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Alastor had been prepared for this. He had held himself together well enough during the battle, all things considered. Niffty and Husk’s arrival—or rather, Niffty’s arrival and Husk’s delivery—had been unexpected, he was willing to admit, but Alastor was nothing if not a master of improvisation. All he’d needed to do was affect a bit of concern for his underlings (easy enough), add a dollop of charm (even easier), let his head loll coquettishly (remarkably easy, thanks to the blood loss), and offer Vox his thralldom by offering his hand. After all these years, he could still play the man like a piano. Alastor could run arpeggios up and down Vox’s ego with his eyes closed.
Still, he couldn’t shake the suspicion that it was too easy. It was a rare leap of faith for Alastor to rely on actual flirtation, to accept—much as he might want to believe otherwise—that his dubious sex appeal truly was the most efficient tool in his arsenal when it came to Vox. The entire time that Alastor had been leaning on his knee, making doe eyes and speaking through puckered lips and flashing winning smiles and baring his mangled chest, he’d been worried. He did not have a deft touch with this technique—he either laid it on thick or not at all. Alastor had been sure that Vox would see through it to his verbal sleight of hand, the ulterior motives absolutely rolling off of him with every word.
Instead, Vox had been rendered speechless, stammering and gesturing stupidly at his equally stupid cohorts, as if asking them to help him believe what he was hearing. It had almost been a satisfying victory, Alastor thought. He may not have agreed with, related to, or appreciated this particular skill set, but he understood it well enough to weaponize it.
Once their deal was lightning-struck, Alastor set his teeth and braced himself. Their fight and handshake had been a public spectacle, as intended. But even if it hadn’t been, there was no way Vox would ever have kept their deal private. He was a shrewd man, mostly, but not a subtle one. He was going to make it a show.
The parade was a given, as far as Alastor was concerned. Having intimate details about his anatomy revealed on a live broadcast? A given. It could’ve been worse; some rumors benefited from being nipped in the bud. The diner date was, frankly, the most humiliating part, simply because there was no public humiliation involved. Just the sheer, inane absurdity of being in that little booth, sitting across the table from Vox, watching and listening to him slurp up a milkshake for two by himself.
The muzzle Vox had strapped to his face turned out to be an odd blessing, Alastor mused, as he endured one stupid torment after another. He couldn’t drop his smile if he wanted to—and oh, how he wanted to. Sometimes he worried that the permanent grin made the small shifts in his expressions even more obvious, calling attention to moments when the smile was incongruent with the rest of his body language, with his eyes. Having a frown forced onto him meant he could slouch, go dead-eyed, and not worry about his face contradicting itself.
It was sick, but it almost felt like a break. A little mental vacation where he didn’t even have to make the choice.
Then evening came, and Alastor was removed from the public eye, and he had to brace himself all over again. There would be no more parading him in front of an audience. Now, Alastor was the audience. It was a role he neither liked nor was accustomed to. He didn’t want to sit back with nothing to do but observe. He liked calling the shots, being the host, running the show.
Alastor did not want to run this show. He simply wanted to run.
But he couldn’t, and he’d known from the start that he wouldn’t be able to, and that was simply the cost of betting on the long game. So when Vox pushed him across the floor of his bedroom, letting his voice finally downshift from that obnoxious show host cadence to a quieter, more personal tone, Alastor put up with it. He did lose the dissociative, dead-eyed look. Vox was goading him into reacting, and Alastor had already promised himself some leeway. He was allowed a few sidelong looks, a few tilts away from Vox’s hand when it drifted too close to his hair, without considering it a loss of composure. Besides, Vox wanted to see that he was getting under his skin. A stoic demeanor would only draw it out. It was a very, very fine needle to thread, but Alastor knew that a few reactions here and there would ultimately keep things moving toward the moment when it would all be over.
Vox spent a minute making sure the lighting was set to his exact specifications: dim enough for mood and atmosphere, but bright enough not to spare any details. While he made the adjustments, Valentino swayed past Alastor to the bedside, willow-thin and feather-light yet still towering over them both. Alastor tried to sit there without reacting. Valentino was unlikely to do anything to him without Vox’s express permission—at least for now. But of all the Vees, Valentino was the one Alastor was the most wary of. He didn’t know how to work him. He couldn’t make any kind of appeal to him. And, worst of all, Alastor had always gotten the impression that he was something of a curiosity to Valentino. Something the man regarded with a unique mix of intrigue, mockery, and pity. It was the kind of bemused reaction that usually made Alastor feel more powerful than whomever he was dealing with. In Valentino’s case, it made Alastor want to claw those flimsy pink eyes out of his head so they could never look at him again.
He made himself focus. This was not about Valentino. This was about him, and this was about Vox. And Alastor knew how to handle Vox.
Once he’d finished messing with the lights, Vox, to Alastor’s mild surprise, went straight to Valentino’s side. He took two of the moth demon’s slender hands in one of his, and Valentino bent down to meet Vox for a kiss. It was jarringly tender. Both men shut their eyes, which was lucky for Alastor, who forgot his resolve for the moment and simply stared as Valentino, incomprehensibly, cradled Vox’s face with one of his free hands. Alastor glanced to one side, then the other, scanning the room as if he might find a live studio audience whose reactions he could gauge.
His movements made one of the chair wheels squeak. Upon hearing it, Valentino chuckled and drew away, wiping a smear of pink saliva off Vox’s screen with his fingertip. "What’s that?" he asked tauntingly, turning his gaze on Alastor while he slid a pair of arms around Vox’s waist. "Is someone getting impatient?"
