Bone_Axe

Heya there I’m Bone_Axe , from time to time I’ll post my art or fanfic here mainly this will be my progress blog for my art! Happy to have you here :)

[ficsthatiwritesometimes]

Remind Me of Your Name?

4/5

Bone_Axe

Summary: Here we are at the end of it all. It was never meant to be like this, it was never meant to go this far. But how am I supposed to live in this world if you aren't in it? Who am I in this world if you aren’t seeing me? All I need you to do is come back to me, stay with me. Why can’t you do this for me? Don’t you see we both suffer without one another?

Chapter 4: We are together once again

Notes:

Soooo, haha, long time no see, everyone? First, thank everyone who has commented and stuck with me throughout this story. It’s the first time I have written such a long fic with multiple chapters! As you can see from the chapter’s word count, haha, there is a reason it took me so long to finish this lol. Knowing it was the last chapter, I really wanted to put all my effort into it! I did feel rather guilty for taking so long, and I saw all your encouraging comments! No worries, I will be replying to all of you now! I was thinking about splitting it into two parts, but then I thought… wait, no??? I personally really hate when things get split up! So enough of my yapping, and please enjoy~ OH! also I never really made a playlist for the other chapters but I made one for this so if you would like to know what I was listening to as I wrote this please feel free to listen to these as you read! Remind me of your name, chapter 4 playlist PS! Please read the endnotes!!! There are a few things I want to go over at the end!

(Click here for the endnotes! more notes.)

If it's easier for you to read on AO3, here is the link!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

The low, persistent hum of the cooling fans was the first thing to reach the surface of Vox’s consciousness. It was a dull, thrumming sound, synchronized with the heavy, rhythmic thud of a pulse that felt too loud for his own head. For a long moment, there was nothing but the gray, staticky haze of a rebooting system, lines of data scrolling behind his eyes too fast to read, error messages pinging and being suppressed by a firewall he didn't remember setting.

Then, the world bled back in.

It wasn't the bright, neon-soaked world he was used to. It was dim, the air thick and strangely warm, smelling of expensive cologne. Vox blinked, his screen flickering with a jagged horizontal line before his stabilizers finally kicked in. He thought he would be met with seeing his ceiling, but it was Valentino.

The moth was hovering so close that Vox could see the microscopic cracks in the pink tint of his glasses.

I should get him a new pair… Vox thought.

Val’s two red eyes were wide, and his expression was... soft. Uncharacteristically soft. That kind of look was reserved for a very small number of people. Vox is one of them.

"He’s awake," Val breathed, his voice emitting a rough rasp. "Vel, he’s finally coming around."

Why did they sound so panicked? Did…did something happen? I was just…what was it doing again?

Before Vox could get lost in his thoughts, a second face crowded into his field of vision: Velvette. She wasn't looking at her phone. She was looking at him, her usual sharp, confident smirk replaced by a look of concern.

"Vox?" she prompted, her voice unusually quiet. "Look at me. Take it slow, okay?"

Vox tried to sit up, but his limbs felt like lead. The weighted silk blanket pinned him down, and the movement sent a spike of static through his head. "I... I’m in the penthouse," Vox croaked, his voice synthesized and cracking. He squinted, the blue light of his eyes pulsing weakly. "Why are you both... why are you looking at me like I’m about to explode?"

"Your fever just spiked, is all. You know how all your fancy computers love to blare out for the attention you need, Voxy," Valentino said quickly. He reached out to smooth the silk over Vox’s chest, his touch lingering almost desperately, as if he could physically hold the lie in place.

"You were calling out for me, Voxy. When Vel and I came over, you were... overheating. That’s all it was." Valentino’s voice pitched into a soothing purr, though his eyes remained sharp, searching Vox’s screen for any sign of a flickering memory.

Vox frowned, a glitchy ripple distorting the corners of his mouth. He searched his memory banks, reaching for the most recent logs. There was a gap, a cold, yawning void of white noise where the last couple of hours should have been. "I... I don't remember any of that. I was just..." He trailed off, the memory of whatever—or whoever—had been in his room slipping through his fingers like sand. He looked up at Valentino, his screen flickering with a faint, uncertain pulse. "The overlord meeting! I missed a meeting. Was I... was I supposed to be somewhere?"

"Val already went and handled it," Velvette cut him off, her voice softer than usual as her hand snapped out to catch his arm. "Everything is fine, V. Seriously."

She leaned in closer, her brow furrowed with a rare, genuine concern that she tried to mask with a flicker of her usual sass. "You’re staying right here until your internal temp is stable. Doctor’s orders. Or, well, my orders, which are better."

Vox gave a weak, glitchy chuckle, trying his hardest to brush off these strange vibes he was getting from the two of them. They weren’t hiding something from him, right?

At first, he appreciated the attention. It was nice having Val bring him high-end coolant and Velvette actually sitting at the foot of his bed to gossip about the latest Sinner scandals. But as he started to feel more like himself, the walls felt a lot smaller.

He’d be sitting in his home office, checking the nightly ratings, and the door would hiss open. It was always one of them.

"Voxy, how is my cariño doing?" Val would chirp, leaning against the doorframe and staying for twenty minutes for no reason at all.

Or Velvette would "accidentally" leave her tablet in his room, so that she had an excuse to come back in five minutes.

And then there was Ethan.

​The first time Vox tried to make a solo break for the studio, he nearly walked right into Ethan’s chest. The assistant was stationed just inches from the bedroom door, hands clasped at the small of his back, and shoulders squared. It was standard protocol for a personal assistant to be reachable, but it felt as if Ethan was taking it a step too far.

"Ethan?" Vox asked, tilting his head. "What are you doing? Don't you have a shoot you have to be at?"

"Change of plans, boss," Ethan said with a shrug, falling into step exactly two paces behind Vox. "I’m on personal security for a bit. Mr. Valentino orders."

Vox stopped walking, his screen flickering with a small amount of static. "Personal security? In my own tower? Ethan, I am the security. I have eyes in every corner of this building."

"Just a precaution, sir. Until you're at a hundred percent," Ethan replied smoothly, his eyes scanning the hallway with a level of intensity that made Vox’s fans spin with unease.

It continued like that. Everywhere he went, Ethan was there. If he went to the kitchen for a drink, Ethan was by the fridge. If he went to the bathroom, Ethan waited right by the door. And every time he looked up, he’d catch Val or Velvette watching him from across a room with a look that he couldn't quite describe. It was the look of someone guarding a treasure they were terrified would be stolen.

"Is there something you guys aren't telling me?" Vox asked one evening, catching Velvette staring at him as he read a report. "I'm fine. Why are you all acting like I’m made of glass?"

Velvette reached out and fiddled with the cuff of his sleeve, smoothing the fabric over his wrist with a repetitive, nervous motion she couldn't quite hide. "We just like having you around, Vox. Can't a girl look after her favorite business partner without a deposition?"

Vox looked at her, then over her shoulder at Ethan standing by the window, and then at Valentino, who was watching them both from the hallway. He felt fine. He felt great, actually.

So why did it feel like something was lurking around him that everyone could see, but him?

The frustration was beginning to manifest as a physical rot in the air around the radio station. Alastor stood in the quiet of his own space, the silence feeling uncharacteristically heavy. He could hardly conceive that Vox had sunk to such a pitiful, pedestrian depth.

To excise a memory... to perform a self-inflicted lobotomy to escape the weight of him, of what they had, the years they had known each other. It was more than a retreat; it was an admission of total defeat.

When? The question ticked in his mind like a broken clock. How many months had he been playing a game with a partner who didn't even know the rules anymore? Every barbed comment, every calculated appearance, every grin meant to provoke had it all been falling on a hollowed-out mind? The thought sent a chill through his veins. All those encounters hadn't been a farce or a clever performance by the Media Demon. Vox hadn't been pretending to forget. He was... gone.

"No…no…no…so then the Vox that stood before him, the one who lay in that bed surrounded by those pathetic "companions."

He was a fake, a charlatan,

an imposter

But… that means Vox had to be in there somewhere, then, right? No matter how much you try to erase something, isn’t history meant to repeat itself again and again and again? This is them we are talking about, they can’t just….end like this, right?

Within the months following the near blow-up of heaven and the pentagram, along with Alastor, breaking his chains, he had become more powerful than he had been in decades. Breaking his deal with Rosie had unchained something ancient and jagged within his soul, his name could finally now again invoke fear into all of hell, everyone would remember who he was, well… almost everyone, yet the one he wanted to remember the most was..

Since his last visit with the other two Vees, Alastor was being successfully blocked by a moth, a brat, and a glorified bodyguard.

"Insolent... predictable... tiresome children," Alastor hissed, his voice layered in simmering anger. He lunged toward the shadows of his office, attempting to melt into the darkness to emerge in Vox’s private quarters, but he was violently spat back out into the center of his own room. He stumbled, his heels clicking sharply as he caught himself. The Vees had done more than change the door codes; they had layered the tower in a localized, high-frequency "white noise" field that acted like a physical barrier to his shadow-travel. It didn't hurt him in the slightest, but it made his arrival noisy, messy, and most frustratingly obvious.

They were treating Vox like a delicate porcelain doll, and it was driving Alastor into a manic frenzy.

He didn’t want to see Vox at this point; it would be pointless to talk to a shell of the former overlord. No, what he wanted was to reclaim the space that was once his to occupy within that man’s mind for half a century. Every day that passed with Vox in that “blank slate” state brought on a new wave of emotions that Alastor wished to avoid. It was an ego-bruising reality he couldn't stomach.

He grabbed a nearby radio, his claws sinking into the plastic casing until it cracked. "You think a silly little barrier can keep me out?" he laughed, the sound sharp and echoing, devoid of its usual rhythmic charm. Alastor was losing his composure. He knew that. The way that he was acting, if he could see himself, was irrational, but it always seemed to be that way when he thought about Vox. Practically anything to do with Vox these days made him act out.

Normally, Alastor was a master of the long game, a strategist who enjoyed the hunt. But the image of Vox looking at him with those vacant, hollow eyes, seeing nothing but a stranger, had triggered a desperate need to be known. He didn't have a plan. He was too manic to form one. He just knew that the V Tower was a fortress, and he was finding a way to reach Vox no matter the cost.

"If I cannot slip through the cracks," Alastor whispered, his eyes glowing like radio dials in the dark, "then I shall have to make the cracks myself. Let’s see how long your 'perfect little world' lasts when the frequency starts to bleed."

Alastor let out a sound that wasn't a laugh or a word, but a screeching burst of static. His shadow, normally a silent partner in his theatrics, ballooned upward, its antlers scraping the ceiling until the plaster rained down like ash.

"How dare they!" he howled, his voice distorted into a chorus of a thousand dying signals. "How dare they tuck him away like a broken toy!"

Alastor’s latest attempt to gain entry within the tower had failed…again.

With a violent flick of his wrist, a thick, oily black tentacle erupted from the Alastor’s latest attempt to gain entry to the floorboards, lashing out with the speed of a whip. It slammed into a heavy oak bookshelf, sending volumes of ancient, leather-bound music scores flying across the room like panicked birds. Another limb, slick and pulsing with malice, hooked into the handle of a mahogany dresser and ripped the drawers clean from their tracks, spilling silks and silver onto the floor.

He didn't care for the mess. There was no one here to witness his lapse in composure, no hotel guests to unsettle, no "friends" to appease with a hollow pleasantry. In this sanctuary of his own making, far from the prying eyes, the shadows were free to be as crude and cruel as their master. He was beyond their reach now, and certainly beyond their understanding.

The inner contents were sprawled across the floor—silver cufflinks, old yellowed photographs, and hand-stitched waistcoats—scattered amid the broken glass and splintered wood.

He was pacing, his steps heavy and uneven, his claws digging into his palms until his own blood—dark and smelling of old iron and rot—began to drip onto the rug. Every time he tried to focus, to weave a path back into the Tower, the high-frequency barrier snapped against his senses like a live wire. His power recoiled, the feedback sending him stumbling back into the center of the room.

In the silence that followed, the image of Vox’s blank, flickering screen flashed in his mind. It wasn't the hatred Alastor was used to; it was the indifference. The nothingness. It was a dial tuned to dead air, and it was a sound Alastor couldn't survive.

He seized a delicate side table and hurled it through the window. The glass shattered outward in a glittering spray, but even the sulfurous night air of Hell couldn't dampen the feverish heat radiating off him. He was a stuttering reel of red and black, a manic whirlwind deconstructing his own sanctuary because he couldn't reach the one person who mattered.

He turned toward his desk, his breathing heavy and thick with the rattle of a dying signal. He swept his arm across the surface. Inkwells shattered, hemorrhaging a deep, permanent black across the floor; pens snapped with the brittle crack of bone; and his meticulously kept ledgers were shredded by the jagged, passing shadows of his own frantic power.

He stood in the center of the wreckage, his chest heaving, his grin stretched so wide it looked like it was going to tear his face in two. His eyes were no longer dials; they were glowing red pits of pure, primal hatred.

"You think you’ve saved him?" Alastor whispered, the silence of the room now more terrifying than the noise. He looked at his trembling, clawed hands. He was thinking only of the flickering blue light of a screen and how much he wanted to smash it to see the moment recognition finally, painfully bled back into Vox's eyes.

As the thought took hold, the whirlwind of his fury finally began to settle. The violent static died down to a low, ominous hum, leaving the room a graveyard of splintered maroon wood and shredded paper. Alastor remained in the center of the ruin, his chest heaving, his shadow still twitching against the walls like a dying flame.

Among the wreckage of his life, the artifacts he’d collected over a century of terror, something caught the dim light. It didn't belong. It was a small, sleek object, made of modern plastic and cheap metal, shaped like a stylized, cartoonish shark—a USB drive.

It was a garish, neon-bright thing that screamed of the very world Alastor despised. It was a piece of him.

Alastor’s shadow, usually a mocking reflection of his own ego, peeled itself away from the floor. It didn't mimic his rage this time. Instead, it slithered toward the small device, its elongated fingers hovering over the shark-themed casing with a strange, hesitant curiosity. It knew. Even if Alastor, in his manic state, was too busy relishing his own fury to notice, the shadow remembered where that thing had come from.

It was a relic of a rivalry that had once been more than just hatred. It was a piece of tech Vox had probably left behind years ago, tucked away in a drawer he hadn't opened in decades. Alastor’s shadow didn’t move with its usual predatory grace. As Alastor’s hand descended, his long, clawed fingers reaching for the small shark, the shadow acted on an instinct that seemed entirely separate from its master’s manic ego.

A jagged, ink-black hand shot across the floor, snatching the USB drive a fraction of a second before Alastor’s fingers could close around it. Alastor froze. His arm remained outstretched, suspended in the air over the empty floorboards. Slowly, his neck snapped to the side with a series of sickening, wet cracks, his glowing eyes fixing on his own silhouette.

"Give it to me," Alastor commanded, his voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly smooth register. The radio static in the room surged, the walls beginning to bleed a dark, shadowy ichor.

The shadow didn't move. It stood huddled in the corner of the wall, its long, spindly fingers curled tightly around the little shark-shaped drive. It didn't mimic Alastor’s grin; for the first time, the shadow’s mouth was a thin, jagged line of worry. It knew exactly what Alastor was planning. It knew that Alastor didn't just want to wake Vox up; he wanted to shatter him. He wanted to use that drive to force fifty years of rivalry, hatred, and obsession back into a mind that had found a fragile, hollow peace. It would be like pouring molten lead into a glass jar.

"You've grown quite bold, haven't you?" Alastor hissed, his shadow-antlers growing, casting a massive, suffocating darkness over the room. "Do you think I don't see what you're doing? You’re trying to protect him."

The shadow shrank back, pressing itself into the wall’s crease, clutching the USB to its chest. It was a bizarre sight, the manifestation of a demon's cruelty showing a mercy the demon himself was currently incapable of feeling. The shadow remembered the way Vox used to look at them before the "deletion." It remembered the sparks and the life. It knew that if Alastor did this now, in this state of unhinged mania, there wouldn't be a Vox left to play with.

"He is MINE to break!" Alastor roared, the sound echoing like a bomb going off in a small tunnel. He lunged toward the wall, his claws raking through the shadows as he tried to tear the object from his own reflection physically. The shadow darted away, sliding across the ceiling and down the opposite wall, keeping the little shark just out of reach. It was a frantic, silent game of cat and mouse played between a man and his own shadow.

"You forget yourself!" Alastor howled, his image flickering like a damaged film reel. "That drive belongs to the world we built! If he wants to forget, I will make the remembering so loud his screen will CRACK!"

The shadow slipped under a pile of discarded coats, burying the USB drive deep within the fabric, trying to hide it from the very eyes that shared its vision. It was a desperate, losing battle. Alastor was the master here, but for a few precious seconds, the shadow was the only thing standing between Vox and a total, agonizing system failure.

"You are me," Alastor whispered, and the sheer force of the words caused the shadows in the room to ripple like disturbed water. "Every ounce of your defiance is just a reflection of my own will. You cannot hide a secret from the mind that birthed it." The shadow froze against the far wall, its form trembling. It clutched the small, shark-themed USB drive to its chest as if it were a heart, its jagged mouth twisted in a silent plea. But Alastor closed his hand into a fist, and the shadow began to scream a soundless, vibrating agony that shook the floorboards.

Slowly, agonizingly, the shadow was forced to peel its fingers back. It fought, its ink-black limbs straining against the invisible tether of Alastor’s command, but it was like a puppet trying to cut its own strings. With one final, violent jerk, the shadow’s hand flew open, and the little plastic shark tumbled through the air.

The smell of burnt mahogany was momentarily replaced by a sweet, salty, almost ocean-like scent.“Keep it, Alastor,” a voice had rasped as if it were coming from an old television set. “If my screen ever goes dark... if I ever stop being me... you’re the only one I trust to bring me back.”

The memory snapped away just as soon as it appeared. Alastor caught the drive between two clawed fingers, his shadow's frantic claws finally stilling beneath his boots.

"There," he cooed, his voice returning to a smooth, velvety purr that was far more frightening than the screaming. "That wasn't so hard, was it? You’ve always been a bit too sentimental for your own good."

He held the drive up to the dim light, his thumb tracing the cheap plastic fins. To anyone else, it was a simple piece of forgotten technology, but to Alastor, it was a key to the man he needed, the one who challenged him, the one who actually mattered. He was elated, but as his manic laughter died down into a low, buzzing hum, the reality of the situation set in. The Vees had turned the tower into a tomb. He could feel the high-frequency barrier humming even from here, a wall of white noise that would tear his shadows apart. He was a monster newly unchained, yet the digital equivalent of a locked door was thwarting him.

He couldn't get close enough to plug the drive in.

"Patience, Alastor," he murmured, his neck cracking as he tilted his head at a sharp angle. "If you cannot walk through the front door, you simply find someone who is already inside."

His mind drifted to the roster of souls trapped within that glittering prison. His gaze sharpened, the radio dials in his eyes spinning with predatory glee. Of course. The perfect, pathetic, glittering little Trojan Horse.

Angel Dust.

Honestly, Alastor had never thought much of the sinner, even during his time at the hotel. If he were forced to choose an emotion, he might claim a semblance of pity, the sort one felt for a wounded animal that lacked the sense to crawl out of the rain. He had found Charlie’s efforts to "rehabilitate" the creature quite valiant; therefore, it was truly unfortunate when the boy's spying was revealed, and all that progress, if there had been any at all, was traded for a seat back in the very pit that had fostered his worst habits.

The one thing Alastor might admit, strictly to himself, was the kinship of their shared hatred for Valentino.

