We've been mistaking unhealthy coping strategies for positive traits our whole life, so for example:
We think people pleasing is being kind, but kindness comes from genuine care, not fear of rejection: people pleasing is anxiety disgused as niceness
We mistake perfectionism for excellence, but excellence is about growth and progress, while perfectionism is fear of failure dressed up as high standards
We confuse avoiding conflict with being peaceful, but peaceful isn't pretending everything is fine: that's fear of confrontation masquerading as harmony
We think suppressing feelings makes us strong, but strength isn't emotional numbness: that's trauma disguised as resilience
We mistake not asking for help as independence, but independence isn't doing everything alone: that's fear of being a burden or pretending to be self-reliant
We confuse approval seeking with getting good advice, but seeking wisdom is different from needing validation: approval seeking is insecurity disguised as being open to input
We think being controlling gives us safety but safety isn't micromanaging everything: that's anxiety masquerading as being responsible
We mistake our productivity for our worth, but our value isn't our output: that's childhood conditioning disguised as work ethics
These patterns serve you once, but now they're just keeping you stuck
***Set in an alternate universe without heroes or powers.***
•Family Chaos. Dark Comedy. Sexual Themes.
•Shippings include: Tim x Kon, Damian x Rachel, Bruce x Selina, Dick x Kori.
(A Christmas Story)
Damian Wayne stays home for Christmas for the first time in years. Bruce Wayne has a color-coded binder of mandatory events. Jason Todd is sporting an ankle monitor. Tim Drake is secretly sleeping with the enemy. A hush-hush Wayne elopement featuring Vegas. Koriand’r accidentally gets people high. Cassandra and Stephanie plan to flee the country. Jimmy Olsen can’t catch a cab. The Kents are in an RV. Wally and Irey West get temporarily trapped. Dick Grayson crashes out over peanuts. Duke Thomas learns what it means to be Selina’s favorite.
And halfway across the world, Talia al Ghul— a literal dictator— realizes Damian refused to return home for Christmas because he’d rather spend it with his girlfriend (Damirae this time, sorry) and that suspicious ride-or-die group of friends.
Absolutely nothing goes according to plan.
(Rating change due to certain scenes/incidents.)
Do we like how I wrote up the couples here or no?
Yes
No
Yes but write it again w/Flatline instead (as requested on discord.)
No because your writing is shit (you sound like my mom)
No because your chapters are too long I’m going to cry.
Oh to have my own cage, full of pillows and blankets and snacks. Getting to be in there with my phone and iPad. Mommy locking me in there while she's out so I don't do something stupid, like run away.
hot take but a lot of the fanon takes surrounding shane's life and control issues come from the fandom's desire to fit him more neatly into the bdsm sub box and not the other way around
Story Summary: When Alastor loses his shadow in a battle with Adam, he loses much more than his power.
Unstable, amnesiac, and unable to exist without an external anchor, he becomes dependent on Vox’s static to hold his fractured body together. Vox calls it protection. Alastor calls it relief.
But Vox remembers the past Alastor can’t and uses it to make things right in all the wrong ways.
a/n: I've been meaning to upload the next chapter, but I uploaded it in ao3 and not here. I thought I did. Well, the thought was there but my actions didn't follow. Sorry! I'm going to upload all the chapters that I have current on ao3.
The room holds its breath, or perhaps that is Vox projecting. It would not be the first time he gave a room too much credit. He wakes in pieces: the low hum of old circuitry first, then the soft blue glow behind his eyelids, then the weight of someone else breathing against him. For one blissful, stupid second, his systems do not identify the problem.
Then they do.
Alastor.
Still asleep.
Still in his arms, Vox does not move. His first instinct is not panic. Panic is crude. Panic is undignified. Panic is what lesser men do when their circumstances become inconvenient. Vox does not panic. He freezes with immaculate internal violence. The room remains dim around them, folded in late-blue quiet. The old radios on the shelves hum faintly, their dials dark, their wooden bodies polished enough to catch the soft light in dull little gleams. The hidden jammers in the walls pulse beneath the atmosphere, nearly silent, almost polite. Every system in the room has been tuned to low output, calibrated for stillness, comfort, and containment.
