s doing to Alastor ‘dragging’ mostly because he has not had enough alcohol himself to waive that last swatch of pride. “They’re not going to deal with you when I’m looming over your shoulder, Vox.”
“Aw, you get deals all the time, Al!” Vox says, gesturing with his fourth glass of sparkling-whatever. He’s not quite slurring, but his words have that sharper punctuation that comes with a tipsy individual trying not to slur. Alastor snags the glass and downs the rest, dropping it off on a waiter’s platter as they move. “And I’ve been talking you up all night. Don’t sell yourself short!”
Alastor snorts. “I promise you, that is not what I’m doing. My dear, I get my deals a little differently from you. This is your playground, not mine. If Carmine even thought I was going to show up, there would be a bartender serving whiskey at the very least.”
Vox stops, still several feet away from his next clutch of victims, and stares at Alastor with round eyes. He’s trying to look endearing, Alastor thinks, and has to duck his head a little to do it—perils of being the exact same height.
“So you came just to bring me?” Vox says, enlarging his eyes.
Alastor sputters out a laugh, unable to help himself as he’s caught. “You are ridiculous!”
“That’s not a ‘no’!” Vox sings, grinning even wider than Alastor himself, and tugs him the rest of the way over to a group of upstarts younger than even Vox. “Heyyyy, gentlemen! Have you met my partner yet—?”
Alastor’s chest clenches at the words. The carbonation really is making him feel a little queasy; the longer he watches Vox, the worse it gets, and those words just—send him over the edge a little bit.
“Partner,” Alastor murmurs. “For now.”
Vox doesn’t stutter. The lights in the room flicker for a split second. Nobody notices—except Carmine, of course, who shoots Alastor a look.
“—accurate weather report in the Pentagram, with my help, of course,” Vox is saying. “Live on the radio show, before you’ll see it anywhere else!”
Alastor lets his grin widen. “Personally, my favorite section airs after dark. Look out for the screams.”
One of the baby overlords squints at him. “It’s always dark. There’s no sun in hell.”
“And that’s why it’s such a nice surprise when I get a chance to run the segment!” He leans in, feeling his neck crack as it stretches. “Would you like to participate in the next one?”
The poor fool yelps, and backpedals straight into one of his friends, who shrieks as he knocks their full drink all over their trailing outfit. “Asshole!”
By the time they extricate themselves from both each other and Alastor’s presence, Alastor is still laughing.
By the time Vox yanks him out of the mingling hall and into a secluded hallway, Alastor is downright breathless with it.
Vox shoves him against a wall, which is a novel experience. He hasn’t gotten so physical with Alastor in quite a while—he thinks the last time might have been that first skipped ad read, actually, which Vox had apparently really put himself out there for—and nobody else has dared to try in years.
Alastor leans his head back to marvel in the experience as his vision swims. Oops, that might be less head trauma and more alcohol. How many has he had by now? He was staying ahead of Vox, at least.
Then Vox’s face is in his vision, and the thought fades away.
“What the fuck was that?!” Vox demands.
Alastor blinks at him slowly, ponderous, and taps his chin with a claw idly. Vox’s own claws tighten on Alastor’s shoulders, prickling pleasantly through the tailored fabric. “I did warn you that I would scare them off.”
“Scare them—Alastor, I don’t give a shit that you scared them off!” Vox says, giving him a shake. Alastor’s head bounces slightly, and he wobbles for a moment until Vox holds him steady. “I meant your fucking—for now?! What is ‘for now’ supposed to mean?!”
Alastor’s vision is filled with bright spots and sparks, and it takes him a second to realize that Vox has once again not actually smacked his skull hard enough to manifest the effect; it’s Vox himself, twitchy and sparking off with burning electrostatic embers left and right. One of his antennae is trembling and on the fritz, like he’s about to burn out, and his endearing little hypnotic eye is swirling manically.
