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It’s always a wild fucking guess what hypnotizing someone is gonna feel like – even after Vox has done it about a bazillion times now. It’s not really even a proper sensation he can describe but if he were to try Vox would compare it to throwing a hook into murky water and just feeling something snag.
Except he isn’t holding the fishing line. He is a fishing line, and he can feel the way metal breaks through skin from the texture of it to the give of it. And some minds are just softer than others.
It’s while Alastor is still talking – halfway through another cutting, goading remark transforming into remarkably long tangent – that Vox turns to him and lets his eye spiral.
“And you were so pathetic, barely fifty souls under your belt and already hungering to sit at the table with the big leagues – like they wouldn’t eat up the second they could. But at least then you had teeth to back up your bark. But now you’re so soft you can’t even–”
“Oh would you please just shut it!”
The change is immediate. He feels the hook jab, then tug and snag. Alastor’s voice cuts off, less a sudden snapping click of the mouth and more like his tongue has lost feeling mid word, forming a soft ‘O’ as his eyes glaze over.
A second goes by. Then another.
Vox expects the string to snap, expects the rebound to hit him like a rubber band when Alastor’s eyes clear and his smile widens like a pleased cat who just watched a mouse trip and fall into a glue trap without even having to raise its claws.
Nothing comes.
There is a pull of course, like the last fleeting efforts of a trout fish trying to escape. However the resistance doesn’t last. It peaks then ebbs.
It should be harder, Vox thinks as Alastor’s blinks up at him, placid. To capture the mind of the Radio Demon.
It isn’t.
Vox eyes flicker to Alastor’s chest, the wound he knows is hiding under the layers of his coat. Not for the first time, Vox wonders how much Adam’s little love tap has reduced his strength, how much that open bleeding slash must hurt.
Traitorously, his stomach flips with discomfort.
‘Soft.’ Alastor’s voice sneers in his head.
Vox scoffs. But then his hands rise up to Alastor’s throat, the gleaming blue claws so close to wrapping around it and – and – do something Vox isn’t sure what but –
He falls short of it, palms instead rising up to cup Alastor’s face and his nails angled oh so carefully so as to not cut through skin. Like this Vox can feel every breath Alastor takes. Like this he can feel the exact temperature of Alastor’s skin.
Cold – not warm like a corpse chilled in a morgue and yet surprisingly soft too in a way that entirely undoes that comparison.
Something uniquely Alastor then, Vox thinks. Then he huffs a laugh to himself. As though everything about Alastor isn’t already unique to him and him alone.
Maybe Alastor is right. Maybe Vox is getting soft. How many times has Vox fantasize about this exact scenario in the last seventy years? How many different depraved things has he imagined doing to Alastor if just given the opportunity?
Vox opens his mouth, the command to make Alastor forget this moment, to pack this small slip up and shove it under the rug, on the tip of his tongue – even as he suspect that such a thing won’t take hold on the Radio Demon.
Vox’s mouth opens and what slips out is –
“You want to please me.”
It’s only one step better, only by a fucking nudge. Vox wonders if Alastor can see how much of a fuck up he’s just made. Just how much he’s thrown down at a losing table. If Alastor under that smoky pleasant haze is already coming up with a million other way to mock Vox for practically begging him to –
Alastor’s head tilts. He nuzzles against Vox’s palm, leaning into the touch. “I want to please you.”
Vox’s screen brightens, a shocking flash of neon blue in a room already bathed in blue light and yet still so fucking sharp that it makes Alastor squint. Alastor blinks once, twice and the flutter of his lashes make’s Vox’s heart squeeze and do quadruple flips like an overzealous gymnast trying to impress the judges. Except the only judges there are is what passes for his cardiovascular system which decides to send Vox pop ups.
Warning heart rate exceeds normal levels. Warning heart rate exceeds normal levels. Sustained increased heart rate level will result in damage.
Yeah, like Vox can’t fucking feel his heart already giving out on him. He’s gonna need a replacement after this. He dismisses the messages and turns off internal warnings.
“You,” Vox says leaning forward to thump his screen against Alastor’s head and only barely dodging being impaled by the antlers there. “Are not good for my heart.”
It might just be Vox’s imagination but he thinks he might feel the line of his hypnotism shaking with laughter. However, when Vox pulls to check he finds Alastor still swaddled in his control so he might just be anthropomorphizing.
Or he might just be going insane.
Yep, Vox pulls back at the feeling of light gnawing at his screen. Vox’s sanity has gone off the air.
