This is an 18+ sneeze kink blog, so if you’re under the age of 18, you are NOT ALLOWED TO INTERACT WHATSOEVER! I don’t tolerate with rude individuals, so any negative comments will be removed and you’ll be blocked instantly. I make art of my favorite characters.
I’m currently in a Hazbin Hotel hyper-fixation, especially with the character Vox, so this blog is very Vox-centric. Yes, I absolutely enjoy seeing Vox suffer from something as simple and uncontrollable as sneezing (and no, I don’t care if he doesn’t have a physical nose, we can pretend!).
I’m currently in a Team Fortress 2 hyper-fixation, especially with the character Spy.
I enjoy reading original fics featuring male original characters sneezing, as well as fics based on or about my favorite characters!
Finally done editing part 3 of my ongoing long-as-FUCK Ha/z/bin Hot/el snzfic that mostly focuses on sick V/ox + V/al caretaking, but will switch to sick A/last/or in part 4 and all three V/ees sick in part 5.
Originally inspired by this lovely art here and here by @f-223108. Shoutout to @very-freakin-effable for beta reading and SO much moral support, I got really shy about this one lol
This part’s 8.9k and contains: V/ox getting VERY glitchy from snz/illness (funnily enough he DOES lose his marbles in Act Three lmao), mild and severe electric shock (not graphic and V/al’s into it lol), injury (gills still), sneezing on someone (no mess, “potential spray”), kink!V/al, inducing (touch), stuck snz, holdbacks, stifling, caretaking, fever, stat/ic/moth fluff
Disclaiming again that this is prob not 100% accurate to how wounds work nor how it’s advised to tend to them—e.g. TECHNICALLY it’s recommended to put a thin cloth barrier between an ice pack and skin—however like 1) they rly might not know better 2) demon 3) it worked out best this way for me 🥺
[18+ kink fic so minors and ageless blogs DNI, including likes, or will be blocked]
Replies/reblogs/tags/etc. always appreciated but never necessary. Love you guys, hope you enjoy!! 🌹❤️
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Sure enough, Val forgot to wash his fucking hands and returned 15 minutes later with his lover’s bowl of boring-ass soup. In that short timeframe alone, he had touched a frankly astonishing amount of common surfaces while waiting for the microwave to finish; he satisfied his remarkable impatience by languidly lounging around the penthouse.
While Vox ate his soup, relishing in the sensation of the warm broth against his poor sore throat, Valentino laid next to him on the bed. Unusually, Vox was a little less inclined to ramble on about whatever topic had caught his interest due to the sorry state of his throat, subduing haze of fever, and intermittent interruptions of coughs and sneezes. Still, the two sinners fell in and out of conversation easily, silences comfortable and warm despite being more plentiful.
To occupy his hands, Val flitted between scrolling through his phone, rubbing soothing circles in Vox’s back during coughing fits, and doodling in a notebook. Sometimes, he did all three simultaneously since he had plenty of hands to spare. He had initially planned on using his drawing tablet, but Vox insisted that it was already a bad enough idea for Val to have his phone this close when he was so glitchy from illness, never mind working on digital art in files he knew the moth didn’t save as often as he should have. At first, Valentino protested with his infamously short fuse lit aflame by indignation.
However, he shut up fast as soon as Vox fell prey to a painfully long coughing fit that was so violent and all-consuming as it wracked his body with shudders that he accidentally gave Val quite the brutal electric shock—which angered and aroused Val, both to Vox’s dismay—and burst at least one or two lightbulbs. Due to the extremely convenient timing, it took a solid ten minutes of hoarse arguing to convince Valentino that none of it was intentional, even though that was the truth.
Of course, Vox left out how pleased he was with the coincidence and its literal ill timing, albeit the agony it provoked from his injured gills was less than ideal.
A short while later, once it had been about half an hour since the ailing media overlord last ate or drank anything, they decided to finally check in on his temperature. The previous night, there might have been a little… incident possibly involving a digital thermometer and a few particularly volatile sneezes that might have occurred just after Valentino removed the device from Vox’s mouth and was looking at the results, which could have perhaps caused an electric surge that made Val’s fluff stand up on end aaand completely fried the thermometer before the last numbers it would ever display could even be read. Maybe. Hypothetically, of course.
For entirely unrelated reasons, Velvette happened to have had to order some analog glass thermometers that night while Val was tending to his wounded lover, and Val now held one of them out near Vox’s screen as he sat on his bedside.
With a salacious giggle, Valentino instructed, “All right, open up that sexy little mouth of y—”
“Val, I can do it myself,” Vox dismissed, lowering the other demon’s hand.
“But where’s the fun in that?” Val countered before lowering his voice into pure seduction. “Now, be a good boy, and open nice and wide for me, Voxxy.” His sharp smile widened as Vox blushed and averted his gaze, arms folded and eyes narrowed, but obeying nonetheless.
After a little over three minutes, the thermometer seemed to plateau. Upon inspecting it for results, Valentino pouted and murmured, “Awh. Mi cariño... 121.3? Tsk. That’s hot even for you.” Regardless of whether or not a double meaning of hot was intended, it would have been lost on Vox in this state anyway. While his electronic systems could handle a little extra heat and utilized it to their advantage when fighting viruses, there was still a limit, of course—his current state was comparable to a human fever of around 103.3°F or 39.6°C.
“Yeah… that checks out,” Vox remarked, tone weighed down by resignation to his fate. Suddenly, a little more alertness washed over him, carried by a growing tide of insecurity. “But anything under 122 is fiiine, really. Not that—not that that would be an issue either, obviously. I’m at the—” As if his verbal floundering and flustered attempts to avoid sounding weak weren’t already of… questionable persuasiveness to begin with, his voice caught in his throat and gave out on him, leaving him to choke on nothing but his words and his pride. One short string of abrasive, hacking coughs later, he continued hoarsely, “I’m at the top of the fucking overlords, after all.” The slight, smug laugh woven into the statement did him no favors, only succeeding in further highlighting just how off his game he currently was and throwing him into a sequel to that brief coughing fit that got much more screen time.
“Uh-huh,” Valentino hummed, looking so very unimpressed.
The moment Vox’s coughing let up, he exclaimed with a stuttering groan, “Aaghhh-hah-hah, fuck,” while he writhed in pain with arms wrapped around himself and an agonized grimace squeezing his digital features tight. Growling in frustration through gritted teeth, he slammed a fist down onto the nearest nightstand with so much force that it left a splintering dent in the poor thing.
Val cast a glance between the damaged, innocent piece of furniture and his agitated lover. “Gills being a bitch?” he asked simply.
“What the fuck do you think?”
“I think… that while you’re,” Val began, pausing to run his tongue over his fangs with great care, “delicious like this… we should probably do something about, uhh… all that.” He waved a hand vaguely in Vox’s whole general direction.
“There’s not much that can be done other than fucking wait, Val,” Vox spat back.
“Well, I don’t fucking know, can’t you just ice that shit or down some fucking drugs or something??”
Vox dragged a hand down his face and sighed, insisting, “No, Val, I can’t—that wouldn’t do any… Ehh, fuck it, I suppose that’s worth a shot.” An almost conspiratorial tone had begun slipping into his voice, heralded by a small shrug and a contemplative stroke of the bottom of his screen. “Get me one of those cold packs from the, uh—from the back of the freezer—one of the bigger ones if they’re in there—and some Tyhellnol.” It wasn’t so much a polite request as it was an instruction, which tasted a little bitter to its recipient.
“You are sooo lucky you’re hot sometimes,” Valentino huffed, turning to leave with his lower hands resting on his hips and the others thrown up into the air.
————————————
After a short while, Valentino returned with hands full of supplies, announcing, “I bring presents~! Here’s your, ehm… cold, uh…? I-ice…” He stumbled over what the exact term was, squinting down at the finely printed text on the item in question before finally deciding on “here’s your weird gel shit. And your medicine. And—ooh.” He paused with an expectant smirk upon seeing a hazy, ticklish look cross his lover’s face.
Vox crumbled into a handful of tissues with a vocal, shaky exhale before two forceful sneezes overtook him with a sense of urgency, though the second seemed to run out of steam halfway through. “Hehhh—! Eh’KDTZSCH’huhh! IHGKTZSHhieww! Nguh… owww…” Both of them induced mild glitches in his systems, sending a slight shudder through his body, static across his screen, and thin lines of electricity around him. Despite having his arm wrapped around his injured gills to minimize their movement, it wasn’t enough to avoid the surge of pain that left a rather defeated looking pout lingering on his screen.
“… And more tissues,” Val added as he approached his bedside, setting down a fresh tissue box and a bottle of Tyhellnol onto the nightstand. “It seems like you’re going to need them. Salud…”
“Thangks,” Vox mumbled with a few congested sniffles before proving Val quite right indeed, draining the other, nearly-empty box of a few more tissues to rid his screen of all that excess coolant.
“Thank me by taking this frozen shit before it gives me fucking frostbite,” Valentino huffed, practically just dropping the cold pack onto him.
Vox quickly downed a dose of Tyhellnol—probably the right amount—and unbuttoned his pinstriped pajama shirt to access his gills. Thanks to the wonders of demonic recovery from all things non-angelic, they had not required wrappings of gauze since last night, and the wounds had closed up pretty well. However, there was still a visible pattern of missing flesh carved out by claws that had not finished regenerating yet. Gingerly, Vox placed the ice pack over the lower half of his torso as he laid down, folding the packet—a thin and wide rectangular shape in navy blue accented with fine white text in the corner—to meet the aching gills on his sides.
A surprisingly intense shiver wracked its way through Vox, an on-and-off stream of smaller ones following in its wake. “Mhh, God, that’s cold as balls… Ohh, yeah, that’s the good shit right there.” Relief washed over his fever-dimmed features, though he rubbed at his upper arms a little and started sniffling more frequently as the frigidness seeped into him.
Valentino hummed fondly and ran his hand over his lover’s drooping antennas such that they rested a bit straighter on his pillow, much like one might brush unkempt hair back from a feverish forehead. Then, he settled himself back down onto the left side of the bed, lounging against the headboard and returning to the notebook sketches he had been drawing earlier.
Around ten minutes later, Val looked his would-be patient over and asked, “Sooo, is the ice thingy doing anything for your little gills?”
“‘S c-cold…” was the only response he received, muttered through shivers as Vox tried to pull the blankets further over his shoulders without getting them damp from the condensation on the gel cold pack lower down.