It’s containment.
Yes.
That is what this is, you idiots.
This is not intimacy.
Certainly not for my indulgence.
Containment.
Alastor is curled against him with the kind of unguarded ease Vox has no right to witness. His forehead rests near Vox’s chest, not quite tucked there now, but close enough that the memory of last night still presses into the space between them. One of Vox’s arms lies across his waist, light but unmistakable. The other rests near Alastor’s shoulder, fingers curled loosely against the sheets. He should move immediately and professionally. He does not. Instead, he looks. He tells himself it is an assessment.
Temperature normalized. Breathing steady. Stitching dim. No visible flare. Frequency dependency is still present, but reduced during sleep. Post-collapse recovery proceeding within acceptable…Alastor’s ear flicks: small, soft, unconscious, and Vox’s screen glitches.
A thin line of static rips across the blue and disappears.
Absolutely not.
The thought from last night returns, unwelcome and fully formed this time.
Cute.
Vox stares at the far wall as if offended by the word’s audacity.
No. Stop thinking that!
No, that is not the category. That is not the operating framework. That is not helpful. The Radio Demon does not get to be cute simply because he is unconscious and fever-drained and inconveniently tucked into my side like he had once decided sleep meant surrender, mother fucker.
He adjusts his hand the smallest fraction. Alastor shifts toward the warmth. Vox goes still again. His screen brightens by one faint degree.
Noted.
He should be ashamed of the satisfaction that curls through him. He is not. He will be later, perhaps, when it becomes strategically inconvenient. For now, he lets himself have exactly three seconds of victory.
One.
Alastor’s breathing remains slow.
Two.
His ear twitches again, then relaxes.
Fuck. Three.
Vox withdraws his arm.
Shit. Shit. Careful.
So carefully it irritates him. He slides his hand from Alastor’s waist inch by inch, watching the stitching for any flare, watching the face for any tightening. The mattress shifts beneath him; Alastor’s brow creases faintly, and for a moment Vox’s hand hovers, ready to settle back where it was. He does not. He eases away and sits up at the edge of the bed, smoothing his jacket automatically. It is creased from sleep. That, more than anything else, makes the situation feel real in a way he resents. He glances back once. Alastor remains asleep, hair slightly mussed, coat folded neatly on the chair nearby, ears relaxed. The dim blue light softens the harsher angles of his face without making him look harmless. Nothing could make him harmless, it is part of the appeal. Vox stands.
The room seems louder once he is no longer lying in the center of it. Not actually loud, never that, not here, but more aware of itself, the jammers hum in the walls. The temperature system shifts, and the old television parts along the shelves sit like witnesses. Vox crosses to the wall panel and pulls up diagnostics with a flick of his fingers. Blue interfaces unfold in layered rectangles: temperature, signal interference, stitching flare patterns, shadow movement suppression, and frequency response. Each one gives him something logical to look at.
Good. This is perfect.
Logic is better than whatever the fuck that bed moment had been. Focus.
He adjusts a limiter by two percent, then pauses.
Too much could irritate the stitches. Too little and Alastor might slip through shadow the moment he regains the strength to be difficult. Vox adjusts it back by half.
“Contained, remember,” he murmurs under his breath. “Not caged.”
The room, like an unhelpful bastard, does not tell him whether there is a meaningful difference. Behind him, the fabric shifts. Vox’s hand stills over the interface.
A breath.
Then a voice, rough with sleep and sharpened by immediate offense, “…Of course.”
Vox turns. Alastor is awake. Not fully, but awake enough to be angry, which is a reliable sign of improvement. He lies still for a moment, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling, as if he is taking inventory of every indignity before deciding which one to punish first. Then his gaze shifts, slow and surgical, to Vox. The smile appears after the eyes and not before. The performance reassembled itself. Vox almost admires the craftsmanship.
