Chapter Text
Something tugs on Alastor’s ear, and he doesn’t even think: he jerks his head around with an unseemly crack and just snaps his teeth, narrowly missing taking off Vox’s fingertips—and, quite likely, the rest of his fingers.
“Whoa!” Vox says, holding his tragically intact palms out. “Easy, Bambi!”
“At what point,” Alastor asks, icy in a way that belies the way that, though his response was very characteristic, it was not at all thought through and entirely reflexive, “did I give you the impression that I was inviting you to touch me, Vox?”
Vox blinks at him, the corners of his mouth taking on an uncertain wobble. Good: Alastor wants him to be uncertain. After all, Alastor didn’t ask for Vox to be here. In fact, Alastor was in a perfectly good mood before Vox arrived in the hotel through the electric networks, interrupting Alastor’s work (of usurping Lucifer’s work) at the hotel and touting his usual slew of compliments and innuendos and getting touchy—
So Alastor can only relish in putting some uncertainty into the man. After all, it was Vox’s interruption to his day that has had Alastor himself a touch disconcerted about…the state of their relationship, so to say.
After a moment, though, that singular overconfidence that has made Vox’s persona rears its head. His grin steadies, and widens into something a touch more smarmy—and his hand comes up again, fingertips skating up the back of Alastor’s spine and making his shoulders twitch before alighting, warm and firm, on the back of his neck. Vox’s palm cups his skin, the pad of his thumb rubbing into the soft little dip behind where Alastor’s ear connects with his skull without actually disturbing the sensitive fur or ruffling his hair.
Alastor’s smile peels back a little, uncertain if he wants to relax into the feeling or snarl. Perhaps both. He’s—not entirely opposed to the touch, even with the associated insufferable smugness, but—he knows what Vox wants out of it, and that is making his skin crawl right at this particular moment.
“You didn’t have to give any impression,” Vox says, eyes lidded and grin toothy. “Last week, you were pretty vocal, you know, no question about it, real explicit—”
Alastor ducks out from under his hand, refusing to let his ears pin back the way they suddenly want to. He grins right back at Vox instead, half-manic, and lets his teeth grow long and sharp.
“That,” he bites out, palms splaying open as he presents the words to Vox, “was last week! This is now, and now I’m afraid that I’m rather full-up on your particular brand of overwrought, licentious melodrama. Go fuck your moth and come back next week, my dear, and if you’re lucky then the break from having to see your face will have rendered me marginally less likely to bite your hand off for the entitlement.”
And, ah, there it is: Vox’s smile falls off his face entirely, mouth drooping at the corners of his silly animated screen until it dips below the edges of it and clips off the screen. What a farce. He’s not fooling anybody: that smile is merely a poor irritation of Alastor’s, and he hasn’t the moxy to pull it off consistently.
Vox’s brows furrow as he steps back into Alastor’s space, and Alastor tenses, preparing himself for the fight he’s started.
Vox catches his hands between his fingers, thumbs tracing over the razor edges of Alastor’s claws.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
Alastor’s ear flicks, and his smile flattens into a thin, perturbed thing. “Peachy,” he says, pretending he’s not biting it out. “Don’t be so presumptuous. Not wanting to fuck you isn’t actually a deviation from the baseline state of affairs, Vox.”
Vox rolls his eyes, but winds his fingers between Alastor’s and squeezes nonetheless. “Sure, pal, we can keep pretending that’s what this is about. In the meanwhile—” His voice sharpens, and Alastor’s ears perk up—it looks like he’s about to get that fight—but it only lasts for a split moment before their eyes meet and something in Vox just…softens.
Disgusting. Is this what being in love does to people?
“Wanna grab a drink?” Vox asks.
Alastor blinks. “What?”
“A drink. Y’know—go out, menace some poor bartender, get wasted somewhere with live music while you decide whether you’re going to applaud them so much they’re too scared to quit playing after their shift ends or kick them out and take over on the piano? You used to love that kind of shit.”
That does sound deeply appealing. In fact, a bit of menacing and alcohol is exactly the kind of mood Alastor is in. But he and Vox haven’t actually gone for a night on the town in—well.
“...I’m not going to change my mind,” Alastor mutters. His smile is as perky as ever, but he finds his gaze drooping to where their fingers are hooked together. He suddenly misses the way that Vox always likes to trace his thumb over whatever part of Alastor he’s touching, but he has nobody to blame for its absence but himself—not after snapping and ducking away. He just—he just doesn’t want any of what follows.