“Isn’t that the point, amorcito?” Valentino countered, raising an eyebrow.
“I mbead, yeah, but… but s-still.”
“Well, is it helping…?”
“I’mb… ndot really sure,” Vox admitted with a soft sniffle or two. He held a few tissues to the center of his screen and blew into them to manage the increasingly persistent stream of coolant overflowing his systems. “Feels better though. Numb...” he continued, voice small and hoarse and so audibly unwell, but a little more upbeat nonetheless. A few wet, ticklish coughs overcame him, and he turned away from his partner to cover them into his fist. Rather than groaning in pain, this time, he got through it with a mere wince and a clear of his muddied throat.
“Good, good,” Val hummed in acknowledgment.
The undertone of pity in those words scraped against the perpetually fragile core of insecurity rooted into the very depths of Vox’s bitter heart, though he was too lost in the draining haze of illness to pay it much mind.
No, instead, he succumbed to a few soft ripples of breath that threw him into a ticklish sneeze flanked on both sides by sniffles. Just before the symptom struck, his arm instinctively began to move down to apply pressure to his gills, stopping with a slight jolt as he remembered the cold compress’s soothing of the injury. Freed of that prior necessity, he buried his screen into tissues held by both hands steepled together.
“Bless you…” drawled Valentino, rolling the phrase around on his tongue to savor its taste.
“You wanna try saying that any less horny for a change?”
“Mnh. No~!” Val chirped with a cutesy tone and a matching smile.
“III didn’t think so,” Vox sighed.
“Especially not if you’re going to do it again. You’re looking pretty sneezy there, babyy,” Valentino teased as he watched with shameless, rapt attention, setting his notebook aside to move closer and run a finger down the side of the other Vee’s screen playfully.
Vox sniffled and blinked against the mounting irritation in the back of his ventilation system, reining back the urge to do something about it. Rolling his eyes, he gently pushed Val away with a hand on his chest and grumbled, “Would you just be a little careful? If you stay too close, you’re g-gonnahh… heh-hh-hiih…” The steady rhythm at which he was trying to keep his breathing gave way to irregular flutters and stutters. After a moment, he let out a slow, careful exhale followed by a small sigh of relief as the tension in his body dissipated. Although he managed to suppress the instinct, both of them knew damn well it was a temporary status at best—a short delay rather than an erasure of the sensation. “You’re gonna get hurt, you know,” he finished with a sniffle and a reproachful, somewhat judgmental glare.
“So what? Pain and pleasure go hand-in-hand, don’t they?” Val mused, his voice silky smooth with temptation, only moving closer and gliding a hand down the collar of Vox’s shirt. Although he acted as though his position was obvious, it fluctuated in accordance with his fickle moods, as did most things Valentino. Sometimes he was touchy about it, sometimes he wanted to get touchy about it. Judging by the vulturous hunger in his eyes as a hazy look fell over Vox alongside needy little gasps, it was the latter at the moment. “Go on and let it happennn. There’s no need to try to hold it back on my account.”
The feverish flush across Vox’s screen only brightened, and his gaze softened with a sudden sheepishness before being fixed to the floor. Rubbing at his vents, he mumbled with a small shrug and a bounce of his eyebrows, “I’m not trying to anymore…” He punctuated the statement with a couple of ticklish sniffles, then a few hitches of breath that sounded twice as ticklish and sent a fresh wave of that twitchy irritation over his features.
A small, knowing chuckle left Valentino’s lips. “You’re so adorable like this. Here, I’ll help you out,” he purred, tilting his lover’s face towards him with a light touch.
“What do you mea—?” Vox began warily, cut off by a sudden shiver of discomfort as he felt the tip of a claw trace delicately and agonizingly slowly around the very edge of one of his oh-so-irritated vents on the back of his head. The sensation was so cloyingly overwhelming that it elicited somewhat of a whimper from him. “Nngh, Val, don’t—enh!” His eyes kept squeezing shut in a wince of sheer distress; they flickered closed with greater finality as Val continued to agitate his poor vents with a featherlight touch and a small hum of satisfaction, working his breaths into an uneven discord. Though he tried, he couldn’t even get a few simple words out, his voice jumping a little in pitch and sounding as if it was dragged away from him until the inevitable sneezes came in a hurried rush: “Fuck, tha-haht— ehgh—! Heh’IHZSHh! —KTZSCH! —KDTZSHh’huhh!… Ughhh…”
He had… probably managed to bring his hand up between them in time to cover all those sneezes, but he wasn’t entirely sure. Frankly, it hardly even mattered, since one hand splayed a couple inches away from his screen was a far less effective method than he ever seemed to realize. Regardless, he sunk back against the pillows propped up against the headboard of the bed, shoulders sagging with relief.
Valentino appeared to be rather unfazed despite the mild electric shock he had received. No, in fact, he looked quite pleased as he snuggled a little closer and murmured, “Bless you... Tell me, what does that even feel like with all your weird TV shit?” He punctuated the question with a playful flick of Vox’s bent antenna.
Getting fed up, Vox sighed, “I don’t know, Val… It’s just…” He sniffled and shivered, feeling the ice pack on his chest continue to drain him of whatever remnants of warmth he had left. The coldness was proving useful for soothing his wounds, but the tradeoffs made it more so a redistribution of comfort than an overall increase, keeping the scale of misfortune balanced. Worse, the mourning of lost temperature was exacerbated by that feverish sense of unreachable cold that had set into every wire and circuit he had. That frigidness only left him more vulnerable to the fuzzy tickle blossoming in the depths of his ventilation system—it seemed that lingering on the memory of the sensation to describe it served to resummon the damn thing itself. “‘S just… really ihh… i-ihhtchyy… ehh-gyh…!”
“Awwwh, it certainly sounds like it. You poor thing,” Val pitied, nothing but crocodile tears. “Let’s fix that, shall we?” With no further warning, he cradled the side of Vox’s monitor in his upper right hand to keep him still, bringing his upper left to one of the larger vents on the back of his lover’s head. This time, though, he only traced the edges of the grate for a fleeting moment before sliding the tip of his claw into one of the gaps and lightly scratching against the inside of the ventilation shaft itself, too gentle to leave a mark, but sharp enough nonetheless to concentrate an immense amount of irritation into a mere pinprick’s worth of space.
The effect was instant and utterly irresistible, provoking Vox’s already hyperreactive, corrupted systems so badly that he barely even had time to cough from the overstimulation before his breath caught drastically.
“Hah’EHDTZZSH’uh! —IGZZsh! —AHDZSH! EYTZSH’ah!” The chain of sneezes came on too suddenly and progressed too rapidly for Vox to even consider covering them, especially given the glitches accompanying each one. That said, Val didn’t seem particularly bothered—hot and bothered, perhaps—about being in the line of fire for any light spray or mild shocks. However, he did bring a few tissues in his lower right hand to Vox’s screen just in time for the next bout of sneezes, winding his lower left arm around his partner’s waist in a way that felt both tender and… possessive. “Ohhh, shit—KTZZSH! —IPTZSH! Huhhh-EHGTZ’shieww!”
“Awwh, you’re much more sensitive to that than I expected. Blessss you,” Valentino said as if it were praise.
It really was.
“Aahh-haaah… ihgh…?” Everything about the vocal flutters of his breath, his expression, and even his body language was utterly needy.
“That’s it, at least one more for me. Don’t be shyyy,” Val coaxed. A few audible taps of his claw against an inner wall sent ripples of reverberations throughout the ventilation shaft, the waves of disruptive sensations nearly unbearable.
“V-Vahh—hahhh!” If Vox was trying to protest, it was lost like raindrops to a riptide. As the feeling of a rather imminent sneeze—sneezes, more likely, based on how distraught his systems seemed to be—surged within him, he tried to turn away from Val, but the other demon held him still. All he could do was hastily grab a tissue from the box and bury the lower half of his face into it before a fit of harsh, shuddering sneezes shook him in Val’s arms. “Ehpt-KZZZSCH! —EIHTzch! —Tzzsch! Hih-GZSHh’uh! Huhh—! Ohhh, mby Gohhh—hh’AHKZZSH-SHUHh!! F-fu-uck.”
Oooh.
… Well, that was a bad sign.
Not only were glitches getting more frequent and more intense, evident by the electricity zapping across him and how static was taking over the sound of every little outburst like an invasive species, but even ordinary speech stuttered terribly at the end there.
“There it is. Bless,” Valentino murmured, lifting the hand that had been holding Vox’s head still just to run the backs of his fingers down the side of his lover’s screen in a display of adoration. After the moment of softer affection passed, he pressed the tip of his claw further back in the ventilation shaft he had been agitating—too far back to handle, the consequence of the contact so immediate that Vox didn’t even have the chance to inhale before snapping forward with a few urgent sneezes.
“KPTZSH! —TZSCH! —KZZSCH!”
“Blessss you.” Another touch of his claw so far back triggered another—
“KZTCH—KZZSH—TZSCH—DZZZSH!” The lights flickered off and back on so slowly that Vox’s heart sank for a moment thinking that they wouldn’t be returning to life.
“Awwh, bless.” He didn’t give Vox more than a second to try to catch his breath before tap, tap, tap.
“IHDTZSH—KZDSH—DZZSCH! Huh-EHTZZsch! Ahh…”
Okay, it was time to stop, if not long past it already. Vox heard one or two lightbulbs shatter during that last paroxysm, and that only spelled disaster in the near future if he couldn’t get a hold of himself. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t exactly keen on breaking anything else in his own fucking bedroom, never mind in his building in general. And, fuck, if things really got out of hand, it wasn’t unlikely that the whole Pentagram might find itself suddenly out of power for anywhere between a few seconds and an entire day. While it might not be obvious that it was his fault, it still would have been inconvenient and bad for business, to say the least. Not to mention Velvette would tear him to shreds.
Nope.
Although he felt his body ache to relieve his poor vents of their troubles, he clamped his hands over his mouth and struggled to hold his breath in an attempt to slam on the fucking brakes. For a fleeting, foolish moment, he tried to actually override his processors to force them into passivity—perhaps if normal biological means of halting the reaction were failing, technological ones were worth pursuing as well.
However, just as Alastor tended to make abundantly clear when it came to more emotional matters than this, it was far easier to provoke a volatile reaction from Vox than it was to stop it from spiraling. Of course, his circuitry was too corrupted from the very illness spurring on this hypersensitivity and the additional glitches in response to excessive stimulus to be told to stop causing additional glitches by overreacting to stimulus. After all, that was a glimpse of the perpetual paradox he faced on a much grander scale, wasn’t it? One of his greatest strengths was his ability to control others, but his ability to control himself was one of his greatest weaknesses, in turn. That was where the pitfall always lied and sent Icarus crashing back down to the Earth in a blaze: he always took things too far.