“Exactly what it sounds like, old pal,” Alastor murmurs, smiling.
Every single ceiling lamp in the hallway pops simultaneously, and the hallway goes dark except for the flickering light of Vox’s screen. He looks apoplectic, which is admittedly soothes something frantic and lashing in Alastor’s chest. He wants to find that pain spot and keep pressing until Vox just—pops, just like the lamps.
Then Vox shudders, taking a deep breath, and smooths his face out. He smiles. He releases his death-grip on Alastor’s shoulders, brushing them off carefully and straightening his suit. One of the overhead lights flickers back on, weak.
“Alastor,” Vox says very reasonably. “Al. C’mon. What’s gotten into you? You got me, okay? I made you feel bad, you made me feel bad—but I’m a little stupid sometimes, remember? You gotta spell things out for me, so I can fix them, okay?”
Alastor blows an amused breath out through his nose. Vox takes this as encouragement, and puts an arm around Alastor’s shoulders, using his other hand to adjust Alastor’s bowtie, straighten his lapel, and otherwise use Alastor’s wardrobe as a fidget toy. “Come on, let’s get out of this place. I appreciate that you did all this for me, but you clearly fucking hate it here. Doesn’t a night on the town sound better? Besides, we can’t be seen being catty and disagreeable in public like that when we’re partners—”
“I need you to get over yourself and break up with me already,” Alastor says suddenly.
He doesn’t plan on saying it. The words just tumble out. He supposes it’s no surprise, though—they’ve been hanging there for weeks, now, just waiting to tip over the precipice. The alcohol just finally loosened his tongue enough for them to go.
“...What?” Vox’s voice is small in the empty hallway. It’s a little annoying, that he sounds like that. He’s the one who needs to dump Alastor, not the other way around.
Alastor huffs into the space between them. Vox’s hands are loose on his shoulders now, cradling more than pinning. He steps back, then, practically skittering with lightning as he separates himself from Alastor.
“Well, you’re clearly happier with a different sort of relationship,” Alastor explains. It’s also annoying that he has to explain this to Vox, when Vox is the one with the problem. “All of that sex and romance jazz, we’ve never done it. And now you’re off indulging, and it hardly seems like you’re keen on settling for—”
“But we—but we’re not together?”
Alastor stares at Vox.
Vox stares back at Alastor. His eyes are big and red on his face, with tiny, trembling pupils that dart between Alastor’s eyes. The poor thing is actually wringing his hands.
Alastor swallows, cold trickling down his spine. “That, ah.”
“We’re not…dating?” Vox says, his tone lilting up into a question even as it grows quicker, more frantic. “We’re not in a romantic relationship? We’ve never…”
“I seem to have made a mistake,” Alastor says, and promptly dissolves into the shadows.
Or he tries to. The world fades into darkness for scarcely a moment before it goes suddenly, blindingly bright—Vox snapping into vivid reality in front of him, an electric current wrapping around Alastor’s throat with an intensity that locks his jaw with involuntary spasm as the shape of Vox’s skeleton lights up the backs of his eyelids. His ears pin. When he opens his eyes again, he’s flat on his back in the middle of—god knows where, because he can’t see anything except Vox’s face twisting into a wicked, angry snarl, can’t hear anything except the ringing in his ears, can’t feel anything except sharp claws snapping electricity around his neck.
“Are you telling me,” Vox’s signal screeches straight through the noise and into Alastor’s awareness, “that you could have been mine THIS WHOLE TIME?!”
Alastor blinks. There’s two of Vox. One is quite animated, his mouth moving silently as his signal fractures spastically into white noise, and the other is lagging a second behind, a bright white trail.
“—fuck, fuck, sorry,” fades into audibility, shaky claws threading through Alastor’s hair and over his ears, trying to perk them up from where they’ve plastered themselves against his skull. Notably, the other hand stays around his throat, pressing him down against the—floor? It feels like wood. They might be in his recording tower. “Are you okay? Oh my god, we’re dating?”
