Work Text:
“To harness the full potential of our brand equity and elevate our market positioning, we must pivot towards an integrated marketing strategy that leverages data-driven insights and multi-channel engagement, ensuring….”
As always, Vox was grateful that he could set his screen to display whatever expression he wanted without having to concentrate on maintaining it. This meeting’s setting was “polite interest”, a usual default for the marketing department, whose primary function seemed to be saying as little as possible while using as many words as possible; an admirable trait when the fire hose of their rambling wasn’t pointed in his direction. Alas, if he didn’t meet with them at least once a month they started leaving him voice mails and sending him emails and trying to catch him in the halls, and years of experience had taught him that it was more efficient to set aside an hour each month to tune out their droning. So once a month he turned on “polite interest” and spent an hour catching up on emails, checking his drone feeds, and occasionally playing Cannibal Crush.
He was up to level 8,462.
He felt the gentle ping of a background notification at the base of his brain stem, one of his long-range telephoto drones letting him know that Alastor had left his rooms at the Hack Off Hotel (or whatever it was called). He idly pulled up the footage, already knowing what he’d see; a blurry, jagged, smeared red shape disappearing behind a door.
Damn Alastor and his video interference.
Even back in the day the Radio Demon hadn’t been fond of cameras, ducking out of photographs and fading into shadows any time Vox had turned a video camera even vaguely in his direction. It had taken an hour of pleading and wheedling to convince Alastor to allow himself to be photographed alongside Vox at an industry function when…
…before…
…before he disappeared for seven years without a trace.
And now he was back, and more hyper-vigilant about pictures than ever before. Vox’s drones couldn’t even get close to the tacky hotel that he was using as his base of operations without getting fried, any technology that was brought in by the residents was quickly warded against his intrusion, and when Alastor was out and about and one of Vox’s cameras caught him, his image was always a staticky, distorted mess.
It made Vox’s incessant surveillance of the demon annoyingly difficult.
Vox closed out of the feed from the drone and flipped his attention back over to his inbox, opening up an email from Katie Killjoy demanding a contract renegotiation again. He internally sighed; if her snarky cruelty weren’t so popular with viewers, he’d have fed her to his sharks years ago.
Another notification tickled his brain stem, this one much louder and more urgent. In his mind a window popped up.
RADIO DEMON IN PROXIMITY OF AN UNWARDED DEVICE.
Hmm. Maybe another sucker has joined the hotel, and hasn’t had his phone warded yet. Might as well get a peek while it lasts.
Vox flipped through the millions of devices to which he was connected until he found the one that had sent the alert, then let his consciousness slip into the phone.
“Alastor.”
Vox recognized the voice of Lucifer. He knew that the King of Hell had moved in with his daughter - at least temporarily - in the aftermath of the exorcist attack on the hotel; that day had almost been the greatest of Vox’s afterlife, but Alastor had to ruin it by popping back up annoyingly alive. Fucker didn’t even have the decency to go to his second death properly.
“Sire,” Alastor sounded tired, drained in a way that Vox had never heard him before. “Is this really necessary?”
“I don’t want you in my rooms any more than you want to be here, but Charlie would be devastated if she found out that I knew about this and did nothing, so you will sit down and you will let me take care of this, because it sure as shit isn’t going to get better on its own.”
Odd. Was something wrong with Alastor? What would he need Lucifer’s help with?
Alastor heaved a heavy sigh. “Very well. Where do you want me?”
Oh, I have so many good answers to that question, Vox thought.
“Sit there. And take your shirt off.”
Vox’s fans spun up instantly, increased their speed beyond his control, emanated a mechanical, high-pitched whine, then froze up entirely. “Polite interest” flickered and shut down, and for a moment his screen reflected his actual emotional state; mouth dropped open, eyes popped wide, saliva beginning to trickle out of the corner of his mouth and down his screen. He wrested active control of his display back from his automatic processes, restarted “polite interest,” and rose to his feet.
“Gentlemen, ladies, others, I apologize, but I must cut this meeting short. We are receiving reports of anomalous behaviors from a mission-critical asset, and I need to attend to the situation immediately. Please contact my assistant to get the remainder of this meeting rescheduled at your earliest convenience.”
Before anyone could say a word of protest, Vox was gone, zapping through the signals and wires and arriving almost instantly in his surveillance room. He collapsed into his wingback chair, plugged in, and pulled the phone’s feed onto the main screen.