As a tumultuous tension rolled through him like unruly waves in tempestuous waters, he fought to tamp down any attempts his body made to do something productive about the irritation in his vents, insistent though it was. While he couldn’t succeed in keeping desperate little hitches of breath from escaping him, he at least managed to curtail any actual sneezes from forcing their way out, barely choking them back. “Enhh… heh! Hhgkt—!… —ahh… Hh-huhh—ehgkt—! Ghuhhh… fuuuck…” After each almost-sneeze, there had to come some delayed sigh to release that held breath. God, was that ordeal unsatisfying as all hell, and his resolve was hanging on by a rather loose thread despite all his efforts.
“Tsk. Trying to deny yourself what you want isn’t going to do anyone any good,” Valentino tutted, pouring temptation into his voice like he was trying to drown in it. With a petty pout of disappointment, he traced lazy little heart shapes in Vox’s ventilation shaft with his claw, earning a faint whimper of discomfort and need. “Don’t you want to feel betterrr, baby? Get all that nasty itch out of your system with a few good sneezesss?” He abandoned the silly little heart shapes he had entertained himself with in favor of caressing that sensitive inner surface in tight circles with the very point of his claw.
What Vox wanted to do most was shove this brat away, but the overstimulation had his attention in a vice grip, especially since it was taking all his focus to try to repress the electric potential brimming in his malfunctioning systems and suppress that fucking innate reflex that Val was toying with so incessantly. Unfortunately for him, what he actually did was much closer to Val’s desire than h-his—
“Ehh… hhk—!” No, no, no, wait—he pressed his hands against his mouth as firmly as he could, struggling to minimize the sneezes he failed to keep at bay. “Hh’MMKT! —NGKT! Ihh… mnhh—! KKGT-ahh…” Good, that was contained pretty well—all things considered—but, Christ, was it uncomfortable, and it did nothing to satiate that near-burning prickling sensation that had his ventilation system in a chokehold.
Valentino didn’t bless him this time; that was reserved for proper sneezes, not this stubborn shit. Though he did seem quite pleased regardless as he taunted with a self-satisfied smile, “See? You can’t fucking help it—”
And, oh, was he proven right without delay. “Hh’kmxXT!… —ghuhh… huhh…” That one was… half-stifled at best, which boded rather poorly.
The interruption evoked a low, lustful laugh from Valentino, and he continued, “So, why even bother trying to fight iiit? You know it’s just going to be worse if you try to hold it in like that.” He tightened his grasp on Vox’s shoulders like a carnivorous animal might upon getting its prey into its clutches—and he looked the part too, all fangs and claws—though his hand steadying his partner’s monitor remained gentle. “I can see how badly you need some real relief.”
That last statement was all too true; Vox felt those maddening little spirals of Val’s claw aggravate his poor vents further and further, drawing out uneven hitches of breaths from him as his last slivers of control over himself slowly slipped away. “Hh-nnh… hgh… hh-hhh…? V-Vahhhl…” He tried halfheartedly to bat Valentino’s hand away from his vents and move away from him, but both attempts were easily dismissed by Val. Honestly, it was much too late for either to have made a difference anyway.
“Go on and sneeze for me,” Val coaxed, speeding up those tight little circles of sharp-yet-featherlight touch and letting them drift deeper where the other man had just been proven to be hopelessly vulnerable. In a singsong lilt, he teased, “Come onnn, I know it ticklesss~”
That was the understatement of the fucking century. Vox’s expression was a tortured epitome of itchy, twitchy, and glitchy, his chest rising and falling erratically. He felt not unlike a ball of twine being unraveled with each tiny twirl of Val’s claw until it was completely unwound, then pulled more and more and more taut until it snapped.
“Val, stahh-hop—” Even in this condition, he recognized the breaking point when it fucking shattered, the feeling overflowing and overtaking him rapidly. He fumbled quickly for a few tissues as his eyes flickered closed. He let out a genuine whine of discomfort and desperation. He couldn’t help but take in a greedy gasp of air, and it was all over.
The dam was well and truly broken, flimsy as it was, and now the flood came rushing in, relentless and impatient to exact retribution for having been denied.
He held an upper corner of his monitor out of distress for a moment before burying his screen into his array of tissues anew. Any semblance of words he tried to speak stuttered horribly from buffering malfunctions and hitching breaths alike, a heavily filtered quality only obscuring his voice further.
Already, he was glitching terribly. After all, the most frequent trigger of glitches for him was being in an overwhelmed state, and while it was more commonly emotional in nature, physical means sure as hell did the job just as well. Currently, not only was the unbearable irritation built up in his sensors extremely overwhelming, so too was his body’s response to it, and the software-corrupting illness really was just the cherry on top of it all.
“Bleeess you, fuck,” Valentino purred, largely unfazed by the mild shocks he received as he sat back to enjoy the show he had instigated.
Vox, however, was not particularly enjoying it, considering he was wracked with sneeze after sneeze after sneeze. It was fittish to the extreme, thanks to his overloaded sensors desperately demanding some semblance of reprieve and his processors malfunctioning during their search for it. “AHDTZSH—KZZCH—IHTZSH—DZZSCH’uhh! F-fuck. Hh-aah-KZDTSH—HPTZZsh! Hehh-KTZZSH’huh—uh’IZZTSHiew!!”
Oh, even in this state, he felt the surge of electricity that last one caused as he shuddered with a glitch. It was hard to miss the lights flickering anyway, and harder to miss the audible shattering of several lightbulbs in the penthouse and the firework-like bursts of sparks that rained down from them. He was barely afforded the chance to catch his breath before he curled in on himself with a string of harsh, wet coughs. A pang of pain shot through his still-healing gills, and the wincing breath he sucked in through his teeth led right into a fuller inhale and—
“Hahh-EHGTZZSH—TZSCH—kzshh—ihdtzch—ksh! O-o-oh, mby fucki-i-i-ing God…” He couldn’t even express his frustration without dealing with the distorted stammer inflicted by buffering issues, which counterproductively just made him more fucking frustrated. However, he didn’t have much time to dwell on it as he felt another bout of sneezing coming on. He sniffled thickly a couple of times and quickly discarded his now-somewhat-soaked wad of tissues into the trash can at his bedside, grabbing a new batch as a series of involuntary gasps fluttered in his chest. “Hh-ahh…! Hehh—!”
Valentino chuckled softly and teased, “Bless you. Pobrecito, so worked up over this…”
Vox would have glared at him if he wasn’t too busy proving him right, his expression crumbling into something oh-so-desperate just before he curled in on himself with yet more intense, incessant sneezing courtesy of his fucked-to-hell processors. “HPT’KZSHH! Ehh-huh—! IHGKTZshiew! O-oh, fu-u-uck— EHDTZZSH—KZSH—DZSH—HPTzsch’ahh!… Nguhh, I-I ca-and’t fuckigg s-s-sto-o-o-op…” It was cyclical if not ouroboric: the paroxysm caused glitches, which caused him to get stuck in the throes of the reflex and sneeze more and more, which caused more glitches, and so on and so forth. God, he was even starting to feel a little bit dizzy, though it was hard to focus on anything other than the overload to his systems and trying to catch his breath whenever he was allowed the chance.
“You don’t say,” Valentino cooed with a patronizing click of his tongue. “You’re so dramatic today, Voxxyyy. All this over a little tickle?”
“Fuck ahh—! O-off, hih-ihgh…?” Again, Vox fought to put an end to it, gritting his teeth a little and pressing a hand against the vent Val had agitated so very terribly. He tried to get a hold of his breath, to wrangle the unruly thing like a wild animal and hold it still until it was subdued.
“Hmm? What was that~?”
Alas, it couldn’t be staved off any longer. Vox felt the tension in his poor systems build and suddenly jump to the breaking point, a soft gasp escaping him and no, no, no, not again— “Hehhh-TZZSHHiew—IHDTZshieww!”
“That’s what I thought.” Val’s shit-eating grin was audible in his voice enough as it was without the huff of laughter that accompanied it.
“Shut thuhh—huh! EHPTZSH—KTZSH—DZZSH—KZTCH—IYZSH!… Anhh…?” That last uncertain waver of breath was nearly more so a moan.
“Ay, you’re still going? Isn’t this getting to be a little much, even for you?” Val asked, raising an eyebrow in some sort of… surprise? Judgment? Concern? Likely, it was all three.
“Shut the fuck up,” Vox growled, voice actually surprisingly steady and clear, save for the filtered quality that rolled through the last couple words. The sniffles that followed weren’t exactly very intimidating though, and his processors were clearly nowhere near done with their little meltdown yet.
“Whaat? You know I’m riiight,” Val insisted with that satisfied smirk, flicking Vox’s bent antenna. “And you know you’re going to do it again~”
If Vox had the ability to think about anything other than how badly he needed to sneeze again—and how soon he would, the sensation already rushing in—he would have felt much more of the humiliation weighing heavily in his heart and warmly in his screen. Perhaps that feverish blush might have brightened with embarrassment, but his display was glitching with static instead, and his body really didn’t have room for anything other than— “Enhh—! HEHT’KZZSH!” Electricity coursed over the upper half of his body, and he felt something in his circuitry malfunction and—ohh, fuck, not this glitch again— “—KZZSH—KZZSH—KZZSH—KZZSH—KZZSH—KZZSH—“
“Blessss you. Going for a record, are we?” Valentino teased as he watched Vox helplessly succumb over and over and over again to the same exact sneeze and the same glitchy shiver, caught in a particularly vicious loop that was too rapid to give him the opportunity to take even a singular breath.
“—KZZSH—KZZSH—KZZSH—KZ-ZZ-ZSH!” The rapid chain ended with one last repeat that was… actually different. Specifically, it stuttered in and of itself, glitching much, much more intensely, which was… a high bar to clear. There was a bright flash of light as electricity burst out in a wide radius from Vox.
He was very vaguely aware of Val seemingly falling back away from him, perhaps even convulsing? Regardless, he finally shut up, which was a blessing Vox counted, and if Val had gotten a particularly nasty shock, then it served him right anyway. It wasn’t like it could kill him or do any permanent damage to his soul whatsoever.