The spider was currently filming at the Tower, tucked away in one of Valentino’s high-security studios. He was already past the checkpoints. He was already behind the firewalls. More importantly, he was someone the Vees, especially that lecherous moth, would never suspect of carrying a lethal dose of reality. Angel was already such a broken, hollowed-out soul that they would never imagine him becoming the catalyst for their end.

Alastor let out a soft, melodic chuckle that made the shards of broken glass on the floor vibrate in sympathy. It was a horrible idea. It was a violation of every boundary he had established at the hotel, a move that would undoubtedly traumatize the boy and draw the white-hot ire of Charlie Morningstar.

But Alastor no longer cared about the hotel. His time there was a closed chapter, and the people within it were merely discarded characters. He didn't care about the spider's safety; he only cared about the result. Whoever was in the way and whoever had to be used mattered very little to him now.

He squeezed the USB drive until his knuckles turned white. Behind him, his shadow rose, but it did not mimic his twisted, manic grin. Instead, it slumped before his feet, radiating a profound sense of sorrow for what was to come, not just for its master, but for the soul it had once considered a friend.

"Oh, Angel," Alastor whispered. "Since they’ve insisted on dragging you back to that stage... the least we can do is ensure it’s the last performance any of them ever see."

The studio lights were blinding, a hot, artificial white that made the sweat itch under Angel’s layers of makeup. Around him, the crew scurried like insects, adjusting cables and checking monitors. Valentino was perched in his director’s chair just off-camera, the smoke from his cigar trailing in the air like a red, toxic fog.

"Positions, baby!" Valentino barked, his voice amplified through the studio's massive surround-sound speakers. "And give me emotion this time, or we are staying here all night."

Angel took his place on the velvet sofa, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He waited for the familiar beep of the digital timer, trying his best to focus on the rhythm of the upbeat, synth-heavy track as it started playing through the studio monitors.

Instead, he heard a horrible static feedback loop.

It was a low, wet hiss, the sound of a needle dragging across a jagged groove. Was the earpiece he had defective? Why was no one stopping the scene, or at the very least saying anything? The studio stayed silent to everyone else, but in Angel's ears, it was anything but.

"Camera one, rolling!" the floor manager shouted.

Angel opened his mouth to notify one of the sound crew, but his jaw locked—a wave of static, cold and sharp as needles, washed over his skin.

“Smile, Angel,” a voice purred not from the speakers, but from somewhere deep inside his own skull. “You’re on camera, after all. It would be a shame to let all that makeup go to waste.”

Angel’s eyes widened, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks as he stared directly into the camera lens. He could see his own reflection in the glass, but for a split second, his shadow on the wall behind him didn't move when he did. It stayed still, its eyes glowing a radio-dial red.

“Don't look so terrified, darling,” Alastor’s voice vibrated through his teeth. “I’m simply here to offer you a new script. One with a much more... explosive ending.”

"Cut! Cut!" Valentino’s voice was a whip-crack through the studio. "Angel, baby, you’re giving me nothing! You look like you’re watching your own funeral. Take ten! Get your head on straight before I decide to straighten it for you!" The heavy studio lights dimmed, leaving the set in a hazy, purple twilight. Angel didn't wait for an assistant. He stood up, his movements stiff, and practically ran toward his dressing room. The earpiece was still in, still humming with that low, rhythmic static that felt like a migraine taking root in his brain.

The moment the dressing room door slammed shut, Angel ripped the small device out of his ear and threw it against the vanity. It hit the mirror with a dull thud, the static from the tiny speaker still audible in the quiet room. Angel stared at the plastic device, his chest heaving, his four hands trembling as the top set hovered near his face and the lower set hugged his middle.What. The. Fuck?!

That was Alastor. That was definitely that creepy, old-timey prick’s voice vibrating through the studio's frequency. But how? The Tower was supposed to be a fortress. Angel had overheard Val brag for weeks about a new security system that was supposed to keep the Radio Demon’s "filthy analog signal" out of their digital paradise.

A cold shiver raced down Angel's spine, quickly followed by a hot flare of pure irritation. He didn't have the time for this. Not today. Not while Val was already breathing down his neck and his skin felt like it was crawling off his bones. What the hell did he want? Why was he reaching out now, in the middle of this neon-lit nightmare?”

The static from the small piece of technology near the vanity didn't stop when it hit the mirror; it grew into a low, rhythmic thumping, like a heartbeat made of white noise.

"Tsk, tsk. Running away again? It seems to be a recurring theme for you lately. You ran from the Hotel, you ran from your 'friends'... and yet, here you are, still taking orders from a man who treats you like a discarded prop." The voice dropped an octave, becoming syrupy and dangerous. "I expected more from a resident of my former establishment. Or perhaps... I expected too much from a lost cause."

"Oh, fuck you, Alastor!" Angel spat, his voice cracking with a mixture of rage and exhaustion. He spun around to the empty room, his eyes darting into the purple-hued shadows, knowing the demon was listening through the very air. "I'm a lost cause?" Angel spat, kicking a stray costume trunk. “Shut the fuck up, I left for the sake of everyone!” The movement sent a jolt of memory through him, the image of the executive hallway from weeks prior.

He’d been lingering near the master suite, script in hand, when Valentino had come bursting through the velvety purple doors, nearly taking Angel out in his haste. Val looked like he was vibrating out of his skin, his wings flared and frantic. Angel had frozen just a couple of steps from Vox’s room, pressing himself against the cold wall. Satan only knew why he didn't just bolt for his own quarters right then. Maybe it was a survival instinct, or a dark, twisted sense of satisfaction. Something was intoxicating about seeing a monster like Valentino with such raw, unmasked distress on his face.

But the distress wasn't just coming from Val. The air in the hallway was vibrating, the very wallpaper peeling back as a three-way war of words tore through the door.

"He didn't choose you, Valentino!” Wait… was that Alastor? The voice had shrieked, followed by the violent spray of glass shattering inside the room.

“I don't give a damn about your ego, Alastor!” Velvette’s voice had sliced through, sharp and terrified.

Then, a burst of heavy, distorted radio static—the kind that made your teeth ache- erupted from the hallway speakers. “HE DID SOMETHING TO HIMSELF!” “I’m going to tear your tongue out for this! Get the fuck out of here!” Val had roared back.

That was the last of it. Angel hadn't waited to hear more; he had fled the moment a looming shadow began to seep like spilled ink from beneath Vox’s bedroom door. That was weeks ago, it was a rare glimpse into the hidden inner world, a moment of desperation from the top Overlords of the city.

Snapping back to the present, Angel’s four hands balled into trembling fists. "I heard you, Al," Angel hissed at the empty air. "I heard you screaming weeks ago. Is that why you're bothering me? Because he won’t look at you anymore? Because Vox finally figured out how to move on from you?"

The air got eerily quiet and cold until Alastor's voice came through again.

"I didn't come here to be psychoanalyzed by a man who doesn't even own his own soul. Doesn’t it make you livid, Angel?" Alastor whispered, his voice dropping into that dark, projecting tone.

Tell me, Angel…does it.

"To see them like this? They get their happy ending. Why does Vox get to forget everything and move on so simply? Why does he get to pretend I—that we—don't matter?"

The words "we" and "I" hung in the air, thick and unnatural. Angel felt the hair on his arms stand up. He felt the weight of it the way Alastor’s voice had hitched, just for a millisecond, on that last sentence.

He's not talking to me, Angel realized, a cold spike of clarity hitting him. He’s talking to himself.

Angel shifted his weight, his four hands clenching at his sides. The fear was being crowded out by a strange, sharp pity that tasted like iron. Alastor wasn't here as the once fearsome radio demon; he was here as a ghost who had been evicted, trying to find a door that wasn't locked.

"You're talking about mattering?" Angel asked, his voice low and mocking. He didn't turn around, staring instead at the shattered mirror where Alastor’s distorted reflection, if he were here, would have hovered behind his own. "Since when do you care if a 'flat-faced-wannabe' thinks you matter? You’re the big bad Radio Demon. You don't need 'em."

Angel took a breath, his heart hammering against his ribs.

"But you’re not here to 'save' me from a script, Al. You’re here because he really did it. He hit 'delete.' And it’s eating' you alive that he’s finding' peace in a world where you don't even exist."

Again, Angel met with another round of silence until Alastor started again.

"Let’s talk about your loyalty. You loathe them, yet you slave for them. You fear them, yet you let Vox treat your mind like a playground. Have you forgotten the hypnosis? The way he slipped into your head like a parasite and turned your eyes into his own personal cameras? He didn't just watch you, Angel. He owned your thoughts. He made you a spy against the only people who ever gave a damn about you."

"And Valentino. Your 'papi.'" Alastor spat the word like it was a mouthful of rot. "He loves that hollow blue box more than he loves the air he breathes. Vox is his pride. His joy. He is the anchor that keeps Valentino stable enough not to torture you constantly. Imagine the exquisite agony of watching that anchor shatter.

It felt as if Alastor was actually there. His voice felt as if it was brushing right next to Angel’s ears.

"You can break him, Angel. You can take the one thing Valentino loves, the thing Vox worked decades to build, and you can turn it into a screaming heap of corrupted data. You can watch them both burn from the inside out. Don't you want to see the look in Val’s eyes when his precious king finally snaps? Don't you want to be the one who pulled the trigger?"

Angel stood frozen, his four hands clenched into tight, shaking fists. His mind was a battlefield of images: Valentino’s smoke, the cold buzz of Vox’s hypnosis, and the way he’d been forced to betray Husk.

He’s using me, Angel thought, his heart hammering like a trapped bird. He’s just another monster wanting to play with a different set of toys. But then he pictured Vox, the arrogant, electric prick who thought he was untouchable. He pictured Valentino, who spent every night obsessing over Vox’s health while Angel worked until he bled. If Vox broke, the empire would crumble. The leash might finally snap.

“It’s not just for Alastor,” Angel lied to himself. The thought provided a desperate, oily comfort. “It’s for me. It’s for Husk.”

"I hate you," Angel whispered, his voice trembling as he finally caved in. "I hope you both burn in a ditch when this is over. I hope you end up somewhere so deep and dark that even your voice can't find a way out."

"Oh, I'm sure we shall," Alastor’s voice purred. “Now, let me explain how this will go.”

Alastor tilted his head and allowed his radio-static to hum with sudden, sharp clarity as he began to lay out the specifics of the plan. He knew that he could not afford for this to go wrong because this might be the last chance he had to get this close to Vox again, and that was a haunting thought he tried desperately not to dwell upon.

"The plan is simple, Angel," Alastor muttered while his voice emitted from the damaged, sparking earpiece with a casual air that completely belied the malice behind his words. "Valentino is a creature of pure ego and obsession, so you must create an opening for yourself to not only distract him, but also to lure Vox down into the studio. I am sure you are already aware of how they are treating Vox like a glass doll lately by restricting his every movement and keeping him hidden away."

Angel actually did not know any of this, and the information was entirely new to him, though it explained the strange shifts he had witnessed on set. He had noticed that there were moments where Val, who normally stayed behind during set breaks to check in on him in his own suffocating way, would instead leave as soon as the scene was finished. Val would vanish while muttering something under his breath about Vox and his stability. Still, Angel had been too buried in his own misery to realize the empire was actually fracturing.

Alastor was not physically present in the room with Angel, yet he still managed to emit a rage-fueled lecture that seemed to vibrate through the very floorboards. “You will mess up your lines repeatedly, looking at the wrong camera, hitting the wrong marks, and ruining the lighting for every shot. You are going to wear him down until his temper is fraying and his mind is a mess of pink smoke and frustration, making him stay on that set until he is too exhausted to think of anything but the mounting budget you are blowing.”

"And then what happens? Is Val just going to sit there and watch me fail? He will kill me before the first hour of production is even over."

"Oh, he will be far too busy to kill you," Alastor chuckled with a sound that resembled a skipping record. "Once he is sufficiently worn down, you will accidentally tamper with the equipment by causing a small, irritating glitch in the mainframe that requires the CEO’s personal touch to resolve. Valentino will be reluctant to call him, of course, but he is desperate for his production to finish, and he will eventually convince himself it is safe. After all, he will be standing right there next to him, and he will wonder what could happen with the great Valentino standing guard."

Alastor’s grin pulled back to reveal rows of needle-thin teeth that glinted in the dim light of his tower. "That is your window of opportunity. When Vox is distracted by leaning over the hardware to fix the mess you have made, that is exactly when you must strike. You will plug this little shark in and let the data flow because one quick click is all it takes for the house of cards to collapse."

'"Wait, wait, WAIT, Al," Angel interrupted, his voice hushed but frantic as he paced the small confines of the dressing room. "How am I even supposed to get this little USB you keep talking about? It’s not like I can walk out of here and meet you for coffee. You yourself said you no longer have access to the building, so you clearly aren't just going to hand it to me. What is the plan for that?"

Alastor’s laughter crackled through the earpiece, "My dear Angel, I do not need to step back into that vile tower. I have something far more reliable. I have the predictable nature of a man who believes he owns the world. Valentino loves to showcase his prizes, doesn’t he? He delights in the attention you receive because it validates his own 'impeccable' taste in talent."

"My fan mail," Angel whispered, the realization filling him with a cold, sinking feeling in his gut.

"Precisely," Alastor purred, his voice dropping into a tone of dark satisfaction. "Every day, a mountain of adoration is delivered to your doorstep, and every day, Valentino allows it to pass because he views those tributes as his own personal trophies. He is far too busy counting his profits to worry about the contents of a fan's affection."

The delivery arrived the following morning during the frantic chaos of the first wardrobe change, tucked inside an oversized, flamboyant box wrapped in shimmering pink foil that looked no different from the dozens of other tributes sent by obsessed fans. One of the studio interns had tossed it onto Angel’s vanity with a distracted comment about it being just another admirer, and at the time, Angel had been too busy fighting into a restrictive corset to give the package a second thought.

It wasn't until he was finally alone during a brief lighting reset that he tore the paper away, expecting to find the usual assortment of expensive chocolates or scented letters. Instead, he found a vintage, velvet-lined jewelry case. Inside, nestled against the dark fabric, sat the shark-themed USB drive, its neon-blue finish looking jarringly modern against the antique elegance of the box.

There was no card and no signature, there was no need for such formalities Angel already knew who sent this; he had been apprehensive when Alastor would send it as Angel picked up the device, it was slightly stuck to a small handwritten note that was tucked into the lid of the box, the letters were crude and erratic, as if the pen had been gripped with a trembling, violent force that threatened to tear through the paper itself. The ink appeared dark and thick, like dried blood, and the words seemed to vibrate under the harsh vanity lights with a frantic, pulsing energy that made Angel’s eyes ache.

A lead role requires the proper props, Angel. The note read, “ Do ensure you hit your marks when the curtain rises, for I should hate for such a masterful performance to go to waste.

Angel felt a cold shiver race down his spine. This was it; he was really going through with this. He tucked the drive deep into his chest fluff, the cold metal a constant, biting reminder of the deal he had made.

Angel looked toward Valentino, who was currently barking orders at a cowering cameraman with a frantic intensity that seemed to vibrate through the entire studio floor. As he watched the Overlord’s wings snap with agitation, Angel found himself struggling to maintain his composure while a dozen different, lethal scenarios began to race through his mind. He wondered what would happen if Valentino didn't believe his act, or worse, what the moth would do if he discovered the device hidden in his fluff before the trap could even be set. He questioned how Alastor could be so certain that Valentino would personally summon Vox to the studio rather than just calling for that sycophantic Eel who followed the Media Demon everywhere.

For a heartbeat, the weight of the USB drive felt less like a weapon and more like a death warrant, making his stomach churn with a sudden, nauseating wave of doubt. He thought about the potential fallout and whether he was truly ready to witness the total collapse of the empire that, for better or worse, provided the only life he knew.

However, the moment he glanced at the red-tinted lenses of Valentino's glasses, the flicker of hesitation was snuffed out. How could he forget the pain they both put him through, the invasive, buzzing hum of Vox’s hypnosis, a sound that had once violated the sanctity of his own thoughts and turned his very eyes into cameras for the Vees' entertainment.

“I am going to break them,” Angel told himself, feeling a dark and cold spark of satisfaction flicker in his chest. “I am going to shatter the very thing Valentino loves most in this world, just like he and Vox spent years breaking every piece of sanity and dignity I ever had.”

"Alright, everyone! We are taking it from the top!" Valentino roared while his four arms gestured wildly at the crew to reset the heavy equipment. He turned his red-tinted gaze toward the stage, his voice dropping into a warning growl as he added, "And Angel? Do not fuck it up this time, or I will make sure you regret ever waking up this morning."

Angel took his place on the velvet-draped set and allowed a lopsided, perfectly artificial smile to be plastered across his face for the cameras. "Sure thing, Papi," he chirped, his voice dripping with a thick layer of sarcasm that Valentino was far too exhausted and distracted actually to catch.

The next two hours were a grueling exercise in psychological endurance as Angel systematically dismantled the production, and he could feel Valentino’s self-control snapping with every ruined take and wasted minute of film. He missed his marks by several feet, causing the expensive focus-pullers to blur the shots into a useless mess of distorted colors, and he intentionally stuttered through the most expensive sequences until the film stock was practically wasted. Valentino was now vibrating with a frantic, manic energy that suggested he was at his absolute limit, pacing the edge of the stage. At the same time, his wings beat a steady, irritating rhythm against his back, and the pink smoke pouring from his mouth began to cloud the entire studio floor in a thick, cloying haze.

"Again!" Valentino shrieked, his voice cracking under the weight of his mounting desperation and fury. "We are doing it again from the top! Angel, you will get this right, or I will set this entire stage on fire with you tied to the center of it, and we will let our viewers find a new kink from your charred body!"

Angel wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and moved back to his starting position with his heart hammering in his throat, but as he passed the main power hub for the digital rendering rack, he let one of his lower hands slip out of view. He used one of his small, sharp nails to slice through the fiber-optic casing with precision, ensuring the damage appeared to be a freak internal surge rather than a clean cut. The reaction was instantaneous: every monitor in the studio flickered with a violent burst of static before turning a deep, sickly shade of crimson, and a high-pitched, mechanical whine erupted from the mainframe, making the crew cover their ears in pain.

"What is that? What did you do!" Valentino screamed as he lunged toward the technical booth, his four hands slamming against the console in a useless, frantic attempt to stop the deafening noise.

"The system is crashing, Mr. Valentino!" the head technician yelled back, his voice pitching into a high-register panic as he watched the data streams dissolve into incomprehensible gibberish. "The encryption is folding in on itself, and I cannot bypass the lock! It is a core-level hardware glitch; the rendering rack is hard-wired into the tower’s central core system. If this isn’t fixed immediately, we risk losing all the footage from today’s shooting!!

Valentino froze, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps as he looked from the flickering red screens to the gold-plated elevator that led directly up to the penthouse. He knew exactly who could fix this with a single thought, yet it pained him greatly, who else but

Vox.

Vox knew the in’s and out of the tower, hell he was the tower practically, any glitch or spark out of place Vox would be able to fix in second this however seemed like it required him to make a physically appearance, However, the fear of exposing Vox’s current, fragile condition to the crew was clearly warring with his manic obsession for the film and the millions of dollars currently evaporating in the heat of the server rack.

"Call him," Valentino hissed, the command seemingly causing him physical pain as his secondary set of arms gripped the edge of the console until the plastic began to crack. "Call Vox down here right now. Tell him the tower's primary buffer is desyncing and I need him for five minutes. Just five minutes to stabilize the goddamn rack before it burns the whole studio to the ground!"

The technician didn't wait for a second order, frantically punching the emergency line to the penthouse while Valentino turned his back to the crew, his wings flared wide in a desperate, defensive posture. Across the stage, Angel stood in the shadows of the bed-set, his hand surreptitiously moving toward his chest of fluff where the cold weight of the USB waited.