The audio was clear, but his only visual was the underside of a lampshade; apparently, the phone had been set down on a table or nightstand or some such. Vox cast his consciousness around the room, looking for any other unshielded electronics, and eventually found a small electronic picture frame loaded with hundreds of photos of Princess Charlotte when she was younger. It wasn’t the one manufactured by VoxTek (“Trust us with your photographs!”), but by piggybacking off the phone’s unwarded signal he could use it to look into the room.
Alastor sat on a red-and-white striped sofa, slowly unbuttoning his shirt and staring balefully at Lucifer, who had his arms crossed over his chest and stared back impatiently. The Radio Demon’s coat had already been removed and was draped over the back of the sofa, and his bow tie was laid over the top of it. Alastor looked rough; he was as well-groomed as always, but his already sallow skin had a greyish tinge to it, and there were bags under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.
Alastor’s hands stopped their motions once he reached his midriff.
“All the way off, Alastor,” Lucifer scolded.
“Why, your majesty, one might almost think that you want to see me in the altogether,” Alastor quipped, but Vox recognized the discomfort in his voice.
He’d heard it before, after all.
“Eugh, no, I’d really rather not,” Lucifer made a face, “But if I’m going to heal you, I’m going to need to touch the injury. Now hurry up. Believe it or not, I have other things I’d rather be doing. Like scooping KeeKee’s litter box.”
Alastor sighed and pulled the tails of his shirt out of his trousers, unfastened the last few buttons, and hesitantly shrugged the shirt off his slim shoulders and set it aside.
His body was lean, almost bordering on gaunt, but what flesh he had was almost all taut muscle and wiry sinew. His sharp collarbones framed the hollow of his throat, his flat pectorals broad above his rapidly narrowing ribcage down to a waist that gave him a waspish figure. The furrows that began at the crests of his hipbones led tantalizingly down past his waistband, as did a trail of thick red fur.
Vox wanted to feel that fur under his fingers.
He wanted to follow it to see where it led.
Or, he would, if it weren’t for the gaping, glowing wound that almost split the radio demon’s chest in two.
Though, upon further consideration, that too was sexy in its own way.
The gash started at Alastor’s left shoulder and flayed him open down to below his ribcage on the right. It appeared that it had previously been stitched closed, but whatever thread had been used had given up the fight and the edges now flared open. An incision that large should have been gushing blood, but Vox could only see a slow, dark ooze dripping down from the jagged boundaries of the injury. Where the skin had pulled away, the muscles twitched and dripped more of that sludge, and Vox could catch glimpses of the white bones of Alastor’s ribcage. Beneath all of that, the wound seemed to emit a faint, pulsing, golden glow.
Vox’s stomach roiled at the same time that his dick hardened, so many conflicting thoughts and feelings coursing through him that he worried that he’d glitch out again.
He wanted to take Alastor into his arms, cradle him, comfort him, assure him that he would be all right.
He wanted to laugh in the Radio Demon’s face, wanted to deliver thousands of volts straight into the broken flesh and cackle as the room took on the scent of roasted meat.
He wanted to pull the torn edges of Alastor’s chest apart, reach in past the ribcage, and see if he could locate the demon’s heart.
See if he still had one.
See if he’d ever had one.
See if Vox’s name was still written upon it.
He was sure it had been, once.
He pushed his maudlin thoughts aside and refocused on the audio.
“You really are an idiot, Alastor. How many times did you sew it closed?”
Alastor’s eyes closed and his face wore a pained expression. “A few.”
“And did it not occur to you that the fact that the stitches kept dissolving might indicate that there was something more significant than a little boo-boo going on?”
“If you’re just going to stand there and berate me, I’ll gather up my clothing and go.” Alastor started to rise, his face grimacing as he braced a hand on the armrest to push himself to stand.
“SIT.”
The command in Lucifer’s voice brooked no argument, and Alastor fell back onto the sofa with a grunt followed by a pained wheeze. Lucifer strode forward, and Alastor closed his eyes in an attempt at nonchalance.
Lucifer stood above the Radio Demon, looked down at him, at the slice that nearly bisected the sinner, and considered his options. Then, in a swift and graceful movement he was up on the couch, knees on either side of Alastor’s legs, straddling his lap, reaching his hands toward the wound.
Alastor’s eyes shot open, radio dials swinging wildly.
Vox’s cock twitched in his pants and he moaned, pressing the palm of his hand into his straining erection.
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Alastor’s voice was almost lost in the popping radio static and screeching feedback.
Lucifer appeared unperturbed.
“Oh, calm down, Bambi. I’m just trying to get the right angle on this. I’m not going to give you a lap dance. Relax.”