Besides, Vox was preoccupied with scrambling to catch his breath after that malfunction left him sorely lacking it, though that panting quickly dissolved into glitching, hitching breaths. A visible field of electricity remained buzzing around him after the previous onslaught of back-to-back sneezes, and it only surged and worsened with each new one that overran him. It was an extreme, damning sign that his systems were well and truly fucked into erratic volatility and that he was losing control over himself and his demonic powers completely. Nevertheless, he had no choice in the matter at this point; it was quite literally impossible to resist, not even allowing him the chance to try. All he could do was gasp and pitch forward into damp tissues with harsh, desperate sneezes yet again, all of which stuttered with increasingly intense buffering issues.
“H-h-hahh, ahdt-TZZZSCH’uh-huh-huh! HzZzh-huh-uhhzh—? H-hehh! DZZZSCH—ZSCH—ZSCH! IHGTZ-ZZ-ZSH! Hahh—EH-EHDTZ-ZZ-ZZSH-SHhh!!” As he shuddered with every glitched step of this last one, that growing electric field dispersed into waves of current that rushed through every surface they could find, particularly ending up coursing through nearby outlets and into the electrical wiring in the walls and out into the power grid itself and—
And overloading it all with a power surge that sent every single light and billboard screen visible outside the bedroom window shutting down with a hum, the same being quite certain for the whole of the Pentagram.
… Fuck.
At least Vox seemed to finally be permitted an end to that hellish cycle that had held him in such a vice grip, letting out a long, congested groan of relief and exhaustion. Despite already being positive that he had accidentally caused another city-wide blackout, there was still something about opening his eyes to complete darkness—aside from the illumination of his own screen—that felt like rubbing salt in the wound. Speaking of wounds, his gills weren’t too happy about the last several minutes, but, luckily, they hurt much less than he had expected.
God, he was actually fairly winded, having to take some long moments to catch his breath and tend to the excess coolant that wanted to leak through his screen. Midway through that process, though, he shoved Valentino off his side of the bed with a hand. He hardly glanced in his direction as he did so, and the soft thud against the floor brought some satisfaction to a petty, spiteful corner of his heart. Okay, maybe that area spanned half his heart, but no more than a measly 90% at most, and how much of the remaining 10% was occupied by sharks was no one’s business.
Left quite the sniffly little mess of an overlord, Vox grumbled to himself amidst congested snuffles, blows of coolant into a frankly absurd of tissues in total, and even a few light coughs, “Jesus fuckigg Christ… snddf, sndddf!… Nghuh, such fuckigg bullshit… sndf! Why’d I evend choose this fuckigg asshole…”
Once he finished tidying himself up and taking a brief breather, he narrowed sharp, scarlet eyes at his partner, who was still laying in an awkward pretzel of a position on the floor. “Okay,” he began, pausing already to clear his throat. “First of all. Fuck. You.” The heavy filter in his voice and swirl in his left eye emphasized the sentiment quite a bit. “Secondly, I was… I was…” He trailed off, words falling airy and distracted as they drifted away from him. “Huhh—! Fuck, not agaihh-hhn… Hiih-EHPTZshiew!”
In the aftermath of the quick, ticklish sneeze, he kept his sleeve up to his screen where he had ducked into it, waiting to see if more would follow. Fortunately, the interruption seemed resolved with just the one, plus a thick sniffle and a breathy groan of relief. “I was trying not to short out the power for the whole fucking Pentagram, idiot. So, thanks for that, real fucking helpful, babe… Guhh, my head’s still spinning like a bitch…” he continued, his eye spiraling again for a moment as he held an upper corner of his monitor with his hand. “You get to tell Velvette that this is your fucking fault.”
Valentino did not respond in the slightest.
“Hellooo, are you listening to me??” Vox demanded impatiently, snapping his fingers thrice in quick succession.
No response. Nor any movements.
“… Val?” Vox prompted, raising an eyebrow. His visage of frustration started to slip away into growing concern as he looked over Val’s crumpled, stationary form.
Nothing.
“… You all right?” Vox asked with a hesitant, worried pout.
Finally, Valentino reacted, groaning out, “… Me duele… todo…”
“I’m going to take that as a ‘yes,’” Vox decided, folding his arms. Although he didn’t understand Val saying that everything hurt, he sighed a little in relief from hearing him say anything at all. Permanent death via electrocution was not on the table, of course, but temporary mortality and injuries were still deeply unpleasant fates that warranted worry. The rare instance of guilt that had begun weighing down Vox’s cold heart abated somewhat. Sure, Val had been a dick—or thinking with his, at least—and reaped the consequences he had sown by toying around with him, but Vox… still didn’t intend to hurt him, especially not too badly.
With a slow blink that was a little desynchronized between eyes, Valentino mumbled dazedly, “… Owwww… eeeverything’s numb… and tingly…”
“You fucking deserve it,” Vox scoffed with a slight shake of his head as he glared down at him in disapproval.
Nonetheless, Val seemed to be recovering, looking a little more alert and murmuring, “Mmh, I almost forgot how fucking sexy that iiis. You should do that more often; it’s funnn~” Apparently, the electric shock wasn’t bad enough to deter him from being horny about it. Now, the bar for that was absurdly low, but it was still a good sign.
“Shut up and get off the floor already,” Vox directed flatly.
“Nnno.”
“What do you mean, ‘no?’”
“Bitch, give me a minuuute,” Val whined with a halfhearted, fruitless attempt to get up; his limbs were still shaky and not exactly listening to him. “Fucking. Can’t yet.”
Ah.
Vox had half a mind to leave him there as penance. It was exorbitantly tempting. However, instead, he let out a drawn out, dramatic sigh of exasperation and muttered, “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Come here.” He got up to scoop his lover’s lanky body up into his arms and set him down on the bed, even pulling the blankets over him. Running an attentive gaze over him a few times, he confirmed to himself that Val would, in fact, be just fine. They had done far worse before with intentional electrostimulation during intimacy. His shoulders relaxed a little, and he returned to his own spot in bed, sitting leaned back against the propped up pillows.
Much too contentedly for Vox’s liking, Val cuddled up to him with a cute, innocent smile that seemed to curve up not just at the ends, but at the middle as well. “Bless youuu~” he offered in a teasing melody.
“Val, so help me God, I will fry whatever brain cells you have left,” Vox threatened.
Val’s smile only grew at this proposition, doe eyes even wider and rounder in excitement.
Realizing his mistake, Vox rolled his eyes and dragged a hand down his screen in exasperation. He changed tack and revised his threat. “I will leave, and you will miss out on seeing me sick like this. You know it doesn’t happen that often.”
That consequence put the brat back in line. Valentino immediately caved and placated in a honeyed, velvety tone, “All right, all right, whatever. I’m sorry for getting carried away, baby.”
“No, you’re not,” Vox refuted without hesitation, offended at what he considered an insultingly obvious lie.
“I could be sorryyy,” Val insisted with a wounded pout.
“But are you, though?”
“Mmh, not really,” Val admitted offhandedly, his voice a soft, amused purr. He punctuated the confession with a kiss to Vox’s cheek, hands cradling his partner’s screen tenderly. The bright cyan, luminous blush that bloomed under the touch of his lips made Val smile in satisfaction.
————————————
Fortunately, due to “VoxTek’s renowned efficiency and dedicated team of skilled professionals providing excellent service 24/7,” power was restored to the entire city in an impressive 62 minutes.
Of course, none of the updates to the public cared to mention the true cause of the blackout, not that any VoxTek employees knew for certain that it wasn’t from typical disruptions. Some had theories along those lines, since they had experienced rather similar occurrences before, particularly when the Radio Demon was involved. For instance, when Alastor disappeared seven years prior with no indications as to why or where he went or if he was even deader than before, the CEO of the company seemed to have… quite a lot of emotions about it all, none of which were stable in the slightest. Oh, how many power surges and outages happened to coincide with the first year or two of that period…
It was safe to say that VoxTek’s expertise with electrical repairs came from an abundance of practice with them. 62 minutes to resolve a Pentagram-wide blackout was remarkably swift!
Still, Vox considered over an hour to be an unacceptable amount of time—nothing falling short of constant improvements and upscaling was ever good enough to him, after all—and made a mental note to fire someone about it later. Later, when he had the energy to string together a simple email or deal with a single call. Later, when thinking about logistics didn’t bring back that headache that was as on-again, off-again as his relationship with Val. Later, when that weariness had been alleviated from his bones and he felt a little more like himself.
For now, though, he remained resigned to his fate of bed rest in a mild haze of malaise, sniffling at a frankly pitiful frequency and icing his poor gills again. That fever was doing a number on him, so they decided to get a number on it.
“Well, fever must have gone down after the meds,” Vox decided as Val grabbed the glass thermometer off of the nightstand and sat back up on his side of the bed. “Ice pack’s probably lowered it too.”
“Mnn, I’m not so sure,” Val remarked, running a skeptic gaze over the other man. Counting on his fingers, he listed, “You look like shit, you sound like shit, and how do you feeeel?” He held out both of his left hands to prompt an answer.
“Like shit,” Vox responded flatly, the sentiment validated by the congested sniffle that followed.
“Exactly,” Valentino cooed as he put an arm around Vox to pull him closer, petting his antennas. The glare and small disgruntled growl he received in response did not dissuade him from continuing the affectionate gestures, though his hand on Vox’s monitor did pause after drifting a little lower. He held the back of his hand delicately against Vox’s screen for a moment before having to pull it away and shake it off. “And you still feel hot too. Mi pobrecito,” Val added with a sympathetic frown.
“Ughh, do I?” Vox groaned, full of weariness and woe as he slumped against Val’s shoulder with a somewhat pathetic amount of melodrama. Despite its actual rigidity, his display looked as though his cheek was squished where his head rested against his partner. “I don’t feel hot though. Sndf. I feel really fucking cold…” he muttered, shivering and running his hands over his upper arms. Almost inaudibly, he mumbled, “You feel warm though…” and snuggled closer. His eyes were growing a little heavier as a wave of sleepiness washed over him all of a sudden now that he was so comfortable, spurred on by how drained his energy was from sickness.
“Sounds like a fever to meee~” Val chirped teasingly. He pulled the blankets more thoroughly over his shaky, sniffly lover; they had slid down a bit from the two demons shifting around to cuddle.
“Yeah, well,” Vox began, pausing to turn away a bit and let out a string of wet, hoarse coughs into a fist. After a rumbling clear of his throat and yet another sniffle, he continued, “Let’s see where it’s at. Although, I doubt that thing is anywhere near as accurate as modern thermometers.” He practically glared at the glass thermometer for offending his sensibilities.