Alastor didn’t even want to glare at Valentino; he wanted to glare at Vox. Vox was the one he’d agreed to deal with. Vox was the one he could deal with.
But not when he was wrapped in Valentino’s arms, letting the other man antagonize Alastor on his behalf while Vox watched with a satisfied smile, as if he himself had nothing to say. Alastor, for reasons he couldn’t have even begun to articulate, couldn’t look at either one of them in this state, let alone both together. He drew his gaze off to the side while Valentino said, "The question is: is it impatience to get this over with? Or impatience to get started?"
Before Alastor could figure out how to react to that without the ability to speak, Vox saved him the trouble. "The former for him," he said. "Latter for me. Let’s get this show on the road."
Somehow, that broke a bit of tension, if only at the surface level. There was movement between the two; their eyes were no longer on Alastor, and he was able to drag his attention back to the scene before him. He sat through it with a few calculated—though entirely genuine—glares whenever Valentino looked his way or asked him if he liked what he was seeing. To Vox, Alastor offered an imperious and scathingly unimpressed eyebrow raise when the man made a show of undressing before him. Alastor ducked his head and swiveled the chair to dodge each article of clothing that Vox playfully tossed in his direction. Only once did Alastor lose his cool, when he failed to duck low enough and one of Vox’s socks snagged on his antler. He had to shake his head to rid himself of it, and his ears pricked up at the sound of shared laughter from the bed.
"Aww," said Valentino, who was still fully dressed—though that was always relative, in his case. He grinned at Alastor, who, unseen beneath the mask, could do nothing but grin ferociously back. "Cute."
After spending half the day silenced, Alastor was burning up with repartee. He was dying to fire back now that they were out of the public eye. Some part of him, some unbelievably pragmatic voice of reason that he did not want to agree with right now, reminded him that he was lucky Vox had gagged him. Otherwise, he’d be making everything worse for himself. Just sit, the voice told him. Sit still. The choice has been made for you, it is out of your hands, and as long as this lasts you will have nothing to say. This is a best-case scenario within a worst-case scenario. Endure it.
So, with chafing arms from the cables binding him, and chafing pride from virtually everything else, Alastor sat, and watched, and endured. Even worse than the distasteful act that was beginning to take place was the sheer unadulterated insufferableness of its participants. The laughter between Vox and Valentino, the dirty talk, the way they reacted to every single move as if it came as a mind-blowing and unforeseeable surprise…it was all so performative and, in Alastor’s opinion, uninspired. He’d been prepared for the grueling chore of watching a graphic sexual act unfold before him—multiple, actually—but he’d underestimated the secondhand embarrassment of it all. Heaven help him: he found himself, with his irrepressible showman instincts, actually wanting to offer pointers about how to make their dialogue flow more naturally and sound more realistic, less cliché-ridden and eyeroll-inducing.
But that wasn’t an option for him at the moment, and even if it had been, Alastor wasn’t in the habit of supplying his business rivals with free critiques. So he indulged in an eyeroll and tried to keep his mind on how unintentionally embarrassing this was for Vox, rather than how intentionally embarrassing it was for himself. He let his eyes unfocus a bit as Vox—still mercifully half-dressed—began to disrobe Valentino. On some level, Alastor was still bracing himself for the moment when Vox would reach out with his cables—or worse, his hands—and drag Alastor into it. Although Vox refrained from involving Alastor physically, he did glance at him after a few more minutes of foreplay and asked what he thought the two of them should do next. "We’re putting on this whole production for you, after all," he said. "We’re open to requests."
Alastor stared him down, unmoving. After a moment, Valentino sighed. "Vox, be nice," he said, with the same flirtatious speech pattern Alastor had used earlier to sucker Vox into their deal. Alastor wanted to throw up. Valentino sat up on the bed, behind Vox. His eyes glowed softly in the dim light as he gazed at Alastor. "He wouldn’t know where to begin."
Valentino was Alastor’s least favorite. He had always been Alastor’s least favorite. He knew how to make Alastor feel insulted and demeaned over something he didn’t even care about, and Alastor had never been able to make sense of that, let alone get over it. Valentino laid two hands on Vox’s shoulders, the other two on his hips, and leaned down, only taking his eyes off Alastor when he was close enough to Vox to nudge the side of his head with his own. "Help him out," he whispered, like a perfect shoulder devil.
Alastor, to his growing dismay, started to consider that he may not have fully thought this through. He’d known that Vox would have a slew of indignities lined up for him, but he’d somehow forgotten just how much of a presence Valentino was, especially behind closed doors. Especially with Vox by his side, egging him on without even doing anything, just through proximity.
The room went still as Vox considered his options and Alastor tried to prepare himself for however he might interpret his partner’s remark. "Bet he’d love to see me tied up right now," Vox finally said, addressing Valentino but watching Alastor. "Level the playing field? It’s the least we could do for him."
He waited for a response. Alastor just sat there, with stunningly good posture for someone bound to a swivel chair with an extension cord. His stare was impassive.
"Well?" Vox said, not about to accept a lack of response from Alastor just because he’d put a muzzle on him. They both knew it was mostly a formality, anyway—it could slow Alastor down, but never truly stop him. After a moment, the microphone on Alastor’s cane crackled to life. The Vees had been good enough to let him hang onto it, both because it was functionally useless as a weapon right now and because all three of them were a little too spooked by it to handle it themselves. It was leaning against the wall by the nightstand. Vox turned his attention to it in surprise—and then, at the sound of a single cricket chirping, he gave Alastor a flat look. Alastor’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
"All right," Vox said, "fair point. Too on-the-nose. And it’d only draw attention to the fact that you’re the one who’s tied up for real." He thought it over some more while the microphone chirped away, with a gradual fade-out. "Maybe he’d like to watch you fuck me," Vox said to Valentino, once the cricket had given him back the floor. He ran his fingertips down Valentino’s bare chest, catching them briefly and deliberately on the chain. Valentino gasped and moaned softly in delight, and Alastor’s lip curled.