The elevator doors slid open, venting a pressurized hiss of frigid air that collided with the studio’s sweltering heat. Vox stepped out into the chaos, his stride missing its usual high-voltage snap. The neon glow of his screen cycled at a low, struggling frequency, and his suit hung slightly loose on a frame that looked like it had lost the physical mass to fill the expensive fabric.

Valentino intercepted him before he could reach the center of the room. He moved in a few long, predatory strides, his four arms expanding like a massive, moth-winged barrier to shield Vox from the prying eyes of the crew.

"Eyes on your stations, now!" Valentino’s voice roared, a low, vibrating threat that sent the imps scrambling back to their monitors. He stepped into Vox’s personal space, his secondary hands twitching with the urge to steady him. "Where is that eel? Where’s Ethan? Why the hell is he not with you?!"

Vox’s display lagged for a painful microsecond, flickering through a frame of static before his mismatched, concentric eyes finally focused on Valentino. He looked profoundly tired, his expression a mask of exhausted irritation. "I sent him to handle the archives in Sector 4," Vox rasped, his voice carrying an electronic burr that made the audio tech's monitors spike into the red. "I’m fine, Val. I don't need a babysitter, and I certainly don't need you hovering over me like I’m some child. I built this tower; I can handle simple hardware without an escort."

"You’re supposed to be recovering, Vox,” Valentino whispered, keeping his back to the room to hide the genuine, frantic lines of his face. You look like you're about to short-circuit in front of the entire floor."”"

"I said I'm fine! Besides, you are the one who called me down here in the first place!”Vox snapped, the sudden spike in his volume causing his display to fracture into a mosaic of buffering symbols for a moment. He shoved past Valentino and turned his attention toward the head technician, who looked terrified that he would be the next person scolded or worse under the Overlord's gaze. "You. Move. Tell me exactly what the issue is and fast. I do not have all day to waste on a simple server error.”

As the technician stammered out what they had already tried, Vox forced himself toward the smoking server rack. Valentino followed him like a dark, protective shadow, his hand hovering inches from Vox’s waist, ready to catch him the second the bravado failed. From his position on the bed-set, Angel watched them with a sharp, calculating gaze.

Vox was hunched over the server rack as the main head technician, from a distance, pointed to various spots where he had checked here and there. Vox’s back was turned, his fingers deep in the wiring; it was a tangled mess, trying to find the source of the issue. If you didn’t look too deeply at him, you would have thought he looked like perfection, always the image that Vox prided itself on, but looking deeper, you could see that the man looked exhausted, his screen, usually a vivid ocean blue, was much dimmer, and the occasional flicker would appear.

This was the moment Angel had waited for.

The studio air screamed with the mechanical whine of the overtaxed server rack, creating a wall of noise that masked the subtle rustle of Angel’s movement. Valentino remained positioned as a human shield, his focus entirely on Vox’s face, watching for the next flicker of static or subtle stumble made by Vox. He was so preoccupied with guarding the secret of Vox’s exhaustion that he never looked over at what Angel was doing.

Angel leaned into the "stressed-out star" persona he’d been building all morning, letting out a sharp gasp as if the heat and flickering lights had started to beat down upon him. He surged from his hiding spot behind the lighting crane, his movements frantic and uncoordinated.

"God, the noise, the heat—" Angel cut himself off with a choked, breathless sound, pressing his hands to his head. He scrambled forward, his movements jerky and blinded, as if he were trying to escape the sound and didn't see Vox standing right in his path.

Angel staggered over to the two men, counting his steps to ensure that his boots would catch on the thick cables snaking across the floor. To anyone watching, it looked like a genuine accident. He went flying forward, a tangle of long, white limbs. Valentino, startled by the sudden outburst and the spider-demon, instinctively flinched back just enough to avoid a direct collision.

That was the opening.

Angel slammed into Vox’s back with enough force to pin the Overlord against the server rack. The impact was jarring, the metallic tang of Vox’s suit pressing into Angel’s chest. In that half-second of tangled limbs, while Valentino was still recovering his footing and Vox was reeling from the physical shock, Angel’s hand darted to the base of Vox's neck.

Click.

The drive slid in perfectly, the cold metal teeth biting deep into the port. For a second, there was a moment of silence. Angel was half-scared that Alastor had sent him a dud, but then Vox’s entire frame locked into a stiff position. The hum of his fans rose to a frantic shriek as his system detected an intrusion. Blue electricity danced around his neck, sparks of light crawling across his screen and down his arms. The air in the studio turned sharp and metallic, the smell of scorched ozone thick enough to taste. The pain emanating from Vox forced him to grip the server rack so hard that the metal casing began to groan under the pressure.

"ARGH! FUCK!" Vox screamed, his screen flashing a blinding, ultraviolet white; the light blinding, it burned the afterimage of his fractured silhouette into the back of Angel’s eyelids. The force of the electrical discharge sent a shockwave through the air, throwing Angel backward into the dark.

"Vox!" Valentino roared, lunging forward, his wings unfurling in a frantic, red-velvet blur.

Angel, sprawled on the floor, saw the drive pulsing a rhythmic, neon-blue against the dark fabric of Vox's suit. Valentino was going to see it the second he reached for him. Panicked, Angel scrambled up and lunged back in, making it look like he was trying to "steady" the man he just nearly crushed.

"Oh shit—Vox! I’m sorry, I didn't—!" Angel yelled, his voice cracking with a mix of real and fake terror. He grabbed the drive, his fingers burning as he felt the raw data humming through the plastic. He yanked it back with a desperate, frantic pull.

Snap.

The drive broke. The plastic tail came away in Angel's hand, leaving the metal teeth of the USB jammed deep in the port, fused into the hardware by the electrical arc.

"Get away from him!" Valentino snarled, his voice laced with an edge of fury. He shoved Angel so hard the spider tumbled backward over a prop couch, hitting the floor with a heavy thud that knocked the wind out of him.

Valentino scrambled toward Vox, gathering the shivering, sparking Overlord into his primary set of arms. "Voxy? Talk to me, baby! What happened?!"

Vox’s screen was a dizzying mess of horizontal lines, flickering between his modern display and a grainy, silver-screen grey. Blue sparks danced across his shoulders, popping with the smell of scorched metal and fabric, and his breath came in short, ragged bursts of static. Valentino should let go of Vox, as his hands and arms were getting small burns from each new spark that arose from Vox, but how could he when he was in this state?

"Vox? Who’s that…I’m Vinc— no…no I’m not him anymore, Val? It's... “ It’s loud, Val," Vox whispered, his voice pitching up into a distorted, static voice before dropping back to his usual tone. “It’s…something is wrong Val…I’m not…”

Vox was not able to continue with whatever his poor, confused mind was trying to piece together. Valentino had had enough; his face contorted with a mixture of terror and possessive rage. He looked at the chaos of the set, the blown-out lights, and the sparking server rack. "That's it! We’re done! Everyone out! The shoot is over!"

He stood up, effortlessly lifting Vox’s lanky frame into his arms as if he were made of nothing. Vox leaned his head against Val’s shoulder, his screen dimming to a faint, rhythmic pulse, his fingers twitching against Val’s chest, trying to grasp onto anything he could, mainly reaching for Val’s fluff.

Before Valentino turned toward the elevators, he stopped. He looked down at Angel, who was still sprawled behind the couch, clutching his singed palm to his chest. Valentino’s two eyes narrowed, pink smoke swirling around him as if trying to create a small protective bubble around him and Vox.

"You," Val hissed, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet simmer. "You, why the fuck did you even come near him for what the hell were you trying to do? All you had to do was sit still, you pathetic whore look pretty. Val wanted to say so much more, but the twitching emanating from Vox snapped him back to what was more important. He tightened his grip on Vox. "I'll deal with you later, Angel. Don't you dare leave this building."

As the elevator doors hissed shut behind the Vees, the studio fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. Angel sat on the floor, his heart racing. He reached into his fluff and felt the broken plastic tail of the shark. It was cold now, but he could still feel the phantom vibration of the data that had surged through it.

He had done it. He had planted the "virus." But as he looked at the sparking mess Vox had become, a cold pit formed in his stomach.

"I hope you know what you're doing', Al whispered to the empty, darkened studio. " 'Cause if you don't... we're both dead."

In the shadows behind the prop couch, a small, old-fashioned radio dial on the floor flickered to life, glowing a faint, sinister red. A low, rhythmic tapping began the sound of a cane hitting a floorboard, timed perfectly with the static heartbeat coming from the penthouse above.

The elevator doors hissed shut, sealing them in a cramped, vibrating silence. The aggression Val had directed at Angel vanished, replaced by a frantic, high-strung desperation. He pulled Vox closer, tucking the Overlord’s heavy head against the crook of his neck, ignoring the blue sparks that bit into his own skin.

"How could I be so stupid!" Val hissed, though this time the venom was directed at himself. "Letting him come down here! And for what? To fix some stupid server?"

His mind spiraled through a thousand regrets, each one sharper than the last. His primary arms wrapped securely around Vox, holding him close. Meanwhile, his second set of arms worked with frantic, blurred speed, dialing Velvette over and over, his fingers nearly cracking the screen.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up..." he muttered, his breath coming in short, ragged hitches.

When the call finally connected to her voicemail for the third time, he gave up on the voice call and began firing off texts with a trembling, violent rhythm.

Val: SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH VOX. I ’M TAKING HIM TO HIS ROOM. Val: I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, VEL. PLEASE MEET ME UP THERE

He shoved the phone back into his pocket, his secondary hand returning to Vox, "Just breathe, Voxy. Well, breathe... keep your fans spinning, okay?" Val’s hand moved to Vox’s chest, feeling the erratic, mechanical thrumming beneath his skin. "Vel is coming. We’re gonna fix this. Please stay here with me.

Vox’s hand suddenly twitched, his fingers digging into Valentino’s bicep with bruising force. A single line of text flickered onto his screen, vibrating in a neon-blue font that didn't belong to his OS:

CONNECTION ESTABLISHED: UPLINK ACTIVE

"Voxy?" Val whispered, his heart sinking. "What’s that? What is that on your screen?"

In the quiet shadows of the radio tower, the air usually hummed with the controlled static of Alastor’s own making. But suddenly, the frequency shifted. A sharp, rhythmic pulse, neon-bright and artificial, tore through the veil of his shadows.

Alastor’s eyes widened, the dials in his pupils spinning erratically. He felt it instantly: the connection. It was an electronic tether snapping into place, vibrating with the frantic energy of Angel’s heartbeat and the cold, metallic resonance of the Overlord on the other end.

Finally. Finally. Angel had actually managed to do this simple task; the connection had been established.

At least, that is what Alastor thought.

His mind flickered back, briefly. Many, many years ago, Vox had gone into excruciating detail about exactly what that USB was supposed to do, explaining its architecture with a feverish, tech-obsessed glint in his eyes. But Alastor had remembered none of it. To him, the digital babble was nothing more than a fly buzzing in his ear; it was not as if Alastor was ever going actually to use it at any point. He had assumed it was a door he could open and close at will.

He was wrong.

Alastor felt his physical form begin to fray at the edges, his shadow stretching thin as if being sucked into a vacuum. The floor beneath him dissolved into a vast, digital void of glowing white lines. He was being dragged across the airwaves, forced through the very medium he usually controlled. The sensation was repulsive, a cold, sterile descent into the guts of a machine he was being pulled into Vox, his essence being funneled toward that singular, sparking service port.

The blinding, ultraviolet white of a flickering screen was replacing the darkness of his own realm.

It was quite disorienting for Alastor; he stumbled quite a bit. It was a combination of how he himself would use his shadow to teleport. He found himself standing in a place that defied the laws of Hell. The digital void didn't stay a void for long. The system began to accommodate itself to Alastor’s presence in the environment, stitching itself together, pulling from the deepest, most stable parts of Vox’s subconscious. It was a defensive reflex, a subconscious attempt to pacify a threat with the only "data" that had never been marked as hostile.

Alastor found himself standing on a street corner that looked hauntingly familiar. It was Pentagram City, or at least a high-definition simulation of it, but it was eerily devoid of the usual screaming masses. There was no smell of ozone or rotting meat here, even the sky was the color of a deep red, starless sky.

As he walked, his cane clicking rhythmically against the simulated pavement, he realized this wasn't just a reconstruction. It was a gallery. Every storefront, every billboard, was a window into a past he had spent decades pretending to forget.

He passed a replica of an old tailor shop. As he looked into the display glass, the reflection didn’t show the street behind him. Instead, the glass rippled like water, revealing a memory in vibrant, saturated color:

The 1950s. A much younger Vox, still with that old CRT head, his eyes bright and devoid of the frantic static of his modern self, was leaning over a drafting table. Alastor stood beside him, a hand resting familiarly on the man’s shoulder as they pored over a blueprint for the first city-wide radio tower. They were genuinely laughing, a shared triumph for two men who looked like they could conquer anything and anyone.

Alastor’s steps slowed, his own reflection flickering with a spiked, blue distortion. He pulled his gaze away, his heart performing a strange, mechanical hitch, only to find the next window of a dimly lit cafe displaying another fragment:

The 1970s. The color was grainier now, more psychedelic and raw, reflecting the era's frantic energy. Vox was wearing a double-breasted suit that would have been hideous if it weren't so expensive, his newly-formed screen-face flickering with a soft, neon pink. He was holding out a small, velvet-lined box. Inside sat a sleek, hand-carved shark USB drive, its casing made of polished obsidian that caught the dim disco lights of the lounge. It was a prototype, a piece of technology far ahead of its time, designed specifically for their shared network. Vox looked nervous, his internal fans whirring at a high-pitched frequency that translated to unfiltered anxiety. Alastor was examining the gift, his long fingers tracing the dorsal fin with a genuine, rare curiosity. For a brief, flickering second, his usual predatory mask softened, replaced by a look of actual... affection.

Each window he passed was a fresh wound. It was during the times they had been "on good terms" when the rivalry hadn't yet soured into hatred. The glass reflected not only the images of what once was; it radiated the feeling of those moments, the warmth, the mutual respect, the shared secrets that had been buried under seventy years of spite.

“Stop this," Alastor breathed, the static in his voice dropping into a low, dangerous hum even as he continued his path of destruction. "Is this what you have been doing? Living in the past? Reliving these horrid memories... watching the lives of two men who are long dead? It’s pathetic, Vox. To curate a museum of these disgusting feelings and call it a sanctuary!

Every time he broke a window, the street around him lost more detail. The cobblestones turned into flat, gray blocks. The sky flickered from a dark reddish hue to a blinding, bright white. He was breathing heavily now. "You think you can hide behind these memories?" Alastor hissed, his grin pulling back so far it looked painful. "You think showing me this will make me go away?

The red-and-black static of Alastor’s aura surged as he reached the final block. His antlers were jagged, crown-like, and his eyes were blown wide with a manic, flickering hunger for destruction. He raised his cane high, ready to bring it down with enough force to shatter the last of these digital delusions.

But as he swung, his arm froze mid-air.

Through the glass of this specific storefront, he didn't see another memory of their past. He saw a figure waving at him.

Alastor blinked, the radio dials in his pupils spinning to focus. Waving? This wasn't the frozen, looping behavior of a background program. The figure moved with a fluid, hauntingly human grace.

Alastor’s gaze snapped upward, searching for the name of the store. His breath hitched a sharp, distorted sound that cut through the digital hum. This wasn't a memory of a contract signing or a shared drink. This was a reconstruction of the Blue Note Lounge.

The bar from that night. The night that ruined everything.

"Vox?" Alastor’s voice was barely a whisper, the static stripped away to reveal a rare, raw vulnerability.

Inside the glass, the figure leaned against a mahogany bar that looked as solid as if it were made of real wood. One moment, the Overlord’s screen was there, cracked and dim; the next, it was Vincent, his boxy CRT screen lit by the amber glow of a whiskey he wasn't actually drinking. He looked at Alastor not with the hatred of the last seventy years, but with a tired, knowing sort of sorrow.

He waved a slow, hesitant gesture of recognition, his fingers flicking forward as if calling him over. The door to the bar creaked open on its own, inviting Alastor into the one memory he had tried the hardest to bury.

Alastor stood on the threshold. The static around his antlers crackled with frantic energy. This place, everything, was just the same, the smell of it all. Vox was able to remember such details perfectly, even after so long. The smoky atmosphere, the smell of it all, how Vox had been able to remember such details perfectly, shrouded the bar, the amber light pooling on the floor like spilled honey.

"Vincent, is that you?" Alastor’s voice was a thin, distorted rasp.

Inside, the figure at the bar didn't move. Vincent, or this version of him, watched Alastor with those tired, watery blue eyes. He looked so small sitting within the bar.

Alastor took a tentative step inside. The moment his heel touched the floorboards, the street behind him vanished. A sudden, heavy darkness swallowed the clinical white sky and the shattered windows of the other memories.

The door slammed shut behind him.

The sound was final, a heavy thud that vibrated through Alastor’s very core. He spun around, his hand clawing at the wood, but there was no handle on the inside. There was no way out of the bar’s windows, which showed only a swirling, electric-blue abyss where the street had been.

"A trap," Alastor hissed, his grin returning as a defensive mask. "A pathetic, digital cage! You think you can keep me here? In this... this rehearsal of a tragedy?"

"It’s only a trap if you still want to leave, Alastor," Vox’s voice drifted from the barstool where, seventy years ago, the first real crack had formed between them. Alastor turned, his shadow looming large and monstrous against the bar’s mirrored back-wall. But as he looked at Vox, his shadow began to shrink, losing its sharp, terrifying edges.

Alastor turned, his shadow looming large and monstrous against the bar’s mirrored back-wall. But as his gaze fell upon the booth in the far corner, his shadow began to shrink, losing its sharp, terrifying edges.

Vox was sitting there; his form began to flicker violently. One second, it was the tall, lean Vincent in a wool sweater, his face lined with fatigue; the next, it was the Present Day Vox, his screen cracked and leaking a dull, grey light. He looked utterly exhausted. He wasn’t wearing the sharp, glowing suit of a CEO; his tie was loosened, his collar undone, and his screen was dimmer, darker, just like when he tried to…He looked like a man who had finally stopped running and was waiting for the end.

“Take a seat, Al, we have a lot to discuss.” Vox pulled up the seat next to him, gesturing for Alastor to take a seat. Alastor continued to stare, his silhouette casting long and jagged against the flickering neon of the simulated bar. The static that usually buzzed around him as a swarm of angry hornets had settled into a low, mournful hum. He looked at the chair Vox had pulled out. It felt like he was on autopilot; the heels of his boots clicked against the wooden floorboards, a sound that felt too heavy for a place that was supposed to be a simulation.

​"A seat," Alastor repeated, his voice stripped of its usual upbeat, transatlantic lilt. He placed his cane across his lap, his gloved fingers tracing the grain of the wood. "How very... hospitable of you, Vox. Though I must say, the decor is a bit more 'morbid nostalgia' than I expected from a man who prides himself on being the future."

​Alastor expected the usual raptor with Vox, yet it never came. Vox didn’t snap back. He didn't even look offended. He just leaned his screen forward, laying it upon the bar top, his eyes staring forward at the multiple rows of bottles that lined the bar top.

​"Heh," Vox rasped, his voice a low, dry frequency. "And you said I was the one who was obsessive?"He gestured vaguely toward the middle of the bartop, where the light blue shark USB lay, which was the very thing Alastor had used to tear his way in here.