“Hey sleepyhead, you’re awake,” he says.
Alastor blinks once.
“How observational.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“Is it morning?”
“Uh, technically.”
“How unfortunate.”
He starts to sit up too quickly.
Vox takes one step forward. Alastor’s ear snaps back. Vox stops.The movement is instant and automatic. Alastor notices that too.
Good, Vox thinks.
Let him.
Alastor pushes himself upright with insulting determination, one hand braced against the mattress, shoulders lifting into a posture too dignified for someone who nearly folds in half halfway through it. The green stitching along his side brightens under the strain. His jaw tightens. He refuses to make a sound. Vox watches him fight gravity like it has personally offended him.
“Careful Bambi,” Vox says.
Alastor swings his legs over the side of the bed. “I see you’ve downgraded from Overlord to zookeeper.”
Vox leans back against the console, folding his arms. “And yet you’re still the most difficult exhibit.”
Alastor’s eyes narrow. His ears, traitorous little things, flick once in irritated amusement before he forces them still.
“Cold-blooded lizard.”
“If you’re going to fucking insult me,” Vox says, with smooth offense, “at least do it right and upgrade me to something impressive. A shark, perhaps.”
Alastor pauses. Then the faintest smirk touches the edge of his mouth.
“No, no,” he says. “That’s too much of a compliment. I would definitely and surely say you’re more of a gecko, my dear.”
Vox’s screen glitches.
“A gecko?!.”
“Big eyes,” Alastor continues, tone warming with cruel pleasure. “Clings to walls and appears where he is not wanted. Probably makes upsetting little chirping sounds when excited.”
Vox scoffs, “I do not chirp.”
“Mm. I doubt you hear yourself.”
“You were sleeping on my chest less than an hour ago.”
The smirk dies, not completely. Alastor goes very still. The air between them changes. The humor remains in the room, but it has edges now. Vox knows immediately he has hit something real.
Good.
No wait, not good.
This can be useful.
Alastor looks away first, which tells Vox more than a retort would have.
“That,” Alastor says, very carefully, “was an unfortunate lapse in bodily judgment.”
“Uh huh, bodily judgment,” Vox repeats.
“You heard me. Is your input not working?”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
“We are actually calling it nothing. There is not label that needs to be placed.”
Vox smiles.
Alastor notices. “Do not look pleased.”
“What? I’m not.”
“Oh you absolutely are. I can see your smile is about to go off your screen.”
“I’m professionally encouraged.”
“Professionally? I would not say that word. You’re nothing but that.”
“Hey rude, you stabilized.”
“Oh, how romantic.”
Vox tilts his head. “I didn’t say romantic.”
Alastor’s gaze snaps back to him. A small victory. Vox lets the silence breathe just long enough to be felt, then shifts away from it before it can become too exposed.
“You remember last night.”
Alastor’s fingers curl lightly against the bedspread.
“I remember enough.”
“He, enough to be angry?”
“I require very little to be angry.”
“That’s actually true.”
Alastor’s smile sharpens again, but the color in his face, faint and fever-warm, betrays him. He remembers more than enough: the cooling, the bed, the arm around him, the humiliating comfort of surrendering to relief. He remembers his own body melting into Vox’s, remembers the awful safety of it, remembers the nickname.
Bambi.
His ear flicks at the memory. Vox’s screen brightens.
Alastor sees it and points one long finger at him.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You considered a thought that caused you to have that face. I don’t like it.”
“Having a thought is a crime now?”
“With you? Preventative measures are absolutely necessary.”
Vox laughs. Alastor hates that it warms the room more than the lights do. He forces himself to stand. It is a mistake. His body informs him immediately. The first step is unsteady; the second barely happens. His knees threaten to fold, and one line of stitching across his hip tightens hard enough to make his breath catch. He catches the bedpost with one hand and turns the motion into something that almost resembles choosing to lean there… almost. Vox does not move this time. He watches.
Alastor appreciates that about as much as he resents it.
“You brought me back,” Alastor says.