"Oh, pelirrojo," Valentino murmured, glancing at Alastor. "Please say yes."
This time, the microphone emitted halfhearted boos and jeers. Vox rolled his eyes. "Tough customer," he said. "As usual." For the first time throughout this whole ordeal, Alastor let his smile became a little more genuine beneath the mask, lazily pleased with himself. If nothing else, he could ensure that he was the most difficult, petty, impossible-to-subdue hostage the Vees had ever had. He wiggled his shoulder blades against the back of the chair, settling in more comfortably. He crossed one leg over the other and tapped his toe idly in the air.
Vox looked him up and down, studying his nonchalant body language. Alastor almost enjoyed it.
"All right," Vox said to Valentino. "We need to go the opposite route, here. You’re getting tied up and fucked tonight. Sound good to you?"
"Always."
Vox glanced at Alastor again. "And how about you?"
Alastor raised his gaze toward the ceiling, tipping his head from side to side, making a show of thinking it over. He could see Vox’s unamused face in his peripheral vision, and Alastor almost laughed in spite of himself. If Vox hadn’t wanted him to resort to pantomime, he shouldn’t have removed his other means and modes of expression. Alastor shut his eyes for a moment, then lowered his head again. When he opened his eyes, he was looking straight at Vox. The microphone remained silent: a tacit endorsement.
Without further ado, Vox turned his attention away from Alastor and back to Valentino. The shift was so decisive that it seemed to catch Alastor and Valentino equally off guard, though the latter adjusted quickly, relaxing under Vox’s hands. Just like earlier, when they had kissed, Alastor was so taken aback that all he could do was watch. Vox finished stripping Valentino, grabbed some kind of leather restraint from the nightstand drawer, and deftly bound the man’s wrists to each other and to the headboard. His movements were so steady and efficient that for a moment, Alastor could ignore the context. His attention was held the way it was held by watching anyone do something they were well-practiced in, and do it with ease. When Vox had secured Valentino’s wrists, he reached down to finish undressing himself, and only then did Alastor’s gaze dart away.
This was the right decision. It was tactically sound. The only way this hostage situation could work, the only way for Alastor to get through it successfully, was by never forgetting that Vox was Threat #1. Seeing the man bound to a headboard and submitting to another Overlord would not have helped at all. Alastor needed Vox to be the active participant, the one running the show. He could not afford, for one moment, to let himself forget that.
On the other hand, he truly did not want to bear witness to any of this. Quickly, while Vox’s attention was diverted, Alastor tried to find something else to fix his gaze on. He settled on a digital alarm clock, sitting on what he assumed was Valentino’s nightstand. Perfect. He could literally count the minutes until this was over. It was close to the headboard—that was good, too. If Alastor caught sight of anything, it would be from roughly the chest up. Waist, at worst.
They didn’t have the decency to do anything under the covers; Vox had pulled them all down and let them spill off the foot of the bed. Alastor found that incredibly gauche, but then, he supposed, what did he know? It was unavoidably clear by now that no matter how sensible his opinions may have seemed to him, he was generally the odd man out. The only person at the hotel who’d even remotely shared Alastor’s sense of propriety had been that slithering imbecile, and just look at what had happened to him.
He was thinking silly thoughts, he knew. It was better than paying attention to what was going on in front of him. Now that things were truly underway, Alastor was in endurance mode. He couldn’t even begin to guess how long this horrible, lurid affair would last. It might be minutes. Or they might find a way to drag this torment out for hours. And that raised the question of whether any of the Vees would ever get around to acknowledging Alastor’s basic biological needs, or if it was his responsibility as a hostage to be a squeaky wheel. This was a new position for him, and he wasn’t familiar with the etiquette.
Surely someone ought to have offered him a trip to the restroom by now. Then again, no one had offered him anything to eat or drink, either, so he supposed he was breaking even. Still, he’d need water sooner or later. And movement, just to keep the circulation going. His wretchedly slow healing progress might have been a blessing in disguise. Perhaps it meant he had a reduced risk of blood clots. That was something to hold onto.
Alastor was doing well with this "spacing out" strategy, until Vox finally managed to tear his attention away from Valentino. "Hey," he said, and Alastor almost looked at him automatically before catching himself. "I know better than to ask if you like what you see," Vox went on, "but I think it’s worth pointing out that I’ve got one of the most powerful, dangerous Overlords in Hell here, all tied up and at my mercy."
"Oh, stop," Valentino said, coyly flattered. Vox waited until Alastor deigned to look at him—and as he did, Alastor kept his eyes fixed intently on Vox’s face. When their gazes met, Vox grinned.
"Whaddya think of that?"
Alastor stared at him for a moment, then had to look away again. Off to the side of the room, his microphone offered a round of applause—three isolated, sarcastic claps. Vox scoffed, but at the same time, the attitude seemed to encourage him. Disdain really was the safest course, Alastor figured; disdain by proxy through his microphone was even better. It was just enough to show Vox that he was, indeed, getting to him, but not so much that it would inspire him to take things even further.