“I can’t believe you even hung on to the little shark I gave you all those years ago, never took you to be the sentimental one," Vox murmured, a ghost of a smirk pulling at the corner of his screen. "Never expected you to go this far, honestly. I thought you’d have tossed it the night we parted ways…He turned his head to look at Alastor, his face a beautiful mess of cracked glass and deep lines around his eyes.

​"So, let's discuss it. Why did you come all the way here, Alastor?

Alastor’s hand hovered over the little blue shark, his claws trembling just enough to catch the light. The questions he had been choking on finally forced their way through, but they came out fractured, stripped of their usual theatrical charm.

Alastor’s mind raced with questions as he sat next to Vox. How long had he been here? Did I really push you to go this far? Were you really going to vanish if I hadn't barged in? The thoughts were like thorns, drawing blood from his pride.

"Before we discuss anything," Alastor rasped, his eyes fixed on the small shark rather than the man, "I want to know if you are... the real Vox? My Vox? Are you truly in there? Or am I talking to another programmed puppet?"

He finally looked up, his crimson pupils narrowed into sharp pinpricks. "Because the thing in the tower... it has your face. It has your voice. But it looks at me and sees a blank screen. It doesn't remember me."

Vox let out a long, shuddering breath that glitched into a high-pitched hum. He leaned forward, his form flickering once again to his old CRT head, Vincent becoming so clear it was painful to look at.

"I'm here, Al," Vox whispered, his voice steady for the first time. "Every miserable, obsessed, broken bit of me is right here in this chair.”

The true Vox had been here the whole time, watching the world through his own eyes like a prisoner behind a one-way mirror. Alastor felt two conflicting emotions swirling within him. He felt a sense of relief wash over him; his shoulders, which were hiked up, slowly lowered themselves. Yet the next emotion to follow was a deep, sharp sorrow. If this was indeed his Vox, why did it still feel like he was talking to some version of him that felt hollowed out?

“So you have just been here, doing what exactly? Reliving the glory days?" Alastor’s voice spiked into a harsh, jagged frequency, his shadow lunging across the floor to loom over Vox’s chair. "How pathetic! You buried yourself so deep within your own self, and for what, Vox? So that you could see me chase you in here? You wish to humiliate me further than you already have these past months?"

Vox just swirled the amber liquid in his glass, watching the way the digital ice cubes refused to melt.“Well... technically, that wasn’t me who was doing all that, Al," Vox said with a hollow, glitching chuckle. "Also, hey, I don’t think Outer Me is doing too badly for himself, honestly. He’s efficient. He’s stable. He doesn't freak out every time you are nearby. Isn’t this a win-win for you and me?”

"A win-win?" Alastor repeated, “Is that what you think this is? Stop it!" Alastor roared, the radio dials in his eyes spinning into frantic, crimson blurs. "Stop with these whims and jokes! You know exactly what I mean! You’ve turned yourself into a ghost before you’re even dead!"

Alastor paced the length of the small enclosed space of the bar, his movements frantic and jumpy as if he was trying to stop the progress of something that was already set into motion a long time ago.

"This is a tantrum!” Alastor hissed, his voice dropping into a desperate, pleading hum. "A grand, theatrical tantrum! You’ll wake up, you have to wake up—you aren’t allowed to end it all! I will not allow it! You think you’re being clever, don't you? Tucking yourself away in this... this shrine to a decade that doesn't exist anymore!"

Alastor leaned down, his face inches from Vox’s screen, his grin a jagged, trembling line of pure fury. "You’re a coward, Vox! You’re hiding in the empty void because you can’t handle the mere presence of me, so you went ahead and lobotomized your own self! Answer me! Fight me! Scream at me! Do something other than sit there!"

When Vox remained silent, Alastor slammed his hand onto the table, his claws gouging deep into the mahogany wood. "Why?" his voice spiked into a harsh frequency that shook the glasses on the bar. "Why in God’s name did you decide to do all of this? Who truly benefits?! You’ve turned your empire into a hollow shell and yourself into a ghost! It looks like you’ve surrendered the board!"

Vox’s screen flickered a strobe-light effect of white static violently before he finally snapped.

"I did!" Vox roared, springing to his feet so fast his chair toppled over. "I benefit, you arrogant prick!"

He towered over Alastor, "It was good for me! And it was good for the Vees! Do you have any idea what it’s like to wake up every morning, and you are the first thought that floats into my mind? To have this obsessive need to check every camera and monitor to see where you will pop up, Vox grabbed the edge of the table, his knuckles white. "The Vees needed a leader who actually put them first. By deleting 'us,' I gave them a Vox that is actually functional!

With a flick of his wrist, a live feed manifested in the air between them. It showed the Vees' private quarters. Valentino was pacing with genuine concern; Velvette was gently wiping a smudge off the face of the "Blank Vox,” the one with the soft, blue default screen, her expression softer than Alastor had ever seen it.

"Look at them, Alastor. Look at her. She’s not walking on eggshells anymore. She doesn’t have to worry about me throwing a tantrum because a radio signal spiked in Cannibal Town. And Val... he’s finally able to have someone who can show him love." Vox let out a choked, glitching sob. "Why should I go back and ruin that? Why should I drag that miserable, obsessed 'Overlord' back into their lives so that I can continue this pathetic war with you?"

He grabbed Alastor’s arm, his grip surprisingly strong. "I was so tired, Alastor. I was poisoning everything I touched, and I almost killed the two people who actually give a shit about me. Though there is one thing you were right about, Alastor, heh. What was it you said? That I was 'broken from the start'?"

The words hung in the air, heavier than the void. Alastor’s shadow shivered. He remembered saying it as a cruel, dismissive remark meant to inflict the maximum amount of pain on someone whose heart was so fragile.

"Well... look at me now," Vox whispered, his voice dropping into a hollow, mechanical drone. "You were right. You are always right. I was broken. I am broken. I spent all this time desperately trying to have you see me, and for what there is no use when all the cracks lead back to you. They’re happy, Alastor! For the first time in an eternity, the air in that tower isn't thick with my bitterness!"

Alastor’s hands, usually so steady, began to tremble violently. “You would truly rather erase your soul, erase us to give them a peaceful lie?" "Was this not a form of suicide?" he hissed, his voice cracking with a rare, unscripted fear. "Digital suicide?”

"IT'S NOT A LIE IF THEY'RE HAPPY!" Vox screamed, the feedback from his voice shattering the remaining glasses on the bar.

The silence that followed Vox’s scream was deafening. The live feed of the Tower flickered in the air, a cruel window into a world that had already moved on from the man Alastor was currently clutching.

"You're not going back, are you?"

Alastor’s voice was stripped of its theatrical vibrato, sounding thin and reedy. The dials in his eyes were still, the red light fading into a dull, panicked rose. He looked at the "Blank Vox" on the screen, then back to the flickering Vincent in front of him.

"You... you fool," Alastor hissed, his shadows curling protectively around his legs. "You can’t do this! "You think you’re permitted to walk away simply?

He began to pace, back and forth, his mind was racing, grasping for any string he could pull to snap Vox out of this trance. Alastor stopped, pointing a clawed finger at the live feed of the Tower.

"The moment I leave this digital prison, I will walk straight into your pathetic tower. I will tell your 'family' I will tell Valentino and Velvette that the creature wearing your face is a hollowed-out lie! I will tear down the illusion of their 'happy leader' until they realize they are mourning a corpse while a fake runs the company!"

He leaned closer to Vox, his grin returning, but it was broken and desperate. "They won't love the 'New You' once they know he’s a imposter! They’ll hate him for not being you. Is that what you want? "They won't even be able to grieve you, you fool! How can they cry for a dead man when a puppet is still wearing his skin? They’ll learn to loathe the sight of your face because it isn't you anymore!"

Vox didn’t even bother to glance at Alastor; he just watched the ice in his glass melt. "They already know I'm not 'me,' Al. They don't care. They're just happy the screaming stopped."

The threat fell flat, leaving Alastor standing in a silence so thick he felt he might drown in it." He scrambled for the one thing he had spent decades refusing to give.

"A partnership," Alastor whispered. The word felt like glass in his throat. "A true partnership, Vox. Like you wanted... as you asked for all those years ago, I will give you the one thing I denied you. We can run this city together. Just don't go where I can't follow."

He looked at Vox with wide, searching eyes, his entire existence hanging on the hope that his pride was a high enough price to pay. He saw Vox’s translucent hand twitch, but the other man still didn't look up. The offer Alastor thought was his greatest prize was met with indifference that quickly made the small hope within him fade.

Alastor felt the walls of the lounge closing in, the ozone smell of the void growing stronger. He was running out of things to give. Finally, he stopped. He reached towards Vox, his hand trembling.

"You’ve always wanted to know, haven't you? How a mere mortal arrived in Hell with the power to topple Overlords on his first night?" Alastor’s grin was gone, replaced by a hollow, bitter twist of his lips. "You called me 'inspiring.' You thought I was some pure, ancient force."

He let out a dry, rattling laugh. "I sold it, Vincent. My soul. I bartered it away while I was still drawing breath in New Orleans to ensure I’d never be small again. All those years I called you pathetic for relying on 'technology' and 'audiences' for power... I was just as much a parasite as anyone else.

He leaned in, his eyes wide and pleading, offering the confession like a peace treaty. "We’re the same, Vox. Do you see? You don't have to be 'less' than me. We’re both just puppets on different strings. Stay... and we can be broken together."

Vox finally looked up. His screen was a mess of cracks, but his eyes were clearer and sharper than Alastor had seen them in years. He looked at the man who’d spent seven decades calling him a "weakling" for needing the others to be strong.

"So that’s the secret," Vox whispered. A dry, glitching chuckle escaped him. "All that talk about 'old-fashioned grit,' Al? All those lectures on integrity?"

Vox leaned back, the steady, flickering blue light of his screen washing over Alastor’s trembling frame.

"All this time," Vox murmured, his voice layering into a soft, distorted harmony. "You were just one big hypocrite, Al. I almost find it funny now how much I actually admired you. All that talk about standards and being 'above it all,' and you were lying to my face the whole time." Vox let out a short, hollow laugh.

"But hey, we’re in Hell, right? You do what you have to do to get ahead. It’s not like I was any better with how I treated my own family—Val, Velvette... ha, even you."

He tilted his screen, watching the way Alastor’s eyes darted, looking for any jagged edge to pull him back.

"The only difference is, I’m finally ready to let go, but you? You’re still standing there, clutching at my sleeve because you're terrified of being the only one left in the room. You don't want 'me' back, Alastor. You don't want to be alone with yourself.

The silence that followed was a dead frequency, more agonizing than any scream.

"I’m so tired, Alastor," Vox spoke. His voice was a thin, flickering rasp—a heartbreaking dissonance of the man and the machine. "After everything... after seventy years of clawing at each other’s throats... I’m just done."

Vox stepped back farther, his form trailing static like smoke as he moved away from the mahogany bar. Behind him, the lounge was failing; the floorboards were turning into a gray, featureless void where bright white light sprouted through the cracks. He paused at the edge of the glow, his digital eyes softening into something almost human as he looked back one last time.

"Aren’t you tired also, Alastor? Can't we finally put this little dance to bed? I’m staying here," Vox whispered, his voice becoming a dull, rhythmic hum. He turned away, his silhouette beginning to blur into the white noise of the core. "Please... just leave."

Leave? Vox wanted him to leave? After seventy years of haunting one another, after all those nights defined by the distant, buzzing hum of Vox’s frequency, he thought he could... dismiss him?

Alastor’s shadow erupted. It was a convulsing mass of ink-black limbs that tore through the lounge’s floorboards, shredding the glowing circuitry beneath.

He lunged.

His clawed hand gripped his fingers tightly, hooking deep into Vox’s collar with a desperate feeling that if he let go, he would lose him forever. Yet he was met with a horrible burning sensation as if he had plunged his hand into a furnace made of needles, every nerve ending in his arm screaming as if Alastor’s very touch to Vox was a serrated blade dragging across an open nerve. He didn't let go. He only gripped the fabric tighter, his teeth bared in a grin that grew more stretched and painful as the moments passed. He planted his hooves and pulled, but the figure was weightless. Alastor’s snarl deepened; he realized he couldn't physically drag him because Vox was unwilling to exist. The memories that gave his soul weight were locked away, buried behind a firewall Alastor couldn't breach.

If he couldn't pull the memories out of Vox, he would force his own in.

He plunged his other hand directly into Vox’s chest.

The scream that tore from Vox was the sound of a thousand speakers blowing out at once. As Alastor’s claws sank past the flickering fabric of the vest and into the center of the "Vincent" persona, the reality of the bar finally shattered. Mahogany turned to jagged glass; whiskey bottles exploded into clouds of binary. Under the sheer, agonizing pressure of Alastor’s hand shoving into his chest, Vox’s knees gave out.

They went down together.

"You are not staying here!" Alastor roared, his voice layering into a demonic, multi-tonal chord. He closed his eyes, searching for the specific, shared resonance they had once held open for one another lifetimes ago.

But it had been too long.

The frequency was buried under decades of unresolved feelings of spite, sorrow, and the longing for something lost to time. Alastor, however, did find it yet; it wasn’t a clean synchronization; it was a fractured mess, a horrible, high-pitched whine started, followed by sharp spikes in feedback, looping on constant. Pushing past it all, he smashed his own memories directly into Vox’s body.

Images of them together flashed through the void like lightning, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they tore through rival Overlords, having each other's backs when the streets of Hell ran red. He forced in the memories of those late-night chats that would bleed into the early morning, the rare, quiet moments where Vox would lean in, eyes bright with excitement, explaining another one of his grand, world-changing plans to a captive Alastor.

He didn't stop at the good moments. He shoved the future in, too, the weight of their own spectacular failures, the jagged vitriol of their fights, and the way they had spent decades trying to unmake one another. Every shared breath and every traded blow flickered in and out of existence like a dying bulb, a chaotic strobe light of seventy years of obsession.

"Stop!" Vox shrieked, his voice echoing from every corner of the collapsing room, sounding like a speaker tearing itself to pieces. "You’re... you’re splintering my mind! You’re breaking me!”

Alastor didn't stop. He couldn't. He was beyond reason, driven by a manic terror that if he let go now, there would be nothing left to hold. He broadcast his own heart, trying to force the drifting soul to take the shape of the man he used to be. Vox’s eyes began to leak a thick, black, viscous sludge that bubbled from his tear ducts as his system tried to purge the "foreign" soul Alastor was shoving inside him. His screen began to splinter, revealing the white-hot light of an overloaded processor beneath the skin. The scream coming from Vox’s throat was the sound of a soul being shredded.

Alastor looked at his hands, which were now stained with that same black liquid leaking from Vox’s face. It felt so… cold. He realized, with a sickening jolt, that he had reached the second hurdle. Vox hadn't just forgotten; he had built a psychological firewall designed to self-destruct if anyone tried to force him to remember. By trying to "save" the man he knew, Alastor was effectively deleting what was left of his sanity.

"No... no, no, no, no," Alastor whispered, the word repeating like a skipping record. His voice was a desperate, thin whine. "No, this isn't what I want. Vox, look at me. Look at me!"

He reached out with his other hand to cup the side of the flickering, half-digital face. His fingers trembled, the claws scraping against the cold, metal casing.

"I just... I want you to come back," he stammered, his eyes wide and frantic, the red dials spinning out of control. "Just come back. We... we could start over, right? I mean, this isn't the first spat we’ve gotten into. This is just... It’s just another argument, Vox! It’s not the end! It can't be!"A sob, sharp with static, tore through Alastor’s throat.

"You can't do this. Please," Alastor choked out, his manic grin finally, truly breaking the corners of his mouth, drooping into a line of pure, raw agony. "I can't do this. I can't go back there alone. I can't be the only one who remembers! If you stay here... if you die in here... then I’m the only one left.

The Radio Demon, the most feared entity in the Pentagram, was weeping.

He buried his face in the flickering fabric of Vox’s vest, his shoulders shaking."Isn't this what you always wanted, Vox?" Alastor pleaded into the cloth, his voice cracking into a high, pathetic frequency. "I'm finally saying it! I'm saying the words! I need you!

The "Real" Vox—the version caught between Vincent. He watched Alastor’s breakdown with a quiet, hollowed-out expression. There was no triumph in his eyes, only a deep, echoing pity.

"You're the only one, Al," Vox whispered, his voice steady while Alastor’s was a wreck. "You're the only one who still thinks there’s a 'me' worth saving. But look at this place. Look at what you’re holding."

Vox gestured to the void around them, which was now gray and silent, the neon lights fading into the dark. The inner world of Vox’s mind began to fracture, the white noise rising like a tide. Vox looked up at the Radio Demon, the man who had been his shadow, his rival, and his obsession for a lifetime, now reduced to a trembling wreck. At one point in his life, Vox would have been ecstatic. He would have been overjoyed at the fact that he was finally able to reduce Alastor to such a state; he would have broadcast this moment to every screen in Hell, savoring the sound of that static-laced sobbing as the ultimate trophy.

Yet now, it all felt meaningless.

"I can't go back, Al..." Vox whispered, his image flickering so violently that for a moment, he was nothing but a silhouette of fuzzy static. "And I won't. No matter how much you beg. The Tower, the Vees...

"Please," Alastor rasped, his voice a jagged, broken frequency. "Please, Vox..."

Vox reached up, his fingers lifting Alastor’s chin. The Radio Demon’s eyes were wide, the dials shattered, leaking the dark ink of his essence. The sight of Alastor, the most arrogant creature in Hell, utterly destroyed by the prospect of a world without him, did something to Vox’s chest.

"How about this then, Al?" Vox’s voice suddenly smoothed out, losing its digital edge. It was the voice of a once-hopeful overlord—the voice of the man who once pressed a shark-shaped drive into a friend's palm.

"How about we make a deal?"

Alastor froze. The word deal hummed through the void, a frequency more powerful than any glitch.

"A... deal?" Alastor breathed, his lungs hitching.

Alastor froze. He could feel the heat of Vox’s hand, even as the rest of the world turned to ice.

"The outer world is going to forget you. The version of me that wakes up in that bed... he won't know your name. He won't know our history. To him, you’ll be another face on a screen," Vox murmured, his eyes glowing. "But I can keep you here within my inner heart where no one, not Val, not Velvette, not even the 'New Vox' can ever touch you."

Alastor’s breath hitched. "What are you saying?"

"Give me your soul, Alastor," Vox whispered, his voice a seductive, digital caress that seemed to vibrate from the very air around them. “I’ll house you in the center of my core. Forever. Even when I don't remember who you are... my heart will still belong to you. We’ll be intertwined, our souls always within each other.

Alastor looked at the vanishing man. He looked at the looming deletion, the gray void swallowing the last of the bar.

His mind shrieked in protest. For a century, he had guarded his soul with a ferocity that made him the most feared entity in the Pentagram. To hand it over now, after just getting it back, would be simply foolish, if not downright idiotic. Yet he realized with a sickening, frantic clarity, he would be sent back to a place where no one truly saw him. It was something he could not take again; all those months alone were nothing but pain.

"Deal," Alastor choked out. The word brought out a sob of relief.

He lunged forward, his hand snapping into Vox's flickering palm.

As their hands met, the "handshake" didn't emit a normal spark; soul deals normally did, but instead, it created a vacuum. A terrifying, silent pressure erupted from the point of contact of their hands. Alastor felt his entire being his shadows, his radio-static, being pulled forward, while simultaneously, a surge of cold, neon-blue energy poured from Vox into his own chest.

They were threading their essences through one another, tearing away halves of themselves to make room for the other. Alastor felt his soul being compressed and funneled into the glowing blue core of Vox’s chest, while Vox’s digital consciousness anchored itself into the deep, red shadows of Alastor's heart.

