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He could stop anytime he wanted to.
It wasn’t a compulsion. It was a desire. He was still in control.
At least, he was when he sat in the chair. He was when he ran his fingers along the cable, so seemingly innocuous. He chose to take the AV cable from the back of his screen. He chose that vulnerability. He was in control of his vulnerability. Even that was well controlled, curated, formulaic. He was in control of plugging in the other cable. The cable to another world.
It wasn’t until then that he lost control.
The world inside that machine is softer. Gentler than real. But it’s more real than a dream. It’s intoxicating. Overwhelming. Everything in hyperfocus, yet soft focus; a camera lens rubbed with vaseline.
He’s aware of his body in a way that he recoils from in his daily torment. He’s aware of his body in a way that should be revolting by any standard. He’s aware of his eyes blinking, of the thin layer of mucus lubricating them. He’s aware of the weight of his tongue in his mouth, of the back of his teeth against it. He’s aware of the friction of air through his nose, the weight of it in his lungs.
Intoxicating.
When they were together, he was thinking about it all the time. He was thinking about those claws rending his flesh. He was thinking about Alastor making him bleed. He was thinking of broken bones and ruptured organs--and he was craving it. That was the sick thing.
Even when they were sitting in companionable silence--as happened more and more often as they took on more years--he was thinking about it. Wanting to start a fight. Alastor could make him feel something.
Alastor may have been against technology, but anyone will get used to something over time, exposed to it for long enough. He had grown accustomed to Vox’s frequency. Not the loud, oppressive, city-wide frequency, but the one that rode Vox’s coattails, the one that emanated from his electric-charged body.
Now Alastor would sometimes sit close to him--so very close; so close it made Vox nervous--and Vox would feel him.
But it was a creeping, not quite there, touch. A touch that made his skin crawl, made his skin ache.
I can’t feel you, Vox wanted to tell him. Not like this, not like--not like you could TOUCH my skin and convince me it’s there, that it’s worth touching, pleasant to touch.
No, no, I need you to tear it open to feel it. To believe it’s real. I don’t bleed without you. I don’t breathe without you. I don’t feel without you. Without your violence, your carnage.
All he had wanted was to win. To win Alastor over? But now it was stale and like another veil lay between them. Even now, after they had breached the barrier of physical intimacy, Alastor was hardly won. Things had not changed overnight. Alastor had not changed over night.
Sometimes he would allow things to be more-than-civil between them. But it was as unpredictable as everything else with Alastor; uncommon kindness that sprung up just as likely as uncommon cruelty.
He spends a lot of time touching things inside the machine. Unreal things, just numbers and zeroes, but the feedback has been fine tuned to make it feel real. More real than real. Intoxicating.
He touches the tightly made sheets on the bed. Closes his fist in the yielding down pillow. Runs his fingers along the spines of books. Sickest of all, he turns on an old television and presses his palm against the glass to feel the hum of static-charge as it comes to life. Traces the sharp cut-outs of vents to feel the unliving breath of a machine within the machine.
It’s not a perfect simulation. He started programming with something simple but complex: a cat. He’d never had a cat. Never had a pet at all--not until Vark--not until he had shed so many layers of the man he had been. Not until he had rebuilt himself into the machine--the man he was beneath it all.
He had started with a cat in the simulation. Programmed it to move. To walk, to jump on furniture, to curl itself neatly into a picture-perfect, high-Like-ratio-guaranteed shape. He had programmed it to be soft, paid special attention to the fur dynamics. He programmed it to purr.
Then he built a valet. Simple enough. He had lobotomized and reprogrammed enough demons in the “real world”--in Hell--to organize simple routines and command obedience. This one he built to anticipate his needs. An upgrade from the TV-headed goons he ordered around in Hell.
