Archive of Our Own

“Salutations, dear listeners! Thank you for tuning in to this afternoon’s stream. It’s a beautiful day out here in the golden plains of the sunflower state, and if you’ve been attentive to the forecast, you’ll likely already have guessed what I’m doing.”

Alastor settles back in his seat, kicking his feet up onto the steering wheel with a relaxed smile. On the dashboard, his microphone equipment is wired directly into the radio, a feat of engineering that’s the least illegal alteration he’s made to this vehicle since acquiring it, and his phone is propped up between his knees, the scrolling text displaying the ravenous exclamations of his audience as the viewer count ticks up, up, up in the corner. It’s not recording visuals, of course; he can see their questions and remarks, but they can only hear his voice. Frankly, that’s all they need to hear.

Beyond the windshield, waves of cornfields reverberate out as far as the eye can see, stalks rippling in the brisk winds. The sky unfurls like a vast banner, big and blue and endless, pockmarked with white puffs of cumulus clouds. The far horizon shimmers with heat. Inside the car, the air hangs warm and stale from how long he’s been idling on the side of the road, simmering under the mid-afternoon sun. A bead of sweat trickles down the back of his neck.

None of that is what interests him, though. Glancing at the rearview mirror, Alastor’s smile widens.

Behind him, dark clouds roil in the east.

“That’s right,” he continues narrating, turning back to his mic, “I’m following a promising cluster of severe weather cells just west of Salina. I believe we’re in for a show today, folks — but of course, it still remains to be seen. I suppose until the weather picks up, I can spare a bit of Q&A for you demented freaks out there who like to pry into my personal life. Please try to remember that what you say in the chat is public and I will read it out loud to humiliate you if it offends me.”

The questions come flooding in moments later. Alastor enjoys the attention, he truly does, but he’s come to realize that maintaining a presence on the internet requires an insane level of fan engagement that he can only keep up with in increments. No, thank you. He will answer questions on his terms, give as much detail as he deems necessary, and then end the interaction. Now if only everyone else could be normal about it.

He hadn’t even started all this with the intention of drawing a fanbase, unlike certain other content creators in his corner of the world, so he doesn’t think it’s too unreasonable to erect firm boundaries between himself and whatever parasocial nightmare tends to arise from certain listeners and their entitlement complexes.

He picks the first question that doesn’t immediately make him want to kill himself. “Ah, a question from @princess_morningstar! They wonder, ‘What got you interested in storm chasing?’ Well, I’ve been bored my whole life, and this seemed like the only available hobby that wouldn’t land me behind bars. Another from @dustyangel: ‘Face reveal?’ Hah, never going to happen!” He laughs and scrolls down, dismissing the spike of disappointed emoticons from the chat. “Oh, calm down, you’ll all live. Hmm… ooh, very interesting question from @radiostaticfan: ‘What’s the beef with the Vees?’”

Alastor’s grin sharpens.

“I honestly have no issues with the Vees as a brand. What a company does to make money is none of my concern. However I am, as you all may know, locked in a semi-official feud with their ringleader, who keeps making an ass out of himself attempting to ban me on all platforms. I have to say — if you’re so insecure that you can’t handle a little bit of criticism from your fellow creators, then you have no business making yourself out to be the most reliable source of weather data in the storm chasing community. But what would I know! I’m only an amateur, according to Vox.” He brushes a hand over his forehead, sighing woefully. “I only hope that one day he can recover a modicum of maturity — although, that implies he had any in the first place.”

The chat explodes with tittering laughter and bickering, which is amusing until people inevitably begin to speculate whether or not the animosity is real or played up for views — a conversation that annoys him so much he ends the stream early, with only a brief hook to tune in later when the storm actually hits.

Alastor is not a conman, and the insinuation that he would pretend to hate someone for Twitter engagement is preposterous. He does what he does for his own satisfaction, and if he garners attention and interest along the way, that’s an authentic product of his own magnetic intrigue. The Vees, on the other hand, are all ephemeral clout-chasers who exploit not only themselves but everything they can get their greedy paws on for views. It’s irritating. It’s hollow.

It’s… unfortunately, quite hilarious. Velvette and Valentino are not as easy to rile up, but Vox, oh, that’s a whole different story.

They’d met for the first time at a low point in Alastor’s life. Best not to dwell on it now, but suffice it to say, he’d come perilously close to doing something drastic in an attempt to alleviate a lifelong and debilitating condition of boredom. It was rather lucky, actually, that he’d found the Vees’ video series when he did — otherwise, he would’ve had to either throw himself off a cliff or become a serial killer, and god forbid because either option would’ve severely disappointed his mother.

So. Storm chasing.

The Vees had already established themselves as big names in the storm chasing community when Alastor first took an interest. In the early days, their content had been genuinely high quality, with excellent camera work from Velvette, editing from Valentino, and technical voiceovers from Vox, who always presented the trio as a smart, knowledgeable educators who risked their lives to gather crucial data on severe weather and were always accessible to the general worried public.

A convincing façade. However, as Alastor has come to learn, Vox is the type of greedy bastard for whom nothing is sacrosanct, and it hadn’t taken long for their channel to begin obviously deteriorating into a hollow consumerist shell of its former self. That’s what irritates Alastor the most — that he once held even a shred of respect for the show, until the curtains rolled up to reveal three reckless charlatans in an SUV who care not a whit about the safety of their audience, so long as they secure those sweet, sweet sponsorship deals with their ridiculous clickbait thumbnails and relentless advertisements.

To be clear: Alastor also cares not a whit about the safety of his audience. That relationship is entirely one-sided. But he also doesn’t present himself as a bastion of wisdom to the gullible masses, unlike some people — at least his viewers are well aware that their lives and deaths are immaterial to him.

The real fun had started when Alastor began making his opinions known, at first on anonymous forums and then eventually under his media persona as the Radio Demon, a moniker he’d picked up from his early listeners and liked well enough that he adopted it wholesale. Needless to say, at that point in time, Vox and his cronies were up their own asses with arrogance, and they did not take well to Alastor’s friendly constructive criticism.

Such a shame, when people can’t admit to their faults. Alastor himself has no flaws, but he would certainly own up to them if he did.

A few admittedly unnecessary escalations and ad hominem attacks later, and Alastor had secured himself his very first nemesis. Quite the accomplishment. He’d gleefully phoned his mother about it and everything. Vox, sadly for him, does not seem to see the whimsy in their antagonism, but in a way that almost heightens the experience for Alastor. Every morning that he wakes up to notifications about his account being suspended for TOS violations only revitalizes his zest for making that little cartoon of a man blow a gasket when Alastor simply makes a new account, tacks on a throwaway email address, and jumps right back into the fray. He hasn’t been able to get Vox’s account completely banned yet, but he has made Vox a laughingstock on his own turf multiple times, which is just as good.

