the streets; they teased and antagonized and critiqued each other. They gossiped and occasionally even schemed together (always only briefly, because neither could resist the temptation to screw the other over). Sure, Alastor was patronizing, inflexible, and pushed Vox’s buttons mercilessly. He never passed up an opportunity to remind Vox that his power left Vox’s in the dust. [“Only for now, old man.” / “We all can dream, my good fellow.”]
But Vox welcomed it. All the insults and challenges kept him sharp, kept him innovating. He was determined to one day see the look on Alastor’s face when Vox finally one-upped him. Alastor may have been mostly a mystery, but Vox thought he had enough of the man’s measure to guess that Alastor would find the moment just as thrilling as he would.
—cuz at the heart of it all, the two of them were showmen, and there was no feeling in the fucking world like putting on a good show, even if sometimes the only audience was themselves.
Unfortunately, Vox was never quite certain which parts of their show were an act and which parts were based on something genuine. Sometimes the semantics mattered. Like right now, when Vox had less than a week to figure out whether he should mention that this Extermination Day would be the tenth one since they started… whatever this was. Vox was pretty sure that recognizing a ten year anniversary was super important if you were dating, but kinda cringey if you weren’t.
The worst part was that Vox had spent the better part of six months and some hefty favors to set up a surprise that would finally force Alastor to admit that television had something to offer even an old fashioned Radio Demon. The vindication was going to be sooo sweet, and Vox intended to be extra smug about it to make up for the fact that the surprise itself was, unavoidably, nice. He’d planned to spring it on Alastor when they met up for drinks, but that was before it occurred to him that this year was a significant (potential) anniversary.
If mentioning an anniversary to someone who didn’t think it qualified as one was cringey, then surprising that someone with something nice on said anniversary was so far beyond cringe that Lucifer would have to create a new ring of Hell to banish Vox to just so the rest of Pride Ring didn’t die of secondhand embarrassment.
Vox could avoid the issue by pushing back the scheme, but post-Extermination was the busiest time of year for a fledgling overlord like Vox. If he put off the surprise it would be months before he could get to it, and he wanted that vindication now. Or, he could act like there was nothing special about the occasion and go ahead with the scheme as planned, but that was risky. He would be gambling that Alastor’s obliviousness to romantic customs would trump his maddening ability to pick up on the slightest opportunity to embarrass Vox.
Damn Alastor for being obstructive without even trying.
Vox’s alarm sounded from the other room. He’d spent so long over-thinking this crap that he’d stayed up all night—forgot to fucking go to bed in the first place, and now he had a whole day of politics and schmoozing and wrangling deals to get through on no sleep. If it wasn’t a bad look for the brand he was building, Vox would look into getting a roommate, one with an actual normal body and a real circadian rhythm he could use as a point of reference for his own routines. (An internal digital clock didn’t help with time-management when Vox could infinitely press snooze on alarms for important-but-boring shit like sleep and eating.) Maybe he could get a pet instead? Something badass, though, befitting an overlord. Like a tiger or something.
XXX
When Alastor first met Vox, he was just coming down off the bloody high of delicious broadcast, sated and about as satisfied as one was able to get in Hell. This is most likely the reason the conversation didn’t end in Alastor eating him. That, and the fact that when Alastor alluded to the likelihood of said fate, the bold little fellow only laughed and gestured to his odd physiology. [“I don’t think I’d taste very good.”]