Then came a woman in red. He had always regarded women as more physical substance than intellectual stimulation, so it didn’t matter that she didn’t have much to say. She was beautiful--attractive and attract ed to him. It helped to lay with a woman who was more doll than anything else. It helped him forget the last time he had laid with a woman. The last time he had killed unintentionally due to his cursed form, his electric touch gone haywire.
Finally, a man.
He never could quite get the conversation algorithm right. No matter how much of his own cleverness and wit he fed into the machine, the conversation was always off. Dreamy and aimless, lacking substance.
But it didn’t matter. The longer he spent in the machine, the foggier his head became--the more he fell into the illusion that he had a head. He could trick himself into believing there was substance. He could fall deep enough into this slow degradation of his system, the gradual overclocking of his processing centers, that he believed there was true connection there.
He could look in the mirror in the machine. He was unstuck in time, removed from his Hellish reality, revisited by a ghost of a ghost of a memory.
In his Life Before, his house was full of mirrors. He often looked at himself in the mirror, admired the cosmetic perfection a bit of minor surgery had afforded him, once he could afford it. Why shouldn’t he want to look perfect? Everybody else in that “hell” of Hollywood got a nip here and a tuck there.
It was perfection he craved. Control over his image. The simulation was the culmination of that. Plastic surgery to make things more real than they felt in Hell. Control over his dreams, over his fantasies. Even the kind dreams were cruel to him, outside of the machine. Or, rather, within the machine that he held less control over.
His processes ran hot and frantic to render the scene, to manifest his avatar so that he could feel again, pushed the limits of his capacity, and everything slowed to a molasses trickle. The longer he spent in the simulation, the s l o w e r everything was. Every sensation, every contact dragged on like he might hold onto it forever.
He would forget, too. He would forget so much. The feeling was so fleeting, so in the moment. He had to delve again and again into the program, into the simulation, just to grasp hold of that bliss once again.
He couldn’t recall it. Not outside of the program. It could not be replicated in reality, only there. Only in this sweet lie he had crafted for himself. It felt more real than real. More honest than he could ever be with himself. His truest senses, truer even than his nigh-forgotten mortal life.
The sweet kiss of the high almost made the aftermath worth it. Almost.
It wasn’t until he unplugged and returned to the dearth and breadth of sensation in the waking world that he felt disgusted with himself. The intoxication was so damned alluring, yet it left such a horrible taste in his mouth--his lack of mouth, reminded him that he lacked a mouth. It felt like corrosion on the inside of his screen, under his claws, calcification and rust rotting him from the inside out.
Worse still was when he forgot to unplug. He was forgetting more often these days. The simulation was becoming familiar. He craved that more real than real feeling, that intoxicating freedom--to feel, to be. He would forget and his system would overheat. Of course, death did not come so easily in Hell, but Vox soon became reacquainted with what a hangover felt like.
Everyone else in Hell had their own buffet of vices. Why not him?
Tonight he remembers to unplug. But he forgets to expect Alastor.
He stops short as he enters the spacious den of his penthouse and sees that distinctive sharp red against the modern cream of his couch.
Alastor drums his fingers upon the bell of his microphone and lifts his face to Vox. “... Have I caught you at a bad time?” he asks, dark amusement tugging at his features.
Vox feels a wash of embarrassment through his system. He’s still reeling from the effects of his indulgence. His system is fuzzy and fragmented. His screen flickers, quick-change-flickering from revolted shock to a pre-set grin. “Of cxxxxourse not,” he says. His system clenches as he hears the slurred static of his speech.
Alastor raises a brow. “I won’t deign to ask,” he says with a derisive look.
Vox smirks to cover up his shame. “Bz-bx-better not.” He steps further into the room, paying close attention to how he moves, determined not to let Alastor see his usual poise slackened. “What bz-bx-brings you up at thz-thx-this time of night?” he asks in carefully clipped tones.
Alastor narrows his eyes on Vox as the demon takes a seat--upon a chair adjacent to him, but much further away than usual. “Would you deny your beloved nemesis a social call?”