“Relax, I’m sure it gets the job done just fine,” Valentino dismissed with a wave of his hand. “And whose fault is it that we can’t use the modern ones anyway, hmm? I seem to remember someone frying one of those into an early grave last night,” he reminded with a knowing grin, walking two fingers up Vox’s chest.
“… Come on, that was one time,” Vox grumbled, gently batting Val’s hand away.
“It was only ‘one time’ because we stopped using them, cariño,” Valentino retorted, “And are your little sensors working right now?”
Actually, it was worth a shot to check them again, and Vox sluggishly sat up to try. The odds of his internal sensors functioning properly in this state were slim, but never zero. Perhaps they had started adapting to the illness corrupting his systems as they were supposed to and could—
Nope.
Vox’s display switched to a screen that read “Internal Temperature:” in the top left corner, but the large digits in the center flickered constantly between various alphanumeric characters. While it sometimes showed the “°F” that he was looking for, even the temperature scale cycled between all its options, including Celsius and fucking Kelvin, before deciding to just start going with random shit too.
Welp, so much for that.
Vox tried to swap back to his normal screen, but failed a couple of times. When a few rapid, impatient taps on his screen proved equally fruitless, he lightly thudded his palm against the side of his head and was annoyed to find that immediately snapped him out of the malfunction. So much for being an advanced piece of technology. The success rate of bonk was stupidly high.
After a brief, slight shake of his head and a few blinks as he reoriented himself, he crossed his arms over his chest and returned his attention to Val with a defeated pout.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, babe,” Valentino snickered smugly, examining his claws. “Sooo, these are the only options you can’t break,” he concluded, playfully tapping the end of the thermometer between Vox’s eyes just to annoy him and make him blink. There was a small clink of glass on glass.
With that, Val held out the thermometer and hummed to prompt his partner. Vox fixed him with a petulant glare, but he reluctantly opened his mouth nonetheless, letting Val place the alcohol thermometer under his digital tongue even though he could have just done so himself.
The thought of Alastor crossed Vox’s mind, as it so often did—if that Hazbin Hotel didn’t work out, Al always had a permanent residence in Vox’s head—specifically that Alastor might be using a similar outdated device, since he most likely came down with the same miserable cold. Having a thermometer in his mouth wasn’t enough to stop Vox from voicing his resentment against that damn deer, muttering around the object pettily, “I sure hope Alastor’s having a shittier day than mine.” As if solely to spite him, a terribly fuzzy, oh-so-itchy sensation began to buzz like static in the far reaches of his ventilation system, teasing at his easily-overloaded sensors and immediately tickling a couple gasps and a rather desperate sneeze out of him.
“Hihhh, hahh?” His breath caught, and all he had time to do was hurriedly turn away from Val before— “HAH-EHPTZCHiew!”
Crash.
A high-pitched sound of glass shattering caught the attention of both men, causing them to flinch and all their antennas and antennae to shoot upright. Confused gazes peered over the bed to the location of the sudden sound and oh, for fuck’s sake—
Apparently, Vox had been caught way too off guard to cover his mouth or, maybe, perhaps, as would have been nice to do, grabbed the glass thermometer out of his stupid mouth instead of letting it fall a few feet onto the hard tile floor, which he had turned towards to avoid catching Val with any potential spray.
Looking over the relatively larger chunks of glass, scattered miniscule shards, and small splatter of red-dyed ethanol, Vox blinked a couple of times in surprise. His gaze turned into a judgmental glare to accompany his offended scowl, crossing his arms and mumbling under his breath something fairly unintelligible along the lines of “how fucking fragile—? What kind of shitty, thin glass—digital’s durable…” And yet, he had broken a digital thermometer last night too, a fact which only annoyed Val further to recall at the moment.
“… ¿En serio? Ay, este puto payaso,” Valentino muttered with a sigh of exasperation, pinching at his temples. Fortunately, “this fucking clown” didn’t understand that he was—deservedly—being called that. With a forced smile plastered over clear frustration, Val commented, “Never miiind, I stand corrected. I guess you’ll break anything, won’t you?”
Screen brightening with blush, Vox averted his gaze for a moment before making eye contact again. “… That one s-snuhh…” He trailed off as his voice fell airy and distracted, eyes unfocused and hazy. He gave a ticklish sniffle and murmured hurriedly, “Hh-hang on a sec, I still gohhtta… s-sneeze—hehh—” This time, he had enough warning of that irritation building for a moment—uncomfortable though it was—before it flared and overtook him to be able to duck into his sleeve. Gold star for finally doing the bare minimum! “Hih-huhhh-IHGJTZSHhieww! Hah-ieh—! EHDTZSHh!” His sneezes came out wet and urgent, doubling him over and leaving a small pattern of darkened dampness visible on his baby blue sleeve. In the aftermath, he wearily slumped back against the headboard, snuffling thickly a couple of times and letting out a long, awfully congested groan as he muttered defensively, “Sndf, snddff! Nguhhh, fuck. That onde snduck up on mbe, okay…?”
“Sure, whatever,” Val dismissed offhandedly, suddenly forgetting any momentary annoyance he had felt as he now ran a hungry gaze up and down Vox with pinkened cheeks. “Blessss you. Awwh, baby, those sounded harsh,” he pitied, voice syrupy sweet as he ran a gentle hand down his lover’s shoulder.
Vox seemed to feel a little confused or awkward, but he shrugged and casually agreed, “Snddf, I mbead, yeah, I guess, but—”
“Are you sure you’re not feeling up to fucking?” Val chirped in far too innocent a tone as he rested his head in a hand and looked at Vox in the same way he did whenever Vox turned his brightness up. He gave him a big smile and batted his nonexistent eyelashes at him expectantly.
“I’mb ndot,” Vox answered without a second of hesitation, narrowing his eyes.
“You’re not sure?” Val asked eagerly, perking up from the misunderstanding. “Sooo, is that a maybeee or a yesss?” he purred, biting the tip of one of his claws.
Vox rolled his eyes and wiped leaking coolant off his screen with a tissue as he clarified, “Ndo, I mbead I’mb ndot feeli’g up to it, Val.”
“Mnnh, all right,” Val replied in a noncommittal hum before dropping back into husky seduction and suggesting, “You know, I could just—“
“Val,” Vox warned, his tone and glare leaving no room for further argument.
“All riiight, not in the mood right now, I fucking get iiit,” Valentino huffed petulantly, turning away and folding all four of his arms to sulk about being scolded. “… But maybe later,” he added under his breath almost inaudibly with a small, fanged smile.
“… I’mb goi’g do us both a favor and prete’d I did’t hear that shit.”
Perhaps Vox was asking too much in wishing Alastor was having a worse time than him.
Long as fuck Ha/z/bin snzfic (doc is 23.6k total atm and I think I’m gonna break 30k 😅) continues with 4.7k of V/ox sick and a little miserable, but getting taken care of quite sweetly by V/al. I was hoping to post this for Valentine’s Day, then for Valentine’s Day weekend, buuut I slept through all of Valentine's Day and had D&D both the day before and after, so uhh have some Stat/ic/moth fluff for a late V/ee-Day gift smth smth V/al-entine’s Day! 💝
This fic is based off both part 1 and part 2 of this lovely comic by @f-223108. Shoutout to @very-freakin-effable and @snezario for beta reading for me, tysm guys!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Contains: Snz kink!V/al (not sexually graphic), injury (gills, not graphic but hurts), mild electric shocks, no mess but very mild implied spray, holdbacks, stifling, false starts, stuck snz, glitchy powers, domestic Stat/ic/moth fluff :3
[18+ only as always! Minors and ageless blogs DNI, including likes, or will get blocked on sight]
Hope you guys enjoy! Comments in tags/reblogs/replies/etc. are always appreciated but never necessary. Love y’all! ❤️🌹
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next day, Vox had awoken to find himself, in fact, pretty well recovered from most of the injuries he’d sustained yesterday and farrr deeper into the trenches of that godforsaken cold. He’d slept in until noon and still ended up needing to doze off for a nap from 1-2pm. All hopes of getting any work done had been quickly and thoroughly crushed, largely because he was such a mess that no business meeting would have been worth the loss of precious dignity… nor the last scraps of energy he had left at this point either. Even at 2:34pm, laying tucked into bed in his pinstriped light blue pajamas with a fever-brightened screen, drooping antennas, and several crumpled tissues strewn across his blankets, he still felt awfully worn out.
The sound of stiletto heels click-clacking against the floor announced Val’s presence before the moth finally reached the door. “Knock, knooock~” he sang brightly as he entered the bedroom, carrying a hot cup of tea in one of his upper hands. “I got my poor baby some nice warm tea with lemon and lots of honey for that nasty little cold of yours and—” His scarlet eyes widened and his sugary tone dropped low and almost judgmental as he continued, “And you look like shit, babe.” Shifting his weight and raising an eyebrow, he gestured vaguely in his lover’s whole direction with swirls of his free upper hand.
“Thaaanks, baaabe,” Vox deadpanned with a halfhearted glare.
“Oh, relax, I’m right, aren’t I?” Val countered haughtily, putting his lower hands on his hips as he placed the mug of tea down on the nearest nightstand. “You look miserable.”
“That’s because I am,” Vox assured flatly, proving his point almost immediately by succumbing to a vicious fit of heavy, productive coughs directed loosely into a tissue clutched in his fist.
As if the paroxysm wouldn’t have been unpleasant enough on its own as it scraped against his dreadfully sore throat, it also aggravated the still-healing cut across most of the gills on his chest that Alastor had been sooo kind as to slash through yesterday with his claws. Since simple breathing involved his gills, every cough sure as hell did too. The longer and more violent a string of coughs were, the more his poor gills had to flex and bend and tighten.
After a particularly harsh, drawn out series of coughs, Vox’s screen briefly glitched into static as a sharp pain shot through his gills as if his chest was being sliced open anew. Groaning in pain between coughs, he winced and dropped the tissue in his hand, instead wrapping his arms around his lower chest and holding his hands against his aching gills in hopes of soothing them even just the slightest bit.
“Aghhh, fuuuck, that hurt like a bitch,” Vox moaned as the fit subsided.
“Awwh, is that so?” Valentino purred with so much sweetened pity that it was very nearly mocking. “Well, perhaps a little tea will help with that cough, cariño. Sore gills aside, I don’t like how it sounds right now.”
