Chapter Text
Vox faced his vast array of screens without seeing any of them. One set of claws tapped arrhythmically against the chair arm. He wasn’t exactly awake, but he also couldn’t sleep: he was wandering through the dense gray fog between dreaming and fantasizing. The Voxtek logo bounced around his screen, occasionally interrupted by glitch of static. Crumpled cans of various drinks littered the floor and dribbled the last of their artificial colors and various additives in small, sticky pools.
At some point after a nauseatingly domestic evening playing chess and gin rummy with Alastor he’d returned to the Tower feeling… Well, feeling. He’d showered, napped, sobered up and then, his mind finally clear as glass, he’d been unable to prevent coming to a brutal awareness of what had actually transpired with Alastor before the light conversation, games, marijuana and martinis. An awareness that made his stomach sink like barometric pressure, awareness that had since exploded into a swirling vortex of confusion and emotions he felt powerless to control. He’d just as easily direct a hurricane as the storm raging inside.
“Haven't you figured it out yet? It's just part of the game… You don't want me, and I don't love you. Right? Keeps it simpler that way. Cleaner.”
That was what he’d said. That was the white flag he’d waved, those words, when he’d realized what exactly was making Alastor so temperamental about their evolving situationship and what needed to be explicitly stated in order to get him fully on board and seal the deal.
And that was supposed to serve as a guardrail. It wasn’t part of their deal; it was just an agreement. It was the underground foundation that supported the entire structure they’d built out of carefully chosen words. It was the fictional fig leaf they both insisted they saw covering the emperor’s nude body; it was deniability and vulnerability, an agreed-upon sidestep that allowed this dance to continue without either of them stepping in the shit.
Alastor had broken their agreement.
Alastor.
“Today, I wanted you,” he’d said. Deliberately.
That fucker had known exactly what he was saying, what it meant. He’d known!
“I—I mean… You know that I—”
And that fucker had also known exactly what Vox was trying to stutter out past his tripping tongue in response. He’d known, and his fluffy tail had flashed in warning a microsecond before he’d gone totally still as only prey animals were capable. All his instincts had instantly categorized Vox’s attempt at reciprocation as danger danger danger! freeze-flee-fight!
He’d known, and it had terrified him.
The latest can imploded in Vox's grip, pink fizzy liquid cascading over and through his white-knuckled fingers. He didn't notice. He only saw that one moment in time—clear as a recording, fucker’s distortion corrected by memory: Alastor stiffening at the sound of his voice, the carefully neutral expression curdling around his grin, lips pulled back in a grimace, anxiety admitted by the instinctive flagging of the plush tail Vox adored. The way he fell into an utter stillness that blanketed the prickle of his static, the jagged edges of him, like a snow fall deadens the sounds of a cold velvet winter night—the frozen pose of a faun in a frenzied Greek fresco, fear flashing in his fixed gaze.
Vox’s screensaver was replaced as red pixels streamed from the corner of his rictus grin; his eye was a bull's-eye of red and black rings, lightning flickering in the depths.
He'd been too vague, too fucked-out and fucked up at the time, the moment too fleeting, Alastor too eager to move on. Vox had watched the rec-mem clip over and over, strange bright feelings like coals glowing white-hot in his belly, sinking roots into his groin. His breath grew short.
But yeah, there it was: the fearsome Radio Demon nothing more than a deer staring in wide-eyed terror...and the headlights that made him mute and unmoving? Words. Three of them, to be exact. Not even words spoken aloud. Just the anticipation of words.
Vox's words. That was a dizzying, ecstatic realization—that he had the power to engender such an honest response, that he could provoke a reaction so raw and vulnerable from someone who prided himself on being an enigma.
It was like being struck by lightning. That was also a life-altering event that lasted but a fraction of a second.
A heady rush of power, too much power to be contained. It burned him from the inside out. He was vibrating with it. It needed an outlet before it overloaded his systems.
A microsecond of visible, obvious fear. No one else would have even been able to register the emotion, so quickly was it smothered by Alastor’s self-control and Vox’s last-second word-swap to smooth the demonic deer’s ruffled fur. But Vox wasn’t limited by biology. His cameras caught everything, even the tech bane that was the Radio Demon. More red streaked his screen.
How long—how very, very long—had he waited to see Alastor afraid? And not just afraid, but afraid of him, and of his power?
Oh, it was sweet. So sweet it hurt. Like gorging on candy and honeyed bourbon until his teeth were a shrill whine of pain and his stomach lurched in promise of praying to the porcelain god. It sickened him; he vowed to never indulge ever again; he needed more.
Vox slowly looked at the shreds of aluminum in his sticky hand. Huh. His eyes flicked to the floor. Or he was feeling pukey because he'd simply drank far too many boozy, drug-filled energy drinks over the course of the last few… He paused to check his internal clock. …dozen hours.
If Alastor, the crazy bastard, tried to offer himself again, Vox knew he wouldn’t be able to turn him down. Not a second time. He was only…well, not human anymore, but the concept was the same. He wanted and wanted and wanted and the more of Alastor he got the more he craved more.
Vox was pretty sure that was the definition of “addiction”.
Alastor likely wanted to hurt him. Vox wasn’t stupid. As much as he would love to believe that Al was simply overwhelmed and nervous by this radical change in his afterlife, he knew better. There would be a price to pay for inadvertently finding a vulnerable point in Alastor’s Teflon façade. The Radio Demon didn’t let slights like that go unpunished. Witnesses must be eliminated.
Vox started to chuckle. His shoulders shook. The laughter bubbled up in quantity and before long he was breathlessly howling, electricity shivering around him, mania a strange light gleaming in his red eyes.
Oh, this was gonna be fun.