As Vox and Valentino grew more involved in their sordid activities, Alastor tried to find something other than the digital clock to fix his gaze on, something that would put the bed out of his line of sight. It wasn’t easy—Vox’s aesthetic sensibilities were so sleek and minimalist that there wasn’t much else in his room to draw the eye. Besides that, it was getting harder for Alastor to focus. Not just mentally, but visually. He sighed silently. He’d steeled himself for this, but he hadn’t expected them to literally steam up the room.
There was no specific, sudden detail that jumped out at him to clue him in. But gradually, the hairs on the back of his neck started to raise. Something didn’t feel right. No—he didn’t feel right. Something wasn’t right. And as much as he didn’t want to, Alastor needed to assess his environment to figure out what it was. Reluctantly, but with a growing sense of urgency, he dragged his gaze back in the direction of the bed.
The air didn’t just look softer. It looked pinker. Alastor went still. He tried to determine what Vox and Valentino were doing by studying the space around them rather than looking directly at them. Valentino lifted his hand, holding a pink-tipped cigarette aloft. Vox was on top of him, blocking his face from Alastor’s view, but a moment later, a pink cloud rushed into the air above them both.
It was dense, whatever it was. After that initial burst, the cloud sank back down, rolled across the bed, and spilled over its edges, settling on the floor to join the thin layer Valentino had been stealthily filling the room with this entire time. The rosy smoke ebbed and flowed toward Alastor’s feet. His ears, which had spent most of the day drooping with weariness or lying flat, now stood straight up. All of his senses were on high alert. Instinctively, he pulled his feet in, and the movement kicked the smoke up in swirls around him.
Alastor went rigid. He knew that sitting this still for too long would become conspicuous. He knew that to shift at all at this point would be conspicuous, too. He was trying to figure out what to do when Valentino brought the cigarette back to his mouth and breathed in deep. Just as he was about to exhale, Vox nipped at his neck, and Valentino turned his head to give him easier access.
He’d turned his head toward Alastor, and with a sensual sigh, Valentino sent the stream of smoke in his direction.
Alastor tried to inhale quickly through his nose, but he couldn’t breathe well with the cables around his middle, holding him in place. His chest still hurt, too. In the end, he only managed one shallow breath, and combined with the physical pain and mounting alarm, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold it for long.
Valentino let his head rest against his bound arm, and he gave Alastor a smile more lascivious than any he’d ever been given before. There wasn’t even any cruelty in it—just pure pleasure that Valentino was eager to share, which was somehow a thousand times worse. "That one was just for you, baby."
All thoughts of maintaining his composure fled Alastor’s brain in a heartbeat. He didn’t care anymore. This was not part of the deal, at least as he’d seen it—and that had been his oversight, certainly, but he simply did not care. He tried to push himself away, but the chair wheels caught on Vox’s clothes, still scattered around the floor where Vox had tossed them, and Alastor didn’t make it more than six inches. He scanned the room, trying to find another exit route. His chest felt like it was full of stinging nettles—he exhaled quickly and tried to whisk an equally quick breath back in. His nose burned with foreign particles, and he tried to forcefully reject them. He didn’t even care about the animalistic reactions: the snorting breath, the mad scramble, the ears going flat again. All he wanted was to get away.
By the time he noticed the pressure around his ankles, a pair of living cables had already constricted them. They coiled swiftly up his shins and pulled his legs out, drawing him back into the layer of smoke. Alastor brayed against the muzzle and tried to kick his way free. To his surprise, he succeeded. The cables loosened and slid to the floor—only for three times as many to criss-cross themselves behind the back of the chair, pulling Alastor to the bedside again with no chance of escape.
He kept trying to hold his breath, despite the fact that it was clearly too late. His vision pulsed and swam; something was wrong with his circulation. He was becoming hyperaware of every sensation: the pressure of the cables pinning his arms to his sides, the soft scratch of clothing against his skin. He heard Valentino laugh and say, "Oh, Vox—you didn’t tell me he was this shy."
Alastor was glaring again; his panic had become defiant. Vox still hadn’t acknowledged him directly, but it was clear to Alastor that he had the attention of both of them. And once it was clear that they had his, too, and that Valentino’s smoke had started to take effect, their fun truly began. This was the plan all along, Alastor finally realized, unable to fully look at them and unable to fully look away. It wasn’t enough to force him to watch. They wanted to force him—against his will, against his instincts—to enjoy it.
It wasn’t really enjoyable, of course. Alastor needed to stand up, to move, to get out of the chair. He was dehydrated. He’d lost blood. The wound on his chest had been throbbing, and now, with his quickened pulse, it was worse than ever. All of his recent humiliations flooded his memory; all the things he’d been able to endure that day were bursting free from his compartmentalizations, because his brain was being hijacked and even the knowledge of what was happening couldn’t enable him to overpower it and think straight. His mind raced without words, just imagery and sounds and colors. It raced like a dial skittering between stations without ever being able to tune in. It raced like a roach across the floor, frantic for a crack in the wall to hide inside.
Alastor could not sit still. He tried, then squirmed. He tried again, then pressed his feet flat on the floor. His skin was getting hot; his hands spasmed until he clenched them into fists, and then, when that wasn’t enough, he dug his claws into the sides of his thighs. Heat bloomed in his chest from more than just the wound. It spread through him, seeping down through his viscera, between his legs. He was alight with it.
Somehow, it was his head that bothered him the most. He let it drop, partly to hide his face, but partly because he couldn’t physically bear to sit up straight. He suddenly—absurdly—despised that the chair back only reached up to his shoulder blades. He wanted external pressure. He wanted to press his forehead against a cool, hard surface (not glass—something, anything else), or, failing that, he wanted to hit his head on something, strike it against the wall. He’d rather bludgeon himself through this than succumb to what was happening. He wanted whatever was in him out.