Vox scoffed in amusement. “Oh, I think we both know that’s a lie, Val,” he retorted with a bounce of his eyebrows. “At least you’ve been getting a kick out of me being like thi-hih…” As if on cue, a troublesome tickling sensation flared in his ventilation system, a filter overreacting to no stimulus whatsoever other than ordinary air due to the malfunctions his cold had brought onto him. He braced his gills with one arm and raised the other up to hover uncertainly near his face, pressing his sleeve to his mouth properly when his breath caught in a fragile, vocal waver, “Heh-ehghh…?… Ahh—!…” His expression crumbled into anticipatory tension, mouth hanging open a bit as he teetered on the very edge of a sneeze for a couple of uncomfortable seconds before the overwhelming feeling backed down much more slowly than he would have liked, leaving him with nothing but a small sigh as the tension in his lungs dissipated. “Ughhh, I fucki’g hate it whed that happeds…” he complained in dissatisfaction, the pitifulness of it only accentuated by the congested, audibly-sick sniffles that followed.
“Hmm. We’ll have to agree to disagree~” Val teased in a singsong lilt.
“Yeah, case idn poindt… fucki’g sadist,” Vox grumbled, rolling his eyes. After another snuffle, he grabbed a tissue and pinched it against the center of his screen with steepled hands, recreating some facsimile of blowing one’s nose to manage the leaking coolant clogging up his systems. His next breath in and out went through his ventilation system much more easily.
“As if you aren’t, yourself,” Val countered with a knowing, fanged smirk. “Now, stop bitching and drink the fuck up before it gets cold, okayyy?” he coaxed, an undertone of petty anger seeping into his tone.
“Fiiine… thanks,” Vox muttered, voice sounding far less congested. If one were to listen extra closely—and Valentino did—there was a sense of actual sincerity and gratitude in that. Raising the mug to his screen, he took a long, greedy sip, relishing the warmth of the tea against his throat and hoping to God the honey worked its magic on that fucking cough of his. “Mmmh, fuck, that feels good...” He lingered, enjoying even just the feeling of steam against his irritated vents… though it started to dawn on him that it actually kind of… t-tickled a little, the miniscule droplets of vapor teasing at his sensitive filters and stirring up trouble. As his expression faltered, Val’s livened in turn. “Huhhh-hang on, I, uhhh… gotta-hah—” he stuttered, words drifting far away with an airy sort of need.
“Awwwh, going to sneeze again, baby?” Valentino asked, unashamed desire clear as day in his voice.
All Vox could respond with was a small nod as he hurriedly set the mug of tea back down onto the nightstand and fumbled for a tissue with his other hand, barely able to see anything through already fluttering eyes.
With a low, slow giggle, Val plucked a fresh tissue from the box and gently pressed it into his lover’s hand. “Here, no need to make more of a mess of yourself,” he teased, though the way he licked his lips sent mixed messages.
“Th-thahh…” Vox let himself trail off, more preoccupied with wrapping an arm around his gills in preparation and burying his face into the tissue in his other hand.
Although covering into just one tissue held by splayed claws wasn’t always the most reliable method—using both hands and multiple tissues worked best given the size and shape of his flatscreen TV, and using his sleeve was a close second but currently unideal given how much coolant had been leaking—minimizing the pain of his tender, still-healing gills was far higher a priority to him than maybe ending up spraying a few more germs across his sickbed. It wasn’t like it was uncontaminated by now, anyway.
A flutter of ticklish, hitching breaths tipped him over the edge, sending him rocking forward with two terribly desperate-sounding sneezes, the first loud and vocal, the second primarily resembling static. “H-hih-hiiih! EHDTZ’schiew!! Uhpt’KZZZSH!…” Though he still felt the urge to sneeze building again, it was satiated long enough for him to sniffle and finally mumble a casual “thanks…” to Valentino that he hadn’t managed to get out before. “Hah… ehhh—!” His body hesitated for a moment before letting the reflex take its course, his shoulders bouncing as he ducked down into the tissue with a sneeze that was… actually quite gentle, thankfully. “Hkzscht!” … Immediately followed by another that was five times as forceful and made him double over, which meant scrunching up his goddamn gills. “Hah-EHKZZSH’ah!! Ow…” A lingering pout and a few pathetic little sniffles served as testament to the short spike of pain.
“Bless—” Val began, falling silent as Vox held up a finger and his features twitched and began to crumble again.
“Still ndeed to… huhh… ndeed to suh… sndeeze agaihhn—” For someone whose voice had long been one of his most powerful and favored tools, he didn’t seem to have much control over it right now. This cold had wrecked both his throat and his vocal processors to the point of sounding hopelessly hoarse all day, caused leaks of coolant that made his usually crystal clear speech sound stuffy and muddy, and now even the ability to keep a few words steady was slipping away from him yet again as his breath caught and his eyes squeezed shut. “Hzhh—! IHTJZZSH’huh!! Agh, fuck—” That one was harsh and honestly took a lot out of him, even regardless of rubbing metaphorical salt in his literal wound, but he was barely afforded the chance to groan—and swear, of course—in pain before another couple of sneezes overtook him, the second sending a zap of electricity between his antennas. “Hh’KGTzshh! IHPTZZshiew!… Nguhh, I cad’t fucki’g stoppp…” he whined in some mixture of exhaustion and exasperation. Sniffling, he wiped the tissue in his hand across the very center of his screen to dry it of leaking coolant, then discarded it carelessly onto the bedsheets amongst the other few crumpled tissues.
“You don’t sayyy. Come here already, let me hold you,” Valentino cooed, sitting down on the bed next to him and holding his arms out.
At that request, Vox’s eyes widened for a moment before falling half-lidded once more as his expression turned hazy. He scooted back away from Val on the bed, rubbing at one of his vents that was giving him the most trouble with one hand and holding his other palm out in a halting gesture that did nothing to deter the moth from approaching closer. “V-Vahhl, that’s n-nahht—heh! Ndot a good idea,” he warned with an emphatic, dismissive wave of his hands away from each other. “I’mb godda… huhh!” Though he turned away from Valentino and buried the lower half of his face into his hands, he still tried his best to suppress the hitching breaths threatening to overtake him. He really didn’t want to end up shocking Val, but he could feel the electric potential coursing dangerously just underneath his skin, primed at a high risk of surging out of his control with the right glitch. So, he resolved himself to avoid anything that might trigger more of those malfunctions—sneezing being the worst contender at the moment—as best he could.
“No shit, babe! I couldn’t fucking tell,” Val mocked lightly, voice pitchy and overflowing with a lifetime’s supply of sarcasm. Sure, he wasn’t usually the brightest of the Vees, but he wasn’t that fucking stupid.
Vox felt that annoyingly needy, fuzzy sensation in the depths of his filters continue to intensify with a sort of impatient indignance at his attempts to restrain it, irritating his sensors past the point of no return whether he liked it or not. A soft yet urgent gasp forced its way out of him, but he choked it back along with the sneezes that it carried with it. “Hih’KGT! —IHGKT! —HPKT’uhhh!” The rapid chain of stifled sneezes really did sound just as uncomfortable, unsatisfying, and unstable as it felt, the tenuous tension palpable to the ear and clear to the eye from how violently he jolted with each one.
In the aftermath, Vox sucked in another breath through his teeth, but this time as a wince. It was obvious from the grimace his features twisted into that holding sneezes in like that was significantly more painful at the moment than letting them out freely. “It’s ndot safe,” he reminded—whined, maybe—with an anxious pout and furrowed eyebrows as he rubbed gently at his sore gills. It was rare to see a show of genuine concern from him. An itchy sniffle and a slight, trembling waver of his expression between that uncharacteristic nervous worry and something perhaps even more vulnerable than that confirmed that his ventilation system was still fighting him quite a bit, dreadfully defective and malfunctioning from the illness corrupting his circuitry from the inside out.
“Do I look like I care? Now, hush, and just let it all out, babyy,” Valentino soothed, tone now nothing but velvet as he nudged the tissue box closer with one of his lower hands and caressed Vox’s shoulders with his upper ones. “I’ll try to keep some pressure on those poor little gills of yours, okayyy?”
Vox relented, allowing himself to be pulled into a tender embrace from behind, his lover’s upper arms looped over his shoulders and his lower hands applying firm-but-gentle pressure to his wounded gills as promised. Hell, Val even intertwined their legs together a little, yearning for affection.
Hurriedly, Vox plucked a few tissues from the box and buried his screen into them, able to use both of his hands to cover this time since he didn’t need to brace his gills. “Iehh-huh! EH’YDTZZSHIEW!!” The sneeze scraped against his sore throat like it was coated in broken glass, eliciting something between a cough and a choke out of him as a sort of aftershock. “Shiiit. That onde hurt mby fucki’g throat too…”
“Aww, did it now?” Valentino hummed before ducking down to press a delicate kiss to his lover’s neck.
“Hehhh… ohh, for the love of f-fuhhck— KZZSCHT! Ah-anhh-hahh—! TZZZSCH’uh!”
“Ow, shit,” Val muttered under his breath as electricity swarmed Vox’s body and ran through his too.
Vox struggled against himself to get a quick apology out. “S-sorryy—huh-uhh’KDZSTCH! Ughhh, what the actual fuuuuck?” he whined, full of self-pity. “I… uH’KZZZTSCH! I haaate thisss…” he groaned, drawing out the last word to the point that it made an “uh” sound when he finally let it go.
“Mmh, I know, baby,” Val comforted, sounding all too happy about it.
Paying no mind to Vox’s complaining, his breath caught in another vocal stutter that led him into a ticklish, staticky sneeze, a glitch throwing him into a rather frustrating loop of pitching forward in the same exact way with the same exact sneeze with a flicker of static on his screen before resetting to the same exact starting position. “Ehgh-huh! Ehdt’KZZSH! —KZZSH! —KZZSH! —KZZSH! —KZZSH! —KZZSH! —KZZSH!” By the end of the malfunction, irritated tears had welled in the corner of his eyes, Val had been zapped with electricity at least once, and the lights had flickered much more than once. “Stupid fucki’g glitch, I swear to God… huhh… a-anhh-hh… heh! Ihghh—!” He hung on the precipice of it for a brief, nearly-unbearable moment of tension being pulled taut before crashing down like a wave upon the shore. “Hahhh-IKTZZZ’SHUHh!” That one made him double over with the force of it, and while that did hurt and the power did surge in the bedroom—if not the whole damn tower—it felt so fucking relieving that it was worth it, leaving his faulty ventilation system satisfied and calm at long last. After a few thick test sniffles didn’t stir up any more irritation, he held his head in his hands and leaned back against Val, groaning miserably and dramatically, “Nguhhh, fucki’g fiiidnallyyyy.”
