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"Oh, Vox," he heard a voice say—Alastor's voice, because he'd know it anywhere, even half-conscious while bleeding out in a disgusting alleyway he hardly remembered stumbling to. His head was pounding. Everything ached viciously. His chest felt—well, trying to take even a shallow breath blossomed shooting agony through his entire upper body, a staticky fuzz greying out the edges of his blurry vision. "What have you done?"
Alastor's voice sounded strange. Different. Too intense, too harsh, too—raw, the filter gone. No, his auditory processors were probably just fucked up, because Alastor's footsteps suddenly sounded way too close. "Nothing," he tried to say, but it ended up a garbled, glitching mess muffled against the fabric of Alastor's jacket and—oh, fuck, maybe he was already fucking dead because somehow Alastor was carrying him, arms warm and wiry and gripping him so tightly it hurt, a brief, sharp anchor to the present before everything rapidly faded into oblivion.
There were worse ways to go, Vox supposed.
He couldn't move. He didn't really want to, honestly, because doing so would bring him one step closer to having to face just how royally he'd screwed up his entire afterlife. But there was a distracting warm weight on his upper thighs that was tugging at his consciousness along with the dawning sensation of air on his arms and chest; he was shirtless and there were hands on his—
"Finally awake?"
Vox's eyes flew open with a distorted gasp, an instinctive attempt to lurch up aborted by a hand holding his shoulder firmly against the mattress. Mattress, bed, he—this was Alastor's bed.
"Do calm down," Alastor said irritably, and Vox immediately froze as he waited for the static to clear from his vision. This… was not a dream; the throbbing at the back of his head and the searing ache in his torso attested to that, and it was as Alastor and their surroundings finally came into focus that the reality of their positions hit him:
Lying on Alastor's bed half naked with Alastor himself straddling his thighs, holding him down and staring down at him with wide, manic eyes. For a moment Vox forgot to breathe, heart stuttering—Jesus fucking Christ it was a nightmare of a dream come to life, except that Alastor remained fully buttoned up, with the exception of having removed his jacket. There was blood smeared across the front of his shirt.
"This is going to hurt," Alastor said, looking strangely pissed off about something that would normally have him gleeful. Vox finally dragged his gaze away from Alastor's face long enough to realise that he was holding a needle and eerily bright thread and glaring down at an ugly, glistening gash across Vox's chest. Oh.
It was so unbearably intimate the pain hardly registered; Alastor's hands on him, warm and dry and touching his bare skin as he shoved the needle inelegantly back and forth through the edges of the wound, attempting to pull it together.
Vox's throat was dry and aching, hands fisting the covers beside his thighs as Alastor leant in close to finish off the final stitches. His skin felt as though it were on fire, Alastor's touch lingering.
"I'm afraid it won't last, sweetheart," Alastor said as he tied off the thread, and didn't sound remotely remorseful about it. All at once, his anger seemed to dissipate. "I'll need to do touch-ups from time to time." His smile spread slow and darkly smug. "You really do need to be more careful with my things."
Alastor looked down at him for a moment, gaze hooded and inscrutable as he studied his handiwork. Vox swallowed, claws coming up to brush against the thick thread now holding his flesh together. A mark of Alastor's, permanently and visibly branding him.
Vox didn't want to examine the elatedly disgusted tangle of feelings that stirred up in his chest.
Maybe if he didn't answer, Alastor would remain where he was for a while longer.