Alastor wouldn’t have half the joy in life he does if it weren’t for Vox. He’s almost grateful, in a sadistic kind of way — storm chasing is titillating on its own, but chances are not low that he might’ve gotten himself killed on several occasions if the thrill of a near-death experience was the only reason he remained, reluctantly, on this mortal coil.

Now, he has two things to live for. How fun!

Speaking of: Alastor’s phone lights up with a notification from the Vees. One quick scan of the thread later, and his mouth curls into a wide, toothy grin.

@VTek_Official: Hello, Kansas! Looking like a promising day out there. Follow along as we track a system developing seventy miles north of Salina, shaping up to be a contender for best tornado of the season. You can find our tornado tier list on our website, linked below, and check out our merch shop if you’d like to support our work. Trust us with your storms!

In the area, are we? What a wonderful coincidence.

Alastor flicks his eyes up to the rearview mirror again, eyeing the rumbling stormfront, before looking back down at his phone. He presses reply.

“Just look at it, you miserable little pissbaby — and I know you can finally see again since Vox updated your prescription—”

“I’m looking, babydoll, and it looks like you’re the one who needs their eyes checked, because there’s nothing there.”

“Wh — it’s a fucking cold front, if we move west to get ahead of it—”

“It won’t matter because it’s nothing. We’ll be following straight-line winds.”

“Since when do we scoff at windstorms?”

“Since we drove four hundred fucking miles to catch a tornado, Vel.”

“You mean since me and Vox drove four hundred fucking miles, because god forbid you pull your weight in this team instead of eating all the trail mix and passing out in the backseat.”

“The fuck are you implying—”

Valentino starts to clamber over the middle console to swipe at Velvette in the passenger seat, fingers hooking into her purple leather jacket collar and yanking as she shrieks and grabs his wrist, digging her nails in.

Vox finally looks up from his phone and says, “I know it’s a tall order, but can you two stop behaving like children for three seconds? I have a headache.”

“Poor baby,” Velvette says sourly as Val flips his demeanor on a dime, letting go of his grip on Velvette’s jacket and using his position halfway up the console to lean in languidly, pressing his cheek to Vox’s shoulder and fluttering his lashes.

“Aw, we’re sorry, papi, don’t be mad,” he wheedles. In the same tone, he adds, “Can you tell this bitch that her eyes are broken?”

“I’ll fucking kill you—”

“Velvette,” Vox says warningly, and she reluctantly backs down, slouching in her seat and yanking up her knees to the dashboard to pout. Beyond her, outside the car window, a vast ocean of cornfields corral them on all sides, rippling in the promising winds from the east. The sky gleams like blue marble, pocked with clouds. The car seeps with heat, metal baking under the midday sun and the cram of their bodies sitting so closely together, loitering in the parking lot of a rest stop as they have been for the past hour. Sweat trickles down Vox’s spine. He grimaces. He fucking hates late spring in the midwest.

Making sure Vox can see it, Valentino pets over the angry little crescent moons that Velvette’s nails had carved into his wrist like one of those guilt-trippy ASPCA commercials that knows you won’t donate but wants you to feel bad anyway.

Vox pinches the bridge of his nose. His best friends in the world are actual goddamn toddlers. Unbelievable.

No, wait, totally believable.

“I’m not picking a side, because you’re both right,” he continues, half-distracted by his phone in his lap. “We did come all this way for a tornado, not a derecho. But this cold front looks promising too. I think it may be in our best interests to split up for this one.”

“Isn’t that, like, a big storm chasing no-no?” Val drawls, sliding down to rest his chin on his folded-up arms. “Our fans need a responsible role model to look up to.”

Velvette snorts. “Yeah, Vox, you gonna lead the sheep astray?”

Vox smiles despite his lingering irritation, finally powering his phone off and reaching for the keys in the ignition. “Hey, when have I ever steered anyone wrong before? Trust me — I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

The ‘good feeling’ in question is actually more like violent, burning spite, but what Val and Vel don’t know can’t hurt them.

At Vox’s insistence, they split up on the outskirts of Salina, Kansas. Vox lets Val and Velvette take the CRV to go north, since it’s the car most people recognize the Vees by at this point — the huge red V logo plastered over the electric blue doors might be a hint — and he takes the Subaru to go west, for once grateful for its muted gray anonymity. If he’s going to end up embarrassing himself, he wants to at least make an effort to preempt the damage so that Val and Vel can’t yell at him too much for it afterward.

Now, Vox sits parked on a dusty side road, one eye on his laptop propped open in the passenger seat and one eye on his phone. He hadn’t been lying about the radar, it does look promising; the models are lit up orange in the east, a potential storm looming just on the far horizon like a raised axe. Valentino and Velvette, chasing a larger cell farther north, will likely have better luck than him in actually watching a tornado develop, and he feels a sting of annoyance at the fact that he can’t be with them to catch what’s shaping up to be a gorgeous — and more importantly, marketable — storm.

He’d love to shake the hand of whoever invented the idea of exploiting natural phenomena for internet clout. It never gets old. They sell storm chaser coffee mugs now. They wear matching graphic tees. Last year, they broke five million subscribers after their footage of an EF5 tornado shredding through a small town in Illinois went viral.

Being celebrities in a socmed community of adrenaline freaks means the three of them can get away with a lot. They push the image that they chase storms for science, always obeying proper safety guidelines and promoting responsible chasing practices, but in reality the three of them are bonafide cowards. They never even come close to putting their lives on the line for a chase, and it’s easy to spin this habit into a sermon about ‘respecting mother nature’ or some bullshit, but hey, Vox is here to shill for content, not actually put himself at risk. He’s not like those crazy motherfuckers who do it for the cheap thrill of flirting with death.

Pursuing entertainment value means following the blips on the forecast models with the most potential to turn into a storm, which in this case should’ve meant tagging along with Val and Vel up north—

—but then his phone dings, and with a surge of almost blinding hatred, he remembers exactly why he’s doing this instead.

@RadioDemon: QRT: Serendipity! I arrived in Salina earlier this morning. I normally work best alone, but if you’re in need of exposure, I can lower myself temporarily for a collaboration between us. What do you say, chums?

Goddamn sleazy arrogant asshole.