“No,” Alastor croaks, correcting. “You are breaking up with me.”
“Oh my god,” Vox says again, and kisses him.
Alastor squeezes his eyes shut again, squinting as Vox’s screen blinds him even through his eyelids. “Mnh.” He’s not sure he likes this. It’s making his head hurt, he can’t really breathe, and it’s awfully wet. And he’s tipsy and nauseated enough that biting Vox’s tongue off to get a better taste isn’t even tempting him.
Vox stops kissing him. He’s on his knees, Alastor realizes, hunched over Alastor and cradling him with one hand even as the other squeezes around his throat. They really are in the tower; he recognizes the ceiling overhead, the red, hellish light trickling in through the wide windows. Of all the places for Vox to take them—Alastor’s domain? Not if he was hoping to maintain any prayer of advantage over the situation.
Alastor reaches up and detaches Vox from his throat. He thinks Vox might be trying to resist for a moment, based on the sharp noise he makes and the way his wrist trembles sharply in Alastor’s grip, but it’s hard to tell when Vox has been making all kinds of strange noises in the past few minutes already.
“I’m not that kind of date,” Alastor tells him.
“Oh,” Vox says, petting frantically over Alastor’s hair. “Okay. Okay. Um, how long have we been dating?”
Alastor squints at him. “Nearly a decade. Our anniversary is in two months.”
“No,” Vox says. “No, because that’s our anniversary of being partners, Alastor.”
“Yes,” Alastor says, staring. “Partners.”
Vox’s mouth wobbles. “Business partners?”
“So you are dumping me?”
“NO.”
Static cracks again, flashing, and Vox’s hand is clutched painfully tightly in Alastor’s hair. He pets a thumb over one of Alastor’s once-again pinned ears—the electric popping is loud—but doesn’t release him.
“No,” Vox says again. His attempt at pinning on a congenial smile is nowhere near as convincing as Alastor’s. “Fuck no. I’m just—trying to get the timeline straight! I can’t be forgetting our anniversary! So, uh—so two months, okay, ten year anniversary, that’s a big one! Big plans for that one. When’s our anniversary as business partners? So that I don’t. Forget. You know me. I can be stupid sometimes.”
He’s trembling against Alastor. Alastor affects an eyeroll he doesn’t really feel and decides to indulge…whatever this is. “There isn’t one. Why do you think I even said ‘yes’ to your business proposal, if not because you were so lovelorn—back then? I was hardly going to just make a business deal with the man who thinks promotion is synonymous with murder your business partners.”
Vox might be hyperventilating. He sits down, shaking too hard to keep himself up, which happens to land him right in Alastor’s lap.
Alastor raises a hand—Vox flinches—and lowers it back down, unsure of himself. It’s not a feeling he likes. He’s always sure of himself.
“...So,” Alastor says slowly. “I suppose we weren’t partners.”
Vox makes a garbled noise. Ah. He’s fritzed out his speakers. It will take him a moment or two to get those back in line, then. Alastor’s mouth twists. He’s not very partial to being put on the spot like this when Vox could be running his mouth while Alastor figures himself out instead.
“...Which I suppose saves you the need to dump me,” Alastor mutters. “Could you let me up? This is very embarrassing, and I’m being very magnanimous by not slaughtering all the witnesses. That’s you, by the way.”
“NO.”
The word crackles straight into Alastor’s brain, meshing poorly with his growing, alcohol-induced headache. Vox’s claws wrap around his wrist.
“N-no,” Vox says again, this time with his own voice and mouth. “I didn’t—don’t be embarrassed! I’m embarrassed. I—I love you?”
The words trip out over his tongue, and he promptly looks sick.
Alastor stares at him. “What about Valentino?”
Vox looks even more sick, if that is possible. “You’re jealous of Val?”