(He doesn’t want his stomach to twist at the thought of Vox’s reaction when he rejects it; if he bites at the other man first, then at least the anger is guaranteed…until, apparently, it isn’t.)
Vox looks like he has a great deal to say about that—hah, Alastor knew it—but just as with his ire, he visibly bites back the words. Instead, he says: “Sure. Hey, if we do a good enough job getting wasted, neither of us will be able to get it up anyway, eh?”
Alastor snerks, and is immediately appalled at his own amusement. “You—I don’t understand,” he admits, biting at the inside of his cheek.
“What,” Vox asks, “the mechanics of alcohol-induced erectile dysfunction? Okay, you got me: I can definitely still get it up, but I was trying to be nice about it since you’re all up in arms about unnecessary upgrades—”
Alastor shoves a palm against his face, cutting off the rest of his words. “Stop talking about your dick,” he says, half-fond. Vox is, after all, very fond of talking about his dick.
“Never,” comes the muffled retort, and then Vox catches Alastor’s wrist and presses a staticky kiss to Alastor’s pulsepoint. It’s a cloyingly romantic gesture, but there’s nothing sexual about it—no lidded, simmering expression, no gratuitous use of tongue.
“I don’t understand what you want,” Alastor clarifies, watching the black gradient of his hand, the way Vox’s screen lights it up in blue tones. “I can’t—I’m not going to give you what you really want.”
“When have you ever?” Vox mutters, and it’s a joke, Alastor knows it’s a joke, but—he remembers nights on the town with Vox before everything went to shit, remembers how Vox always used to look at him, remembers the things he said when they both—
“Exactly,” Alastor says, ripping his eyes away to glare at the wall. “So you may as well just leave.”
Horrible gold-and-red wallpaper with apple motifs, because this is one of the few hotel hallways he has yet to refurbish after the hotel’s reconstruction, largely because nobody ever comes to this part of the hotel. Still, he’ll get to it eventually. His initial advert promised no tacky circus decor, after all, and the new residents are pouring in: they’ll have to open this wing soon!
His fists are clenched—one still in Vox’s grip, one tight at his side. He doesn’t say anything more.
Vox is quiet for a long moment. “...That was a crap joke,” he eventually says. “Sorry. I—does that mean you don’t want to get drinks? Just drinks,” he rushes to add.
“...I would like to go get drinks,” Alastor admits.
“Okay,” Vox says. There’s another moment of silence, stretched and awkward, and Alastor is hit with the acute realization that he may have ruined Vox’s desire for—well, just about anything. Which was in fact his initial intent, except now—
This is why he never bothers with all this nonsense of relationships and romance. No matter what route he takes, he feels wretched and uncomfortable.
“Can I kiss you?” Vox asks.
Alastor frowns over his smile. “No. …Yes.” His fingers twitch in Vox’s grasp. “I don’t know. What kind of kiss?”
“Uh, like—mouth to mouth? Without the, uh. CPR.”
Alastor rolls his eyes. That is not at all what he was asking, but… “Fine. You can kiss me.”
Vox slides his hands up from Alastor’s wrist to his upper arms, his shoulders, then the sides of his neck, broad palms cupping his jaw and thumbs resting on the apples of Alastor’s cheeks. Then he leans in, pressing his mouth to Alastor’s—fizzy, electric, mostly tasteless—and just holds him like that for a few seconds before leaning back, grinning.
Alastor stares at him, relaxing his eyes from the inevitable squint he develops when he blinds himself on Vox’s screen after refusing to close his eyes. “That’s it?”
“You were pretty clear that you’re not in the mood for more,” Vox says.
It’s true. “But…”
“What?”
“It’s enough?”
Vox’s claws scritch against the back of his head, right underneath his ears, and Alastor relaxes into it. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Alastor hums, a little sleepy with the sudden release of tension in his neck. “I wouldn’t know. I just thought…I don’t know what I thought.”
“Don’t you?”
“It was never enough before.”
Vox’s fans whirr for a moment, kicking up a notch in response to—something. Some autonomic stress factors in his system. The man himself doesn’t say anything.
“And,” Alastor can’t help but continue, “this whole—our relationship, as it stands, however you define it, it was only rekindled because I decided to let you…”
“Yeah,” Vox mutters, glancing down. “I get it. And we’ve been kinda flying by the seat of our pants, here. But—Bambi, wanting to fuck you isn’t actually the reason we—I mean, I know we haven’t talked about it, but—there were lots of reasons we fell apart, weren’t there?”