“You’re chewing on my screen.” Vox says, watching Alastor do exactly that with his neck bent at a literally neck-breaking angle – Vox heard the bones crack earlier. It isn’t a question or command so Alastor continues doing what he’s doing which – might Vox repeat himself – is chewing the corner of Vox’s screen like it’s his new favorite teething toy.
(Do deer go through that like sharks do? A fresh set of teeth every now and then? Vox is going to have to research that. He isn’t sure what he’s going to do with that information, but he needs it.)
The gnawing isn’t even all that powerful, Vox can barely feel it and Alastor for some reason has avoided leaving scratches on his screen, focusing more on the edges of his casing.
It feels bizarrely nice. Like how having a scoop of ice-cream after being hit in the head with a hammer might feel nice.
Desperately, Vox forces his speaker to expel more than screeching static noises, “W-hy are-zz you ch-zz-ewing on me?”
With a light click, Alastor’s teeth unhook from the dent in Vox’s casing. “I want to bite you.” Alastor grins.
Of course. What a perfectly reasonable explanation. What an idiot Vox is for not arriving to that conclusion before asking.
Again Vox checks the line of his hypnosis, and again he finds that Alastor is still nestled under his control.
It seems this is just what Alastor is like: the Radio Demon comes pre-installed with cannibalistic urges.
(Vox should not find it as adorable as he does.
Alastor is still more of an eldritch horror than any other demon that Vox has ever come to know.
But maybe Vox’s own metric for what is adorable is already broken. After all Shok.wav has plenty of teeth, and Vox still coos at him every time he throws another underperforming intern into his tank.)
Alastor has moved onto gnawing on Vox’s claws by the time Vox stops buffering.
Alastor is sharp. From the pointy teeth and razor-like claws to the cutting commentary, Alastor has always been sharp. And yet – under the hypnosis – he’s soft. Not fluffy blanket soft. Just.
Soft.
(It reminds Vox of those nights where they drank too much. Laughed too much. The nights where Alastor’s speech would slur and he’d draw in closer to Vox, breaking that impenetrable bubble around him all by himself as he crawled half-way into Vox’s lap – too excited and amused by whatever either of them were saying to mind his manners.)
Alastor’s teeth break skin. Blood beads from tiny pinprinks on Vox’s palm and Alastor swipes a clever tongue over them, humming with the open delight that Alastor – cold, hard sober – would never show at whatever taste he finds.
The sound pulls directly at his gut.
(Vox has already gone this far, hasn’t he? What’s a little more?)
-------------------
Vox leads them to his bedroom – preferring to take Alastor’s hand and walking there together rather than wheeling the other in his chair.
Holding hands – another allowance. Another line in the sand of never ending lines Vox has crossed today and is likely to keep crossing. If Vox lives to see tomorrow, he’s going to have to delete this day from his hard-drive lest his survival be pointless and end up with him kneeling over and dying anyway from embarrassment.
(Even as he thinks it, Vox knows it to be untrue. He will likely make backup copies and then more backup copies for the backup copies. It wouldn’t be his first rodeo either.)
Tugging Alastor to the bed, there’s an awkward moment where Alastor just stands in front of him, looking down at Vox who’s sitting on the mattress. Then Vox thinks, screw it. He’s fucked anyway. And tugs Alastor into his lap until he’s straddling him.
It hits him in the chest right where it shouldn’t when Vox’s hands rise up, hovering over Alastor’s waist in that same old song and dance. Except it isn’t the same. It’s too quiet. Too calm. And just when moves to Vox looks up –
He pauses.
It’s silly almost – how easy it is to nudge the Radio Demon off his lap. Sillier even that Vox leads him into sitting on the mattress next to him only for Alastor to plop onto his back and let the bed bounce under him.
Just like how every mind feels different under Vox’s hyposis, every person he’s ever used it on acts different too. Vox has been told on numerous occasions that being under it feels like getting drunk or higher than a kite, a pleasant haze cloaked in clouds. Vox doesn’t know if that’s true. He hasn’t ever succeeded in hypnotizing himself.
However, Vox feels more inclined to believe them now than he ever has before.
Alastor groans, throwing his hands above his head as he stretches out like a cat and kicks his feet like he’s trying to throw of his shoes. He lets out a disgruntled noise when that doesn’t work and blinks up at Vox expectantly. It’s like a hologram. Like Vox decided to indulge in masochism again and used a projector instead of a screen.