Alastor huffs through his nose, an ear flicking. “No. Or—not as such. It’s just—you’re constantly fucking the man. It’s hard not to draw comparisons. If we were dating—”
“We’re dating!”
“We—you are ridiculous!” Alastor says.
“We’re dating,” Vox repeats, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the pulsepoint of Alastor’s wrist. “Keep going.”
Alastor sighs. “Ridiculous creature. I just meant that you clearly have a preference in your romantic and sexual prospects. I thought I was being a poor partner, which—” He shifts uncomfortably. “Vox, I’m done talking about this.”
Vox raises Alastor’s hand, pressing the back of it to his screen. He kisses Alastor’s wrist, a short, fizzy little thing that tingles and—
Alastor’s face warms. He wasn’t even aware it could do that.
“Wouldn’t that make me a bad partner?” Vox asks, peering up at Alastor through virtual lashes—like Alastor said, ridiculous. “Since I’ve been doing such a dogshit job wooing you?”
“Wooing me,” Alastor says.
Vox grins at him. “Ten years, and I’ve never bought you flowers!”
“They would die the moment I touch them.” Has anybody ever brought him flowers before? Stupid question. People don’t typically buy men flowers. Alastor’s the one who’s spent a pretty penny at the Cannibal Town florist.
But…so has Vox, on Alastor’s recommendation. For Valentino.
Alastor isn’t Valentino, but he also isn’t the sort of person to blush when the back of his hand is kissed, so who knows what new things there are to discover about himself?
“AVTek is the forefront of hellish innovation! What, you think I can’t make flowers you can’t kill? I, uh…” The glee slides off Vox’s screen. “Um, can I kiss you again?” Vox asks.
Alastor makes a face. That one doesn’t require further exploration. “No.”
“Wha—why not?!” The way Vox says it, Alastor imagines his initial request was meant less as a question and more as a prelude.
“Do you really want to know?” Alastor asks. He twists his wrist in Vox’s grip, lowering their hands down between their laps. “I don’t think you’ll like the answer.”
“Of course I want to know!” The indignation injected into Vox’s tone apparently can only increase, not subside.
Alastor sighs, which makes Vox twitch. “Well, firstly, I’ve never done any of that before.” Vox’s screen glitches visibly, multicolored bars that Alastor thinks for a moment will turn into white text on a blue background—but Vox manages to recover himself, even if his claws are getting a little white-knuckled. “Except earlier, of course, when I was still half-concussed. And secondly, I probably won’t like it, and then you’ll resent me for that.”
‘How do you know you won’t like it if you’ve never done it before?’ is what Alastor expects to come out of Vox’s mouth next. Instead, Vox’s mouth twists into an awkward grimace.
“With all that running through your head,” Vox says slowly, “I don’t know if you can enjoy it. …It really makes you that worried? That I want things you don’t like?”
Alastor looks away, his own resentment curling slowly in his chest. He doesn’t appreciate being seen like this—or he does, but doesn’t like that he does. Or he does, and it’s just fucking uncomfortable. Whatever it is, he’d like for it to be over now.
“Why does that matter?” he asks, leaning back, retrieving his hand and crossing his arms.
Vox’s face tips back into his field of vision, a soft, silly grin plastered on. He reaches out, taking Alastor by the elbows. “Because I really like you, Al. I’ve spent the better part of the last decade settling for pining from a—well, a very short distance. I don’t want you to worry, I just want you to be happy. With me.”
“That sounds like a marriage proposal,” Alastor snipes.
“D’you prefer a ring in silver or gold?” Vox asks him seriously.
Alastor stares at him for a long, long moment, lips pressed tight. That fizzy feeling is back in his chest, except instead of nausea, it’s just—light. Like anxiety. Like floating.
“...Let’s start with dinner,” Alastor mumbles. “You owe me ten years’ worth of dates.”
Vox’s grin is blinding in the low evening light. “Yes!”
“...And no fucking filet mignon.”