Some really cool people have gotten together to do live readings of my fic it's not murder, it's research and waste disposal every Friday. Which is BONKERS to me but WOW. They do 3 chapters every week & after, post the recording on a free Patreon, so it's like. Voice acting. Reading. INM Audiobook. Crazy.
There is a server for it SO I am humbly inviting any of my INMCU followers to join. The server is 18+ obviously so. There is a verification process but nothing crazy. Anyway. Link underneath the cut. BE GOOD. :)
Here is the Patreon link if you don’t care about joining the server.
It's Not Murder, It's Research and Waste Disposal Live Read! Fic by mangotangerine on AO3! 🪽 | 62 members
Will it ever get elaborated on why Husk is also scared of Alastor?
Probably not. It’s got potential for a side fic if I ever want to. I need to dial down Husk’s reaction cuz it’s a little melodramatic in the actual fic. 😭 He saw some shit, basically.
With Alastor, Husk’s both loyal to the family/Maman Marie so isn’t going to do anything about it and also scared of Alastor, so he stumbles upon some of the fucked up shit from Alastor at some point before Vox moves to New Orleans & keeps his mouth shut because he is a scaredy-cat.
With Vox, he doesn’t fully know the shit that guy is capable of and does. He just gets the creeps because he can tell something is off.
If one more person comments and asks why INMCU Vox is blond w blue eyes & doesn’t check the published date…………….. like bro we didn’t even have a name I just went w the vibes I felt off him. 😭
Chapter 26: crown moldings of When Boys Grow Up is now out!
Chapter Summary
Maman Marie comes to visit, and she shakes things up a bit.
Lovely illustrations by @rillyrillo are for chapter 15: sparrow!
Fic Summary
Nothing in life is certain, except death, taxes, and Alastor and Vox. Somehow, no matter what universe they’re in, the two manage to find each other.
Alastor is nine years old when V and his fancy family move into the house at the end of his street. They’re not at all how Alastor expects. He’s never met anybody as cold and controlling as V’s parents, and he’s never met anyone he’s liked as much as he likes V. They quickly become friends after Alastor saves V from a cruel punishment in the Louisiana sun, and V finds himself welcomed into a family where nobody yells at each other, nobody gets hit for misbehaving, and where he can be free for the first time in his life.
What kind of men can two boys become when found family and love disrupt the cycle of isolation that creates monsters?
Tags
Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: M/M
Fandom: Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon)
Relationships: Alastor/Vox (Hazbin Hotel), Alastor & Vox (Hazbin Hotel)
Characters: Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), Vox (Hazbin Hotel), Original Characters
Additional Tags:
Coming of Age, Falling In Love, Growing Up Together, Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Human, Human Vox (Hazbin Hotel), Human Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Hurricane Katrina, Fluff and Angst, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Demisexual Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), First Kiss, Getting Together, Litfic, Found Family, Family Dynamics, Trauma Recovery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Creole Alastor (Hazbin Hotel), Kouri-Vini, Heavy Themes, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Alastor Speaks Kouri-Vini | Louisiana Creole (Hazbin Hotel), Happy Ending
Language: English
Word Count: 132,196
I’ve been thinking about Moonset and Moonrise again recently and now I’m curious. following the first chapters timeline, how do you imagine their reunion in Hell went?
For moonset, that first scene is the reunion in the afterlife for them, but that could be imagined as a sort of purgatorial scene where Vox is waiting for Alastor so they can go together to Hell.
To be honest I think their reunion went “gotta find my guy” to “are you a fucking TELEVISION?!” and Alastor trying to swap Vox’s head out while Vox tries to pet his ears. 😭
I imagine Alastor ends up being okay with the TV-as-a-head bit once he realizes his face works as a sort of pocket dimension and he can fuck it without disfiguring/killing Vox.
