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Thinking Alastor was missing had lasted up until he and Valentino had finished victory fucking and he’d tuned back in to his camera feeds to review them. A flicker of shadow, one his automatic Alastor scanning programs had missed on the first go-around, caught his eye on a manual check.
It was hard to truly go missing in Pentagram City with Vox’s cameras everywhere.
Vox should feel pissed, he tells himself at first. He should feel pissed that his rival is still alive. Then he tells himself the excitement he’s actually feeling is because he’s found Alastor injured. He knows where he is, he knows he’s vulnerable, as opposed to him being a wild card. Better to deal with the rival you know. Better to have the upper hand. Maybe Alastor would be desperate enough to make a deal. How delicious that would be.
And that was how Vox had found himself climbing up Alastor’s radio tower that night. Of course the bastard didn’t have any lights for him to zap into up there, and there wasn’t even a fucking ladder for anyone else to get in. Why bother when you can shadow, right? So Vox was climbing up by the strength of his claws and obsession. Rivalry. Whatever this was.
It was humiliating. Vox, CEO of VoxTek, the mastermind of the Vees, one of the most powerful Overlords in Hell with limited teleportation powers, scrabbling up the side of a radio tower for someone who treated him like a pesky fly, not even the worthy opponent he was.
He tried the door when he reached the top and found it was locked. Of course it was. Alastor wouldn’t be caught dead being vulnerable, would he?
Shit, maybe he was dead in there.
And with that thought Vox punched through one of the glass windows in the tower. There hadn’t been enough of a ledge at the top for him to risk falling to wrap some clothing around his hand, so that had hurt a bit. At least the flare of the back of his claws had shielded his hand from any glass getting properly stuck in.
He braced himself against the inside of the tower just below the smashed window and tried to hoist himself up and roll in smoothly with a somersault-like motion. Unfortunately, with the flatscreen TV head, he ended up flat on his back on the floor covered in glass shards.
“One of the things I admired about you was your ability to make a tasteful entrance. It appears I was wrong about that too,” Alastor mocked him from somewhere in the radio tower.
The asshole was still alive, and of course some fucking mocking jab was the first thing out of his mouth.
“Yeah? And what the fuck kind of exit was that?” Vox forced out from the floor. That fall had hurt and knocked the wind out of him a bit.
“A graceful one. Did your cameras not catch it?”
Vox ignored the question in favor of getting himself standing.
Alastor wasn’t sitting in his broadcast chair. He was curled against the wall. He looked… he looked bad. Vox knew him. There was no way he’d be curled over his chest like that, looking disheveled, if something weren’t very wrong. To anyone else, he might look like someone sitting with their legs somewhat sprawled against the wall with their arms at their chest, but Vox knew. Alastor liked to look put together at all times, and he very much didn’t right now.
He ventured some steps toward Alastor, who did not stand to meet him. “You’re hurt.”
“Astute as always, Vox. Truly, I thought the results of a battle witnessed by all of Cannibal Town and my colleagues would be a complete secret.” The confirmation emboldened him to keep walking.
“You’re such a fucking asshole, you know that?”
“You wouldn’t be here otherwise, would you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Alastor grabbed Vox’s wrist as it came towards Alastor’s jacket. “I think you know.” He squeezed Vox’s wrist tightly before letting it go, a warning, a reminder.
“Okay, asshole. You’re hurt, hurt hurt, angelic steel hurt, and I’m here, and no-one else is, so here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna help you, and you’re…” what did he want from Alastor? He’d fantasized about this moment for so long, of finally having the upper hand, of Alastor beneath him, held in the palm of his hand, but now that he was here, he wasn’t sure what exactly to even ask for. “You’re gonna sit down with me and you’re gonna listen to my proposal and seriously consider joining me.”
“How seriously do I have to consider it?” Alastor drawled sardonically.
“Seriously enough for me not to change my mind,” Vox replied in the same barbed but still too earnest tone.
“I can do that.” Alastor wasn’t sure if he really could, but he could certainly make Vox believe it.