“Yes, we already had this conversation.”
“I want to blatantly remind you I specifically said no.”
“I know.”
“Wonderful. I’m pleased that your hearing is still intact.”
Vox’s expression remains smooth, but the blue deepens a fraction. “What do you want me to do? I told you already and I’ll drill it into your skull that your body was falling apart in a fucking alley.”
“And you took that as an invitation.”
“No, I took that as an emergency.”
“You clearly took that as an opportunity.”
The line lands. Vox’s screen flickers once.
There.
Alastor’s smile widens, small and mean.
“Ah,” he says softly. “You always twist my thoughts.”
Vox pushes off the console. He has not come closer yet.
“You collapsed.”
“I was making a strategic retreat.”
“You literally passed out!”
“It was part of the strategy.”
“You were fucking unconscious!”
“It was a bold maneuver, sure.”
“Oh my god! You would rather fucking die than admit you my fucking needed help!”
Alastor’s expression hardens. The room goes quiet, that one was too close to the bone. Vox realizes it a fraction too late. Alastor straightens, despite the strain. His smile is still there, but there is less humor in it now.
“Let me remind you that you would rather dress control in a clean suit and call it rescue.”
Vox does not answer immediately. The jammers hum in the walls. Alastor’s gaze flicks toward one corner. Then another.
“You think I would not notice the alterations.”
“Adjustments, I’m testing out something.”
“To keep me from leaving.”
“No, don’t be so dramatic, look at it as though it’s to keep you from tearing yourself apart the next time you decide dramatic exits are an effective coping mechanism.”
Alastor laughs softly.
“You really do have a gift.”
“For?”
“Making a cage sound like a clinic.”
Vox’s jaw tightens.
“I’m offended. It is not a cage.”
“The bed?”
“It’s for recovery.”
“The frequency dampeners?”
“Duh, it’s a precaution.”
“The fact that I could not shadow-walk out of this room if I attempted it right now?”
“Temporary.”
Alastor’s smile turns poisonous as a deer shriek is heard.
“That word is doing an astonishing amount of work.”
Vox steps closer now, only one step, to change the pressure in the room.
“Let me remind you that you are unstable.”
“I am well aware.”
“You’re not acting like it.”
“I was under the impression that making frailty to everyone else’s problem was considered tacky. I can do this on my own.”
“You’ve always done this.”
Alastor stills slightly.
Vox sees it. He hates that he’s using it but continues anyway.
“You’d walk into turf wars like the outcome of your body was fucking incidental. You’d laugh at injuries like they were some mediocre punchlines. You’d come back stitched together with blood dripping like an open faucet and with radio static spilling everywhere and you would act all offended if anyone noticed.”
Alastor’s eyes narrow, but something flickers behind them. It was an old memory, or the edge of it. Alastor tilts his slightly.
“That certainly doesn’t sound like me.”
“Oh ho, it absolutely fucking does.”
“Nonsense. I am the picture of restraint, my dear.”
“Bullshit, you once took a bullet through the shoulder and kept hosting because you didn’t want the audience thinking the other guy had a really good aim.”
Alastor pauses.
“…That sounds like excellent showmanship.”
“That sounds like reckless stupidity.”
“That sounds like winning to me.”
Vox’s voice drops. “You didn’t fucking care what happened to you.”
“And why should I have?”
The question is light, too light. It opens something in Vox before he can stop it.
“Because I can’t keep finding you half-dead in alleys.”
The room goes still, the sentence has no polish and no showman’s shine nor spin. It sits there, raw and inconvenient, between the old radios and the new bed and the hidden jammers in the walls. Alastor’s face does not change, his ears do… one tilts forward slightly, listening. Vox realizes what he said only after it has already done its damage.
Alastor’s gaze studies him with slow, unsettling focus.
“That sounded dangerously sincere.”
Vox looks away first this time.
“A technical failure.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t make it fucking weird, asshole.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You would absolutely dream of it. You’re weird that way.”
“My dear, my dreams have better taste.”