Vox stabs at his screen and furiously types a response. Velvette let him have it last time he used their official platform to beef with this bastard, so he remembers to switch to his personal account right before he sends it. Barely. Then he reports Alastor’s tweet for hate speech.

@VoxPopuli: Afraid we’ll have to decline. We’re only interested in collaborating with creators who have large reaches & true passion for storm chasing. Great to hear you’re in Salina; if we run into each other, I’d be happy to offer some tips for growing your platform, free of charge.

Magnanimous. Almost polite. He’s looking like the better person. Alastor’s reply shoots back seconds later.

@RadioDemon: Did you practice that in the mirror, dear? It almost sounded genuine.

While Vox is busy reporting that comment too, teeth gritted, Alastor follows it up with another.

@RadioDemon: Unlike some, I don’t accept cheap handouts or take shortcuts with my craft. But to each their own! :)

Vox navigates to Alastor’s account, reports him for spam, and blocks him. Then unblocks him, because like hell is he having the last word. A little voice that sounds an awful lot like the anger management counselor he had as a teenager kindly tells him to maybe think for a moment before he acts, and he kindly tells it to shut the fuck up.

@VoxPopuli: You are an amateur HACK with a DEATH WISH. One day you’re going to fuck around & find out, & you won’t enjoy what happens after.

@RadioDemon: That almost sounded like a threat!

Dread pools in Vox’s heart. No, no, no—

Minutes later, despite scrambling to delete the tweet and scrub the entire thread from the face of the planet, Vox gets an email that his account has been placed under review for threats of violence. He fumbles with the lock on his car door, kicks it open, and flings his phone across the barren street with a shriek of rage. It clatters across the hot asphalt and vanishes into the grasses on the other side. Vox buries his face in his hands and growls.

Fuck the fucking radio demon. He hopes that piece of shit gets his car flattened by a tornado and dies.

After he calms down, he fetches his phone and returns to his car. There’s a new crack on the screen protector.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and closes his eyes.

Alastor has been the single biggest thorn in his side since that cheesy shitbag first popped up all those years ago, hiding behind a pseudonym to criticize Vox for being cheap, like anyone in the influencer game plays fair, like Alastor isn’t a cheap bastard for riding Vox’s coattails the way he does. Vox will hand him that — social media gluts itself on drama, and Alastor is a certified master of stirring shit. He’d have to be blind to not realize that a solid chunk of his viewers are only here for the rivalry.

But it’s not about Alastor’s hypocrisy, or what a niggling irritation he is, or his fucking trolling. It’s about the fact that somehow, against all odds, Alastor’s popularity in Vox’s corner of the internet has rocketed upwards at triple the rate of anyone else in recent memory, and Alastor has done the bare fucking minimum to achieve it.

Vox and his partners have worked their asses off to turn this side hustle into a real career, and what does Alastor get to do? Skate by on half-baked mystique and one-man harassment campaigns until everybody is kissing the ground he walks on, like he isn’t an amateurish coward who almost dies every other week running headfirst into tornados, because he’s a moron.

Vox breathes out, kneading the space between his eyes in slow, soothing motions.

Whatever. He has a fucking storm to chase.

PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION, Alastor’s weather app blares, in bolded scrolling text. Oh, goodie!

“Wind gusts, hazardous conditions, hail,” he sing-songs to himself, reading through the summary. On his laptop screen in the passenger seat, Valentino and Velvette’s livestream is playing with the audio muted, because he really doesn’t need to hear their grating voices. He hasn’t seen Vox in frame yet, but he must be there too — the three of them never split up for a chase. Allegedly it’s bad practice. Alastor has seen several people advise newcomers to never chase alone, as he does, but it’s not like he’s trying to be a bastion of safety.

The Vees are northeast of him, following the more obvious storm cells, but Alastor has a good feeling about this. Already, the skies have shifted from blue to a strange, hazy green, the winds stirring in the fields in sporadic fits and bursts. Overhead, the stormfront brews darkly, bringing with it the hair-raising taste of oncoming rain.

Alastor opens the door and leans halfway out of the car, dragging in a long, greedy breath through his nose. There are no other cars on the road this far out, in this kind of weather.

Technically, he has mapped out his escape routes properly, should that be necessary — there’s a fork in the road a few miles north, splitting off towards the nearest town, and another curving side street to the south should he need to take a different path. He’s never had to actually use his precautions before, but he promised his mother he would at least make vague gestures towards valuing his life, so here he is.

A low rumble of thunder makes him crane his head, looking up. His smile widens, half-manic.

He slides back into his seat, flicks his radio on, and goes live.

“Salutations, dear listeners,” he croons, reaching up to slide his sunroof open for a better view. Cool winds ruffle his hair, sweeping through the hot, stale air lingering in the car and banishing it with a perfect chill. “This is Alastor, colloquially the Radio Demon, coming to you live from western Salina County where I’m taking advantage of one of the last PDS days of the spring. Interestingly, I believe the Vees are in the area as well, though they’re pursuing a different cell — all the better, I do hate to share my space.”

He chatters idly, keeping himself in check as the storm develops above and around him. Boredom is an enemy he can never vanquish, a knife between the ribs that keeps twisting and twisting and twisting, but the promise of a storm just lights him up inside, sparking a stark flame of mania in his sternum that he would gladly burn himself on if it meant he got to keep it. Just for a little while.

When the first rattle-flash of lightning wicks across the sky, Alastor falls silent, enthralled. Another, then another — he finds his voice again, though now his narration is quick, hushed, spurred by the sights of the world cracking itself open all around him, and he is hardly thinking of his listeners at all.

He climbs out of the car, taking his microphone with him. The wind snags his clothes, gusts sweeping around his ankles and shoving him like a hand between the shoulder blades, making him stagger gleefully into the middle of the road where he throws his head back and laughs brightly, buffeted on all sides by winds and the looming presence of stormclouds crawling across the horizon, blanketing everything in shadow and eerie green.

Perfect. Perfect.

But none of that, none of that at all compares to when he finally rotates on his heel, scrubbing a smear off of his glasses with his sleeve, and sees it.

In the distance, a dip in the cloud bank.

A dusty funnel, curving downward. Rotation, counterclockwise, wispy fingers stretching down towards the hungry earth. Something tightens in his chest, a kind of desperate excitement that bubbles up sharp, hooking claws into his throat and squeezing a breathless, pleased gasp out of him that he can only hope isn’t picked up by his mic.