“I suppose.”
“Can I—”
“I don’t want another kiss,” Alastor cuts him off, defensive.
“—Can I hug you?” Vox says, trying again.
Oh. Alastor nods, hesitant.
Vox pulls him in, engulfing Alastor in the smell of ozone mixed with sharp cologne, the faint humming thump of a biomechanical heart, and the satisfied sigh that Vox lets out when Alastor presses his face into his shoulder.
“Have I been unreasonable?” Alastor asks. He doesn’t hug Vox back—he feels drained of energy all of a sudden, and lets his arms hang limply at his sides. But when Vox squeezes him, drawing a hand slowly up and down his spine and Alastor realizes he’s not so much as tensing in anticipation of Vox copping a feel, he leans his weight into the other overlord.
“Maybe a little,” Vox says. “But we’re in hell, baby. We’re all selfish down here.”
“I changed my mind,” Alastor says, drawing back slightly. “Kiss me again.”
He doesn’t wait for Vox to respond, instead reaching up to snag the corner of his screen, and presses his lips to the corner of Vox’s. Vox turns his head, sliding their mouths together properly—and Alastor lets himself enjoy it for once. Kissing is still a little hit and miss for him—not overtly disgusting, but not really something he understands the appeal of—but he likes this feeling he has right now, of being engulfed and surrounded and—
Vox really is in love with him, Alastor thinks. It’s…nice. The love and the lust used to be a sword of Damocles, hanging over his head. It’s nice that it’s nice, now.
It’s been a long time since somebody has cared about him quite like this. Alastor is much too old to be anything other than independent, but there’s still something particularly touching about having a person in his life who holds enough love for him that they are willing to set aside their own desires for his own. It’s a uniquely touching selfishness: Vox’s desire to see Alastor happy.
Alastor thinks that he can get used to it.
They end up back in Alastor’s rooms at half past who-cares that night, tumbling through the shadows—Alastor laughing, Vox…well, he starts out laughing, but the poor man times his mirth rather non-strategically and ends up sputtering, trying to spit out the remnants of shadows that he’d swallowed during the split-second journey. This mostly just makes Alastor laugh harder.
The light of his rooms is warm through the comfortable haze of alcohol. His last drink was an hour or two ago at the very least, and the inebriation has settled into a comfortable sleepiness that bodes well for a lack of headache tomorrow morning as long as Alastor remembers to drink something without a proof label on the side before going to sleep. He does so: chugs a glass of water himself, then refills it and dumps the rest down Vox’s gullet, finally freeing him from the taste of cold blood filling his mouth.
Then he sprawls back onto his own mattress, flinging an arm over his face. Vox follows Alastor down, caging him in with his arms against the bed, and presses his flat face against Alastor’s jaw—a fizzy little kiss, gently snapping static that bites even when Vox keeps his teeth to himself.
Alastor turns his face and catches Vox’s mouth with his own.
He’s still not in much of a mood for sex, but he doesn’t think he’d mind it at the moment, either, which seems—good enough? Closer to the usual state of affairs. And Vox has been so very accommodating tonight. Surely he would prefer some reward for that. It really has been a long time since they’ve spent time together in this particular way, and the alcohol filters fond nostalgia into proper, current affection in Alastor’s veins, washing the bitterness from his memories and leaving them sugar-sweet. He can have sex in exchange for something like this.
So he kisses Vox, smooths his palms over his lapels and tries not to get distracted by the way texture becomes so interesting whenever he’s under the influence. He loses some time to it—it’s not an unpleasant activity—and gets startled back into himself when Vox’s hands tighten on his hips and he rolls the two of them over, laying back and hiking Alastor’s thighs up about his waist.
Then he snakes his hands underneath Alastor’s coat to find his tail, and Alastor refrains from rolling his eyes only because he is somewhat too dizzy for it.
Vox’s obsession with his tail is quite amusing and often borders on downright ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is this: Alastor has been quite good at hiding the thing under his coat during the day-to-day, but his ability to do so hinges at least somewhat on his tail keeping still under his clothes. Now, with Vox’s roving fingers carding gently through the fur, it flicks and swishes without Alastor’s consent, and he’s half-afraid it’s going to start doing so just at the sight of the man at some point soon.