Vox laughs once, but it doesn’t entirely clear the tension. Before either of them can decide whether to bury or examine the moment, Vox’s phone buzzes.
Valentino.
The name flashes across the screen. Vox’s expression shifts immediately. Alastor sees it. There was no panic with his expression, a mild annoyance, sure. His features had a familiar practiced momentum, the look of a man bracing for a conversation he already knows by shape.
Vox answers.
“What.”
Valentino’s voice pours through the speaker, rich, careless, edged in amusement.
“So are we kidnapping now or was that a one-time thing?”
Alastor’s ear flicks.
That voice.
A small pressure rises in him, distaste without context.
I hate him.
The thought arrives with certainty. Then, annoyingly, no explanation follows.
Why?
He searches for the answer and finds only fragments: moth wings, too much perfume, hands too easy with space, a laugh that treats boundaries like a matter of negotiation.
He exhales quietly.
It’ll come back to me.
Vox turns slightly away, lowering his voice.
“You crossed a line.”
“Relax, cariño, I barely touched-”
“You touched him after I told you not to push.”
“What? You said play nice.”
“And somehow you interpreted that as ‘test the feral deer demon currently held together by cursed half-assed embroidery.’”
Alastor’s eyes sharpen.
“Feral deer demon?”
Vox covers the speaker briefly. “Not now.”
Alastor mouths silently, offended: Feral?
Val continues, unbothered.
“He looked fine to me.”
Vox’s voice goes colder.
“He wasn’t.”
A pause over the line.
Val’s tone shifts just slightly.
“Is he now?”
Concern, buried under insolence but present.
Vox glances back at Alastor.
Alastor looks away as if bored.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re welcome, mi amor.”
Vox’s screen glitches.
“Hey! Do not make this my fucking fault in reverse.”
“I’m not. I’m saying if he’s that reactive, you need better rules before somebody loses a hand, maybe he needs a muzzle.”
“Funny. That’s exactly what I called to discuss.”
“You didn’t call me.”
“Well, I was going to.”
“Sure, Voxxie.”
The endearment lands in the room with irritating ease. Alastor studies the old radio nearest him with unnecessary attention.
Vox notices.
Of course he does.
His voice tightens further.
“You don’t touch him again. Not casually. Not to test him. Not to prove a point.”
“Wow.”
“Val.”
“No, no, I heard you. Hands off your deer-shaped nuclear incident. I was only trying to help. Maybe some BDSM will help will help you better control him, now that he’s half of a brain. Easier to manipulate. I can let you borrow some of my leashes…”
Alastor’s eye twitches.
Vox pinches the bridge between his screen and casing as if that could help.
“Goodbye, Val.”
“Wait, wait-”
Vox ends the call.
Silence returns.
Alastor says, very mildly, “Deer-shaped nuclear incident. And what is this ‘BDSM’ he was referring to?”
Vox slips the phone away. “Don’t start.”
“I wasn’t aware I had stopped.”
“What you need to focus on now is rest.”
“And you need better assistants.”
Vox’s gaze sharpens.
“They’re not assistants. They’re my associates.”
The correction comes too fast. Alastor notices. The room seems to notice too.
“Ah,” Alastor says.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said ‘ah.’ That’s worse.”
Alastor’s smile returns, slow and unreadable. “How intimate.”
Vox looks at him for a long second. There are several things he could say. That Valentino is loyal. That Valentino cares in the only ways he knows how. That the Vees are not simple, not to him, not to each other. That not everything in Vox’s life has been waiting for Alastor to return. He doesn’t know how much Alastor really remembers about him and the Vees. He says none of that because Alastor is watching too closely and because some explanations sound too much like pleading. Before the silence can twist into something sharper, the door opens.
Velvette enters without knocking, already mid-complaint.
“Okay, what the hell is going on with the north-side system-”
Her phone glitches in her hand. The screen flickers and freezes, drops three active windows, and she stops dead and looks at the phone. Then slowly lifts her gaze to the room.
“…Oh.”
