Work Text:
ON WARM STATIC
An essay by Vox.
(Draft. Unsent. Do not circulate.)
I. Thesis Statement
I was taught - by enemies, by investors, by the city itself - that everything can be reduced to a function.
Attention is a currency. Fear is leverage. Affection is a weakness you monetize or amputate.
I do not know which category Alastor belongs to.
If I’m being honest, that’s the first reason I hated him: he refused to be sorted.
He is not the past, even though he dresses like a memory. He is not quaint, even when he plays at being old-fashioned. He is not harmless, even when he smiles in a way that makes strangers feel chosen.
He is warm static.
If you do not know what that means, you have never lain awake at night with your tower humming and your mind screaming louder than the machines, and then - somewhere between two stations - you hear a familiar crackle that makes your whole system ease.
That crackle is not music. It is not silence. It is the suggestion of company.
Alastor is the suggestion of company in a room full of screens.
And I, unfortunately, am a creature built to respond.
II. Definitions and Terms
To understand Alastor, you have to accept two contradictory truths:
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He enjoys being witnessed.
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He despises being known.
He will give you spectacle for free. He will give you charm for sport. He will give you stories that taste like honey and smoke. He will make you laugh, and when you try to repeat the joke later, you’ll realize it wasn’t the joke that was funny, it was the fact that he had chosen to deliver it.
Knowing him is different.
Knowing him costs.
I am not writing this essay because I know him. I am writing this because I know what he did to my attention.
I know what it felt like to be a bright signal that finally met a frequency it couldn’t drown out.
I know what it felt like to look at him and realize - without permission - that I would have done anything to keep him near.
That kind of realization is humiliating. I’ve built my brand out of humiliation, yes, but only when it’s someone else’s.
I did not enjoy discovering how easily I could become the product.
III. The Day
There is a day I keep returning to.
It is not the most dramatic day. It is not the day with the sharpest fights or the cruelest words. It is not the day that made headlines.
It is a small day. A stupid day. An ordinary day that I lived like it was a century because it contained him, unfiltered.
We were on the roof of my tower, where the city looks like it’s trying too hard to be beautiful. Neon stains the clouds. Sirens turn into background rhythm. The air tastes like smoke, ozone, and someone else’s bad decisions.
Alastor stood at the edge like he belonged to the skyline.
I remember the way the wind tugged at his coat. I remember the way his smile cut into the night like a thin blade. I remember thinking, irrationally: If he falls, the city will tilt.
He turned and asked me a question that sounded like a joke.
“Do you dance, Vox?”
I told him no. I told him I didn’t do things like that. I told him I didn’t need music because I already lived inside it, inside rhythm, scheduling, pacing, timing.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t mock me.
He just held out his hand, bare and patient, as if offering me something harmless.
I took it because my pride thought it was proving a point.
He pulled me close with a sure, practiced ease, one hand at my waist, the other holding mine like we were in some old film that didn’t have to explain itself. He moved without needing a beat from a speaker. He made his own rhythm. The city became accompaniment.
I wanted to hate how easily my body followed.
I didn’t.
There are moments you don’t recognize as holy until years later, when you’re trying to autopsy your own heart.
That rooftop was holy.
Not because it was good. Not because it was safe.
Because for a brief stretch of time, my mind stopped racing.
My display dimmed into something soft.
My audio input wasn’t scanning for threats, it was listening to him breathe.
He leaned closer and spoke near my audio cord, voice low enough that the night almost swallowed it.
“For a moment,” he murmured, “I want you quiet inside that bright little head of yours.”
It should have been mocking.
It wasn’t.
I remember turning my face - screen angled toward him - and finding his eyes fixed on me with an attention so steady it made me dizzy. Like he was choosing to see me without turning it into a game.
Then he smiled, and the game returned, because the game always returns.
But I still remember that moment before the smile sharpened.
I remember thinking: This could be love if we didn’t ruin it.
We ruined it.
Of course we did.
IV. After
After Alastor, I stopped letting anything in.
Not because nothing tried. Hell is full of hands. Hell is full of mouths that promise comfort and bodies that promise distraction and people who want proximity to my name.
But I couldn’t make my attention stick.
Everyone else felt like… programming.
Predictable. Responsive. Easy to control.
And I have never been satisfied by anything easy.
I built an empire out of noise, and still, in the quiet hours, I found myself listening for the one voice that could cut through my signal without permission.
This is embarrassing to admit in writing. That is why this document is marked Unsent.
If you are reading it, then either I lost control of my files, or I made a choice I can’t take back.