Vox chuckles. “I uz-ux-usually expect your sz-sx-social calls to cz-cx-come over the radio,” he says, glancing toward the old Spartan radio cabinet housed within his penthouse that acted as both a kind of telephone and portal for the two unlikely sometimes-companions.
“I did call,” Alastor says lightly, drumming his fingers upon his microphone. “You didn’t answer.”
Vox’s system runs hot-cold, still overheated from plugging out and plugging in, cold with embarrassment that he had missed Alastor’s call. “And yz-yx-yet you stzzzzill came. I might’ve bz-bx-been out.”
“Yet here you are.” Alastor can tell that there is something amiss, and it disturbs him.
“Yz-yx-you found me,” Vox sighs with bitter surrender in his grin.
“Now you’ve piqued my curiosity.” Alastor sits forward, planting both his hands upon his microphone.
Vox’s current spikes and bristles off him, but not in the agitated way that Alastor is used to. It’s aimless and inconsistent--like the discharge during storms. He looks at Alastor, his screen tipped down some.
“There’s something off about you.” Alastor does not relent, crimson eyes boring into Vox.
“... Jzzzzzust tired,” Vox mutters.
“Hahaha! Tired! Oh, you must think I’m stupid to believe that line. You? Tired? Never,” Alastor scoffs with unbridled mockery.
Vox scowls. “I dz-dx-do have to recharge oz-ox-occasionally,” he snaps.
Hearing Vox admit that surprises Alastor. “You seem… dull, ” he says unkindly.
“I’m nz-nx-not hzzzzere to be your ez-ex-entertainment, Alastor!” Vox blurts out. It brings him some selfish satisfaction to see Alastor’s eyes fly wide, to hear that frequency-adjustment of surprise.
“... My, my. When I upset you, I seek to do it on purpose. ” Alastor recovers with a slow, patient blink of those lamplit eyes. The banter was common, Vox’s outburst less so, so early in the conversation. He considers Vox with a slow tilt of his chin. “Come. Sit closer. I won’t bite.” His grin always betrays how flimsy that promise is.
Despite his shame, his reluctance to let Alastor see him like this, to expose himself in this state of disorder, he cannot resist the invitation. He stands and walks closer, drawn into Alastor’s field of frequency. It’s intoxicating in a wholly different way. And-- fuck, it’s so good against the raw mess of his own current. He feels himself swallow--one of those phantom sensations when he’s close to Alastor’s frequency field. Unreal, but felt.
“That’s better.” Alastor slowly sits back into the couch. He dismisses his microphone and crosses his legs, resting his hands upon his knee.
“... Whzzzy are you hz-hx-here?”
“I tire of all the noise sometimes,” Alastor replies with quiet honesty. He does not look at Vox, but his expression is relaxed, scarlet eyelids half-mast.
Vox crackles with an incredulous laugh. “Fz-fx-funny place txxxo come fz-fx-for some pz-px-peace and quiet.”
Alastor slowly turns to look at Vox. “Don’t you?” he asks, ignoring Vox’s retort. “Isn’t that why you have your opulent penthouse in the sky cut off?”
It was true. There were no cameras inside Vox’s penthouse, and the connection to the grid was carefully regulated. Insulated. A true sanctuary of repose for the demon so intrinsically plugged in all of the time.
Vox doesn’t answer. His mind is wandering in the fog of his thoughts, slowed down in his overprocessed state, making him sluggish.
“You’re not well, my dearest detested,” Alastor says in his lilting tone, as if it’s an earnest revelation.
Alastor wouldn’t understand. How could he? He would think him silly and weak for stooping so low as to simulate a better world for himself. “I cxxxan’t sleep,” Vox lies. Well--a half-truth.
“ Well, I could do something about that, ” Alastor rumbles in a low, delicious threat.
“No--” Vox blurts out and flinches.
Alastor looks on with awed amusement. “What has come over you?” he asks with dark delight.