“You done?” Valentino asked, lightly caressing the side of his monitor with one of his upper hands.
“Yeah… ondly took like a fucki’g hour,” Vox grumbled, perhaps having earned a little hyperbole given how utterly drained he now felt, not that he’d had much energy at all today. Antennas drooping further, he wiped away the remnants of irritated tears from his bleary crimson eyes and took another sip of tea, hoping the caffeine would do him some good. An ember of embarrassment warmed his screen, but it was stamped out by the knowledge that the only witness to his little display was, in fact, incredibly into it. No need to feel too self-conscious if 100% of the audience enjoyed the show, unintentional though it may have been, right?
“Awwwh. I don’t think ‘bless you’ even begins to cover it. Mi pobrecito, so full of cold,” Val cooed, turning his lover around in his arms to look him up and down with hungry eyes before pulling him into an embrace, squeezing him tightly out of some mixture of cuteness aggression and sexual frustration if his racing heartbeat and the rampant warmth spread throughout his body were any indications.
“You’d thingk I’d be ruddi’g… rudn… hang odn a sec.” Vox pulled away from Val to bring a couple tissues to the center of his screen, blowing into them once, then twice, then having to discard those tissues to get a new one for the third and final time needed to clear out the excess coolant. “You’d think I’d be running out of cold after going through half a damn tissue box already, but nooo.” He rolled his eyes and waved his hands away from each other in an exasperated gesture, almost as if mocking the universe for its cruel choices. “I’m gonna kill whatever fucking plague rat got me sick,” he growled low with his left eye spiraling, crushing the tissue in his hand as he clenched it into a fist. It did not occur to him that he, himself, acted as quite the little plague rat just the previous day. Self-reflection wasn’t really his thing, after all. “Probably would’ve kicked Alastor’s ass yesterday if I didn’t feel like shit,” he told himself, tossing the crumpled tissue away with more force than necessary as if it was at fault somehow.
“Suuure,” Valentino responded in a blank tone of clear disbelief.
Just as Vox was going to insist upon his frankly incorrect and quite possibly even delusional belief, he got a text from Velvette:
<[im taking the bloody power surge as a sign ur still w us]
[Unfortunately]>
<[try to keep ur shit together 4 another hr at least]
<[im actually working]
<[unlike u 2]
[Do you want me to get everyone in this building sick?]>
<[fuck no]
<[stay.]
<[there.]
<[blackmail still stands]
[That’s what I fucking thought.]>
<[just try 2 avoid a fucking power outage ok?]
<[and like feel better or wtvr]
[Trying on both fronts bitch]>
<[fuck u]
<[tell kinky boots i say hi]
Still quite sniffly, Vox rubbed at the center of his screen with his wrist and told his lover without looking up, “Val, Velvette says hi.” He then cleared his throat and sipped the last of his tea away.
“Ooo, tell her I said hi back~!” Valentino replied peppily with a little waggle of his fingers.
[He says hi back]>
<[cool]
<[ttyl v]
<[💋💋💋]
[🦈🦈🦈]>
Shark emojis were the closest equivalent Vox had to sending back kisses or heart emojis. Honestly, not only did it feel less uncomfortably vulnerable, but it was also a higher honor, really.
He found a rare sensation settling in his sore chest, something that radiated a gentle, glowing warmth like a well-used hearth of a family home. Because that was one of the many things V-Tower was, wasn’t it? A family home, even if none of its three residents had the boldness to admit it out loud.
Despite Velvette’s texts seeming fairly cold, Vox knew her well enough to recognize that she was earnestly checking in on him. Despite her teasing and threats of blackmail, she had wiped away every trace of the humiliating footage as soon as she had seen how much pain he had been in last night. And ever since last night, Val had been lustful, yes, but also very concerned. Any other plans or work he might have had planned for the day had been cast aside without hesitation just to spend his hours snuggling up to Vox and taking care of him, all much more attentively and sweetly than others might have expected of the man.
It would have been hard not to feel a little mushy, and Vox didn’t have the energy to fight against such things at the moment as he looked at well wishes and virtual kisses sent from one of his best friends while laying in the warm, loving arms of the other. It was nice to feel close and cared about, especially after Alastor had carved into him the belief that he would never have such things in all his unending eternity in Hell. Trust and letting walls down never felt as feasible since, yet throughout the decades, there were always moments. There were always Val and Vel. Here Vox was, sick and injured and weak, but unlike everyone-knew-who, they didn’t seem keen to leave him just for a moment of vulnerability. Perhaps he really had built himself something stable at long last.
Fuck, why did he actually feel a little emotional…? Somehow, as he was sitting up against his pillow and the headboard of the bed, his knees had drawn their way up to his chest, and he had leaned down to rest the side of his head on them, arms wrapping loosely around his legs. His heart felt just a little more exposed or perhaps even less solid in the walls of its form, and his mind felt a bit fuzzy, thoughts floating adrift in a vast sea of static. His bleary eyes alternated between watching Val and staring off into the distance. He snapped out of the latter upon hearing Valentino break the comfortable silence, looking up at the much taller sinner as his attention was piqued.
“Hm,” Valentino hummed as he flicked his gaze up and down Vox. “Your screen looks a little brighter, you know.”
“… Thanks…?” Vox replied hesitantly, an eyebrow raised in confusion.
“In the feverish way. Looks a little lower res too.”
“Oh… well, that’s not good,” Vox commented simply with a couple blinks. Yeahhh, that sure was a feverish haze if ever Val saw one.
“You’re so insightful when you’re sick, Voxxy,” Valentino teased in a deadpan tone before sighing. “Come here, let me see.” Practically the millisecond he touched the display of Vox’s screen, he pulled his hand back like he’d been burned—it wasn’t far off from that. “Ow! Fuck.”
“That bad?” Vox asked, a resigned sort of dread seeping into his voice. Ah. No wonder he had gotten a little foggy in the mind and vulnerable in the heart, though now that he was more aware of it, he tried to cut through that veil of malaise and refocus himself. Sitting up straighter, he rubbed roughly at his eyes before running his palms down his face and leaving the bottom of his monitor resting in his hands. He gave a few rapid blinks and a small shake of his head to try to clear it. His antennas still remained nearly horizontal, but they did perk up at least a little more.
“It is. Let’s take your temperature, baby,” Val suggested, already searching for the thermometer left on the nightstand.
“… Wouldn’t it have been better to do that before I poured hot tea down my throat?” Vox mused skeptically, gaze briefly flicking over to his freshly-emptied mug. He wasn’t sure how long he had zoned out for, but it was probably only a couple of minutes or so since he had finished the drink, right? While he did have internal sensors, they were painfully useless when he was sick, typically malfunctioning until the ailment let up for the most part, which was also coincidentally the point at which they weren’t even needed much anymore.
“… Fair point. Ugh, whatever, that shit can wait until you’ve finished it,” Val conceded petulantly as if Vox was in the wrong for pointing out the issue.
“Oh, uh, actually, Val?”
“Yes, baby?” Val asked as he rolled over onto his stomach.
“Could you, uh,” Vox began, pausing to clear his scratchy throat and cover several productive-sounding hacking coughs into his fist that left him wincing, primarily due to his gills but secondarily due to his throat as well. “Ow.” After a couple urgent sniffles against the coolant pooling in his screen, he held a tissue in steepled hands to the lower half of his face, blowing into it softly. “Nguh. Could you get mbe sombe soup?” he requested as he looked up at Val with round, bleary eyes, voice not only muddied from congestion but also muffled behind the tissue.
“What’s the magic worrrd~?” Valentino teased, all fangs and smiles, playfully kicking his feet up and down behind him.
“… Please,” Vox muttered with an unimpressed glare and an utter flood of annoyance in his voice.
“Aww, of course!” Val chirped as he clapped his hands once and left his palms pressed together, satisfied. “Boring old chicken noodle like usual?”
“Yeah,” Vox confirmed. Only a moment later did the jab sink in properly and he argued, “Hey, it’s a—” Offense gave way to a few forceful, wet coughs directed into his shoulder. “It’s a classic for good reason, okay?” he insisted, poking Val in the chest with an accusatory finger.
“You do love your ‘classics,’ don’t you? Such a basic bitch,” Valentino taunted, hiding his grin behind a splay of his claws.
“Yeah, again, they’re classics for a reason, Val,” Vox countered, exasperation evident in both his voice and the overdramatic roll of his scarlet eyes. “Now, can you just get me my fucking soup? I’m starviiing…” he whined, flopping back against the pillows with his hands clasped behind his head.
“All right, don’t get your fuckin’ panties in a twist. I’ll be right back,” Val assured as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.
“And remember to wash your hands before you touch shit or Vel’s gonna kill the both of us,” Vox instructed in an almost pleading tone as he wrapped himself up in a cocoon of blankets.
“I know, I know. I’m not just going to forget,” Val dismissed with haughty indignance, putting his lower hands on his hips and flicking one of his upper wrists. “Try not to miss me too much while I’m gone.” With that, he left the room.
“Pshh, you wish,” Vox scoffed, though his smile was brimming with fondness. “Thangks, Val.” As he sniffled a few times, he felt that unfortunately familiar buzzing sensation agitate the sensitive filters deep in his ventilation system, teasing out an unsteady rhythm of shaky little gasps and sighs from him. “Hehh… ehhh… hh-anhh—!”
Though he teetered right on the edge of the imminent sneeze, features crumpling into a needy, greedy sort of desperation, the fickle thing toyed with him a bit, maddeningly drawing out the moment of anticipation. His screen glitched in protest to the discomfort. After a couple more seconds of torturous uncertainty accented by itchy jumps of breath, he sat up so he could reach his traitorous vents that were putting up such a fuss.
First, he tried waving his hands in front of his vents in an attempt to stimulate them with airflow, since his damn fans sure as hell weren’t doing their job properly. It only made the stalled pressure and tension in his chest rise higher, though not quite high enough, the feeling awfully overwhelming but unrelenting nonetheless as he took in a useless, vocal gasp that went nowhere. “Enhhh!” To add injury to insult, the swell of breath made his gills ache again, soothed slightly by wrapping an arm around them.