Either way: congratulations.
You have proof that Vox is not immune to devotion.
I did not “move on.”
I learned to function with a locked door in my chest.
I did not “forget.”
I became fluent in absence.
V. On Last Wishes
There is a question people like to ask when they want to feel profound:
“If it was your last day, what would you want?”
They ask it at parties. They ask it in interviews. They ask it like it’s a cute hypothetical, like death is a stage prop.
If someone asked me that question, if they came close and looked directly at my screen, as if expecting my answer to be performative, I think they would notice something.
They would see the tiny stutter in my light.
They would see the way my gaze catches on certain memories like a scratched record.
And if they were smart, they would realize I don’t need time to think.
My last wish has been the same for a long time.
I want one more day in front of my eyes where Alastor is mine in the simple way, no audience, no cruelty as entertainment, no lessons disguised as affection.
Just the day.
The thousand-year day.
His hand at my waist like an anchor.
His voice near my audio cord, warm and quiet.
I want to go out with that in my system, not with the city’s noise in my speakers.
Is that pathetic?
Maybe.
But I have never cared what strangers call pathetic. I have only cared what he called it.
VI. The Words That Ring
There is another question, harsher than the last wish question, and it’s the one no one asks out loud:
“What words describe you?”
People answer with titles. CEO. Overlord. Innovator. Tyrant. Icon.
None of those words are the ones that ring in my audio output at night.
At night, the words I hear are the ones Alastor used when he wanted to make me smaller. The ones he said like he was tasting them.
I won’t write them here. I refuse to gift them permanence.
But I will say this: I have spent years trying to scrub his vocabulary out of my system, and it still echoes.
Not because it’s true.
Because it was said by the only person whose voice could touch my attention without asking.
If you have never been harmed by someone you love, you might not understand why that makes the harm louder.
If you have, then you already know.
VII. Do Not Touch My Love
This is the part where an essay is supposed to conclude. A final paragraph. A clean wrap. A moral.
I do not have a moral.
I have a love that shouldn’t exist.
I have a devotion that made me brilliant and stupid at the same time.
I have a memory that keeps insisting it mattered.
So let me be clear, in case anyone tries to interpret this like a story with a lesson:
Do not touch my love.
Do not dissect it to mock me.
Do not reduce it to gossip, or “chemistry,” or a cautionary tale to entertain your friends.
Let it remain exactly as it is: strange, sharp, sincere in a way I am rarely willing to be.
Let the ones who have never understood what real love costs read this and realize - finally - that it is not always sweet. It is not always safe. It is not always wise.
Sometimes it is simply true.
VIII. Addendum: A Note to You
Alastor-
(Yes. I can’t keep pretending this is an academic exercise. I don’t have the patience for that anymore.)
If you ever find this, I want you to know something without performance. Without the smirk. Without the little game where we pretend we’re not affected.
I didn’t love you because you were kind.
I didn’t love you because you were gentle.
I loved you because when you looked at me, I felt seen in a way no camera ever managed.
I hated you for it.
I still do, sometimes.
But if someone asked me, if some nosy demon leaned in and asked me what I wanted at the end, if they demanded my “final wish” like I was content-
I would not ask for power.
I would not ask for my empire.
I would not ask for the city to remember me correctly.
I would ask for you to sit beside me, just once, without trying to win.
I would ask for one honest minute.
I would ask for your hand, bare and warm, steady at my waist like it was on that rooftop.
And then I think my display could go dark without fighting.
The cursor blinks.
It’s been blinking for a long time.
My office is quiet in a way it never is during business hours. The tower hum feels distant, muffled, like hearing your own broadcast from three rooms away.
I can taste copper in my mouth. That’s… odd. I don’t even have-
No. Focus. Finish the sentence.
If anyone asks me what my last wish is-
The words won’t form.
The lights above me stutter once, like a camera trying to refocus.
Somewhere behind me, a soft crackle rises in the air.
Not the tower’s speakers.
Not my systems.
Something older.
Warmer.
Static shaped like a voice.
A step. A presence.
I don’t turn. I already know the frequency.
A breath near my audio cord, close enough to make my display flare faintly.
“Vox,” Alastor says, quiet, not performative. Just my name, worn soft.
My hand trembles over the keyboard.
If I can get one more line out, let it be this:
I wanted you to understand-
The screen flashes.
The cursor stops.
And the file saves itself without my permission, as if the tower has decided for me where the ending goes.
[DOCUMENT STATUS: FINAL AUTOSAVE]
[LAST EDITED: 00:00]