Lucifer’s brows furrowed and his forked tongue peeked out from the corner of his mouth as he laid a hand on each side of the gash. Golden light, similar to what was glowing from inside the wound, began to emanate from the King of Hell’s hands.
Alastor did not relax, but as Lucifer kept his attention on his healing magic and took no more liberties with the Radio Demon, his eyes slowly returned to normal, though his expression remained suspicious.
Lucifer’s gold-tinted magic sank into the wound, winding its way through his flesh, and seemed to wrap itself around the golden glow that had taken up residence there. Once the competing magics were in close proximity, Vox could see the subtle differences between them. Lucifer’s magic was brilliant and shining, the rich yellow of real 24K gold, so pure it was almost painful to look at. The gold that stained Alastor’s wound was duller, dirtier, as if it had somehow been corrupted. As Lucifer’s magic pulled the invader loose from where it had anchored itself, Alastor’s face twisted into a grimace of pain and shrill feedback keened in the air.
“Sorry…” Lucifer’s voice was distracted, his eyes screwed shut, his concentration on gathering up the invading magic, making sure none was left behind in Alastor.
The last of the dirty magic gave up its grip on Alastor’s flesh and came free, dissipating into the air as Alastor slumped against the back of the sofa, panting slightly.
Lucifer opened his eyes as he pulled his hands away from Alastor’s chest and shook them out as if he were trying to flick water off of them. “Okay, that takes care of the angelic magic. Now we just need to…”
Lucifer’s voice faded out as his body went limp, and he started to fall backwards off Alastor’s lap.
Alastor bolted upright, wrapping his long arms around the small fallen angel and pulling him into his still wounded chest. Alastor held Lucifer for a long moment, his face pressed into the King’s pale hair, taking deep, steadying breaths.
It almost…
It almost looked as if Alastor were embracing a lover.
Which was impossible.
Vox’s eyes darted over the image, taking in every detail. The concerned crease of Alastor’s brows. The large, red-clawed hands wrapped protectively, possessively over Lucifer’s shoulders and back. The way that Alastor’s nostrils flared, as if he were drinking in the scent of the fallen angel in his arms. The movement of his lips, whispering something so quietly that the nearby phone couldn’t pick it up.
Vox closed his eyes for a moment, saving the image with perfect accuracy and clarity. Then he erased Lucifer from the picture and replaced him with an image of himself.
“Lucifer?” Vox heard Alastor’s voice and opened his eyes. He could work on fine-tuning that image later, at his leisure.
Alastor was holding Lucifer by the shoulders, leaning him away slightly so that he could look into the King’s face, giving him a gentle shake.
Purpled lids fluttered over golden eyes as the king came to. He looked up at Alastor’s concerned expression and, for a moment, a soft smile full of adoration and affection played across his lips.
WHAT?
Vox mentally flagged that section of the footage to play back and analyze later.
Lucifer seemed to come back to himself with a shake as he scrambled off of Alastor’s lap, landing with a thump on the floor in front of the sofa. Alastor leaned over and peered down at him curiously.
“What happened?” Lucifer croaked out.
“It seems that you fainted, sire.”
Lucifer bounced to his feet and brushed off his white pants and striped waistcoat, pausing when he saw that the latter was soaked through with the dark blood that seeped from Alastor’s still-open wound.
“Ugh. Really? Did you have to bleed all over me?”
“My apologies, your majesty. The next time you faint in my lap I will make sure to not catch you, so that you can dash your meager brains out of your pretty little head when you bash it into the coffee table.”
Lucifer scowled at Alastor. “There are so many parts of that sentence that will never be happening again.”
Alastor raised one shoulder in a disinterested shrug. “As you say, sire.” He plucked his shirt off of the back of the sofa and started to pull it on.
“Wait!” Lucifer cried out.
Alastor paused his movements and looked curiously at the king.
“I still need to heal the actual wound,” Lucifer approached Alastor, hands outstretched.
Alastor shied away from the fallen angel’s touch. “I assume that now that you have removed the angelic essence, my own healing abilities will function perfectly. I am content to let my body resolve the issue on its own.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “I’m here, you’re already half naked,” There was a squawk of feedback that made Lucifer wince. “Just let me finish the job, you stubborn asshole.”
Silence fell as the (fallen) angel and the demon eyed each other.
Vox leaned in toward the screen, breath held, as if this were the big reveal on the season finale.
“Fine.” Alastor said, trying to sound casual.
Lucifer and Vox each let out a long breath.
“Okay,” Lucifer mumbled, resuming his seat on Alastor’s lap and placing his hands on the demon’s chest once again. Alastor tensed, but did not react as dramatically has he had the first time Lucifer had gotten so familiar. “This should be pretty quick.”