It’s Vox’s fault, Alastor decides, breaking their kiss to tuck his face into Vox’s throat, antlers angled safely away. The petting feels rather nice, and he’s not so sensitive down there that it overstimulates him the way Vox fiddling with his ears sometimes can. And Vox clearly gets a lot out of it—Alastor isn’t in precisely the right position to feel if there’s anything, ah, swelling up against his hip, but certainly if there isn’t now then there will be soon.
And right on cue, Vox sits them up, letting Alastor slide down into his lap but otherwise managing to avoid moving him. His hands rise, petting over Alastor’s sides, then his shoulders, before sliding over them to gently shuck the jacket from Alastor’s shoulders.
“Can I sleep with you tonight?” Vox asks, a quiet murmur against Alastor’s ear.
He hums the affirmative, nodding his assent against Vox’s skin. Vox presses his mouth to Alastor’s hair for a moment, and sets to unbuttoning his shirt for him. Alastor drifts—which he assumes is not much of an impediment to Vox, given all the jokes about him being a pillow princess. When he manages to focus himself in on the moment again, mumbling slightly, it’s to Vox pulling his shirt off of his arms, unclipping his shirt garters carefully so that they don't snap against his skin—and then the undershirt he wears beneath it, and the belt off of his hips. By the time his pants are off, Alastor has been bullied underneath the sheets, shifting his legs around aimlessly to feel the way that the fabric brushes against the short fur tufting around his hooves. His eyes flutter open for a moment and all he sees is Vox’s screen glowing in the dark, a soft grin on his face as he squeezes Alastor’s ankle. The pressure is nice.
Vox gets under the blanket with him, and the light dims. He shifts around for a little while—shifts closer to Alastor, winding an arm around his waist, then fiddles around with the pillows, presumably trying to find something appropriate for the flat expanse of his head—and then goes quiet.
After a minute, Alastor blinks his eyes open again, confused.
“What happened to sleeping with me?” he mumbles sleepily.
“Oh, sorry.” Vox shifts again, volume turned down. “Is my screen too bright?”
“What?”
“...What?”
They stare at each other in the dark, Alastor’s gaze bleary and confused. “I thought you wanted…”
Vox blinks.
“...Sex,” Alastor finishes, feeling unaccountably off as he does so. Perhaps he should have kept his mouth shut.
“Oh,” Vox says again, mouth warping uncertainly. “No, uh—you’ve been pretty clear, I think.”
Alastor can’t help but press the issue, like worrying a nail at a scab. “But you want it. The way you looked at me tonight was no different than usual.”
Vox sighs, static over his speakers, and turns to look at Alastor more directly, propping himself up on an elbow. He’s higher than Alastor, like this, and Alastor could get up, but—he’s too tired, too drunk, too comfortable in his bed. It does make him feel small, though. Not in a good or a bad way, just…small.
“I think you’re very pretty,” Vox says, tracing the tip of one claw down Alastor’s nose. “And very hot, too, but—that doesn’t mean I want to fuck you literally all of the time.” His face does something, and then he backpedals. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d be down any time, but—look, I just don’t want to right now, okay? Neither of us wants to. Is that okay? We have a good thing going on. Not—not like this.”
“That’s okay,” Alastor says quietly. He’s too sleepy and drunk to process this properly. Vox takes Alastor’s hand in his own, and Alastor looks down, watching him play with Alastor’s fingers, curling and uncurling them. “...I have been unfair, then,” Alastor realizes. Making assumptions. Projecting his own feelings onto Vox’s. Has he had the wrong of it this entire time?
There’s another long pause, more danger of Alastor drifting off.
“...You know,” Vox says instead of addressing the statement directly, laying down on his shoulder and pressing his thumbs into the meat of Alastor’s palm. It feels pleasant, makes Alastor’s claws twitch. “I spent so long being afraid that you would leave me over this that I didn’t really ever consider that you might be worried I would leave you over this.”
Alastor’s shoulders want to curl in. He doesn’t let them, but neither does he come up with anything to say.
Vox looks up at him. “I’m gonna hug you again, alright?”
Alastor doesn’t so much nod as incline his chin. It’s enough. Vox’s hands wind around his back and he pulls Alastor onto him, tucking his face back into the crook of his neck. Alastor lets his legs splay around Vox’s hips, and doesn’t worry too much about what response that may or may not be inviting. Vox is warm to the touch underneath Alastor’s cool sheets.
He drifts off.