He still couldn’t see clearly. He felt dizzy—not vertiginous, but a bit woozy. He sat in the chair, taut as piano wire, and tried to overpower his own biological responses and will his body back into stasis. You can do it, he told himself with gritted teeth. Do it. Stop it.
Vox’s domination of Valentino was not helping. Alastor hated that it wasn’t helping. It should have been. The sight of them should have canceled it all out, not stoked it. He wanted to be both outside in fresh, open air, and also hidden in some crevice a mile underground, where no one could see him, where no one would think to look for him, or even think about him. He wanted to ossify and then fossilize and then come back to life, clean and renewed, with this incident so far in the past that it couldn’t ever be recalled.
He tried to imagine that underground place, and then tried to wedge himself into it, tried to feel cold black rock closing in on him from all sides like a coffin a size too small. He clung to his imaginary sanctum for the remainder of his time by the bedside, until the two reached their climax together. Alastor could not and would not look, but he couldn’t avoid hearing. It was worse to hear it. He was so attuned to sounds, and they painted an even more graphic image in his mind than the actual image itself would have. Point for him, he thought grimly, in some part of his brain that was still operating as it should: with ruthless spite. Audio truly did surpass video in every way.
Valentino’s performative cries of pleasure were almost intolerable. Vox’s much more genuine groans were worse. Soon they were both gasping for breath, accompanied by the soft, wet sounds of kissing and other intimate details that Alastor was desperately trying not to think about. Even the blood thundering in his brain couldn’t muffle it. He had ears like satellite dishes and an echoic memory. He simply would never be able to forget this.
Worst of all was the fact that he was still worked up about it. His captors were now basking together in a kind of relief that Alastor was both dying for and would rather die a second death than receive. He wanted to be tended to, and he wanted to kill himself for even thinking that thought. He wanted to be given attention; he wanted to never be seen again, not even as a shadow. He wanted to go home, to ensconce himself in everything he’d grown accustomed to, to stuff his senses with good coffee and mellow brass and tacky sofa upholstery and the paper-and-pine taste of the air in his room. And he wanted to cut himself loose from it all and live in a perfect void for the rest of his days, desolate and untraceable.
He didn’t know what to do or what was in store for him now. He stared at the place where the bed skirt met the floor. Listening to the pair’s breathing wind down while his own remained silent, shallow, and rapid was the greatest moment of dread Alastor had felt all day. He wanted to escape and he wanted the hammer to fall. He wanted this to end.
Eventually, Vox got out of and off of Valentino. He gave him one more kiss, then lay down beside him—nearer to Alastor. Vox took his time getting around to him. He lit a cigarette—a normal one—and smoked it for a minute, gazing up at the ceiling. Finally, and with a seemingly huge amount of effort, he propped himself up on his elbow so he could look at Alastor. Alastor not only kept his gaze down but averted it further, studying the accent rug by the foot of the bed.
Vox didn’t make him wait much longer. Alastor could hear him grinning as he said, "Well, look who’s finally getting in the spirit." He drew in another lungful of smoke, then let it out slowly before he added, "And I thought you were red all over before."
Alastor was ready to combust. He’d hoped this would all wear off once Vox and Valentino were done, but it wasn’t going away. Given Valentino’s line of work, it probably wouldn’t go away for hours, if it went away on its own at all. Alastor wished they would just do something to him, something he could reasonably lash out against, if only for the catharsis of it. In this moment, being watched was somehow worse than being touched.
It only got worse when Vox said, "Uh oh, someone sprung a leak," and Valentino, laughing as he shoved some pillows behind himself to get more comfortable, replied, "Ah, so the voyeur got a little too involved and had a spill. It happens. It’s his first time, Vox."
Now—more than at any other moment in nearly a hundred years—Alastor felt that he was, truly, in Hell. He couldn’t move, couldn’t look at himself, couldn’t respond. All he could think about was blood and every single possible thing that could be done with it.
Vox mustered up his strength and got out of bed, rising to his feet and stretching his arms above his head. Alastor looked up at him sharply. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but it was involuntary. He’d been hunched over, head hanging, trying to make himself smaller and close himself around his vulnerable middle. Now he tried to retreat as far as possible. He couldn’t; the cables were still holding him in place. But with Vox standing before him like this, facing him, the situation had escalated from "act of domination" to "active threat." In lieu of being able to escape, Alastor planted both feet on the floor, and his ears went back, flatter than ever. He lowered his head again, but some deep-wired self-preservation instinct would not let him take his eyes off of Vox. A growl brewed in his throat, as involuntary as the rest of his reactions. He didn’t want the animal half of him to take over; he didn’t want to feel any more reduced than he already was. But he couldn’t help it.
Vox got the message and had just enough decency to slip back into a pair of boxer briefs before coming closer. He stood in front of Alastor and started to reach out to him. Alastor thrashed until another pair of cables caught him around the shoulders, pinning him fully back against the chair. He continued to struggle erratically, weakly, until Vox, sounding weary, said, "God, give it a rest," and laid his hand on Alastor’s chest.
The pain was so bright and intense that Alastor squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t tell if he was actually emitting feedback, or if the noise was just in his head. It was a sound of pure anguish, the scream of nerves. Nausea and pleasure roiled in his stomach, sharpening each other. He pressed his feet hard against the floor, as if he could exorcise all the sensations out of him through his soles. He felt sick to his teeth and was certain he was going to pass out.