“What a treat,” he says softly. Every muscle in his body relaxes, the noxious tensions of existence bleeding out of him. Yes. Yes, this is exactly what he wants, what he needs, and no one can take this sublime delight from him, not even Vox. “Ladies and gentlemen, do stay tuned — I believe we’re about to witness a wonderful showing. Come along with me.”

“Come along with me,” Alastor’s voice crackles over the livestream, but for once, Vox isn’t paying attention.

He’s scrambling to adjust his cameras, enraptured by the sight just beyond his windshield: a tornado, stirring in the distance, the first delicate filaments of dust and wind dancing towards the ground. His audio quality is perfect, his film pristine, and fucking nothing can ruin this for him. Alastor is around here somewhere, seeing the same shit, but his fervent descriptions don’t hold a candle to the real thing, the real thing that Vox can record, package, and upsell to every one of the simpering sycophants who pressed that big red subscribe button. There’s truly little in this world that can rival it — having an audience.

But he does still have an image to maintain. He shoots off a quick tweet from their main account, alerting everyone to the sighting and the precise location, before calling Velvette and Valentino.

“You’ll never guess what I’m looking at,” he says smugly, when she picks up.

“It’s just fucking raining here. Dammit, Val, I told you there was something in the west—”

Sounds of scuffling, a yelp, and then Val’s voice fills Vox’s ears, “What are we talking, baby? The real thing, or a downburst?”

“The real thing,” Vox confirms, eyes trained on the spiraling winds. “And getting worse by the second. I might have to pull out of here — I think I’m parked too close.”

“Well, don’t die,” Val says encouragingly.

“I’ll do my best.”

Val and Vel devolve into chatter on the other end, clearly elbowing each other for control over the phone, and Vox hangs up.

He’s aware that there’s no guarantee this tornado will come to fruition; too often, they’ve trudged back to their hotel room exhausted and disappointed after a promising cell fizzled out into nothing, or the whole thing had shuttled into a dust storm instead and left them hacking up a lung for days. But as much as Vox hates to admit it, the excitement in Alastor’s voice is infectious; he sounds like he’s looking at the fucking Second Coming, all reverent praise like the wind and rain are his personal gods, and Vox, cynical as he is, can’t help the quiet thrill in his veins as he carefully turns up the volume, unable to take his eyes off of the budding tornado.

And the rain is picking up now. It drums along his windshield in a harsh, thudding rhythm, forcing him to turn his wipers on. On the livestream, Alastor’s voice struggles against the white noise, dipping in and out of clarity, but his laughter is crystal clear.

“Crazy bastard,” Vox mutters.

He’ll have to edit this footage later, probably scrub his unflattering commentary in exchange for a more pleasant voiceover. It’s one thing for dedicated fans to know that he and Alastor don’t exactly jive, but it’s another thing to upload a video where he’s muttering hatefully to himself like a scorned lover over a man whose face he’s never even seen.

Alright. He needs to get going. The funnel cloud is twisting dangerously now, stirring up vicious whorls of dust and debris where it’s grazing the ground, and Vox recognizes that he only has a few minutes before he’s got a full tornado on his hands.

He leans over to his laptop in the passenger seat and tabs through it until he lands on his radar, watching the screen flicker as new information loads in. Moments later, a vibrant magenta hook lights up the map, spinning towards the west. Perfect. From where he is, that gives him plenty of room to skirt alongside it without actually risking anything — his favorite kind of danger is the kind where he’s never really in jeopardy at all.

Vox starts up the engine, turns his brights on, and presses on the gas.

It isn’t until Alastor reluctantly climbs back into the car, if only to shield his microphone from the deluge of rain, does he register that he may have made a mistake.

“Ah,” he says faintly, eyes on the vortex that blacks out the horizon. It doesn’t appear to be moving to either side, but he knows better. The illusion of a stationary column is just that: any unmoving tornado is a tornado that is barreling directly towards you.

The thrill of fear is addictive in its own right, and it spikes in his veins like the sweetest of stimulants as Alastor throws the car into reverse, skidding over slick mud and gravel, before pulling out onto the dirt road, putting the tornado in his rearview. The wind howls through the cracks in the windows, slivers he’s never sealed because he simply couldn’t be bothered — but now the whistling makes his shoulders hunch as the whole car shudders, struggling in the gale-force winds of the monstrous creature bearing down on him, jaws yawning wide and devouring everything in its path. He quickly fumbles to turn his livestream off. Frankly, his listeners can have everything but his honest fear. That belongs to him.

“Signing off, darlings,” he chirps, before shutting everything down.

Here goes. He slams on the gas and the tires spin furiously, a shrill whine vibrating through the steering wheel under his hands as the winds fight him, trying to pull him backwards. Perhaps all those illegal alterations to the engine and such were not the best idea.

Oh, dear.

A hasty glance over his shoulder makes his throat tighten.

The tornado looms, beautiful and hungry, kicking up great spires of dust and corn stalks and wood slats, likely from the abandoned barns in the area, and Alastor can see pieces of debris getting flung this way and that from the sheer power of the storm, blackening the skies and crushing the landscape underfoot. Lightning pulses in white-hot spears, lancing through the dark. If he lingers here any longer, he’s going to be snapped up in the storm, and part of him craves it so desperately that he finds himself biting his tongue bloody with the force of his restraint. He can’t, he can’t, he’s not done yet, he’s not ready.

Lovely as it would be to give himself over to those wild and callous teeth, to finally surrender — he can’t leave his audience on a cliffhanger.

Finally, finally his car gives a lurching judder and takes off, hurtling down the dirt road as fast as he’s willing to go without diving headfirst into a ditch. Adrenaline pounds through his body. He leans forward and gasps with laughter, rain streaming down his windshield and blotting out his visibility with its thick, hazy sheen, and he thinks he hears the beginning of hail blooming atop his roof too—

“Why not!” he cackles, half-hysterical. “Come on, I can handle it!”

The road curves left, sharper than he’d thought, and he yanks on the steering wheel in a way one is absolutely not supposed to when driving in hazardous conditions. The tires skid wildly, slipping on the dirt of the road which has transformed into claylike mud beneath him, sending him careening into the low, rain-softened shoulder and the cornstalks waiting below, friendly and green.

The nose of the car plunges off the road, and he only has a few seconds to think this is terribly unfortunate before the world flips upside down with a brutal metallic crunch and the crystalline, almost gentle sound of shattering glass.

Vox cruises along slowly, easing off the gas in careful intervals to keep from losing control. He’d split off from the main road some time ago, keeping lockstep with the tornado through a series of interconnected dirt paths that can barely be called roads.