The Radio Demon didn't scream as he was pulled into the dark; he only tightened his grip on Vox's hand, his eyes finally closing as he let himself be swallowed.

In the center of the collapsing void, there was a final, blinding flash, a violent collision of blood-red and neon-blue. Then, the lounge vanished. The static died. There was only the quiet, rhythmic hum of two broken things becoming one.

[ficsthatiwritesometimes]

Perfectly Content to Be Crushed by You

By: Bone_Axe

Summary:

Under the hazy influence of the drinks, Vincent's deepest insecurities come rushing to the surface; he's too large, too heavy, crushing the stag demon beneath him. But Alastor begs to differ, and he’s prepared to use the entire night to show Vincent exactly how loved his body truly is.

Notes:

HELLLO!!! Oh, how excited I am for you guys to read this! I just knew that for the free day, I HAD to do something for Chubby Vox. How could I not?! This idea actually sparked from reading CandySignal666's answer to an anon question on their Tumblr! AlVoxweek 2026 Day 7: Free Day Please enjoy some Chubby Vox!!

Link to AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86276076

m earlier entirely dead and buried. He stops trying to lift himself with his arms and instead tries to awkwardly slide sideways, anything to take the burden off Alastor's knees. "I'm gonna crush you. I’m too heavy for this, Al, just let me—"

A low, resonant sound cuts through his frantic muttering—the distinct, humming frequency vibrating directly from Alastor’s chest.

"Vincent."

Alastor’s voice is low and velvety, stripped of the usual theatrical showmanship. It’s eerily quiet.

Vincent freezes, his breath catching in his throat. He is forced to meet that gaze again, but the unreadable stare from before has finally shifted. The wide, dark pupils are now intensely focused, tracking the frantic, mortified twist of Vincent's mouth. Slowly, Alastor’s other hand rises. Vincent braces for a push, a violent shove to the floor, but instead, Alastor’s palm settles flat against the small of his back, warm, solid, and comforting.

"You are rambling," Alastor murmurs, his grin softening just a fraction around the edges, though his eyes remain intensely focused. "And you are making an awful lot of noise over absolutely nothing."

"I'm not—I'm heavy, Alastor, I know I am," Vincent insists, his voice dropping to a raw, miserable whisper. He hates how vulnerable he sounds, hates the alcohol for stripping away his filters, but the self-loathing is overflowing. "I've gained weight. A lot of it. I'm practically suffocating you."

Alastor’s tilt of the head is slow, almost feline. The hand on Vincent's hip gives a deliberate, firm squeeze. This solid, possessive hold acknowledges every single inch of him as if to say indirectly that everything that is a part of Vincent is loved and cared for deeply, no matter how small or big.

"Suffocating?" Alastor echoes, a faint, genuine amusement coloring his tone, though the static in his voice hums with something heavy and entirely deliberate. "My dear, if I were displeased, you would be on the floor. Do you truly think so little of my strength? Or," he adds, his gaze dropping for a fraction of a second to where Vincent's thighs are bracketed around him, "Do you think so little of my preferences?"The word strikes Vincent to his core, but through the heavy fog of the liquor and the suffocating weight of his own self-loathing, it doesn’t register as comfort. It registers as a lie—a cruel joke.

 A sudden, volatile flare of anger surges up in his chest, hot and sharp enough to temporarily burn right through his shame.

Preferences?

"Don't do that," Vincent snaps, his voice cracking, thick with a mix of intoxication and raw, ugly bitterness. He stops trying to pull away and instead glares down at Alastor, his chest heaving. "Don't sit there and mock me. What the hell do you mean, preferences?"

Alastor doesn’t flinch at the sudden spike of aggression. His grin remains fixed, but his eyes narrow slightly, the dark pupils tracking the sharp, erratic rise and fall of Vincent’s chest. The radio static humming between them pitches down into a low, attentive drone.

"Who would want this?" Vincent demands, his hands shaking where they press against the armrests. The filter is entirely gone now, dissolved by the alcohol, leaving nothing but the raw, bleeding truth of his own mind. "Look at me! I'm huge, Alastor! I've gotten soft, I've gotten heavy—there's just... blubber everywhere. I'm a slob. I look disgusting, I feel disgusting, and you're sitting here acting like it’s some choice?"

The self-destructive thoughts roar in his ears, a deafening chorus telling him exactly how pathetic he looks right now—wasted, sprawling, and overflowing out of his own clothes in the lap of an overlord who is nothing, but pristine lines and terrifying perfection. He expects Alastor to snap. He expects the demon to get tired of the pathetic display, to flash his eyes like radio dials and tear him apart for daring to raise his voice.

Instead, the grip on Vincent’s waist tightens. Hard.

It’s enough to cut off his breath, the long, clawed fingers digging directly into the soft give of his hip, refusing to let him shrink away or hide.

"Are you quite finished?" Alastor asks.

His voice hasn’t risen. If anything, it has dropped into a quiet, radio-filter-smooth purr that vibrates right through the upholstery, right through Vincent's own thighs. The sheer, effortless strength in that single hand is a stark reminder that Alastor isn't being crushed; he isn't even straining himself in the slightest.

Slowly, the hand on Vincent’s back slides upward, tracking the broad line of his spine until Alastor’s fingers tangle firmly into the nape of Vincent’s neck. He applies just enough pressure to force Vincent to lean down, bringing their faces inches apart. The smell of copper, moss, and a faint hint of high-end rye washes over Vincent's senses.

"You call yourself a slob," Alastor murmurs, his eyes wide, dark, and devoid of the disgust Vincent is so entirely certain should be there. Instead, there is an intense hunger in them—something primal and intensely focused. "You speak as if I am a creature of modern, fragile tastes, Vincent. Do you truly believe I find a lack of substance appealing?"

Alastor’s grin stretches a fraction wider, sharp teeth glinting in the dim light of the room.

"I have never had any interest in things that are easily broken," the Radio Demon whispers, his voice dropping into a low, static-laced rumble that makes Vincent’s entire body shiver. "I like that you take up space. I like the weight of you. And I suggest you stop insulting what belongs in my lap before I have to find a more... thorough way to quiet you."

The warning in Alastor’s voice rumbles straight through Vincent’s chest, leaving a stunned, breathless silence in its wake. The anger that had flared up so sharply begins to dissolve, replaced by a dizzying, overwhelming rush of heat as the reality of Alastor’s words sinks through the alcohol.

Alastor doesn’t wait for a verbal response. The hand at the nape of Vincent’s neck relaxes, sliding slowly down the curve of his shoulder to join the other at his waist.

Vincent gasps, a sharp, hitching sound, as Alastor’s clawed fingers find the soft fullness of his love handles. Alastor squeezes, his grip firm and unhurried, kneading the plush flesh as if marking his territory. There is no hesitation, no hint of the repulsion Vincent had been bracing for. Instead, Alastor’s touch carries a quiet, intense fascination, laden with an uncharacteristic heat.

"Al..." Vincent breathes, his head spinning.

From his hip, one of Alastor's hands slides further down, tracking the thick curve of Vincent's thigh. The fabric of Vincent’s trousers does nothing to hide the sheer size of his legs, bracketed tightly around Alastor’s narrow hips. Alastor’s fingers dig into the heavy, soft muscle with a possessive, slow burn that makes Vincent’s knees go weak—even sitting down.

Vincent’s mind is still trying to reject it, still trying to whisper that he’s too big, too soft, but Alastor’s actions are entirely contradictory. The Overlord’s gaze follows his own hands, his dark eyes wide and fixed on the way Vincent’s plush body spills over his sharp frame.

Then, that same hand glides all the way up the side of Vincent’s torso, flattening firmly against his chest. His long fingers slide over the soft, heavy curve—the fullness there that Vincent usually tries to hide beneath loose layers. Alastor presses his palm flat against the soft weight, feeling the frantic, erratic thudding of Vincent’s heart underneath. A low, appreciative hum rattles in Alastor’s throat, a sound of pure satisfaction.

Then, slowly, Alastor’s hand slides lower.

His palm glides down the center of Vincent’s chest, tracing the line of his ribs until it settles squarely over his stomach. The sheer volume of liquor Vincent has consumed tonight has left his belly soft and rounded out, pushing prominently against the fabric of his shirt. It is heavy, plush, and completely exposed right in Alastor's lap.

Vincent instinctively tries to suck his stomach in, his face burning with a sudden spike of mortification. "Don't—Al, don't look at that, it's—"

"A-ah," Alastor murmurs, a sharp, scolding click of his tongue cutting him off. The hand on Vincent's belly presses down firmly, completely overriding the defensive contraction and forcing the muscle to relax. Alastor’s long fingers spread wide, molding perfectly to the full, soft slope of his stomach where it rests heavy against Alastor’s own thighs. "What did I say about insulting what is mine?"

Alastor leans forward, tilting his head up until his lips are brushing right against the side of Vincent's monitor, right where his audio receptors catch every tremble of static. His breath is hot, carrying the scent of rye and iron, and his voice drops into a dark, unfiltered purr.

"You are magnificent like this," Alastor whispers, his hand giving a deep, possessive squeeze to Vincent’s soft belly. "So beautifully plush and substantial... You were made to be held down like this."

A heavy, aching heat pools low in Vincent’s gut at the words. The sheer contrast between them—Alastor’s lean, terrifyingly strong frame, his own big, soft, ample body—collides in a wave of raw desire. Alastor isn't just tolerating him; he is ready to devour him.

Vincent’s hands slip from the armrests, his fingers tangling tightly into the fabric of Alastor’s red coat. He finally surrenders, leaning his full weight down into Alastor, no longer trying to hold himself back as his soft stomach presses entirely against Alastor’s torso.

"Alastor," Vincent groans, the alcohol making his voice raspy and desperate. "Please."

Alastor’s grin stretches into something dark, sharp, and intensely hungry. The radio static in the room swells into a loud, roaring crescendo of jazz and heavy feedback, mirroring the sudden, violent spike of tension between them.

"Quiet now, darling," Alastor murmurs against his lips.

With an effortless surge of strength, Alastor’s hands grip Vincent’s plush hips, guiding him as Alastor stands completely up from the chair. He presses Vincent backward, his mouth crashing into Vincent’s in a bruising, possessive kiss that tears away the last remnants of doubt as they give in entirely to the heat.

The intense contact breaks with a sharp gasp, leaving Vincent’s head spinning as Alastor’s deceptive power easily rules the space between them. In one fluid, unyielding motion, Alastor bears Vincent down against the plush cushions of the nearby sofa, following him all the way down until he is hovering completely over Vincent’s broad, substantial frame.

The heat in the room felt thick, heavy with the scent of rye whiskey and the low, intoxicating hum of Alastor’s radio static. Vincent lay back, his chest heaving, his vision still slightly blurred by the liquor. That dark, possessive gaze entirely swallowed up the lingering sting of his earlier self-doubt; Alastor was looming directly down at him.

Alastor’s hands were unbuttoning Vincent’s shirt with a frantic sort of precision, parting the fabric to expose what Vincent had tried so hard to hide fully. Vincent’s belly spilled out, round and soft, noticeably full and heavy from the alcohol he’d been sinking all night. It rose and fell with his shallow breathing—a prominent, plush curve that looked massive against the dark upholstery of the sofa.

Vincent instinctively tensed, a flush rising to his cheeks, but Alastor let out a low, warning growl through his grin.

"Relax for me, Vincent," Alastor murmured, his voice a smooth, low-register purr.

Alastor brought both hands down, his palms settling flat against the broad expanse of Vincent’s stomach. He began to rub, his long, slender fingers spreading wide to map out the sheer fullness of him. The contrast was stark—Alastor’s sharp, clawed hands sinking deeply into the soft flesh. Alastor smoothed his hands upward, gathering the plush weight of Vincent's love handles and squeezing firmly, before sliding back down over the soft, rounded slope of his middle.

A soft, needy groan escaped Vincent’s throat. The warmth of Alastor’s hands felt incredible against his skin, soothing the tight, full ache in his stomach.

Alastor leaned lower, his eyes wide and fixed on his handiwork. Slowly, he hooked a long, clawed finger right into the deep indent of Vincent’s navel. Vincent shuddered, his entire frame shaking as Alastor began to playfully swirl his finger in the deep recess, tracing the sensitive skin before pressing his thumb firmly into the center of his soft belly, making it dip and give beneath the pressure.

"Ah—Alastor, please," Vincent gasped, his hands blindly reaching up to grip Alastor’s upper arms, his fingers digging into the lean muscle there. The deep, direct stimulation sent a sharp shockwave of heat straight down to his groin. "Look at you," Alastor whispered, his grin stretching wide, showing off a glint of sharp teeth. He leaned his weight down, pressing his own chest directly against Vincent’s soft, rounded stomach, deliberately kneading the plush flesh beneath him. "So beautifully full. So soft for me."

Alastor didn't make him wait any longer. Shifting down, he efficiently dealt with the rest of their clothing, his movements sharp and purposeful. He parted Vincent’s thick, heavy thighs, positioning himself between them. Even now, Vincent could feel the sheer mass of his own legs bracketing Alastor's narrow waist, a vivid reminder of how much space he took up—but Alastor only looked hungrier for it.

With a firm grip on Vincent's plush hips, Alastor pushed forward, entering him in one slow, heavy stroke. Vincent’s head snapped back against the cushion, a loud cry echoing through the room. The static in the air spiked, a loud crescendo of overlapping frequencies that mirrored the overwhelming rush of pleasure. It felt incredibly tight—a deep, full friction that made Vincent’s hips subconsciously roll up to meet him.

Alastor set a deliberate, unhurried pace, each thrust deep and heavy. With every forward motion, Alastor’s lower abdomen pressed firmly against the underside of Vincent’s big, soft belly, lifting and shifting the plush weight. Alastor’s hand returned to Vincent's stomach, his palm pressing flat over his navel, rubbing in heavy, circular motions as he moved inside him. The dual sensation—the deep, stretching fullness from below and the firm, possessive kneading of his soft middle—completely overloaded Vincent's buzzed brain.

"You're... you're too good, Al," Vincent slurred, tears of pleasure pricking the corners of his eyes. He let his body go entirely soft, sinking into the sofa, completely surrendering his heavy frame to the Radio Demon's rhythm.

"Stay right here under me, darling," Alastor rasped, his breath hot and ragged against Vincent’s neck as the pace began to quicken. His claws dug deep into Vincent’s plush sides, anchoring them both as the heat in the room reached a boiling point.

Then, the thick friction of their bodies and the intense hum of static in the room suddenly paused. Alastor stopped his movements, though he remained buried deep inside Vincent. He looked down, his dark eyes taking in the way Vincent was still holding his breath, his broad shoulders tense against the sofa cushions, his large, soft belly still faintly trembling with a lingering, anxious tightness.

Even in the heat of the moment, the alcohol couldn't entirely drown out Vincent's stubborn, deep-seated doubt. He still looked like he expected to break something, or as if he were waiting for the illusion to shatter.

Alastor let out a low, soft click of his tongue. "Still fighting your own mind, I see," he murmured, his tone a mix of fond amusement and rare, quiet gravity.

Before Vincent could stammer out an apology, Alastor’s hands moved to his plush hips. With a sudden, effortless surge of strength that made Vincent’s head spin, Alastor gripped him securely and shifted. Vincent gasped as the world tilted; Alastor braced his weight, smoothly rolling them over until Alastor was flat on his back against the sofa, and Vincent was sitting completely upright on top of him.

The sudden shift left Vincent entirely exposed. Sitting straddled over Alastor's lap, his massive thighs draped heavily over the Radio Demon's slight frame. At the same time, his big, soft belly—fully rounded and relaxed from the liquor—rested prominently against Alastor’s lean torso.

Panic flared in Vincent's chest. He instantly tried to lift his weight, bracing his hands on the back of the sofa to keep from putting his full bulk down. "Al, wait—no, this is worse," Vincent stammered, his voice thick and frantic. "I’m putting everything on you now. I’m going to crush you, seriously, let me—"

"Vincent."

Alastor’s hands reached up, his long, clawed fingers wrapping firmly around Vincent’s plush waist. With a deliberate, firm tug, he pulled Vincent down, forcing him to drop his hips completely. Vincent sank all the way onto him, their bodies connecting deeply again with a breathless gasp.

"Look at me," Alastor commanded softly.

Vincent looked down, his vision blurred, his heart hammering against his ribs. Alastor lay beneath him, perfectly relaxed. There was no strain in his features, no hitch in his breathing from bearing Vincent's entire bulk. His hands stayed anchored on Vincent’s soft love handles, his thumbs stroking the skin.

"Do I look crushed to you?" Alastor asked, his voice a low, resonant purr that vibrated directly up through Vincent’s thighs. "Do I appear fragile? I am an Overlord of Hell, my dear. I can hold the weight of your insecurities, and I can certainly hold the magnificent weight of you."

Alastor’s hands slid forward, his large, warm palms flattening completely against the full, rounded curve of Vincent’s stomach. He rubbed the plush flesh, smoothing his hands over the soft give of his belly, deliberately tracing the deep indent of his navel with a possessive, rhythmic pressure that made Vincent’s hips twitch involuntarily.

"I want to feel every single pound of you," Alastor whispered, his dark eyes wide, locked onto Vincent’s face with an intense, unyielding hunger. "I want you to take up all the space you desire. Now, move for me, darling. Ride me, and feel just how well I can take you."

The absolute certainty in Alastor’s voice, combined with the firm, adoring pressure of his hands kneading his stomach, finally broke through the last of Vincent’s walls. The self-destructive thoughts dissolved into pure, liquid heat. He wasn't too heavy. He was wanted.

Leaning forward slightly, Vincent let his soft, full belly press fully flat against Alastor's chest. He gripped Alastor’s shoulders for balance, threw his head back, and began to shift his hips.

He rode Alastor with a slow, powerful rhythm, his full weight sinking with every downward stroke. The sensation was overwhelming—the deep, stretching friction inside him paired with the solid, unmoving warmth of Alastor beneath him. Every time Vincent dropped his hips, Alastor’s hands would squeeze his plush sides, his long fingers sinking into his soft waist, anchoring him, encouraging him to take more.

"Ah—Alastor... God," Vincent groaned, his voice completely wrecked as he found a faster, more desperate pace. He let his body go entirely soft against the smaller demon, no longer holding back, letting his thick thighs and substantial middle press against Alastor’s lean frame as much as they wanted.

Alastor met every single downward thrust with a firm, possessive upward tilt of his own hips, his grin stretching wide and sharp as a low, rumbling growl of pure satisfaction tore from his throat. The radio static in the room roared to a deafening, chaotic crescendo, completely drowning out the rest of the world as Vincent finally let himself lose control, completely consumed by the solid reality of Alastor's touch.

The friction between them was total, hot, and unyielding. Vincent kept moving, his pace turning into something frantic and heavy as the last remnants of his coordination melted into pure, unadulterated sensation. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps that bounced off Alastor’s throat. Every time he dropped his weight, the full, bloated curve of his stomach flattened entirely against Alastor’s rigid chest, the damp heat of their sweat gluing their skin together.

But the sheer exertion of the pace and the heavy fog of the alcohol were finally catching up to him all at once. Vincent’s movements slowed, his hips hitching weakly as his trembling, plush thighs threatened to give out completely. He slumped forward, his forehead resting against Alastor’s shoulder with a soft, frustrated groan.

"M sorry, Al... 'm tired," Vincent mumbled, his voice thick and slurred, hating that his stamina was lagging when things were getting so intensely good.

Alastor let out a low, dark chuckle that vibrated right through his chest, a sound stripped of its usual theatricality and replaced with raw, fond amusement. "No need for apologies, my dear. I told you to enjoy yourself."