“Oh, fxxxuck off, Az-Ax-Alastor,” Vox says weakly.
Alastor bristles at such coarse language, his lip curling in a sneer. “There’s no need to be crass. ”
“Whz-whx-when have I bxxxxeen anything else?” Vox deflects back at him with a mean grin.
“Don’t act like a child, Vox. Do you really think I would secret myself into your penthouse just to escape the noise? I could do that at my own manor,” Alastor scoffs.
Vox’s system lurches. Alastor’s frequency bristles and crackles against his own, but it’s a far cry from the distortion and conflict their signals had met with for so many years.
“I came for your company,” Alastor says, aggressively plain. “Are you really so dense as to dispute that in that high-tech system of yours?”
Alastor has never said it so plainly, so unequivocally. Vox’s skin crawls and he can’t think straight. He should know what to say--he always knows what to say. But his system keeps calling for a command and losing track of the routine halfway through. “Why?” The question loops and cancels all other database requests.
“Ha.” A rare, humorless laugh from Alastor. “The reason as to ‘why’ will elude that digital mind of yours.”
“Trxxx--y me.”
Alastor turns to look at Vox. “There are fewer of my ilk with every passing year.” His hands shift, reposition on his knee, flick at a bit of lint on his slacks. “Fewer of the old guard. ” He chuckles. “Meanwhile, your empire continues to grow more fruitful.”
Alastor wasn’t speaking of power. He still held a power more terrible and magnificent than damn near any demon in Hell. He meant… other demons who still did things the old fashioned way. Demons who still held their culture, their era, dear to them.
“Hzza,” Vox fizzles with a humorless laugh of his own. “ Mz-mx-my empire. ” He peers over at Alastor. “I’ve nz-nx-never known you to be jxxxealous of mz-mx-my empire before.”
“Oh, no, no, no. Not at all, darling,” Alastor chuckles.
“... Whz-whx-what, then?”
“I’m lonesome.”
Vox’s system stutters, a static crash spitting from his speakers.
Alastor laughs. “See? I knew that would blow your breakers.”
Vox fights to compose himself, but Alastor keeps startling him in his already muzzy dis-ease.
“Did you think I was immune?”
“Nxxxxot… immune, ” Vox grates out, his voice burred with static.
“Did you think I came to tolerate your company because I liked you?”
Alastor never pulls any punches. There’s something liberating about it, even when his words come like an actual blow to the chest. He laughs bitterly at the blow, his voice ruined more and more by static.
“No, my nefarious nemesis, I don’t like you. I find you obnoxious, but… by some small miracle, not lacking in taste.” He examines his claws for a moment, then smirks at Vox. “And I find your lack of self-preservation and… resilience quite… entertaining.”
“Ezzzzeveryone needs a hz-hx-hobby,” Vox says.
“Indeed. I haven’t managed to destroy you yet, so I suppose that’s kudos to you,” Alastor replies conversationally.
Vox scratches idly at his chest. “The sz-sx-scars don’t lz-lx-last lz-lx-long…”
Alastor raises a brow at him. “You sound disappointed, ” he croons.
Vox’s screen flickers with a pang of regret for having said that. But he’s already in this deep. His defenses are forcibly lowered, inhibitions loosened. “I don’t… feel much,” he says slowly, the words grating from his speakers.
“What do you feel?”
“Nz-nx-numb…” Vox flexes his hand, presses his claws into his palm experimentally, hazy as if in a trance. The simulation left him with some phantom, prickling sensation. Unpleasant, but there.
“No… What do you feel when I slice you open?” Alastor corrects him with delicious patience, feasting on this rare glimpse beyond Vox’s usual bravado.
“... Lz-lx-like breathing,” Vox exhales. “Lz-lx-like I have a pz-px-pulse again. Lz-lx-like I’m az-ax-aware of… no, lz-lx-like my insz-sx-sides actually ex-ez-exist. There’s sz-sx-something there, not jz-jx-just--electrz-trx-tricity.”