He fucking hates the countryside, really. It’s unfortunate that all the best conditions for severe weather cells are out in the open plains.

He’s keeping an eye through the windshield, but he thinks the worst of it is over. Even the rain is beginning to peter out. This tornado had been short-lived but vicious, hovering pretty firmly in the F2 category before it dissipated back into merely wind and rain, but he’d captured every glorious second of it.

“Well, that was truly remarkable,” he says for the benefit of the footage, and does mean it. Just because he chooses to monetize his hobbies doesn’t mean everything is performative. The vast majority, maybe. Ninety-nine percent. It doesn’t escape him that Alastor’s livestream had ended a little while ago, meaning Vox got the bulk of the content by including the aftermath, so he’s feeling smug and almost effervescent as he turns a corner, smiling to himself. “I’m going to trail behind this cell for a bit, see if anything else turns up, but I think that might be all the action we see today. What a show, right? Almost… uh, almost…”

He slows, attention snagged by something off the side of the road. Oh, fuck.

It’s a car, overturned in a ditch. He winces and hopes it’s abandoned, because he really doesn’t want to have to see a dead body today. Yuck.

Personal revulsion aside, he is suddenly hyper aware of the opportunity he has here. Oh, oh, this is gonna be so good — he readjusts his dashcam, ensuring it’s pointed straight at the tire marks and wrecked vehicle, and says, in his best tone of compassionate worry, “Shit, I think someone crashed over there. Hold on, I’m gonna go check on them.”

He pulls over and parks, then hurries out of the car, grateful that the rain has mostly diminished to a weak sprinkle. It takes some maneuvering to climb down the road shoulder, since everything is a muddy disaster, but he sucks it up for the camera, for the views, because everyone loves a good Samaritan, even if there’s nobody inside or they’re already dead. The gesture is everything. Thoughtful, upstanding, benevolent Vox. Won’t hurt to hammer it home.

“Hello?” he calls, approaching the car hesitantly. Nothing seems to be smoking, but he’s wary of an explosion, even considering how drenched everything is. “Is anyone hurt?”

No answer. Dead, or unconscious?

Vox steps over flattened cornstalks, grimacing. The tornado passed through here, must’ve gone right over the car, and if the person inside is alive, this crash may have saved their life by keeping them low and out of the line of fire. He circles around to the driver’s side and flinches.

Fuck.

Curled up awkwardly in the grass, his legs still in the car, a guy is half-collapsed on his side, panting and cupping one hand over his forehead, where bright blood glistens between his fingers. It looks like he’d tried to pull himself free and then failed to finish the job. Vox winces with nearly genuine sympathy this time when he sees the guy’s disheveled, blinking face, his button-up shirt stained red and glass glinting in his curly hair. Vox blames Valentino for his next thought, which is that this guy rocks the ‘disoriented accident victim’ look with an unfair amount of sexiness.

“Hey,” Vox says, crouching down. What’s the protocol for car crashes again? Make sure their neck isn’t broken? “Can you feel your arms and legs? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

The guy jolts, squinting vaguely up at Vox. When no semantic blinking occurs, Vox sighs and hooks his hands under the guy’s arms, starting to drag him all the way out of the car. He figures that if he’d made it this far, he probably isn’t paralyzed. Brain damage remains to be seen.

The moment they clear the wreckage, the guy abruptly starts to squirm, thrashing weakly in Vox’s grip. Vox holds on harder, trying not to slip in the mud and corn as a grown, concussed man tries to fish-flail his way out of Vox’s generous arms. “Hey, woah, I’m trying to help you—”

“Nnno,” the guy slurs, fumbling to sit up under his own power. “Don’t — I need my microphone, you imbecile—”

And Vox instantly stills.

No.

No way.

He looks down, hands loosening unwittingly, and exhales a harsh, disbelieving laugh, because he would recognize that annoying fucking voice anywhere.

“Alastor?” he says.

The bane of his existence gives one final, ruthless shove, successfully freeing himself, and slides to the ground at Vox’s shell-shocked feet, clutching his head.

“You know, Vox,” Alastor says. He blinks a trickle of blood out of his eyes. Then, despite literally everything, he manages to tip his head back and bare his teeth in a spiteful, dazed grin. “You are even less impressive in person.”

Alastor swings his feet slowly, humming to himself. Doing so makes his headache worse, his skull vibrating with the aimless, slightly confused notes of You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile, but Vox twitches irritably nearby every time he repeats the chorus, so he keeps doing it.

Against Alastor’s wishes, they are in the emergency room at Salina Regional Health Center, presumably to ensure he is not suffering any injuries beyond the concussion relentlessly squeezing his temples. Vox had made it very clear on the drive that he also did not want to be doing this, but that the alternative — Alastor keeling over and dying, that is — would be bad publicity, because it would distract from the Vees’ chase today and therefore be the wrong kind of sensationalism. Or at least that’s all Alastor had been able to extrapolate. His ears have been ringing something fierce and Vox’s voice is just the right timbre to be filtered out completely. Also, the lights are too bright and he lost his glasses in the wreck, so he keeps squinting at amorphous, colorful shapes that may or may not be people. He wouldn’t have even recognized Vox if it wasn’t for his, as previously mentioned, annoyingly distinctive voice.

All this probably doesn’t bode well for the state of Alastor’s brain, but he maintains that there’s nothing a hospital can do for him that a couple tabs of acetaminophen and a shower can’t.

Speaking of Vox. It is beyond strange to be sitting next to the man in real life. Alastor can admit that perhaps he’d developed an itsy bitsy parasocial relationship with the Vees — but then, isn’t it only parasocial if it’s unreciprocated? Vox is even more obsessed with Alastor than the reverse. It’s more like a long-distance relationship, but without the romance, and only bad. Oh, also funny. Extremely funny. Mutually negative in a ‘throwing peanuts at a monkey through a cage’ way.

Just this morning Alastor was gleefully trying to ban Vox on Twitter. Now Vox is forcing him to receive medical attention so that Alastor’s untimely death doesn’t overshadow his social media brand. It’s so absurd it loops right back around into being fine and dandy.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Vox snaps, and Alastor flinches upright from where he’d started to list forward, closing his eyes.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he sneers, pinching the bridge of his nose. His whole body aches. “I didn’t ask for your assistance.”

“I’d be a little bit more grateful if I were you.”

Alastor scoffs. He leans back in his seat, tipping his head gently against the wall, and immediately has to shut his eyes again from the fluorescent glare overhead.