I have a scene/chapter I wrote actually that covers their first meeting in Hell that I’ve put on Tumblr somewhere but I’m not sure it actually made its way to Ao3. I should edit and post that.
did i add a font into the workskin because I have it and it’s pretty and I want to look at it on this fake birth certificate thing, knowing nobody else will have it and so they get ugly bradley hand or segoe script?
yes, yes i did.
this is the font
and for the fans, the snippet:
April 17th, 1989
The spirits tell her that her daughter’s got something important to say, but not what, of course. Not the most important information. Marie waits by the phone, hoping it’s today Gloria’s gonna call, reading a book so the phone knows it isn’t special. She was gonna read here anyway. You gotta make sure things know you make your own decisions, or they get uppity.
Of course, the phone rings right when she’s in the middle of a good paragraph. She sets the book aside with a sigh and picks up.
“Mama, I’m pregnant.”
“Not even a hello,” Marie says. “No, hey, mama, how you doing? How’s life? You still alive? Not too lonely? Just, oh, I’m having a baby.”
Her daughter sighs the sigh of a daughter long-suffering, and Marie smiles. “Hello, Mama,” her daughter says dryly. “You still alive? Not too lonely?”
“Why in the hell would I be lonely, Gloria?” Marie says with a laugh. Her daughter groans this time, and Marie hears a gentle, What’d she say? from Gloria’s husband. “Always liked that man,” Maman adds.
“Oh, sure, stroke his ego—”
“Marcus don’t got an ego, Gloria, that’s why I like him. Knows his place,” Marie says. Marcus’s laughter carries through to her, faint as it is over the phone.
“Mama, I’m pregnant,” her daughter says again.
“So that’s what the spirits meant,” Marie says to herself. She lets out a quiet hum, standing to head to her little office where her nekren is. She stands in front of it, picking up the petrified wood. “I got somethin’ for him.” No way to know it’s a him, but ‘him’ feels right on her tongue.
“Could be a girl,” Gloria says. “Might be the future matriarch you’re snubbin’.”
Marie snorts. “He’s a boy, Gloria. I can tell,” she says.
“That’s what Marcus thinks too,” her daughter says wearily.
“How far along are you?” Marie asks.
There’s a pause, then Gloria says, “Six weeks about. I know it’s early to say, but I talked to the ancestors like you always tellin’ me to. They said it’d be—that it’s safe to say now. Nothin’ is goin’ to happen.”
Six weeks. Marie looks at the petrified wood in her hand. She thinks about it, then scowls. Rude of the damn spirits to draw her out there on the damn day of conception. “Early February?”
Gloria makes a choking noise, stuttering out, “I—I—doesn’t matter!”
“Healthy marriage,” Marie says. “He good to you?”
“I’m not havin’ this conversation with my mother of all people.”
Again, Marcus’s laughter filters through the phone. “Bet he’s proud of himself,” Marie says. Before her daughter can protest further, she adds, “Got to go now. Have some things to arrange.” Marie pauses, her smile turned soft. “Congratulations, Gloria. I’m comin’ up to meet him.”
Medical play inm universe oneshot thing (non canon or canon) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. I BEG.
I fear if I try to do this I would disappoint 😭 I feel like it’d just be a repeat of the pet play bit where Alastor takes his job very seriously and doesn’t quite get it’s supposed to be erotic and just gets frustrated at Vox getting horny for him in gloves.
I LOVED IT!!!!!!!! I'm so glad everyone either gets a happy or happy-headed ending, and the idea of Al + Vox hunting invasive species for sport instead has soothe something deep within my soul. Also, congrats on wrapping up such a huge project!!!! I've got a couple questions about these characters going forward:
Does Alastor have a Big Goal anymore? From avenging his father's death, to then killing Vox's dad, then rebuilding in the aftermath, he's been busy, but that's all slowed down eventually. He seems to twist himself around a singular focus that's accomplishable in a single (if extremely meticulously planned) fell swoop, so what's taken up that spot?
Does Vox fully realize he could've gotten Travis killed? And what does realizing he's pushed Travis away for good look like for him? (I am undone by the tragedy of Travis taking his leave once Vox gives up the murder grind since that's probably the only time in this timeline they could've made anything work, platonically or otherwise).
...And following that, are Vox + Al still actively hunting in Heterochromia?
Thank you so much!!!!!!!!