Vox feels more like a school boy than nearly a century old demon when his palm wraps around Alastor’s ankle. He pulls the shoes off by the heels and sets them on the ground. Vox’s screen is bright when he straightens back up and the look on Alastor’s face is smug.
“You’re supposed to want to please me, you know?” Vox can hear his own fans working overtime to cool him off as his eyes skitter way. “Not the other way around.” Even Vox can’t not hear the petulance in it as he says it.
The sheets are at once so incredibly interesting. Dark blue with wave patterns drawn on them in a lighter shade. So, so interesting that Vox can’t look away from them. The red of Alastor’s hair shifts with the tilts of his head. It’s bright against the sheets, too bright. Vox turns back to him to see Alastor blinking up at him slowly.
“I –” his eyes squint and flicker to the bottom of Vox’s screen. The ears on his head, flatten against his skull. Vox feels a tug on the string.
He sighs. “Don’t think so much about it.” Then to himself, “I doubt you know the first thing about doing shit for others.”
Except that isn’t true is it? The memory of the roses Alastor would buy for Rosie before a visit – Why Vincent, they’re her favorite. How could I show my face without them? Or Alastor stepping forward to lean over Mimzy whenever she brought trouble – Oh, it’s hardly a bother dear, it always fun to let them know who their dealing with. Or even Alastor letting Vox ramble on and on about sharks only to – Hmm, why ever would I be tired? Now, do continue. What was the name of the organs they use to detect electric fields, again?
And now the princess – You are not to lay a hand on Charlie Morningstar.
‘Hah, that’s it?’ Vox had laughed. Of course that was it. Of course that was fucking it. What does the princess even do for him in return? It’s been what – three weeks? Vox thought she’d be here at least once by now. Plead her case. Ask how Alastor’s been at the very least?
But noooo – that - that Morningstar Bitch! Alastor let himself be caught for her. He almost got slashed in fucking half by the first man defending her stupid hotel! And she doesn’t show up even once?
If Vox were her, he’d be trying to kill himself by now. Not suicide. No. He’d kill the fucker who’d caught Alastor. If he was in her place again – if he had it again – he’d… he’d…
Vox’s attention drifts to the edge of the bed.
Right, hooves. It’s been a while since Vox has seen them. He runs a knuckle along the edge of the keratin there, almost feeling the need to say ‘hello’. Dully he notes that they’re chipped and a bit bigger than he remembers. Overgrown, he concludes comparing the sizes directly using a program. Vox doesn’t know much about taking care of hooves but it must be a difficult endeavor when you can’t exactly bend over without pain.
‘Soft,’ Alastor’s voice accuses in his head as his stomach flips again.
The anger flairs up again but Vox isn’t sure where it’s directed. He runs a knuckle over the chipped edges again.
It must be uncomfortable. From Vox’s own experience, wearing closed shoes with grown out toe nails feels like shit. Hooves couldn’t be that different could they?
One of the nicks rubs against his skin. It’s deeper than the others. Alastor tenses.
Fuck.
Vox is on dial calling Ethan and screaming at him before he even realizes he’s gotten off the bed.
-----------
Thing is, Vox gets in over his head sometimes. Vox knows this. He knows that Val and Vel think he doesn’t, but he does. He’s lived more years with himself than he has with either of them and as much as he hopes that one day that fact becomes untrue. And he can say he’s lived more years with them rather than without –
Okay he’s getting off topic.
What he means to focus on is that, he knows he gets in over his head sometimes – okay? It just usually works out in the end. Usually. Mostly. Okay - more than fifty percent of the time. He’s not going lower than that.
It’s just that –
Vox is on the floor next to the bed. There is a tool box set next to him, with an array of things he doesn’t know what to do with and the internet isn’t helping. He’s searching through Veetube on his phone, and he swears that if he taps on another video promising him that that it’ll teach him how to take care of hooves only for it to turn out to be fetish porn about hooves he’s going to cause another city wide black out!
It’s while Vox is grumbling to himself, that the string breaks.
One moment Alastor is relaxed, some old jazz song vibrating out of his chest that he’s crooning to. The next the sound clicks off and –
Whack!
Vox ducks, just barely in time to avoid hooves breaking his screen. The bottom side rails aren’t as lucky. Vox winces mentally at the splinters, not thinking of wood at all.
“What. Do. You. Think. You’re. Doing.” Alastor’s voice crackles with static, and when he looks up Alastor’s eyes have bled into black.