“I said don’t fall asleep,” Vox repeats, knocking his foot against Alastor’s chair leg.

He fights back a swell of indignant fury, as it only makes his head hurt worse. “I’m not sleeping. It’s too bright in here. Also, you can’t keep repeating that because it’s the only thing you remember from tenth grade health class.”

Vox makes a low hmm noise. Alastor wants to throttle him. “No, I think that one is just common sense. You know what else is common sense? Not driving directly into a tornado, and then into a ditch.”

Alastor presses his hands over his face.

“What have I always said, Al? You’re an amateur. You have no idea what you’re doing, and it almost killed you. Call me whatever you want, at least I know when to back the hell off of a chase. You think it makes you interesting and mysterious to fuck around, but it just makes you an idiot.”

They lapse into silence. Alastor kneads his eyes with the heels of his palms, struggling with feeling like the world is tilting and rocking underneath him despite being perfectly motionless, while Vox scrolls through his phone aimlessly. The waiting room is quiet around them, so Alastor doesn’t expect they’ll be waiting any longer than twenty minutes, but having to wait at all is wearing on both of them.

Finally, Alastor gives a wry huff. “It’s poor form to lecture someone with a concussion, you know.” Vox doesn’t respond, but Alastor feels his eye roll anyway. “By the way,” he continues, “what were you even doing out there anyway, hmm? I thought you were accompanying your partners to the north.”

“Figured I could upstage you if I hung around. You know, there’s no such thing as storm chasing podcasts. You’re not a trailblazer, you don’t know how to play the game. It’s video, digital, all in the seeing.”

“It’s a condescension,” Alastor counters. “My streams tap into a creative element that you lack wholesale. I trust my listeners to use their imaginations.”

“I’m a fucking visionary,” Vox snaps.

“You’re a wannabe with no personal or professional integrity.”

“What the fuck do you know about integrity? You have a million sock puppet accounts for the sole purpose of fucking me over.”

Alastor laughs, then winces, a dull throb lancing through his head. “I — ah. Mm. I wouldn’t have to keep making those if you didn’t foam at the mouth every time someone criticized you.”

“I do not—”

“Practically blind with rage!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Dull, blind, and aggressive makes for a euthanized pet, my good pal.”

Vox’s shoes scrape on the tile like he’s about to get up and possibly strangle Alastor for real this time — which, he feels compelled to point out, would only validate his words — but then a nurse calls out, “Alastor Toussaint?” and he’s saved.

Once in the examination room, he honestly loses the lead for a while — sue him, he’s had a very long day. The gist of it is: mild concussion, whiplash, and bruising wherever he’d been banged around in the car like a pinball, but otherwise he’s fine. The bubbly blonde nurse with a hand-embroidered nametag — Charlie, framed with pink heart patches — informs him that whoever pulled him out of the wreck was extremely lucky that he hadn’t had any kind of spinal injury, or else this could’ve been far worse, and he laughs so hard he starts seeing spots. She gives him a cup of sympathy water and sends him on his way.

When he saunters — staggers — back into the waiting room, painkillers in hand, a bandage plastered on his forehead, and an icepack draped over his neck, he’s mildly surprised to find Vox still there.

“I’ve been informed,” he announces, hovering over the other man imperiously, “that staying awake after a concussion is an outdated bit of advice that’s been thoroughly debunked. So what use even are you?”

“I’m guessing you’re fine, then.”

“Nothing rest and time can’t heal.”

“Oh, good,” Vox says, visibly relieved. “I can stop pretending to care. I kind of wish you’d been killed on impact.”

“Yes, excellent, I treasure your honesty. Now walk me to your car, I can’t see a damn thing.”

Back in the car, they learn that they’re both coincidentally staying at the same hotel, so Vox drives straight there. Alastor drifts in the car for a while, leaning against the window. His microphone and other electronic valuables sit nestled between his feet, the only things he’d insisted on retrieving from his car — the only things that mattered. A truce of sorts falls over them for the duration. Alastor suspects that it only lasts into the hotel because he’s too out of it to participate in banter, which is a shame — but he forgets about all of that when he arrives in front of his room on the first floor, reaches into his pockets, and realizes he doesn’t have his keys.

Perhaps a few other things should have mattered.

“Ah,” he says vaguely, blinking at the shiny brass number 4 on the door. He glances sideways at Vox, who’s been texting incessantly since they walked in, and fruitlessly starts turning his pockets inside out to prolong the inevitable.

“Jesus, can you move any slower?” Vox finally demands, looking up from his phone.

Alastor slumps forward and braces his forehead against the door. “Hilariously, I seem to have left my room keys in the car!”

“The car.”

“Yes.”

“The car in the parking lot outside, or the car forty minutes west, upside down in a ditch?”

Alastor closes his eyes. “I think you know.”

Vox makes a tortured sound that, despite the circumstances, brings a smile to Alastor’s face.

“I hate you, you make my life hell, you have no redeeming qualities,” Vox says. The satisfaction of being able to say these things to Alastor’s face is dampened tremendously by the fact that Alastor looks like a crumpled tissue at the moment, wobbling on his feet like a newborn fawn and squinting constantly without his glasses. The worst part is that Alastor is still sexy like this. Vox must’ve committed unspeakable crimes in a previous life to deserve this. “I am only doing this because we need to have a serious conversation, and I don’t want you running off in the morning before that happens. Comprende, asshole?”

Alastor stares at him, smiling vacantly. Vox is convinced he’s hamming up the concussion just to be a dick.

“Fuck my life,” Vox groans, before unlocking his door and pushing his way inside.

Thankfully, only Velvette is in there when he steps through the door, curled up at the headboard of her bed and scrolling through what sounds like Instagram reels. He can hear water running in the bathroom — Valentino, probably showering off the long, humid day. Vel must be waiting her turn. Miracles on miracles.

“I’m back,” Vox says flatly. “And I brought you a friend. Velvette, please say hi to Alastor.”

He’d told both of them about what was going on while Alastor was getting checked out at the ER, so it’s not with surprise so much as deep, profound skepticism that Velvette lifts her gaze, raising one perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

“Hey,” she says, flicking a two-fingered salute their way. “Bringing home strays now, Vox?”

“Trust me, he’s off to the shelter tomorrow morning.”

“You’re all rude and heartless,” Alastor announces. “Everyone will be delighted to know how callous the Vees truly are behind the scenes.”

“Try me, babe,” Velvette says.