Before Vincent’s exhausted muscles could give way entirely, the shadows in the corners of the room suddenly detached themselves from the floor. With a low, ominous ripple of static, several thick, ink-black shadow tentacles slid across the sofa...

Vincent gasped as the cool, slick appendages wrapped securely around his plush body. One broad, shadowy coil slid right under his heavy thighs, lifting the strain off his aching legs, while another thick tentacle slid across his back, acting as a solid, unyielding brace that held his upper body up.

But the best part was the thickest tentacle of all, which slithered directly under Vincent’s large, bloated belly. It cupped the heavy, soft mass of his stomach like a hammock, lifting its weight just enough to ease the pressure on his lower back while simultaneously kneading the plush flesh with a slow, rhythmic squeeze.

"Ah... fuck," Vincent groaned, his eyes fluttering shut as he completely surrendered his weight to the shadows. He didn't have to hold himself up anymore; the tentacles were doing all the heavy lifting, suspending his massive frame perfectly over Alastor’s lap.

"There now," Alastor murmured, his eyes glowing like radio dials in the dim light, thoroughly pleased by the sight of Vincent looking so utterly helpless and taken care of. "Let them hold you."

With the shadows managing Vincent’s bulk, Alastor reached up, his long, clawed fingers flattening out over Vincent's stomach alongside the moving tentacles. Alastor’s thumb slid deep into Vincent’s navel, pressing and swirling inside the sensitive dip, while the snowy-dark appendage below gave a firm, possessive upward push against his bloated middle.

The dual stimulation—the cool, supernatural grip of the shadows and the intense, targeted heat of Alastor’s direct touch—made Vincent’s head snap back.

Alastor didn't waste a single second. Summoning his thick shadow tentacles, they rose from the floor, wrapping securely around Vincent's thighs and torso to handle his massive weight. With the shadows dictating the intoxicating rhythm, Vincent was lifted and lowered in a flawless, unyielding cadence. Every time the shadows dropped him down onto Alastor's length, Vincent’s big, plush belly would squish beautifully against Alastor's flat chest, the shadow tentacle coiled around his middle, squeezing his soft flesh in perfect tandem with the thrusts.

"Alastor—oh my god, Alastor!" Vincent screamed, his voice completely wrecked. The sheer sensation of being entirely handled—of having his large body thoroughly supported and adored by both the Overlord and his magic—broke whatever remaining sanity he had left.

Alastor’s grin was feral, his sharp teeth bared as he picked up the speed, his own hips snapping upward to meet every descent the shadows dictated. The static in the room reached a deafening frequency, the very air vibrating with a violent, intoxicating energy.

The shadow tentacle wrapped around Vincent’s stomach gave one final, deep, possessive squeeze, pressing firmly into his navel just as Alastor drove himself in to the hilt. It was too much. Vincent convulsed, a loud, shattered cry tearing from his throat as he came hard, his internal muscles locking down around Alastor like a vice.

A split second later, Alastor let out a ragged, static-laced growl, his eyes flashing violently as he followed Vincent over the edge, spilling inside him while the shadows securely held Vincent's substantial, trembling body close against his chest.

For several minutes, the only sound in the room was the erratic, dying frequency of the radio feedback and the heavy, synchronized panting of two chests pressed together.

The tentacles slowly dissolved back into the floorboards, gently letting Vincent's full weight settle completely back down onto Alastor. Vincent lay there, completely limp, his face buried in the crook of Alastor’s neck. The alcohol was making his limbs feel like lead, but for the first time all night, the heaviness didn't seem to bother him. He was completely pressing Alastor into the sofa cushions, his large, rounded belly rising and falling heavily against Alastor's ribs. Still, Alastor hadn't made a single move to push him off.

Instead, Alastor’s long, slender arms came up, wrapping completely around Vincent’s broad back. His clawed fingers gently traced the line of Vincent's spine, soothing the trembling muscles.

Slowly, Alastor turned his head, his lips brushing against Vincent’s sweat-damp temple.

"You see?" Alastor murmured, his voice incredibly soft, the familiar, comforting jazz music beginning to purr quietly back to life in the background. "Still entirely intact. And you, my dear Vincent, are precisely where you belong."

Vincent let out a long, shuddering exhale, the final remnants of tension leaving his body as he melted completely into Alastor’s hold. The warm mass of his own body felt grounded now, anchored by the solid pair of arms wrapped securely around his waist. The self-destructive thoughts that had consumed him earlier felt distant, entirely drowned out by the steady, rhythmic purr of Alastor’s radio static.

Alastor’s fingers continued their lazy, possessive tracks across Vincent’s back, occasionally dipping lower to squeeze the plush give of his love handles. There was no rush to move, no sudden shift to restore order or neatness. Alastor seemed perfectly content to remain trapped beneath Vincent’s substantial frame, matching the slow, deep rise and fall of Vincent’s rounded belly against his own chest.

"You're remarkably quiet," Alastor noted softly, the static in his voice vibrating warmly against Vincent’s skin. "A rare occurrence. Have I finally managed to silence that loud mind of yours?"

Vincent let out a weak, breathy chuckle, his face still pressed into the crook of Alastor's neck. "Shut up," he slurred affectionately, the exhaustion making his eyelids incredibly heavy. "Just... thinking you were right. For once."

"Only for once?" Alastor teased, a low, melodic chuckle rattling his ribcage. "I am always right, my dear. Especially when it comes to what pleases me."

Slowly, Alastor shifted one hand from Vincent's back, sliding it down until his long, clawed fingers rested flat against the center of Vincent's stomach again. The skin was slick with sweat, the soft flesh now completely relaxed. Alastor gave a deep, affectionate press, his thumb idly tracing the edge of Vincent’s navel one more time—a gentle, lingering reminder of the intense heat they’d just shared.

"Sleep, Vincent," Alastor murmured, "I'll be here when you wake."

Vincent didn't need to be told twice. With a final, contented sigh, he let his head drop against Alastor’s shoulder, his body sinking entirely into the mattress-like comfort of the Overlord beneath him, finally falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

[duckiewashere]

Alvox week Day 6: Marriage :3 had a blast hanging out on the server magma for this one, turned out pretty cute

[ficsthatiwritesometimes]

A Gentleman's Guide to Calming an Overstimulated System

Bone_Axe

Summary:

Vincent’s latest anatomical upgrade backfires disastrously, leaving him a drooling mess on his own bedroom floor. He’s missed his weekly drinks with Alastor—and the Radio Demon hates being stood up. Fortunately, Alastor knows exactly how to troubleshoot a television on the fritz. It just involves a lot of shadow tentacles and a very hands-on repair

Notes:

Hello, I'm sorry this was posted late. I got really busy during the last couple of days of the week! But aye, we are here! This is for Day 5 Overstimulation for AlVoxweek2026 :)

Link to AO3 for easier reading! https://archiveofourown.org/works/86244956

​Vincent had just wanted to understand the wiring within his own damn head. Since coming to Hell, he had taken to performing his own checkups and hardware diagnostics. Could he have gone to the numerous repair shops he saw lining the lower streets? Sure! If he wanted to get killed, mugged, and stripped for parts by desperate tech-scavengers, that is. Alastor was another choice that had briefly floated through his mind, but Vox had quickly dismissed it. He vividly remembered the way the Radio Demon had barely even touched a delicate piece of equipment last week, a video camera that now sat completely dead on Vox’s workbench. Vox had spent days trying to fix it. No, the deer was out of the question. He could handle this himself.

​Vincent’s head was a heavy, classic CRT monitor that contained fragile vacuum tubes and an array of cathode rays. It was all hardware up top, and yet just below his jawline, he was still flesh. Well, mostly? It was a bizarre, volatile cocktail of biochemicals and live currents.

​Honestly, Vincent found it rather astounding. He had even felt a genuine spark of joy when he first discovered that he did indeed have gills. Shark gills, to be exact. They weren't exactly like biological fish, but they seemed to function just like them, venting the excessive heat their monitor produced. They neatly rounded the sides of his neck and lined his torso.

​Even so, he knew that tinkering with his own body was incredibly dangerous. One wrong snip in his wiring could result in paralyzing himself, or worse, he'd die, and have to endure the agonizing process of regenerating his physical body from scratch. That hadn't happened in a while, so he had foolishly thought that perhaps, this time around, he would be safe.

​Wrong.

​He’d clipped something—a hidden, microscopic junction where flesh met wire, his entire body had gone white hot.

​Now, everything was too much. The soft fabric of his shirt felt like coarse sandpaper grinding against his skin. The dim, low light of the workbench lamp was a blinding spike driven directly behind his eyes. Even his own breathing sounded like it was entirely too loud in his head.

​He had collapsed onto the floor, completely helpless. Even the plush carpet felt like a bed of jagged spikes against his bare skin; he could feel every individual fiber needle-pricking his body. He desperately attempted to drag himself up, his fingers clawing weakly at the floorboards. If he could just reach the diagnostic panel hidden behind his casing, he could reset his settings to default. But the moment his hand brushed against his own neck, the mere friction felt like liquid fire.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts!

Vincent was trapped within his own body, paralyzed on his own floor. He didn’t even know how long it had been. Time had lost all meaning as one day bled into three, then five, then seven. He was missing their meeting. Alastor and Vincent always met at the bar for a drink to trade the latest gossip, aligning their schedules and bragging about their newest discoveries—though, for the most part, it just consisted of seeing who could out-drink the other. Vincent had been so determined to beat Alastor this time around, and yet here he was, reduced to a drooling mess on his own floor.

Could Alastor let it slide this time? He knew that Vincent tended to get carried away for days on end, locking himself in his apartment to test out new projects. But as the hours dragged on, that small hope felt increasingly fragile against the overwhelming static in his head.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The rapid, rhythmic rapping on the wooden door vibrated straight up Vox’s spine, making his screen flicker violently with jagged bands of static. It seemed it didn’t even need to be physically touched; it affected Vincent, just his antennas seemed to pick up the vibrations from other objects. Great. He winced, a choked gasp catching in his throat as the vibrations continued to plague him.

"Vincent? Darling, are you in there?"

Alastor’s voice cut through the heavy wood of the door, amplified by that familiar, crackling radio distortion.

"You had better have a good excuse for missing our date," the voice chimed, dripping with a dangerous mix of amusement and irritation.

FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.

Vincent wanted to call out to tell Alastor to give him a second, though how he was going to get off the floor was something he had not thought too far ahead of yet. Lucky for him, he didn’t even have to get up.

Alastor’s shadow was already slithering its way underneath his door, grasping at the door handle at first and then finding its way to the double lock. Huh. Nice of him not to obliterate his door, considering how long it had been since Alastor and he had met. With a sharp, clean click of shadow magic, the door swung open.

Alastor stepped into the apartment, the constant, low hum of his radio aura instantly filling the room. His eyes scanned the mess, his perpetual smile tightening slightly as his gaze landed on the trembling shape on the floor.

Beneath that rigid, stitched-on grin, a sudden, sharp spike of genuine unease cut through Alastor’s radio frequencies. The static hissed, dropping into a low, defensive growl. For a split second, his mind raced with a rare flash of concern—had someone broken in? Had another Overlord tried to make a move on his little picture box? Why hadn't Vincent come straight to the door? Why was he lying there, refusing to answer him or even mock him like usual?

"A-Al..." Vox choked out. The sound of his own voice, a glitching, rasping sound that vibrated horribly inside his chest. "Don't... don't touch—"

"And why ever not?" Alastor was directly over him now, a towering shadow. He reached down, his hand catching Vox by the chin. The moment Alastor made contact with Vox’s jaw, a spike of sensation shot straight down Vox’s spine. It wasn't pain, not exactly, but it was so intense that Vox’s back arched off the floor. His screen went completely white for a fraction of a second, a high-pitched whine of feedback tearing from his speakers as he shuddered violently against the floor.

Alastor’s eyes widened slightly, the radio static around him shifting from a mocking tune to a low, intrigued frequency. He didn't pull his hand away. Instead, his thumb brushed slowly against the delicate seam where the metal of Vox's neck met the soft skin of his throat. Vox let out a broken, pathetic whine, his hands blindly reaching up to grip Alastor’s wrist, not to push him away, but for a desperate need…for what… Vincent was too embarrassed to ask.

"Oh?" Alastor tilted his head, his smile widening into something softer, darker, something akin to hunger. He felt the frantic, racing pulse beneath Vox's skin, the way the younger demon vibrated with an agonizing sensitivity. "What have you done to yourself, you foolish creature?"

"F-Fucked up," Vox gasped, his eyes wide and unfocused on his screen, his hips twitching involuntarily against the floor just from the pressure of Alastor's thumb. "Everything... It’s all too much. Don't... please..."

"Look at you," Alastor purred, leaning down. His sharp teeth grazed the sensitive spot where Vox's organic neck met the casing of his jaw. "Completely a mess under me. You can barely think, can you? Come now, tell me what you need, cher.”

Vincent’s screen fractured into a dizzying grid of bright, chaotic colors. He wanted to answer. He desperately wanted to demand that Alastor touch him, hold him down, or rip those agonizing clothes away—anything to take away from this pain. But the moment he opened his mouth, his throat locked up.

"I—I need—" Vox choked out, his voice a broken rasp. The mere vibration of his own vocal cords tore through his raw neck like glass, making him wince. "Al... please... can't..."

He gripped Alastor’s forearms, his claws digging blindly into skin. He tried to force the words past his tongue, but his vocal modulator skipped violently, emitting a high-pitched, frustrated whine instead of speech. His hips twitched helplessly against the floorboards, completely overwhelmed, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. Alastor tilted his head, his smile widening as he listened to the pathetic, broken frequencies cutting through the air.

"Oh, you poor thing," Alastor murmured, his voice dropping into a low, soothing purr. "Look at how much you're hurting. You look as though you're suffocating.”

The air in the room grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and the low, comforting rumble of old radio static that Alastor always carried with him. With agonizing slowness, Alastor’s hands moved to the buttons of Vox’s shirt. He unbuttoned them one by one, letting his knuckles brush against the exposed skin of Vox’s torso.

Every touch was like a tiny lightning strike spreading throughout his body, Vox sobbed, his back arching completely off the plush carpet as his body caught fire from the contact. His thighs trembled violently, and a sharp gasp tore from his speakers. It was overwhelming, a tidal wave of sensation flooding his fragile body, but under Alastor’s heavy hand pressing flat against his chest, the terrifying panic suddenly found a focal point. Alastor’s eyes narrowed with a sharp, predatory curiosity as he watched. He dragged his thumb lazily over Vox's collarbone, watching the digital pupils contract into terrified, aroused pinpricks.

A dark realization settled into Alastor’s mind, accompanied by a smug wave of amusement. The miserable state Vincent was in stemmed entirely from messing with his own anatomy again. Oh, he had warned his little picture box on more than one occasion about the foolishness of tinkering and experimenting with new upgrades, and now the stubborn creature was paying the price.

Now, do you know how to fix it? The solution was simple enough, really. The most efficient way to break the fever was to push Vincent entirely past his breaking point to deliberately drown him in such an intense flood of pleasure that his senses would be forced to snap, plunging him into a merciful blackout.

And Alastor was more than happy to give his television a helping hand.

"A-Alastor—" Vox choked out, his hands blindly gripping at the radio demon's forearms. "The air... it hurts. Everything... It’s too much."

"Hush now," Alastor chided softly, though his grip remained. He slid the shirt off Vox’s shoulders, his hands following the line of Vox's collarbones. Alastor shifted his weight, pinning Vox down more securely, using his own heavy, solid body to stifle the chaotic trembling of the smaller demon. He began to peel away the rest of Vox's clothes, handling him like a fragile, precious thing. Without the barrier of fabric, Vox felt entirely exposed, every nerve ending screaming as Alastor’s hands mapped the contours of his waist, his ribs, and down his thighs.

Vox was writhing now, completely helpless against the sheer volume of sensation. A simple touch to his hip made his thigh twitch involuntarily; a thumb dragged along his inner thigh caused a heavy, sweet sob to tear from his throat. He was dripping, his body completely betraying him, worked into a state of frantic arousal from nothing more than the air and Alastor’s seeking hands.

From the shadows pooling beneath them, a slender, ink-black tentacle slithered upward. It was smooth, dripping as it slid between Vox's trembling thighs. Vox let out a strangled whimper as the shadow-appendage coiled loosely around the base of his leaking cock. It didn't squeeze hard; it simply compressed enough to trap the heat, the slick surface sliding lazily up and down his shaft in a slow, torturous tease. The contrast between Alastor's internal stretching and the biting, rhythmic friction of the tentacle wrapping tightly around his dick sent a surge of electricity straight to his core.

Vox’s hips hitched violently off the floor, his length desperately pulsing against the tight shadow-grip, weeping fluid onto his own stomach from the sheer, dual friction. He couldn't breathe; his cooling fans whined at a desperate, piercing pitch as the tentacle swirled lazily over his sensitive tip, holding him right on the verge of snapping before pulling back just enough to deny him.

Alastor withdrew his fingers, the shadow tentacle maintaining its teasing coil around Vox's cock, and replaced them with the hot, blunt head of his length, pushing inside in one slow, agonizingly deep stroke.

Vox’s eyes went wide on his screen, his digital pupils contracting to absolute pinpricks. The sheer size of Alastor's cock stretched his walls completely to their limit, filling him so utterly that a breathless gasp was stolen straight from his throat. His internal muscles immediately panicked, gripping the thick shaft in tight, frantic, spasming pulses.

"Ah! Ah—fuck, Alastor—!" Vox screamed.

Vincent’s voice turned into small breathless gasps as Alastor pulled almost all the way out and drove back in, burying himself within Vincent. Each heavy thrust sent waves of white-hot pleasure throughout his entire body. His screen blurred with bands of static, his vision swimming as the shadow tentacle wriggled and stroked him in a perfect, torturous rhythm that matched the relentless drive of Alastor's hips. He was completely caught between the heavy, driving weight of the Radio Demon pinning him from above and the slick, freezing grip of the shadow wrapped tight around his cock below.

The shadows held Vox’s legs pinned tightly to his chest, but as Alastor’s heavy, rhythmic thrusts continued to batter his sensitive body, Vox’s chest heaved in a desperate struggle to breathe. A suffocating heat was building rapidly beneath his skin, boiling him from the inside out, and his lungs alone couldn't vent the overwhelming warmth fast enough. With a wet, rhythmic click, the hidden seams along his ribs and neck split open—his biomechanical shark gills flaring wide, trembling and gasping for air in the suffocating room. They pulsed a vivid, cyanish-blue hue, frantic to cool his system down.

Alastor’s eyes blew wide, the radio static around them shifting into a sharp, thrilled frequency. "Oh? What an extraordinary little feature," he purred, his grin splitting impossibly wider.

Alastor shifted his weight forward, burying himself deeper within Vincent. Another heavy, bruising thrust made Vox’s gills snap shut and open in a desperate flare. While his lower half kept up the agonizingly deep rhythm, Alastor brought his hand up, pressing his long fingers directly over the delicate, wet folds of the gills lining Vox's ribs.

"Ah—fuck!—Al—!" Vox’s scream dissolved into a wet, choked sound.

It was a part of his own anatomy Vincent had never even thought to experiment with; he had never needed to mess with them, so having another person touch them was entirely uncharted territory. They were easily his most sensitive, exposed flesh, meant only for venting heat, and Alastor was smearing his palms over them, his long claws catching deliberately on the tender, pulsing ridges. Every slide of Alastor's hand over the slits sent a secondary wave of ecstasy rushing straight down to meet the friction of their bodies.