Eventually, the feeling began to ebb, though it lingered. When Alastor managed to open his eyes, his vision was still blurred; he couldn’t tell anymore if it was from Valentino’s smoke or the overwhelming pain. Vox had withdrawn his hand but held it out between them, his fingers tipped with blue, and now also red. "I told you," he said, as Alastor finally noticed the wet heat soaking into the front of his shirt. "You’re leaking."
Alastor should have been more concerned about his injury than anything else, but when he saw Vox reaching for him again, it was all he could do not to lash out. He was exhausted and yet he could not rest. He was physically unable to while under Valentino’s influence—and even if he could have, he wouldn’t. Alastor would rather drag himself along, one hand over the other, until his nail beds bled, than consider lying down and stopping anywhere his enemies could see him. (His allies, too, for that matter.)
He tried to draw back from Vox’s hand. Vox was a shark, and Alastor was blood in the water. He did not want Vox’s touch, and he certainly did not want his injury fucked with any more than it already had been that day. But Vox calmly undid Alastor’s bow tie and the first few buttons of his shirt, then pushed it aside, peeling away a patch of fabric that had gotten stuck to the wound. A stitch ruptured in the process. Vox crouched down in front of Alastor to inspect the damage. He was still smoking the cigarette, but he turned his head on the exhale and blew the smoke to the side.
The wound wasn’t just bleeding, but festering. The skin that surrounded it was grayer than the rest of Alastor, and it was getting mottled. The stitches that still clung to Alastor’s sinewy frame were more of a dull olive than the glowworm green they’d been earlier in the day. After taking in these details, Vox made a little noise—almost a laugh—and said, "Damn."
When he’d had his fill, Vox started to stand up again, then stumbled backward just in time to dodge a vicious headbutt that would have splintered his face on several points of impact. He swore and gave Alastor’s foot a kick to the side, more of a petty retaliation than anything else. Alastor immediately brought it back to where it had been before, pressing his feet together, his knees, straining against the cables at his shoulders until Vox let them loosen enough for Alastor to lean forward, trying to protect himself in every way that he felt exposed. A bit of blood dripped from his naked chest onto his lap.
It was all too much: the indignity, the repeated aggravation of his wound, the chemicals from Valentino’s smoke still saturating his bloodstream. The betrayal of his own body. The lack of food, water, freedom, rest, or privacy. He’d known there would never be such a thing as privacy in this situation, but knowing it had not adequately prepared him for experiencing it. He was reaching the point where even a facade of privacy would have soothed him. He’d know he was still being watched. But he wouldn’t have to watch himself being watched.
Vox stood before him. Alastor was as tense as a snake, ready to strike and unable to do so. Tiny tremors kept jolting his body as he invested all his energy into holding himself together. At last, after enough self-indulgent observation, Vox said, "So. Have fun?"
Alastor, predictably, said nothing. Vox scoffed and glanced over his shoulder at Valentino. "You know," he began, "little Miss Morningstar can say whatever she wants. But some people really are lost causes."
As Valentino chuckled, Vox returned his attention to Alastor, only to find that he had lifted his head a bit, just enough to meet Vox’s gaze. The digital mouth on the muzzle was still frowning, but above it, Alastor’s eyes were wide and bright. It would have been difficult for Vox to describe the exact look Alastor was giving him. "Glare" wasn’t inaccurate, but it didn’t quite cover it. Vox stood there, his cigarette smoldering between his fingers. Some unbidden response started to arise in him, and he reacted to it as Alastor had reacted to his own: with immediate resistance and suppression.
Vox brought the cigarette back to his mouth as he half-turned to address Valentino again. Alastor, despite everything, couldn’t take his eyes off him. Among all the freakish, inhuman residents of Hell, Vox was singularly unnerving. Alastor had always thought so. It was especially pronounced now, with Vox nearly nude and in profile. He had a sculpted male form, almost convincingly human if one were to discount a few surface-level features. And then there was the head: flat, thin, shiny, and distressingly wrong. It was clean and crisp, made of perfectly straight lines, but atop his comparatively normal body it looked like a mutilation. It was exactly the kind of unsettling horror that captivated Alastor and fed his morbid curiosity, far more than anything else Vox had tried to tempt or torment him with.
Alastor wondered if that was the kind of thing he should have told Vox at some point over the past seventy years.
"Val," Vox said, tossing him a key. "Give me the reset."
Valentino missed the catch, and he had to lean over the side of the bed to find the key on the floor. He grumbled as he unlocked his restraints, using a free hand to rummage in the nightstand drawer. "Such a waste," he remarked as he retrieved a small, dark blue bottle and passed it to Vox. Vox uncorked it as he stepped closer to Alastor, then quickly covered it again with his palm when Alastor jerked upright so suddenly that he almost knocked the bottle out of Vox’s hand.
"Fuckin’—" Vox sighed and snapped his fingers. Alastor flinched at the sound; his hearing was always heightened, and doubly so now. But a moment later, he felt the muzzle loosen from around his face, powering off at Vox’s command. It started to slip, and Vox reached out to catch it before it fell on Alastor’s chest. He placed it on the nightstand, then offered the bottle again and said, "Down the hatch."
Alastor had despised the muzzle on principle, but it was the only thing that had given him any semblance of privacy throughout this ordeal. Without it, he suddenly felt as if his face were laid bare, his smile more revealing than masking. He was panting and desperately trying not to. But when Vox raised the bottle to Alastor’s mouth, Alastor pressed his lips together. His brain still couldn’t focus; he couldn’t latch onto a single coherent thought, and everything was a threat to him. Frustrated, Vox said, "We’re done for now, Al. So unless you want to spend the whole night like this—or unless you want to take care of it the old-fashioned way—drink. It’s an antidote."