“He’s not exposing jack shit,” Vox sighs. “He can’t even see. Velvette, will you be a dear and pull out the couch for him? He’s staying with us tonight.”

“Um, since when? Also, do it yourself.”

“Since now.” Vox stalks over to the couch and starts fumbling with it, kicking off cushions and yanking at random levers until it falls into some semblance of a bed, which he basically drags Alastor over to, dumping him on the springy mattress. Alastor makes a weak noise of complaint, pressing a hand to his head. Vox does not feel bad. “There. Sit right there. Velvette, please at least watch him and try to remember he’s the competition, not a pet.”

Velvette raises her phone, snaps a selfie, lowers it. “Your rival, not mine, V. But fine.”

“Ooh, rival?” Alastor coos, fluttering his lashes.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Vox goes out to the parking lot and back to his car, climbing in the driver’s seat. He takes a moment to suck in a deep breath and blow it out. Calm. Rational. Normal, even. He’s not going to think about the brand new insane hospital bill on his credit card, since Alastor had also left his wallet behind, or the tow fees he’s likely going to have to pay as well, because he has something that’s going to make up for all the bullshit Alastor has put him through, today and retroactively into eternity.

He picks up his dashcam, resettling it closer to him, then pulls up the app on his phone.

The footage plays out in perfect, high-def clarity: the tornado, the aftermath, his descent to Alastor’s car, basically carrying him up to Vox’s passenger seat, and the whole conversation on the way to the hospital, before Vox had remembered to turn it off. Most importantly, it has captured the one thing Alastor has managed to withhold from the internet all these years — a clear, uncorrupted image of his face.

Vox has never understood Alastor’s resistance to being filmed. In all the years that the man has been tormenting him, Vox has only ever heard his snarky voice or read his shitty, typed comments. Alastor is pathologically protective of his face and his personal life, to the point where even Vox’s most concerted efforts to find out anything about him online — for doxxing purposes, of course — have never born fruit. He’s a ghost. In this digital age, that’s a fucking feat. It would be impressive if it didn’t make Vox so incandescent with fury.

But now. Now. Vox finally has something he can hold over that asshole’s head. And he knows exactly what his demands are going to be when he gets upstairs.

He pockets his phone and the dashcam, then climbs back out of the car.

Alastor stares at the gritty popcorn ceiling of the hotel room, vainly ignoring the sounds of Valentino rustling around the room, murmuring to himself. Velvette is showering now, leaving him alone with Vox’s ephemeral lover in the meantime. Their nearness is unsettling; the idiosyncrasies of their lives impinge on his peace, trampling over his mental view of them with the reality of how they are as people, not as images on a screen. He’d had zero desire to be this close to any of them. Having Vox bodily drag him out of the wreckage of his own car was bad enough, but this — Velvette singing to herself in the shower, Valentino’s mild grumbling about misplacing his reading glasses — grates.

It’s fine. One night in this godforsaken hotel room, and he’s free. Frankly, he could leave right now and just sleep in the hotel lobby, concussion be damned, but he’s curious about what Vox has to say. Chances are high that it’ll be completely puerile, but he’ll throw the man a bone. He’s paying Alastor’s hospital bill.

“So, ah… Alastor, right?”

Ugh. Alastor slings an arm over his face, ensuring at least that he won’t have to make eye contact with Vox’s boyfriend. His shoulder throbs with the movement. “Valentino, yes? Pleasure to be meeting you, quite a pleasure.”

Valentino chuckles. “Somehow I doubt that. I heard you wrecked your car today.”

Discomfort pooling in Alastor’s gut, he tries to sound disaffected. “And was that between you and Vox, or has the whole internet heard about it by now?”

“Aw, don’t worry. None of us have posted about it yet, Vox asked us not to.”

Curious. “I see.”

The latch-click of the doorknob, and then Valentino’s voice shifts into a lascivious purr as, presumably, Vox slips back inside.

“Hi, papi,” he murmurs. Fabric rustles. Alastor actively tunes out whatever nonsense those two are engaging in, endeavoring to maintain a perfect indifference to all things which do not pertain to him in this hotel room.

Eventually, Valentino pads away, opening a different door — the bathroom, perhaps. And then it is just Alastor and Vox.

Click. Click. The light seeping in around Alastor’s arm dims, and after a moment, he lowers it, surprised to find that Vox has turned off most of the lamps, leaving the room pleasantly dark. For the first time in hours, Alastor’s eyes stop prickling with pain.

“Considerate of you,” he says warily, tracking Vox’s movements as he crosses the room. He crouches down beside the couch, getting on his knees to be on Alastor’s level.

“That’s me,” Vox agrees. His smile is crooked and insufferable. This close, Alastor can see him clearly, which is as frustrating as it is relieving. Vox’s conventional attractiveness pairs with his shrewd, pale irises for an effect of trustworthiness, an element of clever geniality in his features that nonetheless makes the animal part of Alastor’s brain hesitate with distant tension. He’s warm everywhere but the eyes. “Considerate.”

“Truly, a paragon of virtue.”

“Hey, that’s what they say.”

“Well,” Alastor sniffs, “it’s not what I’ll be saying when I can stand to look at a screen again.”

At this, Vox’s expression shifts. The change comforts Alastor, sets him back on level ground — in the absence of warmth is a callous honesty that holds more allure than Vox’s pretty plastic mask ever will. “Right. I actually wanted to talk to you about that.”

“About my clinical photophobia?”

“About next steps. See, Alastor, I think we can both agree that today was embarrassing for you.”

Alastor smiles, betraying nothing.

Vox tents his fingers, resting them on the edge of the couch so he can lean forward, some flimsy attempt to box Alastor in against the couchback that goes nowhere when Alastor doesn’t move in kind. They remain like that, far too close for comfort.

“Mm-hm,” Vox continues, nodding, as if Alastor had spoken. “Really, none of this looks bad for me. In fact, I’ve been downright magnanimous today, even though it was against my better judgment and my interests to help you. But you know nothing comes for free, right?”

“Do keep in mind the concussion while you babble.”

“I’ll cut to the chase.”

Vox reaches into his pocket and produces — a dashboard camera.

Alastor stiffens.

Vox notices. “So you already know what this means, good. For the sake of clarity: I have almost an hour of raw, clean footage of you, which includes not only your voice, but your face, your license plate, make and model of your car, and a whole host of other things that any half-decent internet sleuth could use to track a person down. I’m holding the nuclear launch codes to your privacy, baby.”

The smile on Alastor’s face must be little more than a snarl by now, but his tone is thin with politesse when he says, “Is that so?”

