Chapter Text
0.
He’d won.
Vox still can’t believe it. Hours later, after the parades and the parties and the victory tour and the celebration sex and rubbing it all in Alastor’s smug fucking face, Vox still can’t believe he’s finally won.
He did it. He beat Alastor. He beat the Radio Demon at his own fucking game. Hah! Not powerful enough? Not useful enough? Well, fuck you, Al! Vox’s team was better, hands-down. That psycho maid and that old drunk cat were nothing compared to his team, so fuck Alastor and his hypocrisy. After all that lecturing about not needing a partner and working alone. Hah! Learn to pick out proper fucking help, asshole!
And sacrificing his freedom just to let his two inept little minions go? To make sure he doesn’t hurt Charlie Morningstar? Honestly, pathetic. It would almost be disappointing, to see how far Alastor had fallen, if Vox weren’t laughing himself silly. The Radio Demon’s gone soft in the princess’ little pity parade. Almost a shame to see such a good demon fall.
Not quite enough of a shame to not take advantage of it, though.
Because Vox absolutely wrecked Al in their fight, and who gives a shit if that wound from Adam was slowing the old bastard down a little? A smart demon and a smarter businessman took advantage of an enemy’s weakness. Alastor can bitch and moan about borrowed power and weakness, but Vox beat him at his own fucking game. Fair and square.
Vox wins. Vox fucking wins. Vox always wins.
Vox is a fucking god in the making.
And he’s gonna make damn well sure Alastor knows it. Alastor can bitch and moan and make sad faces and talk about how pathetic Vox is all he wants, but who’s the one stuck in a chair, and who’s the one ready to take over Hell? Over Heaven?
Not Al, that’s for fucking sure.
No, Vox always wins, and there is not a damn thing in the world Alastor can do to take that victory away from him now.
1.
Vox isn’t stupid enough to think that Alastor has given up entirely.
The bastard’s as manipulative as they come, after all. He’d proven the fire hadn’t left him yet by spitting back with some of that psychological bullshit just tonight. Bringing up their past, trying to get under Vox’s skin.
Well, Vox doesn’t have skin, so first of all fuck him for trying. And second, he’s bigger. Better. Brighter. He’d been a newbie to Hell back then and easy to take advantage of, still looking for humanity in a place it didn’t exist anymore. He’s not stupid anymore and he’s not nearly so easy to manipulate. He’d proven that just fine in his little song-battle with Alastor.
But Val’s little jab about fucking each other and filming it seems to have quieted Alastor for the moment. Vox still isn’t sure if it’s the fucking or the filming part that really made him shut up. He’d always been a prude about sex back in the day, which definitely hasn’t changed if his disgruntled static during Vox’s victory sex earlier was any indication. But he hates television more than anything. Who the fuck knows which one bothers him more.
Point is, he stops taunting and digging, retreating to his sullen silence of earlier. Which is fine by Vox. He hadn’t been lying when he said he preferred the silence, and if Alastor actively chooses to not run his mouth, Vox isn’t going to complain.
In fact, it lets him get a little paperwork done and send out a few memos, changing timelines and pushing up some of his plans. With Alastor captured, one of his biggest obstacles is out of the way ahead of schedule, and that makes things much easier for him. The other Overlords will be more willing to join his team without Alastor there to dissuade them, and he can start making moves on most of them tomorrow.
Rosie’s a lost cause, so he doesn’t even bother to plan for the cannibals. Her and Alastor are usually on the same side of Overlord decisions in Hell, and she won’t take kindly to one of her allies being captured. Zestial’s unknown, but unlikely—too against war with Hell, based on Velvette’s intel. Carmilla will take some careful pushing. But the rest, they’ll be putty in his hands once he shows them this victory.
He keeps an eye on Alastor while he works, of course. Not directly, but there are cameras in here and he can keep watch internally without displaying any of the feeds on his face. He’s fully expecting Alastor to try something. Maybe spying, maybe whining, maybe more psychological bullshit.
But he doesn’t do anything at all. Just sits there staring at the wall, ears flat, ignoring everything Vox does with such willful intensity it can only be on purpose. Maybe he thinks he’s proving his point, that Vox wants his attention, and ignoring Vox will piss him off somehow.