Vincent was completely coming apart. He was being handled from the inside out, filled, his cock milked by the shadows, and now his ribs were being mapped by heavy, unyielding hands. It felt too good maliciously, violently good, shattering his thoughts until he couldn't even form a coherent word.

"Too—too much—" Vox gasped, his screen flashing wildly as he tried to twitch away from the touch, only to end up arching harder into Alastor's palm. "Al, 'm gonna... 'm gonna break... please..."

"Look at how they twitch," Alastor purred darkly, his breath hot against Vincent’s screen as the shadow tentacle coiled tighter, wringing out the length of his cock with agonizing precision. He deliberately hooked two fingers into the fluttering seams, spreading the delicate gills open to the cool room air while his hips ground heavily against Vincent's pelvis. "You're panting so desperately, darling. Let's see if we can quiet these pretty little vents of yours."

Alastor leaned his full weight down, pressing his chest flat against Vox's heaving torso and effectively smothering the gills against his own body.

The sudden restriction of air, combined with the crushing pressure against his chest, made Vox's vision go completely dark around the edges. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think. A deafening ringing filled his ears, drowning out the entire world. His hyper-stimulated walls clamped down around Alastor’s length in a series of violent, helpless spasms, his entire body locking up tight as the shadow tentacle gave one final, merciless squeeze up his shaft.

That was the final, brutal push over the edge. His hips jerked up off the floor in one last, violent convulsion, a strained, broken shriek tearing from his throat as he completely snapped.

"Al—ALASTOR!"

With a wet, breathless sob, Vincent came hard, his release splashing hotly against his own chest. The sheer, blinding intensity of it drained the last of his strength; his vision flashed a chaotic white before he completely lost consciousness.

As his head fell back, a patch of soft, ink-black shadow surged up from the floorboards, delicately catching the heavy casing of his monitor and lowering it softly to the ground so it wouldn't crack against the wood.

The tight, rhythmic pulsing of Vincent's internal muscles as he passed out was the final blow to Alastor's control. Letting out a low, gravelly growl, Alastor tightened his grip on Vox's hips and delivered three more heavy, deep thrusts, burying himself within Vincent, finally letting go. He came hard inside the younger demon, his own radio static roaring through the room, rattling the loose tools on the workbench.

For a long moment, the only sound in the apartment was Alastor’s heavy, satisfied breathing and the low, comforting rumble of his post-coital radio aura.

Slowly, the shadows holding Vox’s legs and the tentacle binding his waist melted away, letting his trembling thighs ease them back to the floorboards. Alastor pulled out, fixing his trousers and smoothing down his red coat. He looked down at Vox. The TV demon lay entirely still, his screen dark, his chest barely rising and falling. The delicate shark gills along his neck and ribs were still flared open, twitching weakly as they slowly, greedily drank in the cool air of the room, the raw, cyanish-blue flesh gradually cooling to its normal hue.

With a low hum, Alastor knelt, reaching out to brush a thumb over the edge of the venting seams on Vox's neck. The gills gave a small, involuntary flutter against his hand. Vincent was entirely dead to the world. Alastor stood up, his eyes tracking the messy trails of their shared release pooling on the younger demon’s skin and his own coat. He let out a soft, clicked sigh—a sound more fond than truly irritated. With a casual flick of his wrist, a soft, damp cloth materialized in his hand from the shadows.

He knelt back down beside Vox, handling him with a surprising, fluid gentleness that completely contradicted the brutal pace from moments before. Gathering Vincent’s limp upper body against his chest, Alastor began to wipe away the sweat and slickness, his touch slow. He cleaned Vox’s chest, smoothing down the edges of the shark gills until they finally closed completely, retreating into neat, hidden seams along his ribs. Once Vincent was clean, Alastor slipped his arms under his knees and back, lifting the TV demon effortlessly into his arms. Vox’s head lolled heavily against Alastor’s shoulder, his heavy CRT casing resting against the Radio Demon's collarbone. Carrying him out of the messy workshop and into the bedroom, Alastor laid him down onto the soft, waiting mattress, pulling the heavy blankets up to his chin.

Standing beside the bed, Alastor looked down at the unconscious shape of his companion. His gaze drifted to the back casing of Vox’s TV head, specifically, the tiny access panel where raw flesh met wire that Vincent had so disastrously tampered with earlier.

Alastor scoffed softly, a low hum of static vibrating in his throat: fools and their toys.

Alastor reached out, a single tendril of dark green, glowing shadow magic bleeding from his fingertips. His shadow slipped into the tiny seams of the panel on the back of Vincent's head, popping it open with a soft click. The magic slid deep inside, gently untangling the crossed, raw connections and fusing the clipped junction back together with a faint, warm spark of demonic energy. It perfectly settled the chaotic current, safely aligning Vincent’s erratic pulse with his internal hardware once more. Carefully, Alastor snapped the protective metal cover back into place.

It was fixed. A permanent modification to ensure this volatile incident would never happen again.

...Well, unless they explicitly wanted it, Alastor thought smugly.

A sharp thunk-whirred echoed from the back of Vox's head. The vacuum tubes inside his monitor began to glow with a faint, steady orange light. His screen flickered, a few lazy bands of tracking lines scrolling across his display before his face finally softened into a relaxed, resting state.

Satisfied, Alastor smoothed a hand over the top of Vox’s monitor, his smile casting a sharp silhouette in the dim room. "There now," he murmured to the sleeping demon, his voice a quiet, comforting radio crackle. "There now. Your system should be perfectly settled when you wake."

As Alastor turned on his heel to leave, a weak, trembling hand suddenly reached out from beneath the heavy blankets. Fingers clutched blindly at the hem of Alastor’s red coat, the grip loose and desperate. On the dark screen, a faint, flickering pair of eyes opened just a sliver.

"Please..." Vincent breathed, his voice barely a glitched, exhausted whisper. "Please, Al... could you stay with me?"

Before Alastor could even form an answer, Vincent’s hand lost its strength, dropping heavily back onto the mattress. His eyes faded back into the dark display as he sank right back into a deep, peaceful sleep. Alastor stood frozen beside the bed, his static dropping into a low, uncertain hum. He looked down at the hand that had just touched him, his brow furrowing slightly beneath his bangs. Staying was entirely out of character. It was sentimental. It was soft. He should melt into the shadows and return to his own radio tower. Yet, his feet remained rooted to the floorboards. He glanced back at Vox’s face, watching the steady, warm orange glow of the vacuum tubes radiating a quiet, rhythmic hum.

With a quiet click of his tongue, Alastor finally gave in. He shed his heavy outer coat, leaving it draped over a nearby chair. Crawling onto the mattress, he lay down beside the sleeping demon, the sheets rustling softly in the quiet apartment. He didn't embrace him fully, but Alastor casually draped a long, heavy arm over Vincent’s waist, pulling the younger demon just a fraction closer against his side.

Vox let out a low, contented sigh in his sleep, his body relaxing completely under the familiar, grounding weight. Listening to the quiet, synchronized rumble of Vox’s monitor and his own radio aura, Alastor closed his eyes, slowly drifting off into the dark.

[candysignal]

Alvoxweek Day 6: dacryphilia "only mine, mine, mine"

[random-deer]

Sooo romantic

[ficsthatiwritesometimes]

Muffled Cries and Serrated Stitches

Bone_Axe

Summary:

A bitter argument on a nightly hunt results in a horrible loss of control, leaving Vincent torn open and vowing to give Alastor what he wants... silence.

Notes:

Here we go, Day 4! Loss of Control, hehe, I really did like writing this one! First time writing Murdermedia!

Poor Poor Vox, you are such a beautiful muse, and sadly, I gotta make you suffer

Please enjoy! Also I don't always catch every little typing error all the times so if you do see one do let me know! (Of course please be kind about it haha!)

Link to Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86098421

As Vincent took a shallow sip, his eyes never left Alastor’s. He saw the way Alastor was watching his every breath, as if he were afraid that one wrong movement and Vincent would cease to exist. There was no anger left, only a strange, quiet intensity that Vincent couldn't quite name.

"You’re still here," Alastor whispered, more to himself than to Vincent, his thumb tracing a slow, rhythmic circle over Vincent’s knuckles.

Vincent leaned back into the pillows, the exhaustion washing over him. He was still hurt, and the memory of the blade and the fresh scar was a permanent ache in his side, but as he looked at Alastor, who hadn’t moved an inch from his side, the worst of everything started to fade.

Yet, as Vincent’s eyelids grew heavy, a quiet, unvoiced shadow settled into the corners of the room. The warmth of the bed couldn't entirely wash away the metallic taste still lingering on his tongue, or the memory of the terrifying entity Alastor became when the mask slipped. Alastor’s hand remained closed over his, tight and protective, but the weight of that grip felt different; he couldn’t quite place it… Though really, he didn’t want to think any deeper about it.

They were alive, and they were together, but the air between them had shifted. The needle had pulled the flesh back together, but both of them knew, without saying a word, that the trust had been torn open, and neither of them knew if a silk thread was enough to hold it.

[candysignal]

Alvoxweek Day 4: lingerie/cannibalism "I'm yours, body and soul..."

[pervertedf-ggot]

[candysignal]

Alvoxweek Day 3: petplay/hypnosis "my dear Vincent is finally back!"

[ficsthatiwritesometimes]

I Hear Everything (And Now I Own Half)

Bone_Axe

Summary:

A catastrophic collision of powers leaves Alastor tuned into a frequency he can't turn off: Vox’s unfiltered thoughts. What starts as an entertaining glimpse behind the corporate screen quickly unravels into an intense, suffocating obsession. Trapped in a one-way transmission, Alastor is forced to witness the devastating reality that even the man who rules Hell's airwaves has his own quiet demons, and they are tearing him apart from the inside out.

Notes:

Hi Guys! here we go for Day 2!!! I wanted to combine the two themes here on soul deal and fell first / fell harder haha I hope you guys are enjoying the fics that are coming out! I know I am lol (though I'm literally still editing some of them the day of or night before 🫩)

Link to AO3

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Vox had finally been allowed back into the space of Overlord meetings, albeit on a limited basis. Many had realized just how much they relied upon him for power and network updates, discovering they could actually tolerate him far better than the other two Vees.

The air in the auction house had curdled, thick with heat and the quiet, tense murmur of Hell's elite. It had been a grueling four hours of ego-stroking and empty threats, but the true climax of the evening had nothing to do with the auction block. It was the silent, vicious standoff happening over a single antique.

"I am not letting you walk out of here with this, you archaic piece of shit," Vox hissed, his neon screen flickering a violent, unstable blue. His hand was clamped tightly around the heavy brass neck of the artifact—a pre-war ribbon microphone laced with ancient, calcified soul-binding magic.

"Oh, come now, old friend!" Alastor purred, though his smile was dangerously wide, his claws wrapped firmly around the opposite side of the vintage casing. "A beautiful, historical masterpiece like this belongs in a studio with taste. In your hands, it would be melted down to make more of your tacky, glowing toys."

"It's a powerful magical conductor, and it's going in the Vees' vault," Vox snarled.

Now, some might question why the fuck the Vees would need such a thing. Wasn't their whole brand built on new tech—anything sleek, modern, and shiny? Well, yes. But anyone who looked into Voxtek’s rich history would know that Vox actually had a soft spot for older technology. When he died, he had been surrounded by the up-and-coming tech of his era. Whenever a rare piece from that time surfaced, by Hell, he was going to add it to his private collection.

But of course, Alastor just had to have it, didn't he?

The argument quickly dissolved into violence. Vox’s patience snapped first, a blinding current of high-voltage electricity surging down his arm to blast Alastor away from the pedestal. But Alastor was ready. Pitch-black shadows bled from the floorboards, tearing upward like jagged claws to intercept the lightning.

Vox poured more power into the connection, his digital systems screaming as he tried to override Alastor’s defenses. Alastor’s radio-dial eyes glitched violently, his dark, eldritch static roaring to life to drown out the modern hum. The vintage microphone was caught dead in the center of the crossfire—trapped between a tidal wave of raw, electric current and a crushing vortex of ancient shadow magic.

The sheer pressure of Vox’s high-tech digital signal violently slammed into the dense, archaic wavelength of Alastor’s soul, forcing the two opposing forces into a terrifyingly tight bottleneck.

The ancient microphone couldn't handle the strain.

With a deafening, ear-splitting screech that forced every other Overlord in the room to cover their ears and dive for cover, the artifact shattered.

The feedback loop hit like a lightning strike directly to Vox’s core. While the physical explosion threw them both backward, the metaphysical blast wave tore right through Vox's consciousness. His screen flashed a stark, blinding white before going entirely dead, his internal systems freezing solid. For a single, agonizing second, his heart rate—simulated but terrifyingly real—spiked into a flatline.

"Fucking... cheap... outdated garbage," Vox wheezed a moment later, his screen sparking violently as it forced a hard reboot. He pushed himself off the marble floor, brushing soot off his expensive lapels while glaring at the melted brass and shattered glass scattered between them.

He felt weird, a little rattled, and his processor was running hot, but he assumed it was just the aftermath of a massive power surge. Adjusting his coat, Vox turned on his heel and walked out of the venue with his usual sharp, aggressive stride, barking orders into his phone to his assistants. He was entirely unaware that the violent collision of their powers had permanently bridged a gap he had spent decades trying to close.

Across the city, the rain in the Pentagram fell in its usual dreary, rhythmic patter against the stained-glass windows of the old radio tower.

Alastor stepped into his studio, shedding his damp, slightly singed coat with a faint, tight hum. His ears were still ringing from the explosion. The auction had been a bust, but forcing the Media Overlord to short-circuit in front of their peers had been mildly amusing, even if he hadn't secured the artifact. He walked over to his main console, intending to cue up a piece of vinyl to wash away the lingering headache of the evening.

He reached for the dial. Before his claws could even touch the brass, his own internal frequency glitched.

A sharp, static pop rang out in the center of his mind, followed by a low, rhythmic

thump-thump, thump-thump.

Alastor froze. He blinked, tilting his head as his deer ears twitched beneath his hair. The sound was coming from inside his own skull.

...need to reroute the power grid in the Pride district before tomorrow morning... if Valentino throws another tantrum about the studio lighting, I’m going to lose my fucking mind... God, my head hurts... why does my head always hurt...

Alastor’s smile strained, his eyes narrowing to razor-thin slits. The voice was unmistakable. It was loud, fast-paced, and vibrating with a frantic, high-voltage energy that made Alastor’s jaw clench.

Vox.

At first, Alastor’s grip tightened on his microphone cane, a dark, dangerous flare of malice ignited in his chest. Was this some new, repulsive stunt? A pathetic trick by the media moth to worm his way into places he didn't belong? Alastor was prepared to channel his own shadow magic down the connection to rip the intruding signal apart violently.

But as he focused on the frequency, intending to destroy it, he realized something that made his breath catch.

There was no barrier. No firewall, no filters, no broadcast equipment to fight against. It was just Vox—completely unedited, entirely defenseless, and drowning in a chaotic, high-voltage downpour of his own frayed panic.

...just five minutes. If I can sit down for five minutes without someone needing something from me... no, no time. Move, move, move...

Alastor slowly let go of his cane, allowing his shadow to catch the wood and sink it into the floorboards. He let himself fall back into his worn leather armchair, the shadows in the room pooling anxiously around his feet. He closed his eyes, tuning out the steady patter of the rain outside, and completely centered his attention on the bizarre, uninvited station now playing inside his head.

It should have disgusted him. It was the absolute embodiment of the noisy, frantic modern era he despised.

But as the minutes turned into hours, the signal’s rhythm shifted. Vox had finally returned to the Vee Tower. The frantic pace of his thoughts began to slow, cooling from a chaotic fire into a steady, pulsing warmth. Gradually, the low, rhythmic hum of Vox’s resting processor aligned perfectly with the steady beat of his heart.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

And then, Vox’s thoughts drifted.

I wonder if he was laughing at me tonight. He looked right at me before the blast. Just for a second. Standard arrogant prick look. God, I hate him. I hate how he looks down his nose at everything I’ve built. I hate that I still look for him in the crowd. Decades. It's been decades, Vox, get a fucking grip, he doesn't care, he never cared...

Alastor’s eyes snapped open in the darkness of his tower.

The shared frequency bled deeper, carrying the raw emotion beneath the thoughts. Right then, the signal flared with a heavy, aching longing. It was a decades-old warmth that Vox was desperately trying to crush beneath layers of anger and static. Alastor sat perfectly still, his breath shallow, his chest tightening in a way it hadn't in a century. The sheer, naked intimacy of it made him feel certain things he really didn’t want to confront in this moment. Yet the more he listened, the more he couldn’t pull himself away.

To hear another's thoughts… Alastor wondered whether this connection was the other way around. Desperate for answers, he tried to force his own thoughts down the frequency, hurling them directly toward Vox.

​Vox! You idiot, can you even hear me? Your stupid, erratic temper caused this horrid connection!

​Nothing.

​Well, now Alastor didn’t know if it was more horrific that this was a one-way connection or not. God only knows what kind of vile thoughts went through that man’s mind, especially associating with the dreaded, sex-addled moth. Dear God, did that mean he would be subjected to the thoughts of when they were intimate?!

Alastor had to quickly think of a way to undo such a vile connection. The next couple of days, he had expected a disorganized jumble of cheap marketing slogans, mindless pop trends, and superficial vanity. He was entirely unprepared for the sheer, grinding weight of what really went on in Vox’s mind.

The transmission began every morning at exactly four AM, the precise moment Vox’s internal systems forced a reboot. There was no gentle waking up, no slow easing into consciousness. It was a violent, erratic awakening that made Alastor’s own deer ears twitch in the dark of his quiet tower.

Before Vox could even process the physical reality of his bedroom, his mind was instantly flooded by a relentless, screaming tidal wave of small, incessant pings.

Ping. Ping. Ping-ping-ping.

A barrage of thousands of internal notifications, data feeds, and text alerts tore through the connection, hitting Alastor’s consciousness like a hail of sharp needles.

[System Alert: Server Rack 4B operating at ninety-two percent capacity.] [Notification: Valentino sent forty-two unread media files.] [Market Update: VoxTek stock down zero point zero three percent in the Wrath District.] [Calendar: Board meeting in four hours.]

Alastor winced in the dark, his hand flying to his temple as the sharp, acrid taste of burning plastic and the metallic sting of copper wire instantly coated his tongue.

"Merciful heavens," Alastor muttered aloud to the empty studio, his radio filter wavering for a fraction of a second. "Does he never turn that off?"Inside the frequency, Vox’s true voice was already hyperventilating beneath the noise, his thoughts racing at a speed that felt entirely unnatural to someone like Alastor.

​Reboot complete. Fucking hell, my screen... it feels like someone is driving a nail right between my optical sensors. Why does my head always hurt? Because you don't sleep, idiot. Move. You have to move. Check the server logs. If the Pride district grid fluctuates today, the lower-tier demons will see you as incompetent, and you are just now starting to get back into people’s good graces again. I have to look solid. I have to look perfect. If I flicker even once on camera, they’ll think that I’m losing my edge. That I’m nothing.But God... I want to lie here for five minutes. Just five minutes without the entire grid screaming at me. No. No time. Get up. Move. Move. Move.

​Alastor, after he had let a moment pass, sat up in his bed, his fingers gripping the fabric of his pants. He was utterly bewildered. To Alastor, the morning was a sacred thing, a time for a quiet cup of chicory coffee, the slow turning of a newspaper page, and the soft patter of rain. To witness a mind that was entirely denied the luxury of peace, a mind that woke up already running at a full, panicked sprint to keep from drowning, sparked an emotion in Alastor he didn't care to name.

​"You moron," Alastor whispered into the dark, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "Do you not know the meaning of having a moment’s rest?”