It took Alastor a few seconds to process what he was being told, and a few more to weigh his options. He really only had the one. He opened his mouth delicately, teeth bared but separated just enough to let the liquid pass through. Vox tipped it in; the taste was bitter, and Alastor relished it. Since he was already taking Vox at his word that this was, indeed, an antidote, he downed the contents of the entire bottle in three gulps. He sputtered on the last one, coughing dark blue flecks onto his chin, which Vox did not wipe away. He simply set the empty bottle on the nightstand and said, "Give it a couple minutes."
As Vox returned to the bed to chat with Valentino, Alastor tried to force the concoction to work faster. When that didn’t work, he tentatively, reluctantly, mistrustfully tried to relax, and he found that it was the much more effective approach. He could feel the antidote spreading through his body, replacing itchy heat with soothing coolness.
With this unraveling tension came the ability to focus a little more on his surroundings again. Vox was sending Valentino off to indulge in a bath. That sounded like quite a nice idea, Alastor thought, with giddy delirium. Valentino said something to him as he left—something smug and prurient, no doubt—and Alastor didn’t care to listen. Once he was gone, Vox dressed himself just enough to be presentable, not bothering with his jacket, tie, or vest. He approached Alastor again, who kept an eye on him but didn’t feel a pressing need to thrash, resist, or send out any kind of warning signal. He did tense up, just a bit, when Vox moved behind him. But Vox simply put his hands on the back of the chair and wheeled Alastor away from the bed, then brought him out of the bedroom and down the hallway. He didn’t take him too far—just to a smaller nearby room which seemed to be a storage area for spare furniture and things. The Vees had a collective fetish for commercial consumption, Alastor knew. He imagined they must have been in a constant state of replacing and upgrading all of their fixtures and amenities, and he supposed the outdated pieces needed somewhere to go.
There was a security camera in the ceiling corner, of course. There wasn’t a single place in this building that wasn’t surveilled. But aside from that, there was nothing too ominous about the room. Alastor considered asking, wryly, whether this charming accommodation was the designated Hostage Suite. But he didn’t. He was too tired to even open his mouth, let alone banter.
Vox stepped out from behind Alastor and leaned his staff against the wall. Alastor was surprised to see that Vox had carried it for him—almost as surprised as he was to realize that it had slipped his own mind entirely until now. For a few moments, Vox simply stood there and looked down at him. Alastor returned his look. Alone now, without Valentino’s presence, and with both of them having gotten something or other out of their systems, there was less of a performative atmosphere. Alastor thought he should have been more alert, alone with Vox in an enclosed space, in the condition he was in. He was alert, as always—always attuned, always keeping an eye and an ear out. Always aware of things on a primal level that he didn’t completely understand but that he’d learned to trust. But if he was reading the room correctly, which he believed he was, then he didn’t need to have his guard up at the moment. No more than usual, anyway.
Vox continued to look at him, taking in all the details: Alastor’s uncharacteristic lethargy, the blood on his clothes, his hair wavy with sweat and sticking a bit to his forehead and temples. Alastor tried not to be too interesting to look at. He was still experiencing tiny, skin-deep tremors, but it was nothing like before. There was no more tension inside him, radiating outward, wracking his entire body. God, he thought, he’d been put through the wringer that day. He was craving a steak, a bourbon, and a fourteen-hour nap.
"Well," Vox finally said. "Guess now’s as good a time as any to debrief you."
Alastor lolled his head around to give him an unimpressed look. Insultingly easy set-up. He wouldn’t have bothered with a comeback to that even if he’d been in the mood for it.
"I’m gonna go clean up," Vox said. "I want a break. And I figure you could use one, too, right about now. You’re not as fun when your energy’s this low."
Even with the muzzle removed and left in the other room, Alastor was unwilling to respond. He didn’t want to find out, along with Vox, how little control he had over his voice, his tone, if he tried to speak now.
Vox was looking at his chest again. Alastor wanted his shirt buttoned back up and his tie done; he wanted his wound and his throat concealed. "I’m going to send a doctor up here to take a look at that and see what he can do," Vox said. "If anything. We’ve got a medical team on standby here, so you can kill the first guy I send if it’ll improve your mood a little. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t. I’ll have dinner brought up, too. Eat, drink, take a nap if you want. For the next few hours, you’re off the hook, so feel free to kick back and relax."
Alastor was already half-slumped in the chair. He knew that once he recovered from this, once he regained his usual energy and started to forget just how relentlessly exhausting this had been, he was going to be furious with himself for letting this particular moment pass without saying anything. For not figuring out the perfect flippant, snippy remark to show Vox that, yes, he had gotten to him, but no, he hadn’t subdued him.
But Alastor did feel subdued. Just for the moment. He was self-aware enough to know that he’d be livid about it later…but it would have to wait until later.
So he relaxed, if that was the right word for it. He focused on how good it felt to take normal breaths again, for his entire core to liquefy, for his spine to feel like it was unfusing. That bottle couldn’t have just been an antidote to Valentino’s smoke, he thought. There had to have been some kind of intoxicant in it. What he was feeling right now had to involve the addition of pleasure rather than just the removal of torture, because for plain relief to feel this good, it would have to mean that the torment had been unbearable. And Alastor had borne it.
Vox approached him one more time. He rested his hand on the arm of the chair, leaning down to study Alastor’s face. Alastor wasn’t worried, but he wanted Vox to step away. He wanted Vox to take his hand off the chair, because at some point that evening, Alastor had begun to think of it as his chair. But Vox simply studied him. Alastor wanted neither to look at him nor to be looked at. But he was finally in a mindset and circumstances where he could handle it, so he supposed he probably should.