Well, joke’s on fucking him. Vox doesn’t need him nearly so much as Alastor thinks. Also, he can watch Alastor as much as he likes without looking at him, because of the camera-linked-to-his-brain thing. If he focuses, he can even use his own control over the electromagnetic spectrum to counteract some of Alastor’s disrupting radio waves, bringing him into clearer focus.
(Vox doesn’t know how he ever survived living without being a mechanical demon. How do people live with having to do shit like physically typing emails? He can fire them off at a literal electronic thought, watch multiple streams or channels simultaneously and comprehend all of them, and answer calls in his own head. Watching Alastor from three camera feeds while focusing on business emails is easy).
Al doesn’t make whatever move he’s planning on by the time Vox packs it up and heads for bed. Val is already asleep, phone still in his hand from where he’d been taking some very suggestive selfies. Vox plucks the phone and Val’s glasses free and sets them on the nightstand. Val’s cigarette is currently smoldering on the bed sheets, which would piss Vox off if he didn’t already have flame-resistant blankets. Electronic fires are a bitch and a half to deal with, and he’d set a few on fire before commissioning some that didn’t burn so easy. He snuffs the cigarette with his fingers and puts it on the nightstand next to the other crap.
Vox debates waking Val up for more sex, but decides, fuck it. He’s tired. It’s been a long day. Victory is exhausting. He settles in bed, powers off, and delves into a well-deserved rest.
Exactly one hour and sixteen minutes later, according to Vox’s internal clock, Alastor makes his move.
“Oh, Vox.”
Vox doesn’t even notice at first. Val tells him he’s notoriously difficult to wake up once he’s shut down for the night, which is one of the downfalls of being a demon with a television for a head.
It’s almost worse with smart TV’s, too. His first cathode tube model that he’d dropped into Hell with had been clunky, heavy and inconvenient in a lot of ways, but fuck that bitch could take a beating and it didn’t stop working for anything less than a baseball bat to the screen, and he’d needed it when he first arrived. SmartTV’s have their own perks, and he can never go back to anything that isn’t HD and with decent audio quality again now that he can see and sound better than ever. But now his brain is divided into apps and wifi and connections, and it can take a fucking age to wake up and link itself to everything properly.
“Voooox. Vox. Vox. Vox.”
Val elbows him with one of his many arms, which is really what it takes for Vox to register the soundwaves are outside his head, and not in his dreams. “Make him shut up.”
“Wha?” Vox powers his face on, and takes a moment to reorient. His mind reconnecting to dozens of apps and powering up for lightning speed is a lot like crawling out of a dream, when it takes a few seconds for anything to make sense.
“Vox. Vox. Vox. Vooox. Vox, listen to me. Voooox.”
“Val, th’fuck d’you want?” Vox slurs. His screen freezes for a moment, and he blinks away a few stuck pixels with a yawn. “S’three in the fuckin’ morning.”
“It’s not me!” Val hisses, shoving him harder. “Make him shut up! He’s doing that stupid voice thing in the radio.”
“Huh?”
Val switches to a stream of angry Spanish, gesturing to the little clock radio on the bedside table, stacked on top of a couple books. It flashes with every inflection of every word spoken.
Which mostly just seems to be one singular word.
“Vox. Oh, Voooox...Vox, Vox, Vox, Vox. Or would you prefer Vincent? Vincent, Vincent, Vinc—”
“Shut the fuck up, I haven’t used that in decades,” Vox snaps. His mind is starting to click back online as he sits up and finds Alastor sitting in the corner, easy to spot thanks to his glowing red eyes and gleaming yellow teeth. Without preamble he snags an extra pillow from the bed with a few of his extendable cords and hurls it in the general direction of the Radio Demon.
Alastor kicks a foot and neatly rolls his desk chair aside, missing the pillow easily. “How rude, Vox!” he tuts. “You’re supposed to take proper care of me, as your prisoner!”
“You’re my prisoner and I can do whatever the fuck I want to you,” Vox snaps. “You’re lucky all I’ve done is tied you to a chair.”
“You also electrocuted me, which is quite uncalled for,” Alastor says. “After I willingly surrendered myself and everything! I’m not a very valuable prisoner if you assault me, am I?”