YAY, I’m glad!! Thank you so much!!!! And OOOH good questions.
Spoilers for people who haven’t yet read chapter 58!
Alastor’s Big Goal (or lack thereof):
He doesn’t have something big and singular in the way he did during the fic, something with a final achievable goal, but he does now have the time to actually throw himself into his work the way Marcus did. So essentially, more focus on his environmental goals and, something that will be touched on in the next couple of WBGU chapters, his role in his family’s spiritual practice.
Gloria moving into the position of matriarch moves Catarina from matriarch-in-training to the matriarch’s right hand, which is a specific role that also works to prepare her for her future position. It also moves Alastor into his position as the left hand. There wasn’t one for a while, but with him stepping into the role, the duties of that role (that have been somewhat neglected as Maman Marie is just one person) can now be performed.
If the matriarch is the light that warms and uplifts the community that she serves, the left hand is the shadow that light throws. They work close to the boundary between the living and the dead and concern themselves with the safety of their community, using violence if necessary. Hence what Maman Marie said, about Vox stepping in to play Alastor’s role when Alastor was the one threatened. :)
So his focus switches to those two things, which are larger, continuous, more complex tasks. It’s a different sort of work but keeps his mind busy much the same way hunting keeps Vox’s mind busy.
Does Vox fully realize he could've gotten Travis killed?
No. He has no idea. To him, Travis just disappeared. He assumes Travis is fine, just off doing whatever-it-is-that-Travis-does, because the idea of Travis (the man with the plan) not being okay doesn’t compute.
Travis used Vox’s trust in him to get him to sign that paperwork, knowing Vox wouldn’t read it, so he could martyr himself for Vox’s continuation. He got exiled instead, and technically didn’t have to cut himself off from Vox, but did so anyway because he saw it as an opportunity, and he’d lost everything anyway, basically.
In the sequel that follows, the third burning, at some point way later on, Vox and Alastor run into Travis by complete chance in Travis’s new city, and Travis lets slip what he did. Vox is very, very upset by this news, and extra upset to realize Travis got married and never told him. But that’s like 4–5 years after Travis tries to throw himself under the bus and disappears.
Are Vox + Al still actively hunting in Heterochromia?
Yes. They each get one murder a year for their birthday on even years and one murder a year for their half-birthday on odd years. Leap years they get two each. Travis has veto power over days and victims. There are black-out days where no murder is allowed, and they have to schedule their murders with Travis in advance. He is a very generous handler boyfriend. 😌
Here, a little snippet I have written, below the cut!
Alastor finds them like that. Travis has switched to glasses too—that’s two of his partners wearing glasses, and it’s almost too much. He wants to interrupt, to take them off and kiss down Travis’s body, or Vox’s, but his boys look like they’re doing very serious smart boy stuff.
“What’s going on in here?” Alastor asks.
“Science,” Vox says.
“Blackmail,” Travis says. “In service of science, I guess,” he adds.
“Evil science?” Alastor asks, amused.
Vox turns to look at him, expression fond, and Alastor feels arousal stir in his gut. He hasn’t seen this side of Vox in a while.
“Yeah,” Vox says. “Evil science. Well, the evil science has already been done. I’m trying to figure out how to anonymize Dessert’s brain scans so I can use this in actual research and start doing real stuff because I’m bored as fuck, since Travis doesn’t let us do fun murder things anymore.”
“You get two murders a year,” Travis says without looking up. “I feel like that’s pretty fucking generous. One for each birthday.”
“What about Christmas, Travis?” Vox asks.
“Yeah,” Alastor says, “What about Christmas?”
Travis pauses what he’s doing to give both men his full attention. “You want permission to commit high-profile murder on one of the most sacred American holidays?” he asks. “On Christmas? I know you two are fucking stupid, but let’s keep it to mundane fucking days so I don’t have to deal with a PR crisis and murder coverup, please and fucking thank you. Also, it’s an off year, so you get half-birthday kills. Figure out which months you want.”
He turns back to his laptop, ignoring any further questioning from Alastor or Vox.
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