Her eyes move fast.vBed. Couch. Alastor standing too straight. Vox standing too close. Old tech. Low light. Hidden corners. Frequency dampeners humming just beneath the walls. Then back to her phone. She taps it once. The screen flickers again.
She scowls, “You’ve got interference running in here.”
Vox says, “Velvette-”
She lifts one finger.
“Don’t.”
He stops.
Alastor’s brows lift faintly.
Interesting.
Velvette steps farther inside, waving her phone slightly as if testing the signal with contempt alone.
“Cute,” she says. “Very cute. Subtle as a hostage note, but cute.”
Alastor’s smile shifts.
Vox crosses his arms. “It’s not-”
“Don’t finish that sentence if you value the few little scraps of dignity still rattling around in your fucking casing.”
Vox’s screen flickers.
Alastor’s eyes brighten with quiet pleasure.
Velvette swipes across her phone with quick, precise movements. Her nails click lightly against the screen.
“Some of my features are lagging,” she continues, “which is annoying, because unlike the rest of you dramatic fossils, I have actual work.”
A tap.
Another.
The phone stabilizes.
She smiles, sharp and satisfied.
“But I know how to fix it.”
She lowers the device and turns fully toward Alastor.
“So.”
A beat.
“You’re the problem.”
Alastor, still standing on pride and very little else, inclines his head.
“How charming. I was beginning to worry I’d been reduced to a patient.”
Velvette glances at the bed. Then at Vox. Then back at Alastor.
“Patient, prisoner, pet project… honestly, the branding’s a fucking mess.”
Vox says, “Well, he’s recovering, you know.”
Velvette snorts.
“Oh, is that what we’re calling the weird little bachelor bunker with signal blockers and a suspiciously large fucking bed?”
Alastor’s smile grows sharper.
“Bachelor bunker,” he repeats, delighted.
Vox points at him. “Hey! Do not enjoy this.”
“I would never deny a lady her excellent phrasing.”
Velvette’s gaze slides back to Alastor. For the first time, she really studies him. It’s not in the way Valentino had: no lingering physical claim, no testing proximity, and no careless reach. Velvette stays exactly where she is, phone in one hand, hip angled, eyes sharp enough to cut through the room’s softened light. Alastor notices the distance. He appreciates it, against his better judgment.
“Hm, you don’t like being handled,” Velvette says.
Alastor’s eyes narrow.
“Oh, how insightful.”
“You’re stiff as a board.”
A pause.
“Not in the fun way, my dear.”
Vox scoffs and mutters, “Can we not?”
Velvette ignores him. “You’re standing like if you move wrong the room wins.”
Alastor’s smile remains fixed, but his ears tilt forward a fraction.
“And you’ve arrived at this conclusion in what, thirty seconds?”
“Give me some credit. Twenty-two.” She glances at her phone. “And I’m being generous, love.”
“How efficient.”
“I’ve worked with Vox for years. You either learn to read a room in under a minute or you get eaten by his fucking big ass ego.”
Vox looks offended. “Hey! My ego is an essential part of this company’s brand identity.”
Velvette laughs, “Your ego needs a leash and a crisis manager.”
“You wound me. I have both.”
“Uh huh, clearly not, considering”, she gestures around the room, “whatever this is.”
Alastor lets out a soft, delighted hum.
Velvette catches it.
“Oh, you like that, don't you?”
“Oh, I do appreciate someone with competence.”
“Then you must be having a miserable fucking week.”
Vox says, “I’m standing right here.”
“Yes, yes,” Velvette says. “That’s part of the problem.”
For a moment, Alastor almost forgets the ache in his joints, just slightly. Velvette’s presence changes the room differently than Valentino’s had. She does not fill space by force. She edits it. Cuts through it. She exposes weak lines in its composition and rearranges the focus with a sentence. There is no comfort in her, exactly, but there is clarity. Alastor respects clarity. Velvette’s eyes drop briefly to the green stitching visible at the collar and cuffs where his coat no longer hides everything.