“So how am I taking you home to get you cleaned up?” Vox asked. Angelic Security might have started as a con, but the Vees did have anti-angelic steel healing materials in their tower, their own private stash. That shit had been hard to make.
“There’s a lamp in the cabinet.”
So Alastor did have a lightbulb in here, just not plugged in. Vox wondered what that meant and decided to save it for later.
Vox found it, plugged it in, and turned back to Alastor. “I have to touch you for this to work.”
Alastor didn’t protest; he wasn’t really in a position to.
He didn’t think Vox needed to pick him up bridal carry style for it to work, but he had taken quite the hit from Adam. It was nice not to have to walk or even get to his feet on his own.
Vox figured Alastor didn’t need his wounded chest pressed into his shoulder to be carried like a sack of potatoes, and besides, he wanted Alastor’s face where he could see it. The man was known to bite.
And if it meant his hand was curled around Alastor’s hip, well…
They zapped into Vox’s private en suite bathroom, the one attached to the bedroom for when he wasn’t sharing his bed with another one of the Vees. Sometimes he worked late; sometimes Val was sleeping with someone else; sometimes he or Velvette wanted to be alone; whatever. With the kind of money they had, the expense of private and shared bedrooms was hardly something to bat an eye at. They could also be locked down as semi-panic rooms, an extra safety measure for exterminations. He was very glad indeed to have the room now. Alastor was his prize, his find. He didn’t want Val and Velvette to know about this, not yet, anyway.
“Strip. We need to clean out the wound.”
“Buy a man a drink first, Vox,” Alastor said, begrudgingly taking off his coat after turning around.
“How many drinks did I buy you over the years?” Vox shot back.
Alastor hummed a concession.
Vox turned around to find the anti-angelic steel wipes in the kit he kept in a cabinet in the bathroom. When he turned around, Alastor was lying down in the bathtub.
Vox snorted a laugh after coming over to the edge of the bath to find he’d helped himself to a towel to wrap around himself. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, you know.”
“It’s been seven years,” Alastor replied coolly. “More than that.”
“True.”
Not that it had been terribly often anyway. On occasion, Alastor had decided to avail himself of Vox’s assistance with dealing with his sex drive, after what had started as an experiment. Vox had been all too happy to oblige. So what if Alastor said it was about making someone else get sticky? He’d asked him.
Vox climbed in the bath, got on his knees over Alastor, and pulled back the bloodstained towel to reveal a long, angry, and bloody diagonal gash across Alastor’s torso.
“Fuck,” Vox let out. “He got you good.”
“I’d tell you to take a picture; it’ll last longer, but…” Alastor coughed out some blood instead of finishing the sentence.
“Shit, you really took a beating, huh,” Vox said to that.
“Are you going to clean me up, or just gloat and grind?” Alastor asked with annoyance.
Vox hadn’t realized he’d sunk onto Alastor’s leg and was pressing his dick against it. “Alastor, it’s been a while, but you should know what it feels like when I do that, no?”
Alastor rolled his eyes and Vox leaned forward, still on Alastor, to wipe down his chest. Or that was secondary to the leaning forward on him. Who’s to say, really?
Alastor started to yell “Fu--” when the anti-angelic wipe hit the wound, but Vox lurched forward to clap a hand over his mouth.
“Shut--ow--shut the fuck up,” he demanded. He pulled his hand back to suck at where Alastor had bitten him. “Valentino and Velvette don’t know you’re here.”
“And doesn’t that just inspire confidence about your intentions with me?”
“Shut the fuck up,” he growled this time. “I am gonna clean this out, and you are not gonna scream, because we are having a private interaction here. Got it?”
Alastor nodded, and hissed when the wipe touched the wound again.
Vox set to work cleaning out the wound while Alastor gritted his teeth to keep from crying out, determined not to show further weakness to the pain. “You always were quite under me,” Vox remarked as he made another stroke with the wipe across the wound. Alastor just glared at him, not trusting himself to speak.
“I’m gonna stitch this up now,” Vox announced.
When the needle pierced his skin, Alastor whimpered. It was so pathetically vulnerable of him Vox’s erection got even harder.