“Taking liberties,” Vox says, playing ‘smug bastard png.’ on his screen. “See?”
He wraps a palm around the hoof within closest kicking distance – a safety measure, only he ends up brushing off saw dust and splinters. An accident, Vox is sure. The png. On his face still flickers and Alastor’s sclera turn back to red.
Alastor’s attention flickers away from Vox’s screen to the room around them. From the four poster bed to the panoramic window looking out over all of hell, he must recognize it from Vox’s Victory Day Parade. Alastor’s ears flatten against his skull, and through the smile on his face remains, his shoulder hike up almost as though he is bracing himself.
Alastor finally looks down at himself and it all seems to falls away.
“I’m still dressed…?”
Vox glitches for real this time.
What? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Alastor can’t have – he –
It should be harder, Vox remembers thinking. To capture the mind of the Radio Demon.
“I’m not-zz fuck-zz-ing t-zz-ouching that.” Vox spits out the second his screen clears. If Vox had still been capable of it, his words would have been accompanied by spittle.
Alastor tilts his head, free leg crossed over the other – whatever strange spell he had been under apparently dispelled. “Why Vincent,” he croons, smile sharp enough to cut. “You’re actions betray you’re words.” He tugs at the ankle still caught in Vox’s hold.
“No,” Vox let’s go, straightening to his feet. Like this Alastor is forced to look up if he want to keep hold of Vox’s eye. “No, I am not fucking doing this with you.”
Vox points at Alastor. “I get that you’re from the 1930’s or whatever and that they didn’t having conversations, back then – hell they didn’t have conversation even twenty years later - but no, Al. If you have a kink-”–Alastor rears back at the word like he’s been struck – “for this shit, you talk about it. Not – not doing whatever you’re – you’re –”
Vox loses steam. “I’m not –” static grows around the edges of his screen, spreading inward like fog. It reminds him of the way his glasses used to go cloudy stepping out into the heat of a hot summer day after staying inside for too long under a cool roof.
Vox could take off his glasses back then. He tries to do the same now except he can’t. He can’t. His claws scratch against glass and he settles on the ground trying to take his glasses off.
“I’m not –”
“Oh, stop that.” Hands come to warp around Vox’s wrist, pulling them away from his screen and blur of red shows in the fog.
“I’m not that shi-zz-tty Al,” Vox still can’t see him properly. It’s like he’s downgraded to an older model of his head – lost his 4k resolution. “I wouldn’t do that to you – never you. Don’t tell me you thought –”
There’s a loud thud when Vox props up his screen next to the destroyed side rail. Alastor’s shadows take over to hold his wrist in Vox’s lap while Alastor’s hands hover around the side of his screen.
Vox isn’t sure what answer he wanted to that question. But the resulting silence as Alastor’s claws curl and uncurl with a soft clink each time feel so much worse than any ‘yes’ ever could have.
Vox tries to throw on ‘bored neutral png’ but it glitches again. The hands hovering next to his casing freeze, then slowly Alastor wraps them around his screen, careful not to touch the glass.
“What else was I meant to take away from that, Vox?” Alastor asks and Vox’s screen clears enough to see him leaning closer, his mouth shifted into a closed-lipped smile as his brows pull together. “You blew smoke in my face.”
“What? The cuck-chair?” Vox squawks trying to rear back, only to be held in place and claws dig into the back of his casing.
Alastor blinks, “The what now?”
“That isn’t the – no. I was trying to make you jealous!”
“Jealous of what?”
And that has to be joke. Surely Alastor is messing with him. Except Vox knows what Alastor looks like when he’s messing with people. This isn’t smug enough for that. The hands wrapped around his screen are holding him still but their not –
They’re not threatening when they’re the only thing keeping him grounded.
“Me for fucking the literal overlord of Porn? The overlord of porn for fucking me? Both of us?” Vox’s speaker’s screech, his voice coming out several octaves higher with each word that Alastor continues not to react to.
Alastor’s nose scrunches up. And somewhere in the distant part of Vox’s head that’s always running he thinks – Oh he’s confused. Oh that’s a cute expression.
“Why would I be jealous of that?”
Vox’s can’t stop himself from blue screening.
“What did you intend to do with that?” Alastor asks, when Vox comes back. Alastor still has him in his hold, but he isn’t looking at Vox anymore. No, he’s tilted to the side peering over Vox to see what’s next to him on the floor and there’s a not quiet weight in Vox’s lap that Vox can’t place. Vox tries to look down but the hands around his screen keep him in place.