“It was a pillow. Deal with it. Now shut up, some of us are trying to sleep,” Vox grouses.
He flops onto his back again to go back to sleep, and wishes he could roll over on his side for a very pointed dismissal. Unfortunately side sleeping isn’t really possible with a widescreen television for a head. When your face is as wide as your shoulders, there’s just some things you can’t do anymore.
He’s halfway through his powering-down process, again, when Alastor picks up where he left off. Again.
“Vox. Vox. Vox. Voooox. Vox, we’re not done talking yet. Voooox! Vox, Vox, Vox—”
Val’s Spanish cursing gets faster and he starts doing that thing with his R’s a lot more, which is great in bed but otherwise usually means he’s getting pissed. Vox doesn’t want to deal with a pissed Val at three in the morning. A pissed Val is a pain in the ass even at three in the afternoon.
Just to prove the point, Val shoves him out of the bed fully. “Make him shut up! I have a shoot in the morning and I need my fucking beauty sleep!”
Vox thunks onto the ground, thankfully missing cracking the corners of his head or his screen. “Ugh! What the fuck was that for?”
“Vox! Vox. Vooox. Vox—”
“Shut him up,” Val hisses. “You don’t get back into bed until he’s quiet.”
“He’s never quiet when you want him to be,” Vox grumbles, hauling himself to his feet.
“Vox. Voooox! Oh, Vooox. Vox—”
“I fucking hear you already!” Vox snaps, throwing his hand in the air. “What do you want? It is three in the goddamn morning and even television has to sleep sometimes!”
Alastor fixes him the most innocent smile he can muster, which isn’t very with all those teeth, and says primly, “I’m hungry.”
Vox stares. Valentino stares. Alastor politely regards them back.
“That’s it?” Vox nearly shrieks. “You wake me up at three in the fucking morning because you’re hungry?”
“Well, I am,” Alastor says. “You didn’t feed me. You’re rather terrible at keeping prisoners, Vox. I expected quite a lot better of you, old pal.”
“No. Fuck you, and fuck this.” Vox offers him a pair of middle fingers as he backs up towards the bed. “You didn’t ask for dinner earlier and you can damn well wait until breakfast in the morning.”
“I really can’t, Vox,” Alastor says cheerfully. “I’m devilishly hungry right now.”
“You can wait five fucking hours like the rest of us,” Vox grumbles. “And if you’re going to keep yammering while we sleep—”
“I will,” Alastor interrupts, “because I’m starving—”
“—then I’ll put you in another room for the night,” Vox says. “Val needs his beauty sleep.”
“You tell him, babe,” Val says, rolling over and stealing the warm spot Vox left behind.
Vox rolls his eyes, but snaps out a few cords to catch Alastor’s chair. He starts marching for the door, dragging Alastor after him as he calls, “Back in five, Val, and I want my spot back after.”
“Mm-hmm,” Val mutters, already half asleep again.
“But Vox,” Alastor says. “I’m hungry.”
“You can deal with it until breakfast.”
“I really can’t,” Alastor drawls. “And you can put me in as many other rooms as you like, Vox. But we both know that anything with speakers is mine for the taking, and I won’t be letting you rest until I get. My. Dinner.”
“Give me one good fucking reason to get you food right now,” Vox growls, wrapping his hand around the door handle with a click of metal.
“The Hunger of ‘59,” Alastor says immediately. “Remember, old pal? Hee hee hee, what a day that was!”
Vox lets go of the handle so fast his nails cut gouges into the door with a screech. He whips around, puts his face right in Alastor’s, activating his eye on pure instinct even though he learned years ago it has no effect on Al. “Are you fucking serious?” he snaps.
Alastor’s grin only grows wider. “I’ve never had the opportunity to taste moth,” he observes. “They’re usually not big enough to make a meal. Perhaps I’ll learn soon!”
Val’s head snaps up, and both of his antennae flit forward with a squeak. “Vox, what’s going on? That doesn’t sound like the fun kind of eating.”
“Oh, it will be for me!” Alastor says cheerfully. “Perhaps not for you, though.”
Vox shoves him back into the room, kicking his chair with more force than necessary back towards the bed before marching to his desk, where he left his cell phone. “I’m ordering him dinner.”