Her expression changes only slightly.
“What happened to you? I don’t remember seeing that the last time we saw each other.”
Vox answers too quickly. “He’s just fractured.”
“Was I looking at you? No. Why are you answering for him? I asked him.”
The room stills. Alastor’s gaze shifts to Vox, then back to Velvette.
He could answer flippantly. He should.
Instead he says, “I seem to be experiencing a mild inconvenience at the moment.”
Velvette stares.
Then laughs once. “Right. So catastrophic magical trauma then. I don’t touch all that voodoo shit, but I am aware of it. I can feel you spewing so much magic that I can smell it all the way to my floor.”
“Must you strip all poetry from the room?”
“Only when it’s getting in the way of the obvious, love.”
She steps, not closer, but slightly sideways, changing the angle so she can see both him and Vox at once.
“He’s hovering, you know,” she says.
“I am not,” Vox says.
Velvette doesn’t look at him and whispers, “He hovers when he’s panicking.”
Alastor turns his head slowly toward Vox.
Vox’s screen remains very, very still.
“How unfortunate for him,” Alastor says.
Velvette’s mouth curves.
“Yeah.”
A beat.
“It is.”
Alastor does not respond immediately.
Velvette sees that too.
“We’ve clashed a few times, but you’re not what I expected,” she says.
Alastor’s eyes return to her.
“Disappointed?”
“No, no.”
She considers him openly.
“Just inconveniently interesting, love.”
“Careful,” Alastor says. “That almost sounded complimentary.”
“Now don’t get attached. I recover quickly, love.”
Vox exhales. “Why are you here, Vel?”
She finally looks at him fully.
“Because your shitty systems started acting like you were hiding a fucking nuclear meltdown in the back of the tower.”
Alastor’s mouth quirks.
“Deer-shaped, apparently.”
Velvette points at him. “That’s funny. Don’t encourage me.”
Vox pinches the bridge of his casing again.
Velvette continues, more pointed now. “You vanished, north-side signal output dipped, private room dampeners came online, three of my phone features lagged when I crossed the threshold, and Val sent me five messages that were mostly swears and one very unhelpful moth emoji.”
Vox closes his eyes.
Alastor looks intrigued. “A moth emoji.”
“Don’t ask.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to.”
“You absolutely were.”
“I was considering it.”
Velvette’s gaze cuts back to Vox. “So I came to see what was worth breaking the system over.”
Her eyes flick to Alastor.
“And surprise.”
The room holds that.
Vox says, quieter, “It’s under control.”
Velvette’s face does something subtle. Something almost sympathetic, if she were a softer person.
“No, it isn’t.”
Vox’s screen darkens. Alastor watches the exchange with growing interest. Velvette looks between them, then folds her arms.
“You know what’s funny? You’re both pretending this is a different problem.”
Neither answers.
She points at Alastor. “You’re pretending you’re not one bad dizzy spell from eating the floor.”
Then at Vox. “You’re pretending ‘keeping him from eating the floor’ isn’t making you insane.”
Vox says coldly, “Thank you for the analysis. Are you done?”
“You’re welcome. Pay me.”
Alastor’s laugh slips out before he can stop it. It was small and brief. Vox hears it. Velvette hears it. Alastor hates them both for hearing it.
Velvette’s eyes flick back to him, not softening, but sharpening with satisfaction.
“Ha, there you are.”
Alastor stills.
Something about the phrase echoes Mimzy. Different voice. Different intention. Same unnerving precision.
“Why is everyone very fond of saying that?” he asks.
Velvette’s expression turns curious.
“Saying what?”
“There you are.”
A pause.
Velvette studies him more closely. Vox does not move.
Alastor regrets saying it the moment the room receives it.
Too revealing.
He covers with a smile.
“One might think I’ve been misplaced.”
Velvette’s phone buzzes. She glances down, scrolls with her thumb, then looks back up.
“Maybe you have.”
Silence.
Then she turns toward the door.
“Well. This has been creepy.”