Growing impatient for relief, he brought his free hand up to the back of his head and lightly thudded a fist against the vent that seemed to be the most sensitive today. The soft thmp! of the impact was immediately followed by a brief glitch of his screen and a sharp, urgent rush of breath as that precarious indecision was suddenly shattered. The first two sneezes came on so fast that he didn’t even have time to cover them, only managing to bury his face into his sleeve before the third. “AHKZTSH! —EHTzzch’uh! Huh-uhh-IHPTZshhiew! —GZTSCH! Fuck.” Electricity surged across his body with each sneeze, glitches causing the lights to flicker. With a couple of deep snuffles, he righted himself wearily and moaned out of a cocktail of frustration and relief.
“Bless youuu~!” Valentino called sweetly from down the hall.
“Oh, shut up,” Vox grumbled, folding his arms before having to duck down into his hand with another sneeze. “Hah’IHDTZSCH!”
“Fuck you! And, awwh, bless you again~!” Valentino responded from even further away, all spice then all sugar.
“Wh—? Your hearing sucks, Val, why do you only hear shit when I don’t want you to??” Vox griped, raising his voice.
“Whaaat??” Val called back, having not caught a damn word despite the increased volume.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Vox groaned, facepalming and shaking his head before dragging his hand down his screen in exasperation.
Some Ha/z/bin V/ees snz/illness ideas (coldfucker bias is obvious here lmao), this got kinda long so under the cut we go!
Val:
Val wrapping his wings around himself, one of the other Vees, or both of the others for like 🥺🥺🥺 warmth and affection when sick
Alsooo, local moth demon’s fluffy wings could tickle a bit, shame if that were to make anyone snz ofc,,, maybe especially a shame if that were to happen while cuddling to his partner who’s sorta kinda covered in vents and even gills if we like the gills take. God fucking forbid Val’s wings ever shed or molt or anyth,,,
Val is SO annoyed if his nose or throat is ever sensitive enough to disagree with his smoke
Pushing his glasses up to rub at his eyes :3
This is kinda silly, but when Val holds thermometers he tends to hold them kind of like a cigarette lol? Especially when taking one out of his mouth. Maybe one time he’s a little loopy from fever and kind of just muscle memory treats the thermometer like a cigarette for a few seconds, just like holding it in his hand longer than need be and even putting it back in his mouth—which is completely unnecessary bc they already finished taking his temp—and then realizes what he’s actually holding
During shoots, he tries (and usually fails) to keep sneezing and coughing quiet enough to avoid disrupting takes. Refuses to consider it His Fault
Local moth could be a bit photic, maybe especially if he’s already extra sensitive for another reason. Shame he’s constantly around studio lights, flash photography, and his TV bf
Always draping himself over something when sick, whether it’s a chair, sofa, table, bed, his bestie who’s a fraction of his height, or his partner
Of their unholy trinity, he’s the most willing to stop working/cancel work when sick. He can still be stubborn sometimes, but he also loves lounging around getting attention and pampering from the others. Vox is busy? Not anymore, Val demands his princess treatment or he will start causing problems
Velvette:
Her brewing up some form of cold remedy in her cauldron for herself or one of the other(s)
The scent or steam/smoke of something she’s brewing in her cauldron bothers her nose or sets off one of the other Vees
If one of the others is too cold when they’re out and about—usually Val, wearing Not Much—she’ll just magically change their outfit into something warmer or at LEAST add some warmer layers or a cute scarf to it. However, if she’s feeling a certain look and she’s cold in it, she Will commit to it until she gets bored of it and changes it on a whim
If she’s really not feeling well, like perhaps running a bad fever, her smaller stature compared to the other two lanky fuckers is… kind of actually really nice when cuddling, though she won’t admit it. Something very comforting about getting to just curl up in the embrace of someone(s) she feels close to and just be totally enveloped by gentle affection and warmth. 🥰 Like awwwh the image of her really out of it from fever and muffling coughs into the chest/wing/coat of Val or Vox as she dozes off into an uneasy slumber in his arms on the couch while the other watches with a worried pout and they quietly discuss the state she’s in and concerns while trying not to wake her
The other Vees have learned not to say “you look like shit” or anything similar bc her looks are so important to her and her career, so she tends to respond Very Hostilely to that sort of comment and feel even more insecure and frustrated with whatever’s causing her not to look her best (illness, allergies, emotions, etc.)
Can and will just magically levitate another Vee to drag them away to rest when they’re being stubborn or if they’re actually in too bad a shape to walk easily
🥰🥰🥰 Velvette trying to get through a livestream while hiding illness/allergies. It’s live and to a big audience, so,,, better keep it together well
Vox:
Things like dandelion or cottonwood fluff getting stuck in Vox’s vents and whether or not we’re going w any allergy hcs for him it Does Not Mix Well
Guys I. I feel like we should probably do SOMETHING about Vox’s s2 finale demon form being modeled after a bacteriophage. Like that CANONICALLY the person who designed it said that they went for a virus as a union of biology and technology for him bc both have viruses (and computer virus kinda tracks for some of his abilities). I actually don’t even really know What we should do with that but like. That’s a little wild. Ig could hc he’s just like Extra contagious when sick?? Or like. If sick with a tech virus, can get others sick with it as if it were a biological virus like a normal cold? Idek man just surely there’s Smth to be done with this
À la s1e2, if one of the other two is sick (or an allergic mess) and refusing to take the day off or at least take a break, the other Vee who’s in good health will often just send Vox to go deal with them, especially if it’s Val. He does a lot of more managerial things in the company and kinda in the trio even (guy who LOVES deciding what people should do and trying to convince them to do it) and hey local guy who’s constantly persuasion checking people, go persuasion check that stubborn bitch into resting pls thx. Plus, sometimes he’s stupid enough to simply put too much faith in the more technological structure of his body and/or his god complex to assume he can tooootally go deal with a sick Vee without catching what they have, he’ll be fiiiiiiine like he’s obviously stronger than—ah, fuck, he most definitely caught it.
He would rather die a second time than admit it, but when he runs a fever oooh boy does that poorly-veiled insecurity and need for approval that’s always waxing and waning under the surface just start roiling like a tempestuous sea. ‘Cause 1) the fever makes him a little more emotionally vulnerable and unsteady and 2) he hates feeling vulnerable and weak. Alastor made that pre-existing problem MUCH worse than it already was (that one comic/meme format of the “never again” squishy blob with walls up fr).
Continuing the above, sometimes, he ends up fishing for approval from the other two Vees. And he is not as subtle with it as he thinks, nor does he realize how much he’s clearly seeking reassurance and confirmation of relationships. Like he might flirt with Val a little more bc Val only wants him for sex and the like, right? (Wrong.) So, if he’s gross and pathetic right now and Undesirable then… would Val not… want him anymore? Or at least not want him right now? Val having the kink or smth adjacent/overlapping enough to be into him being sick might actually reduce some of that buried anxiety because He Wants Him Right Now
He feels the need to restate how useful he is and how he’ll be fine he’s fine now actually he can be useful now and thus worth keeping around. And the usual ups-and-downs and mutual annoyances between Vees hit him a lot harder in too feverish a state and he’s BAD AT HIDING IT BUT TRIES TO and he’s so frustrated with himself FOR being upset but fuck he just needs to feel like his friends/found family/loved ones are Not Going To Change Their Mind On Him Like Al Did Or Leave Him. And he needs people to Like Him and think he’s Capable/Strong and ooough if he’s feeling Weak and Not Useful then oooh no
Gills getting kind of sore when he’s sick, especially if he has a bad cough. Fever only exacerbates the soreness/makes them more sensitive
Val sometimes intentionally or unintentionally exhaling smoke from one of his cigarettes directly into Vox’s vents or gills, and it immediately making him cough and/or snz
SHOK.WAV worries about him if he sees him sick 🥺 just like nuzzling up to the glass looking so sad. Sometimes Vox will sit next to/back against the glass if he’s really not doing well—comforting to be near his bwabey. SHOK is extra extra soggy about seeing him unwell post-s2 finale bc :( father was Very Very Injured And Almost Dead And Sad Oh No
“We cannot allow ourselves to look weak in front of other overlords.” Sooo, I’m thinking he either sends another Vee to overlord meetings when he’s sick or decides he can just keep up appearances well enough aaand nope he fails terribly, smth smth hubris the folly of man (hubris bell tolls, if you will /ref)
may i request caine trying to hold back a sneeze but failing miserably :) thx
BEHOLD !!! Failed holdback doodle, + a whole page of C//aine studies & doodles because I felt like it (and wanted to get a better idea of how his expressions work) :]€
Spoilers ahead !!
My pathetic sad little scrimblo….. (he. kinda got what he deserved. And Also I want him back PLEASEEEEEE IM BEGGING)
Caine listlessly floating through the circus, bumping into walls and doors, snot dripping from his maw like drool, whining softly and glitching with every hitch, sniffle, and sneeze..
Not to mention his poor state means the circus is even more wonky than normal, glitching out and things floating willy-nilly!
"Today's chahhllenge is..AHHHCHOOO! Cur'ig the commbon cold.."
GUESS WHO FINALLY DEFEATED ART BLOCK. EVEN IF ONLY FOR A MOMENT.
My solution (since I realized the thing that kept giving me the most grief was the lineart & detailing) was to try out lineless art— and it worked !! I love the process, I love how it looks, and I feel content in general 🥹
Plus it allows me to make stupid shit like This
Anyways, BEHOLD!!!!! C//aine snz, for the Several of you who requested it :3
Suggestive snzfucker continuation (+ a bonus Z//ooble) under the cut !!
The silly…. He’s aroace in my mind And Also I can’t help that I want. to sexualize those damn ai dentures. so I have created two seperate canons in my mind. one aroace C//aine and one kinky/repressed C//aine and I’m equally insane about Both Of Them
V: The weather's been awful today, hasn't it? It keeps swinging between hot and cold, and the pollen's been crazy, I can't stop coughing and sneezing. :[
A: Oh?
A: Come here you idiot, you really couldn't tell the problem was with you and not the weather?!
V: ... Did I die again and go to double hell, there's something sharp and bony beneath my head...
A: That would be my lap, dear. (At least he's lucid again, what an idiot.)
4koma is too much for me, so I tried 3koma
I realize I've just slandered Vox's abilities as a weatherman and to that I say: LMAO. LMFAO, even.
Nah he's just got whatever passes for his brains cooked right now, he's not usually that dumb for non-Alastor stuff.