Alastor chuckles softly. “Why didn’t you say so sooner, darling? I could have told you just how much flesh and blood you are,” he says with a dark lilt of pleasure.
Vox looks at Alastor with the strangest, most fucked up feeling of gratitude. It even seems to take Alastor off guard--he laughs.
“Is it just the pain that makes you feel?” Alastor asks with amused, undisguised curiosity.
“Nz-nx-no, I--...” Vox wrings his hands. He can feel Alastor’s frequency more and more with each passing moment, as if his field is expanding and filling the air around them, as if some shadowy, intangible thing is slowly wrapping him up. “I fz-fx-feel…”
Alastor moves closer, physically, and it should feel suffocating, but it just feels warm, the memory of sun on his skin. Alastor takes one of his hands, pries it from the anxious grasp on himself, and Vox should flinch and pull away, but Alastor knows what to expect when coming in contact with him, the shock of his flesh when they were bickering over the nature of their interaction.
“The nerves in my hands are quite dead,” Alastor explains.
“Oh.” Vox hadn’t known that. “So, you dz-dx-don’t fxxxeel--”
“One of the few things I can feel,” he says promptly, running his fingers along Vox’s palm, lacing their dangerous claws together.
“Oh,” sizzles out again, more buzz than speech.
“What was it you were doing when I arrived?” Alastor asks, his tone flat. Almost… tentative.
Vox is tired and Alastor is here, and his sweet perfume of frequency is salving his rough edges. “Dz-dx-do you exxxxxever have nz-nightmares?”
“I’m in the business of causing nightmares, being the things that go bump in the night--not having them,” Alastor chuckles.
Vox responds with a silent stare.
Alastor looks briefly disappointed that Vox meets his attempt at humor so seriously. “... Yes. I believe bad dreams come as part and parcel of our buffet of just desserts.” He sighs. “So it’s nightmares that plague you, darling?”
Alastor’s pity is performed, play-acted and frosted with condescension. But there is a kind of pity there, a false-positive ironic pity. Come around far enough in mocking and it betrays a grain of the genuine.
“Exxxven the kz-kx-kind ones are cz-cx-cruel,” Vox mutters.
“Dreams? Yes. Really no point to good dreams in Hell.”
“I’ve…. Iz-Ix-I’ve made a sxxxxort of… dz-dx-dream machz-chx-chine…”
“ Quite the masochist, aren’t you?” Alastor peers over at Vox with veiled interest.
Vox’s quiet chuckle trails into a sigh.
“I’ve told you--technology is torture,” Alastor chides him lightly.
“It’s… az-ax-addicting.”
“Torture?” Alastor chuckles. “I can attest to that.”
“No, I--wz-wx-well, I’ve px-pz-programmed it…”
“To torture you,” Alastor supplies with a nod.
Vox chuckles with a bit more weight this time. “Yxxxeah. I sz-sx-suppose sz-sx-so.”
Alastor tilts his head, considering their laced hands, feeling the hum of Vox’s current against him. “Is that how you prefer your torture?”
Vox flexes his fingers experimentally in Alastor’s. “...?” The static hum of his overclocked system asks a silent question.
“In isolation?” Alastor tilts his head to look up into Vox’s screen.
Vox’s digital mouth opens to protest--that that’s not the point. That he doesn’t feel so isolated within the machine. But that’s a lie. He cuts himself off in his penthouse, and further within the machine, where truly nothing can touch him except the facsimile he’s programmed. But the bitter truth comes to him and he laughs in a flat crash of static.
“If it’s nz-nx-not one thing, it’s az-ax-another…” he rumbles vaguely.
“You put quite a bit of effort into isolating yourself,” Alastor notes, brows lifted thoughtfully.