He met Vox’s gaze, just inches away from his own. Vox’s expression was oddly inscrutable. Alastor didn’t like it. That wasn’t how Vox was supposed to be in their little dynamic. Alastor could see his reflection in the darkest parts of Vox’s face. His image didn’t glitch at all.
Vox’s gaze drifted down to Alastor’s mouth, and there was a look on his face that Alastor wasn’t in the mood to analyze. Fond, he thought anyway. Cruelly fond. It was a look he was well-acquainted with, though not usually as the recipient.
"You know," Vox began, his voice quiet and low, but not overly charged. "I thought that muzzle was a pretty good idea. Not just to get you to shut up for a while—though that was the obvious goal. But the frown…it seemed like a nice change of pace. You know, seeing you wearing something a little different." He reached up, slowly enough to give Alastor a chance to react. Alastor started to withdraw, and then, all at once, the fight dissipated out of him. Whatever the reason, Alastor sat still and let Vox cup his palm under his chin, cradling his face, tipping it up just to see it a bit better. Alastor kept his smile dispassionate. He didn’t want Vox to get any inkling of how nice it felt to not have to hold his own head up anymore.
Vox gave Alastor’s face a little squeeze; Alastor gave him a little sneer. As Vox relaxed his hand again and looked him over, he said, barely above a whisper, "I actually started to miss this comedy mask face of yours."
Alastor was glad he hadn’t spoken this entire time, glad he hadn’t set the precedent, because if he’d tried to respond to Vox’s statement right now, he truly would’ve had no idea what to say. Vox continued to hold him in his hand and with his gaze. Intruding on his space, cradling his jaw, and smushing his face condescendingly were all things Alastor could put up with. Then Vox took an extra liberty and stroked Alastor’s cheek with his thumb, so lightly and absentmindedly that Alastor couldn’t even tell if Vox was aware he was doing it. He was too busy studying Alastor’s gaze—which was how he noticed the subtle shift from careful compliance to a rebellious spark. Vox drew his hand back right before Alastor could snap his teeth down on it. Still, he got nicked between his thumb and forefinger, just enough to break the skin.
Vox shook his hand and seethed, cursing mildly under his breath. He looked at Alastor, ready to say something about how maybe he should stay muzzled after all. He paused when he saw Alastor grazing his tongue along the tips of his teeth, savoring the taste of Vox’s blood.
"All right," Vox said, "point made. Dinner’s on the way. Enjoy it, have a nice little intermission in here. I’ll come back when I feel like it."
Alastor closed his mouth and swallowed. Vox watched him closely but kept his distance, giving Alastor his space again. It was promising to see him start to get a second wind, and so soon, but Vox couldn’t say he shared Alastor’s enthusiasm for post-coital bloodletting.
"Before I leave," he went on, "got any thoughts about how our little arrangement is going so far? Is it everything you thought it would be? Everything and more? Any areas that could use improvement? Maybe a rating on a scale of one to ten? Remember: this is our deal. I welcome any and all feedback."
Alastor could’ve thought of something to say, if he’d really wanted to. But he’d lasted this long without speaking, and he had always been a man who’d had unparalleled commitment to the bit. Besides, Vox had requested feedback…
The microphone glowed with a sickly phosphorescence. A keening whine floated out from it, layered over a crunchy substrate of static. It was an abrasive noise, intended to irritate Vox, but all Alastor could hear in it was all of the fury, shame, humiliation, and defiance he’d felt that day, wrapped up in one horribly and blatantly vulnerable sound. Vox winced, but the shark smile he gave Alastor suggested that he’d picked up on the subtext, too.
"That’s what I like to hear," he said, as he turned and made his way out of the room. He almost shut the door behind him, then stopped at the last second and left it ajar instead. Alastor heard him start to whistle about halfway down the hall. He couldn’t name the tune.
Once Vox was out of earshot and Alastor was as alone as he could reasonably be in Vee Tower, he sank into his chair, resting his head on the back of it. He couldn’t truly relax, still, but he fully embraced his exhaustion for the next few minutes. He’d retained a touch of his own power in this deal, as long as he didn’t use it to try to get around the agreed-on parameters. He wrangled some shadowy tendrils together, just enough of them to retrieve his broken staff and lay it on his lap. The symbolism did not elude him, and he was so worn out and mentally frayed that he laughed. It was a generous term for what came out of his mouth—a disjointed, erratic sound that stuttered past his lips and ended as abruptly as it had begun.
After he’d gathered a little more energy, Alastor sat up again and nudged himself across the floor, scooting the chair backward until he’d reversed fully into the corner beside the door, on the hinge side. It was the most shadowy part of the room, and Alastor had to maintain a closed-lipped smile to keep his teeth from betraying his position. His eyes, he could do nothing about. They shone like a nocturnal animal’s in the dark.
Another pair of tendrils materialized to take Alastor’s staff, placing it out of the way, against the far wall. As Alastor tried to find a position that was both comfortable and practical, he glanced down and caught sight of himself. He was a mess. He was a debased and mangled mess. He decided that this would be his fuel for now. After shooting a charming, starving smile at Vox’s security camera, Alastor turned all his attention to the crack of light coming past the door. He leaned forward in his chair as much as the restraints would allow, his ears upright and his gaze steady. He placed his feet on the floor, but he bounced his legs at regular intervals, warming them up for the jump.
He didn’t know who Vox was planning to send first: someone with a stethoscope and sutures and gauze, or someone with a dinner tray. All Alastor knew was that, after everything he’d been through today, the very next thing he was getting, one way or another, was a meal.