“What? Now? No place is even open,” Val complains. “This is stupid. I want to go back to bed!”
“I will drag somebody’s ass out of bed myself if I have to,” Vox says. Or at least make Ethan do it.
“You can’t seriously go a little hungry without throwing a hissy fit?” Val says, crossing his arms and glaring at Alastor. “Vel and I make our models diet all the time, it’s not that hard.”
“Why don’t you ask Vox what happens if I go on a diet?” Alastor asks smugly. “Go on, Vox. Tell him about the Hunger of ‘59.”
“I was still alive,” Val notes. “What is he talking about, babe?”
Vox actually shudders. “Val, you know I’m into some weird fucking shit, and I like killing a guy as much as the next Overlord,” he says. “But trust me when I say, you don’t want the details. You just don’t want Al to be really hungry.”
“Why, does poor baby deer get hangry?” Val sneers. “What you do, get pissed off and kill a couple people? Big deal. We’ve all been there.”
Alastor’s smile turns positively wicked. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the Rundown District?”
“Who the fuck isn’t?”
“That was me,” Alastor says, grin growing impossibly wide. “I was very hangry.”
Val blinks. “Is he serious?”
“As a fucking heart attack,” Vox grumbles. “Picture the fuckers in cannibal town. Now picture’em going on a rampage ‘cause they’re hungry. Now picture Al doing it.”
“I really think you’re underselling it,” Alastor says cheerfully. “Why, if Rosie hadn’t brought me some of that delightful Sinner meat, I think I might have eaten you! And where would we be now, hmm?”
Vox doesn’t want to think about it. He’d still been on friendly terms with Alastor then and that day had scared the piss out of him. And he doesn’t even piss anymore. That was the day he learned that a hungry enough cannibal would go on a mindless rampage, consuming everything in its path until properly fed.
Vox is not unleashing that thing in his Vee Tower. Nope. Fuck no. Absolutely not. He doesn’t even care if Alastor is currently fully sated and just fucking with him. There’s risks and then there’s stupid.
Val blinks, eyes wide. “So...definitely not the fun kind of eating.”
“Fuck no.”
“Well, I still think I might enjoy it,” Alastor says. He’s regarding Valentino thoughtfully now, and—fuck, and there’s drool running from the corner of his mouth. Bad sign.
“What about the Deal?” Val asks. “Can’t he like...not attack us?”
“I can’t!” Al agrees with frightening cheer. “As long as I’m in my right mind to know the instructions.”
Val is not the brightest bulb, but even he picks up on the implications of I won’t be in my right mind much longer for what it is. And he’s right, because Vox has no idea if he can control Al when he gets like...like that thing.
(He shudders again).
“Get this man some fucking nachos! Vamanos!” Val says, throwing all of his hands up in the air. “I’ll call out of work and get my beauty sleep then, but I am not sleeping around this hangry fuck for another fucking second.”
“Nachos won’t cut it, I’m afraid,” Alastor says, casually crossing one foot over his other knee. “You know my tastes, Vox. And make it snappy. As I said…” His eyes flick to dials. “I’m hungry.”
Which is why Vox rouses Ethan from bed at three thirty in the morning with explicit instructions to raid the nearest butcher shop. If the place isn’t open, fuck it. Smash and grab. It’s Hell, who gives a fuck. He’s got a salivating cannibal that’s gonna go postal if he doesn’t get meat yesterday.
Absolutely nobody sleeps while waiting for the delivery. Alastor because he’s Alastor. Vox and Val because they sure as fuck are not going to bed with a hungry cannibal right there.
Ethan is Vox’s personal assistant for a reason, and he makes the delivery in record time. By four-fifteen in the morning he’s breathlessly knocking on the door to Vox’s suite, with a grocery bag full of dripping things best left unspoken. “I wasn’t sure what to get, so I grabbed a little of everything,” Ethan says, huffing as he holds out the bag.
The bag is heavy enough that it should sate Alastor for now. He’ll work out a better meal plan in the morning. “This should be eno—are you bleeding?”
“Smash and grab, sir! I think the glass got me—”
“Okay good whatever bye!” Vox says, and hastily slams the door in his face. The last thing he needs is Alastor catching a whiff of Sinner blood and deciding to eat his PA. Not that he gives a shit about Ethan, but a good PA is hard to replace, and he doesn’t have time for the bastard to get himself digested by Alastor so he can reform.
