Lovers Once More - Radiostatic

Overthinking

The warm water of the shower cascaded over Alastor's shoulders, yet he barely felt its heat. His mind was a million miles away, replaying Vox's words from the night before. He closed his eyes, bracing his hands against the tiled wall as he let out a long, weary sigh.

*I missed us being more than friends... I still love you.*

Alastor wasn't usually one for sentiment, but those words kept tugging at him, like an old tune he couldn't shake. He chuckled, a bit of static curling through his voice as he shook his head. "Just drunk ramblings," he muttered to himself, though his reflection in the fogged-up shower door didn't look convinced.

The way Vox's voice had sounded, his usually cocky bravado stripped away, raw and vulnerable, played over and over in Alastor's mind. Maybe it was all just the drinks. Hell, Vox had been practically drowning himself in booze by the time Alastor found him. He could have been confessing his love to the barstool if Alastor hadn't shown up.

And yet...

*Why did it feel so genuine?*

Alastor grimaced, running a hand through his soaked hair as he tried to shrug off the unsettling feeling creeping over him. He had known Vox for a long time—long enough to know the demon wasn't prone to empty confessions. If Vox had let something slip, even in a drunken haze, it meant *something.* But did it mean anything now, all these years later, after everything that had happened between them?

"Foolish," he muttered to himself, leaning back against the shower wall. "Getting caught up in old memories like some love-struck fool."

But even as he said it, Alastor couldn't deny that the thought of being more than friends with Vox again stirred something in him—a mixture of excitement and dread. They'd burned through the stages of friendship, romance, and rivalry so many times that it was hard to know where they even stood. Still, in the quiet hours when the hotel was asleep, he sometimes wondered if he, too, missed what they'd once had.

The thought gnawed at him as he reached to turn off the water, his mind still racing. He wrapped a towel around his waist, the air cooling his skin as he glanced at his reflection in the foggy mirror. "Get a grip," he muttered at himself, straightening his posture and forcing a wry grin. "Vox is just hungover and embarrassed. Don't flatter yourself, old boy."

But as he headed out of the bathroom and back into the hotel's bustling lounge, he couldn't quite shake the question lurking at the back of his mind: *What if it wasn't just the drinks?*