Once again a golden glow spread out from Lucifer’s hands, but this time instead of screwing up in pain, Alastor’s face seemed to ease and go slack, a look of such profound relief washing over him that Vox could practically feel it himself.
Vox watched as the gash across Alastor’s chest knitted itself together from the inside out; muscles weaving back together, skin pulling itself closed until Alastor was once again whole. Lucifer leaned back, smiling down at his work, then summoned a damp cloth and meticulously cleaned the lingering blood from Alastor’s chest and stomach in slow, careful strokes. Alastor looked at Lucifer with a strange expression on his face - one Vox had never seen before - but did not halt the king’s ministrations.
Lucifer snapped the cloth back to wherever he had summoned it from and turned his face back to Alastor’s. Whatever that expression was, it appeared that Lucifer had never seen it, either, because he tilted his head to one side in a clear expression of curiosity.
Alastor reached one hand up and placed it against Lucifer’s cheek.
Vox glitched and his screen flickered to black, then came back on.
“Sire,” Alastor’s voice was low, his eyes half-closed, and Vox could swear that he could hear the pounding of Alastor’s heart.
Or perhaps it was Lucifer’s.
Or perhaps it was his own.
“Alastor,” Lucifer’s voice was breathy. “I….”
“Thank you, your majesty.”
Alastor leaned in and pressed his lips against Lucifer’s, slowly, softly, with a lingering touch that made Vox’s heart ache and his cock throb.
Alastor pulled back and Lucifer stared at him, struck dumb.
Then Lucifer’s hands were on Alastor’s face and he was pulling himself into the deer demon, his mouth pushing desperately against Alastor’s lips.
Alastor’s eyes flew wide, and Vox fully expected Alastor to dump Lucifer on his ass again, but what he did instead, Vox could never have predicted in a million years.
The Radio Demon closed his eyes and opened his mouth to Lucifer’s seeking lips.
He wrapped his arms around the King of Hell, held him close, kissed him like he was fresh water in an endless desert.
Vox’s cock ached with need, precome leaking and making a wet spot on his boxers, as his heart shattered into a million little glittering pieces.
Alastor - his Alastor - his beloved and hated Radio Demon, was kissing. Someone else. On purpose.
Glitches and errors cascaded over his screen, and he shook his head to try to clear them, to try to refocus, to try to ignore the wracking sobs of his broken heart.
On the video monitor, Alastor and Lucifer’s embrace had only grown more passionate. Lucifer’s arms were thrown around Alastor’s neck, his kisses hot and needy, and through the phone Vox could hear the wet sounds of their tongues meeting, intertwining, sucking at each other with delirious want and desire.
Alastor stood, his hands cupped under Lucifer’s ass, holding him easily. Lucifer wrapped his legs around Alastor’s waist, grinding into him, breaking the kiss to pant softly, his forehead pressed to Alastor’s, before surging forward again, whining with need.
Vox’s hand was in his pants. He didn’t remember putting it there.
Alastor carried the fallen angel to the huge, four-poster bed and laid his small, delicate form onto it before climbing atop him, pulling the king’s bow tie loose, unfastening the buttons of his striped waistcoat, his movements hasty in his growing need.
Vox’s hand moved over his cock at a rapid pace.
Alastor pulled back and sat up, pulling Lucifer with him so that he could maneuver the waistcoat off the king.
As Alastor tossed the clothing aside, his eyes fell on the phone sitting on the nightstand.
No.
Alastor's brows furrowed.
“Sire, did you get a new phone?”
“Huh?” Lucifer seemed confused at the sudden non sequitur.
“Did you get a new phone?” Alastor repeated.
“Uh…yeah, I just picked it up today. Does that really matter right now?”
NO.
Alastor’s neck cracked as he tilted his head, staring at the phone with undisguised malice.
“More than you could possibly realize, your majesty.”
NO.
A broken sound spilled from Vox’s speakers, the movement of his hand frantic.
“Sorry about this, sire. I promise I’ll make it up to you.” Alastor’s voice cracked and popped. Vox watched helplessly as Alastor leaned over the phone and raised one hand, the claw of his index finger held like a scorpion’s tail, poised to strike.
Vox was so close.
“Hey!” Lucifer shouted, reaching toward the phone. “What are you…?”
Alastor’s hand came down, his sharp claw piercing the glass and plastic and silicon and wires and embedding in the wooden surface beneath it.
###SIGNAL LOST###
“FUCK!” Vox screamed, his orgasm evaporating as if it had never been.
All across Pentagram City, the power went out.