“Something smells delightful,” Alastor says, raising his nose to the air with a sniff.
“No need to go all rampage mode, now, right?” Vox says hopefully. He starts unpacking the contents of the bag on his desk, wincing only a little when bloody smears are left behind on its surface. He’ll have Ethan clean that later. Instead, he reads the scribbles on the wrapped paper. “Looks like a whole chicken—leg of lamb—this one’s a rack of ribs—and a whole slab of pork. Satisfied?”
Alastor sighs. “It’s not Sinner, and it’s not venison either. But I suppose it will do for now.”
Val blinks from his seat on the bed. “You eat deer? Wouldn’t that make you like...a cannibal?”
Alastor actually exchanges glances with Vox for a moment, raising an eyebrow. Vox rolls his eyes, and turns to Val. “He already eats people, I think that’s kind of worse.”
“So...does this make you a double cannibal?” Val asks thoughtfully. “And if he eats a deer Sinner, would that make him a triple cannibal?”
“What a fascinating notion!” Alastor says, as Vox unwraps the paper packages of meat for him. “Do let me know if you ever come across another. I think I’d love to try it.”
“You’re really fucked up,” Val says.
“Sinners in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
“We’re in the tower?”
Vox can’t really drag his hands down his face anymore like he used to when he was alive, because his nails can cut glass and his screen would not appreciate it. But he groans and clutches at his casing for a moment, before saying, “Just...just ignore him, Val. He’s fucking with you.”
“He is not,” Val says, eyeing Alastor up and down. “I’d actually be down for that, not whatever this is. I don’t usually fuck anything except tens, but how often do you get to sleep with an Overlord?”
“You sleep with me like every night,” Vox protests.
“Yeah, but still—”
“Never going to happen,” Alastor says, ignoring Val in favor of his meal. He tests his arms, but they’re still firmly bound by Vox’s cords. So he simply shrugs, and lowers his jaws to the nearest piece of meat, sinking his teeth into it and shredding it like a dog. There’s an audible crunch of bones, and Alastor hums appreciatively as meat juices dribble down his chin. “My compliments to the butcher! What a fine cut of meat.”
There are many things that Vox finds sexy about Alastor, whether or not the prude realizes what he’s doing. Watching him eat is definitely not one of them. It’s a literal bloodbath, as Alastor tears up bits of meat and crunches through bones, licks his lips with an overlong tongue and rambles to himself about the taste like a sommelier over wine. Despite his deer traits, at least half of it goes down like a python, swallowed whole.
Even Val seems disgusted. “I just watched that man deep throat an entire leg of lamb, and I am not even remotely turned on,” he says. There’s horror in his eyes. “What is wrong with him?”
“So much,” Vox says.
The meat is gone alarmingly quickly, despite how much of it there was. As he licks the last drops of blood off his lips, Vox says, “Well? Satisfied? No longer hungry?”
Alastor considers. “I suppose,” he concedes. “But I’ll want better fare in the future. Sinner meat wouldn’t go amiss to staving off the...hunger...longer.” He smiles, sharp and dangerous.
“Good. Fine. Whatever. I’ll get on it tomorrow. For now, I am sleeping.” Vox stomps back over to the bed and wearily crawls under the blankets again. Val flops down next to him, sticking closer than usual...possibly because he’s still a little unnerved by the whole food thing.
But Alastor stays in his chair in the corner, and goes quiet again. His eyes are back to normal, and he’s not drooling.
Vox finally lets himself relax. Safe. Alastor is a sadistic motherfucker, but there is absolutely something dangerous and unhinged that you can feel in the air like electricity, right before he goes full hangry rampage. Vox doesn’t even sense a hint of it.
No repeat of the Hunger of ‘59.
Thank fuck.
He lets himself power down again. This time, he manages to get through the full shutoff sequence without Val jostling him awake, and figures it’s finally, finally safe.
By his internal clock, it’s exactly 39 minutes later that it starts again.
“Vox. Vox. Voooox. Vox. Vox! Voooox.”
“What?” Vox howls, when Val shoves him awake again.
Alastor looks at him innocently, and says, “I’m thirsty.”