The weight wiggles, a cold pressure looped around his ribs, encircling him.
“Vox,” Alastor says, attention returning to him. “I asked you a question. It’s impolite not to answer.”
Vox’s system is too over-run to even try to guess what Alastor’s thinking. Vox is half way to rebooting himself and putting himself in sleep mode for a while – to hell the consequences of going offline. To hell with the backlog that would create. To hell with not being able to micro-manage his company. Vox wants to go offline and, Vox would if only Alastor wasn’t still holding his screen like an I-pad baby.
Alastor would probably bash his screen in if he heard that comparison, the old timey boomer.
“It’s for your hooves,” Vox says, and he knows that the sound comes from his speakers but he can’t be sure if the animation of his mouth actually happens or not. “They looked chipped and grown-out. Thought it made shoes difficult – you know? To wear and… and..” Vox trails off. He wonders how many of his viewer would lose all respect for him if they saw him right now. The great Media overlord, an incoherent rambling mess kneeling at the feet of the Radio Demon.
Loads of ‘em, Vox thinks. His ratings would plummet.
Alastor is silent, then:
“I won’t give you anything for doing this.”
Vox snaps.
“Did you hear me asking, old man?” And finally, finally he looks Alastor in the eye.
They don’t look mocking. They don’t look like anything Vox knows at all. His eyes skitter away, back down. Back to the broken side rail. Back where it’s safe.
“Are those ears of yours just for show?” Vox says but even to him it lacks bit.
Alastor lets go of his screen and Vox is finally able to look at his lap. Alastor’s shadow looks up at him, a wide smile stretched across its face. It’s looks like it’s positively beaming – as inappropriate as that word must be for something made of literal darkness – as it squeezes tight around Vox’s mid-section just once, only to let go. It slides up and over Vox’s chest and shoulder to grab Vox’s screen and hold it in place of it’s owner.
Vox catches Alastor shooting it a look.
Then Alastor clears his throat and –
“Continue.”
“What?” Vox croaks and Alastor’s ears swivel over his head.
“I said,” Alastor looks at him from the corner of his eye, “If you’re so eager to play servant than far be it from me to stop you. As long as you understand that this is a fruitless crusade, yes?”
Vox nods, and unlike its master, the shadow doesn’t stop him from doing so.
“Then go on. Get to work.” Alastor leans back, flicking his hooves.
Vox swallows. “But what if –”
“Just think of it as carving wood,” says Alastor. “I’m sure you remember the shape I like, considering your quiet literally photographic memory.” Alastor waves a hand in the air dismissively. “You were quite proud of that particular upgrade of yours going on and on about how much RAM you had and how many gigabytes of information you could store without a single thing getting distorted by time. One of your more worthwhile upgrades if I do say so myself.”
Alastor tilts his head, smile widening, “Don’t tell me you traded that for a flatter head now?”
“No, that isn’t –” Vox lurches forward, only kept from smashing screen-first into the bedframe by Alastor’s shadow. “I’ve improved it. Better than any computer or system in all of hell and earth combined.” Vox says, some impression of the past coming back to him. Vox jolts when Alastor’s shadow slips into the crook of his neck – only for a laugh to be shocked out of him as it turns to rub against him like an over-affectionate cat.
Alastor eyes narrow and his shadow stops, sulking up at its master from where it props up its chin on Vox’s shoulder. When Vox still hesitates, Alastor sighs, “Oh come now, I’m hardly the sort of demon that would die of infection even if you were to nick something truly sensitive.”
“That can happen?!” Vox squeaks out.
“Oh hush.”
Despite it all, Alastor still tenses when Vox first puts the blade to keratin. Vox wouldn’t be able to tell, if he weren’t holding Alastor’s hoof – so Vox slows, more slow than he was going before. It buys him time to make a program in the back of his head based on his memories of Alastor’s hooves from before.
The program makes things easier by overlaying the image of what they should look like over what they do now. It’s calming almost, to whittle away at the keratin. Velvette would like Alastor as a client, Vox thinks. He doesn’t fidget or move much, Vox could see them bonding as Velvette cuts his hair.
Maybe he should leave them alone together in her studio and see what happens.
The thought makes him happy, already planning what excuse he’ll come with to do that tomorrow. And this time when the silence falls again, Vox likes it.
He likes it even better when Alastor’s chest starts thrumming with another jazz song, and he starts crooning to it again.