“Let me get you something to bite down on,” he said, lifting himself out of the bath to grab a hand towel, leaving the needle in Alastor’s flesh. Once Alastor had bitten down on the towel, he finished the stitch. After he’d settled into a rhythm of stitching across the wound, he teased “Aren’t you doing such a good job for me?”
“That’s your kink, not mine,” Alastor managed to force through the towel.
“Who said I thought it was?”
Alastor pressed his leg up into Vox’s erection, eliciting a groan. Once he snapped out of it he admonished “Fuck, Alastor, I’m trying to keep a steady hand here.”
Once Vox finished with the chest wound, he announced “I’m gonna check under the rest of the towel.” As he moved to pull it back from Alastor’s waist, Alastor jerked his leg up, hard and fast, sending a wave of pain and pleasure through Vox.
“He only hit my chest,” Alastor said by way of explanation.
“You could have just said that,” Vox complained.
“You could have asked,” Alastor retorted.
Vox shook it off. “Okay, Bambi, let’s get you set up for the night.”
He scooped Alastor up, Alastor processing what was happening just in time to grab the towel and keep it around him.
Vox laid him down on the bed. He’d have to get clean sheets after this, but ah well.
“You should spend the night.”
Alastor arched an eyebrow at him.
“Not like that. Unless you want it to be,” Vox joked-but-not-really. “You’re in bad shape. You shouldn’t shadow like this.”
Alastor resigned himself to lying on the bed.
“Can I have my clothes back?” he asked with irritation at being in a position where he had to ask.
“You’re not wearing those in bed.”
“I’m not staying nude.”
“You can have some pajamas.”
Vox handed Alastor a set of custom red silk pajamas after pulling them out from the back of his closet.
“You kept these?” Alastor asked, enjoying the level of attention it implied rather than being put off by the level of obsession.
“Aren’t you glad I did?” Vox grinned back at him, handing him the pajamas.
Alastor didn’t answer and instead started trying to put them on, wincing as the movement pulled at the stitches.
“Don’t be stupid,” Vox muttered and took the shirt back to unbutton it for him. He’d gotten good at unbuttoning this particular shirt; usually, buttons were hard for him with the claws.
“You gave it to me,” Alastor pointed out.
“Shut the fuck up,” Vox said to him for the third time that night, this time softer. He had a feeling it might not be the last. Alastor seemed to be having that effect on him.
He helped Alastor get the shirt on, leaving it unbuttoned to let the wound breath and avoid it rubbing against the exposed flesh, and maybe to let Vox see his chest. Then he announced cheekily, “Okay, Bambi, spread ‘em.”
Alastor shot him a look before doing as he was told, unbuttoning and unzipping his pants for Vox to slide off him. He squeezed his eyes shut for that last part. Vox looked so smug.
Vox picked up Alastor’s feet-- well, hooves-- at the ankles to slide them into the legs of the pants “Arch for me, Bambi,” he told Alastor as he got the pants further up his legs.
“You always liked that part, didn’t you?” Alastor shot back. He tried to arch up to put some space between his legs and the bed and found he didn’t have the strength to push himself up very far. Pathetic.
“Oh, Bambi, can’t get it up?” Vox teased and slid a hand under the small of Alastor’s back to lift him up to pull the pants up over his thighs and waist.
“Didn’t you like it when that was your job?” Alastor replied as Vox moved the fabric up him.
“I just got those on,” Vox said, nodding towards the pants. “You want me to take them off so soon?”
“Can we settle our agreement that way?”
Vox considered it. Alastor would probably bullshit him on the business proposal anyway…
“Hmm. Not tonight, Bambi. You’re here ‘cause you’re too fucked up to move, and not that I don’t like ‘em tied up, but…” he shrugged. “Let’s see how you feel in the morning, huh?”
“Fine,” Alastor agreed.
Vox changed into his own pajamas, not bothering to step out of view, and pulled back the covers for him to get in next to Alastor.
“You’re sleeping here?” Alastor asked dubiously.
“I’m sure as fuck not leaving you alone, Bambi,” he laughed. “Sweet dreams.”