Vox says, “Vel-”
“Nope. I’ve seen enough for one morning. Fix your fucking dampeners so they don’t mess with my phone and systems, or I’ll fix them in a way you hate.”
“They’re not for you to handle.”
“I know. That’s why they’re ugly.”
She pauses at the door and glances over her shoulder at Alastor.
“Try not to break anything while he’s gone, love.”
Her gaze shifts to Vox, then back.
“He gets weird about his stuff.”
A beat.
“Especially you.”
The door opens. Then closes behind her. The quiet she leaves behind is not the same quiet as before. It is sharper now. Alastor remains standing near the bed, one hand resting lightly against the post, posture too controlled to be comfortable. Vox stands near the console, arms still folded, screen unreadable. The room hums. The dampeners pulse softly in the walls.
Neither of them speaks.
At last, Alastor says, “She notices too much.”
Vox’s mouth line shifts.
“She’s good at that.”
“A dangerous habit.”
“Oh, you would know.”
Alastor’s smile returns.
“Yes,” he says. “I would.”
Another silence.
Vox looks toward the door Velvette left through. Then back at Alastor. For the first time, it occurs to him, not as an abstract risk, but as a real and immediate possibility, that keeping Alastor in VoxTek does not mean keeping him to himself. He built this room for himself and, lucky enough, to keep Alastor close. He had not considered that someone else might make him comfortable in it.
Alastor, unfortunately, looks like he has considered exactly that.
I grew up believing that if someone fell apart, it meant I hadn’t done enough to stop it.
Not acting was failure. And not doing enough was worse. But how do you explain that kind of guilt at the confessional stand?
The guilt of standing on the shore while everyone you’ve ever loved keeps walking into the sea. The guilt of surviving people who are still alive, but drowning. The guilt that no matter what you do, you are not enough to keep someone from choosing oblivion over tomorrow, and yet, that was your role.
My stepdad drank until his body finally gave out on him. He told me that he wanted to die and the night he went out to the bar I weakly told him not to go. That he didn’t look well. But it wasn’t enough.
A year before he died, he fell down the stairs.
A year later, my mother fell down those same stairs. Two empty vodka bottles on the table and Christmas lights still shimmering. She survived with a brain injury. If I wasn’t there she would have died, and yet she kept going back to the thing that killed her husband and that almost killed her.
Everyone expected me to save her.
All it earned me was being screamed at, blamed, and hit. I became responsible for a woman who refused to save herself. She lies to herself saying that she doesn’t drink, with a glass of whiskey half full waiting for another kiss of her lips. Her loyalty never lied with family, and yet I was expected to uphold that value.
And then there was my brother.
He was always searching for another exit. Marijuana. Shrooms. Fentanyl. Whippets. It never mattered what it was as long as he could escape his reality. He stopped trying to escape his own world and started trying to control mine instead. Holes in walls and destroyed doors turned to bruises and cutting me off from friends. He reached for power the same way our parents reached for bottles. But yet just as our mother couldn’t blame herself, he blamed me for everything. He couldn’t face himself.
No one knows how to stay.
They leave through alcohol.
Through drugs.
Through rage.
Through violence.
Through denial.
Everyone is forever searching for a door out of themselves.
I was the only one who ran in the opposite direction.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
Because I left.
I escaped.
An entire family so desperate not to feel alive that they’d rather poison themselves than change. Bottle after bottle. Drug after drug. Lie after lie. Hurting everyone around them because looking inward was somehow more terrifying than death itself.
And somehow I was supposed to fix it.
I was supposed to stop grown adults from walking willingly into their own graves.
Their escape just happened to come in bottles, bibles, or bongs.
Mine came with a packed bag and memory loss.
I’m supposed to feel happy that I escaped. That I’m not like them. But am I truly not like them? I inherited it.
Not the addiction, not the anger, not the denial or helplessness.
But the grief. The misery, that was passed down to me instead of any heirloom. And the guilt.
The guilt of realizing there was never anything you could have done—and still feeling as though you should have done more anyway.