The following days were endless like this, unfortunately; however, the one thing that many started to notice was that the famous Radio Demon had suddenly ceased his gruesome broadcasts. Many thought it might be another absence, or maybe he was preparing something special? It was none of those; the truth was far more disturbing: Alastor couldn't bear to listen to anything else.

He spent his hours sitting in the pitch-black of his studio, his leather chair pulled away from the desk, his hands loosely gripping the armrests. He sat with his eyes wide, staring at nothing, completely submerged in the sensory overload of Vox’s mind.

The connection that was created didn’t just link their thoughts; it started to allow Alastor to feel what Vox felt in the moment physically, and it was intoxicating to say the least.

Whenever Vox flew into one of his corporate rages, screaming at board members or violently throwing a glass across his office, Alastor would feel the phantom crackle of high-voltage electricity dancing along his own skin. His jaw would lock as a sharp, acrid taste of burning plastic coated the back of his throat, the metallic sting making his own demonic blood pump faster. It was thrilling. It was a violent, chaotic spark that made Alastor’s shadow writhe across the walls in sheer excitement.

Idiots! Useless, incompetent, brainless fucking leeches! Do I have to do every single thing myself?! If I don't micromanage every square inch of this district, it all falls apart! Tear it down, tear the whole studio down, and fire everyone on the floor! I’ll burn this whole floor to ash before I let our numbers drop! Look at them staring at me, waiting for me to slip up, waiting to see if I’m weak. I am not weak! I am the backbone of this fucking city! I will fry every single one of you if you look at me like that again!

Alastor had never felt such entertainment before. The sheer force of Vox’s ego and wrath felt like a roaring furnace. He knew that Vox threw tantrums, but ever since the whole “incident,” Vox had forced himself to become more subdued to recreate his brand. And Alastor drank it down like fine wine. He couldn't get enough of it. The sheer, unfiltered humanity of it broke through every barrier he possessed.

But there was a catch. The signal had a radius.

If Vox traveled to the lower rings for business, or if he moved to the opposite side of the Pride District, the beautiful melody would begin to fray into agonizing, harsh white noise. Alastor’s ears would pin back, his claws digging deep into his armchair as the crisp, intimate thoughts dissolved into a chaotic screech.

It got to the point where Alastor had a desperate need to know exactly what and where Vox was, and so, the Radio Demon left his tower.

It started subtly. Vox would be standing in the middle of a high-end restaurant in the Doomsday District, sealing a contract with a minor demon lord, when a sudden, icy chill would wash over the room.

Vox would pause, his eyes darting around the crowded space.

...what the hell is that? Why did the temperature drop? Did the AC glitch? No, the grid is stable... wait. Is someone watching me? I swear to God, if Val sent another one of his lackeys to spy on my meeting, I’m going to tear their spine out through their throat...

Across the room, melted perfectly into the deep shadows near the coat rack, a pair of glowing, dark red eyes would be fixed entirely on him. Alastor didn't move. He didn't speak. He just stood there, his chest rising and falling in perfect synchronization with the rhythmic hum of Vox’s processor, soaking in the sudden spike of sharp, defensive anxiety that flavored the broadcast with the scent of ozone.

By the fifth day, the subtlety vanished. Alastor was becoming greedy. He needed a stronger signal; he needed to be closer.

Vox was unraveling. He could feel a heavy, quiet intensity pressing against his mind wherever he went.

During a major Vee’s promotional event, Vox stood on a grand stage, basking in the neon lights and the cheers of thousands of adoring sinners. He was supposed to feel powerful and on top of the world. But as he looked out into the VIP balcony, his screen froze for a fraction of a second.

Standing right at the edge of the balcony, bathed in the dark, bleeding shadows of the upper tier, was Alastor.

The Radio Demon wasn't holding his microphone. He wasn't smiling his usual theatrical, media-ready smirk. His expression was terrifyingly heavy, his eyes locked onto Vox with a dark, unblinking, ravenous focus.

Inside Alastor’s head, the stage performance vanished. Vox's true, frantic internal monologue completely drowned out the microphone audio.

He’s here. Why is he here? Why is he fucking HERE?! He hasn't broadcast in a week. He’s just... standing there and looking at me. Why is he looking at me like that? It feels like he’s pulling my chest apart. It hurts. It’s too hot. I can't breathe—no, smile, keep smiling for the cameras, don't let him see you sweat, don't let him win.... Why is he looking at me like I'm the only thing in the room?

Hearing his own name flaring with that familiar longing, Alastor let out a soft, shuddering sigh in the dark of the balcony. The taste of sweet, burning copper and a hint of bitterness flooded his senses.

Vox took a step back on stage, his hands trembling slightly as he forced his way through the rest of his speech, his sanity chipping away piece by piece under the weight of an obsession he couldn't begin to understand.

But just as one can burn hot, there were moments of Vox that Alastor wished he had never seen or, more so, felt that even he should not be witness to. Late at night, when the rest of the city slept, and Vox was left alone with the crushing weight of his empire, a heavy, suffocating sadness would creep into the frequency. When Vox felt small, or overwhelmed, or deeply, desperately lonely, Alastor would suddenly feel like he was drowning. The air in his lungs would turn heavy, pulling him down into a dark abyss. A thick, bitter taste of engine oil would pool on his tongue, dragging him into the depths of Vox’s despair.

Please just let me stop existing. I don't want to wake up tomorrow. I don't want to open my eyes. I don’t want to do this anymore. Look how far I have fallen. Look at this pathetic, disgusting piece of trash you are. Even Val doesn’t want to touch me. I hate my voice. I hate the way my hands feel.

Why didn't I die on that day? Why couldn’t the blast have taken me,

It would have been so merciful. I should have been turned to ash right then, when the sky was screaming. If I had just died that day, I wouldn't have had to feel any of this.

Alastor... god, Alastor, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn't enough. I'm sorry I was so loud, so small, so desperate. I ruined us. I smashed everything we were into dust just because I couldn't bear how much I needed you. I just wanted you to love me. I just wanted you to hold me. I would rip my own chest open, I would tear every wire out of my throat, I would burn the entire city to the ground if I could just lay my head against your shoulder in the quiet again. Just once. To feel safe for a single second.

But you hate me. You look at me, and you see garbage. Because that’s all I am. A pathetic, worthless, unlovable piece of junk drowning. Nobody wants me. Nobody has ever wanted me.

I want to die. I want to shut down and never turn back on. It would have been so much better if I died that day... please, just let me die...

Unless...

The thought flared in the dark, with a sharp, sick, twisted relief?

Maybe if I push him just a little harder... if I make myself a big enough threat, a big enough nuisance... he’ll have to do it. He’ll have to come for me. He’ll hunt me down, he'll tear through the tower, and he'll finally look right at me. He’ll hold my neck in his claws, and for just one second, I’ll be the only thing that matters to him. I can let him rip the wires out. I can let him tear me to pieces. If I have to be destroyed, oh God, please let it be him... let Alastor be the one to—

Click.

With a violent, choked gasp, Alastor lunged forward out of his armchair, crashing onto his knees. The sheer, suffocating agony of Vox’s self-loathing felt like the air was being crushed from within his lungs. His smile, the permanent, iron-clad mask he had worn through centuries of bloodshed, strained so violently that the skin at the corners of his mouth split open, dark blood trickling down his chin.

No. Stop. Make it stop.

He didn't want to hear this. He couldn't feel this.

This was a horror he had never anticipated. This was a direct line into a soul that was actively tearing itself to pieces, and it was dragging Alastor down into the freezing, pitch-black abyss right alongside it. The heavy, bitter taste of engine oil on his tongue turned thick, rancid, and suffocating, coating his throat until he was dry-heaving on the floorboards. He didn't want the agonizing burden of Vox's suicidal ruin. He didn't want to feel the shattering, desperate depth of how much Vox loved him, or the horrific reality of what his cold absence had done to this man.

Alastor’s hands flew to his head, his claws digging mercilessly into his scalp, tearing at his hair as if he could physically gouge the frequency right out of his brain. Dark, chaotic static exploded from his body in a deafening, panicked shriek that shattered every window pane in the radio studio into a thousand flying shards. Shadows twisted and writhed violently up the walls, screaming and tearing at themselves in a terrifying mirror of his internal panic.

Stop… stop… STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP

He slammed his mind against the connection, channeling every ounce of his eldritch magic to violently tear, crush, and shred anything to cut the connection. He wanted to run from the weeping, broken thing inside his head.

But the bridge forged within their frequencies held firm. It vibrated like a taut, agonizing piano wire under the strain, refusing to break, forcing Alastor to stay on his knees in the dark and feel every single, heart-wrenching sob of the man who wished he had died.

"You absolute fool," Alastor whispered into the dark, his voice a broken, gravelly rasp, entirely stripped of its radio filter. "You miserable, broken fool..."

As he sat alone in the pitch-black of his studio, blood dripping from his smile, a terrifying truth settled deep into his chest. Vox wasn't just throwing tantrums. Every single broadcast, every insult, every petty television war they had waged for decades—it hadn't just been out of spite. It was a desperate, suicidal plea for Alastor’s hand to finish what the bomb failed to do.

Alastor knew this could not continue any longer

Vox hadn't slept in nearly a week. His internal systems were operating in a permanent state of emergency override, his processor running so hot that Alastor could constantly taste a thick, choking cloud of smoldering wire insulation at the back of his throat. Vox’s mind was a dark, agonizing loop of self-hatred and exhaustion.

Just pull the plug. Someone just pull the fucking plug. I can't look at another spreadsheet. I can't listen to Val scream at me again. I’m so tired. My body hurts… I could always go to him… If I fight him... If I force his hand... he’ll tear me apart. He’ll make it quick. He’ll look at me. At least if he’s killing me, he’s looking at me.

Alastor’s eyes snapped open in his dark studio. His breath hitched, a cold, striking panic seizing his chest as he felt the visceral reality of Vox’s intent. He was coming directly to the radio tower.

Alastor dissolved into the shadows, traveling down the ley lines of the city, desperate to intercept the Media Overlord before he destroyed himself. They met in a secluded, rain-drenched alleyway just outside the borders of the Pride District, a liminal space between the neon glare of the Vees' empire and the silence of the radio tower.

The rain poured in violent sheets, washing over Vox’s pristine suit. His screen was glitching aggressively, horizontal lines of white static cutting across his digital eyes. He looked completely unhinged, his shoulders shaking as his hands formed tight fists, his claws cutting into his navy skin.

"Alastor!" Vox screamed into the rain, his voice a distorted, crackling roar that echoed off the brick walls. "I know you're there, you piece of shit! Come out! Come out and face me!"

A pool of black shadows bled across the brick wall, and Alastor stepped forward. For the first time in a century, his trademark smile was strained to the point of breaking. His dark red eyes were wide, fixed on the mess of Vox’s physical form.

"Vox," Alastor spoke, his voice laced with a terrifyingly heavy intensity. "You are not well. Go home."

"Don't tell me what to do!" Vox snarled, taking a heavy, unstable step forward. He raised his hands, sparks of blue electricity snapping violently through the damp air. "What's the matter, prick? Lost your nerve? You've been stalking me for weeks! You think I haven't noticed you lingering in the shadows like a fucking vulture? Fight me! Come on! Show me what Hell's great Radio Demon can actually do when he's not hiding behind his pathetic little shadows!”

But inside Alastor’s skull, the spoken bravado was masked by the staggering, heartbreaking reality of Vox’s unedited thoughts. The frequency roared with despair, completely contradicting his angry words:

Please. Please strike me down. Put your claws through my screen. Rip this dead thing in my chest. I don't want to go back to that tower. I don't want to be anything anymore. If I die by your hand, it means I mattered enough for you to kill. I’ll finally get to rest. Even if I come back, at least I can have five minutes of absolute silence while my system shuts down forever, maybe this time I won’t wake up. Please, Alastor... I’m begging you. Just destroy me.

"I am not going to fight you, Vox," Alastor said, his voice trembling slightly as he took a slow, deliberate step closer, his shadows rising defensively around them, not to attack, but to block the alleyway exits, sealing them away from the rest of the world.

"Why?!" Vox yelled, his screen flashing a blinding, unstable white as he aggressively shoved Alastor hard. "Are you mocking me?! Am I not even worth the effort of a real fight anymore?! Look at me! I am the Media Overlord! I am—"

—nothing. I am nothing. I’m a hollow plastic box. Please, just hit me. Why won't you hit me? God, he looks so beautiful in the rain. Even when he’s looking at me with that pitying, horrible expression, I still want him to hold me while I break...

Vox’s voice cracked, the loud, aggressive bravado instantly fracturing. His hands shook so violently he stumbled forward, his chest heaving, his screen flickering erratically as the sheer, crushing weight of everything finally broke his physical systems.

"Why won't you just kill me?" Vox whispered, his voice stripped of all its electronic modulation, sounding small, human, against the sound of the pouring rain. "What do you want from me, Alastor? Just finish it. I can't... I can't keep doing this."

Alastor closed the remaining distance in an instant. He stepped directly into Vox's personal space, his tall frame physically crowding the shorter demon back until Vox's spine hit the cold brick wall. The dark red glow of Alastor’s unblinking eyes reflected starkly across Vox’s glitching screen.

Slowly, with an agonizingly heavy tenderness that Alastor didn't even know he possessed, he reached out. His hands softly gripped Vox’s trembling wrists, pinning them flat against the brick wall.

"You absolute fool," Alastor breathed, his voice a low, raw rasp that vibrated directly against Vox's collarbone. His internal radio dial glitched, a sharp pop ringing out in the physical space between them. When he spoke next, his voice perfectly mimicked the exact, vulnerable cadence of Vox's internal monologue from a second ago.

"'I’ll finally get to rest. Five minutes of absolute silence while my system shuts down forever...' That is what you were thinking, isn't it?"

​Vox’s eyes widened into perfect, terrified circles, his entire screen flashing a violent, horrified blue as a massive spike of raw, unadulterated panic exploded through the frequency.

​What the fuck, what the fuck?! How… no, no, no, he can’t. How did he even—? No. NO. If he heard that, then all those nights… God. How long has he just been laughing at me?

​"I am not laughing, Vox," Alastor interrupted softly, his voice thick with an emotion that he had not felt since his human days.

​Before Vox could even process the horror or find his voice to speak back, Alastor let out a desperate, shuddering breath and leaned down, pressing his forehead firmly against the cold metal of Vox's chest. He kept Vox’s wrists pinned flat against the wall, holding onto him like an anchor in the storm.

"I am drowning in you," Alastor confessed into the dark space between them, his chest heaving as the thick, bitter taste of Vox’s engine-oil grief and the sweet, burning copper of his love flooded his senses. "Every morning... every agonizing night where you tear your own beautiful soul to pieces. I hear it all. I feel it all."

Vox completely froze, his hardware humming a low, stunned baseline as his processor tried to compute the impossible.

"You... you hear me?" Vox whispered, his defensive anger completely evaporating into the rain.

"I hear everything," Alastor murmured, his grip tightening on Vox’s wrists with a terrifying, ravenous devotion. He tilted his head up slightly, his wide red eyes staring directly into Vox's flickering screen with a soft vulnerability that was reserved for only one.

​"My dear, dear picture box... your longing for me has never been a secret. I knew that you fell for me all those years ago. But for you to think of yourself so lowly... to believe you are nothing but worthless garbage..." Alastor’s shoulders trembled. "The blame is mine, Vox. It is entirely mine. I let my pride build these walls between us, refusing to be honest with you—refusing to be honest with myself—and I left you to drown in the silence until you broke."

​Vox froze, his fans humming a low frequency. He didn't know what to say.

​"You might have fallen first all those decades ago, my dear..." Alastor whispered, practically begging now, his voice entirely stripped of every ounce of pride he had ever owned. "But I am the one who is completely ruined by it now. I have fallen so much harder than you ever could.” Alastor leaned closer, his hot breath fogging the corner of Vox's screen as he held onto his wrists.

​"Please do not ask me to destroy you, for you to wish to end yourself by my hands is something I can never and will never grant you.”

"Instead... let us make a deal."

​The word hung in the damp air between them, heavy and charged. Vox’s screen flickered, a sudden spike of static cutting through. A deal? Overlords didn't make deals with their equals. Deals were for ownership. Deals were for control.

​"A... a deal?" Vox breathed, his voice sounding incredibly small against the pouring rain. "What could you possibly want to trade for a broken machine, Alastor?"

​"Darling, I can hear your thoughts. Remember, I do not care for your empire, Vox. Not your tech, or your loyalty, nor your obedience," Alastor murmured, his tone dropping into a low, resonant register that vibrated directly against Vox’s chest. Slowly, Alastor released Vox's wrists. He brought his hand up to press his palm flat against the center of Vox's chest, right over the pulsing, erratic rhythm of his heart.

​"I want it all, Vox. I will not have you tearing yourself to pieces. Alastor declared, his shadows rising around them, thick and suffocating, sealing them into a pocket dimension of darkness. "We will split the transmission, my dear. Half of my soul to carry the crushing weight of your world... and half of yours to bring my world to life.”

​Vox’s breath hitched. A soul bond born of a love so toxic and consuming that it required rewriting their very existence.

​"You're crazy," Vox whispered, even as his own hands rose instinctively, his claws digging into the fabric of Alastor’s red coat. "If we do this... we're stuck. I'll be inside your head forever. You'll feel everything I hate about myself."

​"Then let me carry it," Alastor replied, “We have forever darling to turn those horrid thoughts of yours into something more pleasurable”

"Do we have a deal, Vox?"

​Vox stared into those wide, dark red eyes, completely unmade by the sheer magnitude of what Alastor was offering. He didn't just want Vox alive; he wanted to own half of his suffering.

​"Deal," Vox choked out.

​The moment the word left his lips, Hell's physics bent around them.

​A deep, soft purple aura bled out from where Alastor’s hand pressed against Vox’s chest. The air grew thick with the scent of ozone and moss, a violent, beautiful tearing sensation ripping through the center of both their chests as their souls fractured and rewrote themselves.

​Vox let out a sharp cry, his screen flashing a blinding white as half of his frantic, screaming, hyperventilating consciousness was suddenly pulled into Alastor's vast, quiet void. And in return, Alastor gasped, his eyes going completely dark as the chaotic, brilliant warmth of Vox's soul flooded his veins, settling deep into his own hollow ribs.

​The agonizing weight didn't quite disappear; it was instead halved. Shared perfectly between two demons that had spent a century trying to destroy one another.

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from the NTR comic over on the other places

I guess it might be too raunchy for tumblr, so here's a panel I liked (there will be more of it, perhaps)

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"Sinful Delight" (SFW part) - SAMPLE

-> a VoxAlVox fancomic set in the domestic partners AU

info:

"In a much brighter timeline, the Radio Demon and the Television Demon joined forces and not only became Hell's most powerful entertainment duo, but also partners for (after)life.

To be loved is to be changed - and after spending years together, both Vox and Alastor come to realize just how true that rings"

(NOTE: more parts of the comic will be posted at a later date)

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past & present...??

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re-visiting an old brainworm where the Vees are attending an Overlord gala dressed to the nines, and there's this huge buffet that everyone's swarming to. Vel & Val are immediately starting their gossiping and badmouth the venue, but quieten down in confusion when they watch Vox pile his plate high and force himself to a good portion from everything.

"Uh, Vox? what's the big idea, why are you even eating that crap?"

but Vox puffs out his chest and smugly tells them it's a way to butter up the other Overlords and get into their good graces, this is basic manipulation tactic 101! ugh, young people these days have no fucking manners, Vox has got them in the bag, just you see (when in reality it's just an excuse to pig out with no bad conscience )

[candysignal]

happy wedding

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