“Nz-nx-no, I--”
“You create these false narratives, these portals into another world through all your media, glimpses of entertaining situations, puppet shows of faux-interactions, surround yourself with it all, and--” Alastor takes a breath, “Retreat into your fortress of solitude. Torment yourself by letting it all play out at arm’s length.” Before Vox can formulate a reply, Alastor goes on, “And this way you… intoxicate yourself, full immersion into the lie, total removal from this shared torment…” Alastor chuckles idly. “It’s really quite the ordeal. And is it worth it? Does it get you off? ”
“Shz-shx-shared txxxorment?” Vox echoes, his system caught on that.
“We’re not so removed from the Life Before, albeit even less in control of the circumstances. Fewer sensibilities of common decency, but--none of us were commonly decent to begin with, were we?”
Vox doesn’t follow. “Whxxat dz-dx-do you mean…?”
Alastor narrows a brow at Vox. “I don’t like you like this. MIserable and dense,” he sneers, but not unkindly.
Vox frowns and tries to remove his hand, his system burning with shame. Worse still is that he can’t just knock it off. He can’t shake himself out of it. It’ll be hours before his system cools off and sorts itself out. The only thing he feels now is Alastor’s frequency bristling with irritation against him, almost in direct contact with the body that emanates it.
Alastor’s grip tightens, refusing to let Vox go. His hand is shackle as much as it is comfort. “Like it or not, we’re all cellmates in this prison, darling.”
Vox glares weakly at Alastor, his body and current tense at Alastor’s demand to remain so close to him.
“You’re pathetic,” Alastor tells him warmly.
“I dz-dx-didn’t axxxsk you to come, Az-Ax-Al,” Vox sneers.
“No. Of course not. Not with words. That would be much too easy. No, no, no--the magnanimous media mogul must needs manufacture a misery for himself.”
Vox’s current spikes and flares, electricity crackling between them as he tries to elbow Alastor away from him. “Hxxxit brz-brx-bricks,” he snaps.
But Alastor persists, he twists Vox’s wrist, whips half off the couch to face him, pins him by the throat in a way that catches Vox off guard and cuts his crackling current short. Alastor’s sure grin is illuminated by wide eyes on Vox’s screen. “Does misery help you cope?” he demands with sinister delight.
A rush of sensation floods through Vox, more real than real, a phantom of the simulation--no, this is real, and he can feel it. A whine hums through his system as his expression twists painfully.
“What is it that you want, Vox?”
“To bz-bx-be alone--” he chokes out, his throat thick--not because Alastor is choking him, but because of the liberating pressure of it.
“Poppycock,” Alastor snaps brightly. “None of us wants to be alone!” he laughs. “We don’t choose our torment, but you’ve chosen this. ”
Vox’s wires are crossed and his inhibitions are frayed and he feels weak and turned on, of all things, by Alastor’s closeness, by his intensity, by the threat and the sensation of touch against his skin and the pressure of that field against him, and he all but weeps. “Plxxxease…”
Alastor’s eyes widen a fraction. He’s never heard Vox beg like this. “You’re pitiful…” he croons softly. His fingers caress that trembling throat. “What is it that you want?” he asks again.
“Txxxo… to fz-fx-feel something, ” Vox pleads.
“To bleed? ” Alastor asks with almost breathless delight.
“Yes,” Vox answers desperately. Anything.
Alastor’s expression goes flat, disappointed with this weak surrender. “Tch.” He releases Vox with a sneer.
The sudden loss of contact jarrs Vox’s system and he instinctively reaches out. He grabs Alastor and jerks him forward, bringing him down to sit on one of his thighs. Alastor’s knee knocks between his legs, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to give away that he is hard.
Alastor looks startled for a moment, wary with eyes wide and his ears forward. He watches Vox’s pitiful expression--but there’s still some fight there. A stubborn crease of his two-dimensional brows, eyes narrowed like a challenge. But he doesn’t fight with Alastor. His claws loosen from where they clutched his coat, slowly slide around his narrow waist.
“What do you want…?” Alastor asks, warily this time.
“To sz-sx-suffer… with you.”