“Yup. But hey, like you said. I’m a considerate guy. I’m willing to negotiate.”

“Is that so.”

Vox holds up one finger, eyes bright with triumphant malice. “Just one thing, and I won’t post it. I want you to stop storm chasing.” Alastor immediately opens his mouth, but before he can protest, Vox adds quickly, “As an online presence. I don’t give a shit what you do in your free time. But I want you off my forums, I want your fanbase dissolved, I want to see that nifty little ‘account not available’ message if I try to search your handle anywhere. I want you to fuck off. That’s all!”

Alastor forcefully unclenches his jaw enough to speak. “You’re quite confident that I care enough about my image for this threat to work.”

“Maybe it’s a gamble on my part, but we’re going to find out, aren’t we? If you don’t do what I say, I’m going to conveniently forget to blur your face and license like I normally do for strangers. Hey, maybe I’ll even post your hospital bill. That had your full legal name on it, right? Birthday too. How about it, Alastor Toussaint?”

With every word, the horror simmering in Alastor’s bones grows colder. His last name in Vox’s mouth is the worst thing he’s ever heard, the sickly, self-satisfied inflection that curls around the French vowels with no regard for their true pronunciation — and the fucking audacity, to dangle Alastor’s life and carefully-cultivated privacy in front of his nose like waving a treat at a dog, knowing it will roll over and comply for even the barest chance that it’ll be given the thing it wants. His head throbs, pain squeezing his neck when he slowly pushes himself up, just enough to brace his upper body on his elbows so that he has some height on Vox, from this angle.

He has never hated anyone as acutely as he hates Vox in this moment, and Vox clearly sees it in his eyes.

“Your choice,” Vox says easily, withdrawing and rising to his feet. “Tick tock, Alastor. I might get antsy and post it tonight, or… maybe over breakfast in the morning. On me, of course. I’m… considerate, like that.”

“You are repulsive,” Alastor seethes. “A cloying worm of a person.”

“Uh huh. Time’s a wastin’.”

“You can’t — this isn’t—”

“You of all people shouldn’t be surprised; you’ve been calling me manipulative from day one.” Vox spreads his hands and chuckles. “It kind of pissed me off at first, but maybe I do value the blunt feedback. Helps me grow, I think. So? What’s it going to be?”

Alastor grinds his teeth, glaring furiously down at the floor.

There’s nothing for it. Only one response is the correct one.

He imagines wrapping his hands around Vox’s neck until his eyes bulge, and it is only this violent fantasy that gets him through his next words, forced out between labored, mortifying pauses: “I… accept… your offer.”

Vox’s mouth splits into a white, vile smile. “Great! That wasn’t so hard. Pleasure doing business with you, dear.”

Alastor watches Vox walk away, his form blurring into vague blue outlines as he retreats out of Alastor’s immediate view. He rolls over, minding the bandage on his head, and curls up against the couch back, twisting his hands into fists and clenching until his nails bite painfully into his palms, grounding the electric tremble of sheer rage that passes through him. Fuck. Fuck.

There’s not as though he had any other options. Concussed, stranded, and effectively helpless without his glasses, he’s only now realizing that he’s going to be dependent on Vox for however long it takes to sort out this business with his car — a calculation Vox must have already made, damn him. Alastor has no negotiating tools. No leverage. Vox is, categorically, a bigger presence online than he is. It won’t take long for Alastor’s unique impact on their shared audience to disappear entirely, subsumed under Vox’s more polished, more attractive, more utterly fake drivel.

How long before he means nothing to anyone? What’s the purpose of holding his life over the abyss if no one is paying any attention? He is a solitary creature by preference, but he needs the vital flow of eyes and ears on his words and voice, distanced through the audio format but no less powerful for the connection it provides him, the raison d’être that he can find nowhere else.

Maybe he should have become a serial killer. It would’ve been a hell of a lot easier.

Slowly, slowly, he calms himself. In the background, the Vees are settling in for the night, murmuring amongst themselves. Anger and, for some inscrutable reason, betrayal bleed out of him in increments, clearing the fog from his mind and allowing him to think beyond the humiliation Vox inflicted on him.

With this comes clarity — and the simple, ecstatic joy of realizing one is not as helpless as one had believed.

Vox startles awake to Val’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him harshly. He groans, rubbing his eyes miserably; weak sunlight seeps around the edges of the hotel room curtains, dimly illuminating Val’s outraged face, his brown eyes wide in the low light.

“What do you want?” Vox sighs, attempting to pry Val’s hand off of him.

“Your fucking nemesis,” Val spits, “stole my fucking glasses!”

That wakes Vox right the fuck up. He sits up, automatically twisting to see the pull out couch — Alastor is gone. He whirls to the nightstand, somehow already knowing exactly what he’s going to see.

His dashcam is gone.

In its place, a scrap of paper with curling, elegant script sits neatly folded.

Quit? HAH.

You first.

~ R.D.

Throat tight, Vox snags the drawer, yanking it open and rifling through the contents. When he doesn’t come up with his wallet either, he swears, shoving himself to his feet and stumbling towards the door. Hands in his pockets — no phone. Motherfucker pickpocketed him—

Behind him, Velvette begins to stir, her sleepy, questioning tone trailing off as he swings open the door and bolts out into the hallway, barefoot and dazed. He staggers down the stairs, unwilling to wait for the elevators, and darts through the lobby, bursting out into the warm parking lot, dazzled by the morning sunshine that stabs into his eyes. Relief flushes through him when he sees that his car is still parked where he’d left it, but it’s a fleeting consolation. He doesn’t see Alastor anywhere. He has no idea when he left, how long he’s been gone without any of them noticing they were being fucking swindled in their sleep.

Vox fists his hands in his hair and kicks the curb, once, twice, three times, until his foot is throbbing and his eyes are welling up with tears from how hard he’s yanking on his tender scalp.

“Fuck,” he hisses, doubling over. “Fuck. FUCK!”

He’s so fucking stupid. And now he’s losing it like a lunatic in a hotel parking lot, people are staring, if he gets security called on him Velvette is going to split him open from throat to pelvis and he’s going to deserve it because WHAT the FUCK was he thinking?!

When he finally finds the will to drag himself back inside, abruptly becoming aware of the fact that he’s dressed in nothing but boxers and socks, the concierge waves him down before he can go back up to his room.

“Yes?” he grits out, looming over the desk.

“Uh, that guy you came in with last night? He wanted me to give you this.”

The concierge slides a very familiar cellphone across the desk. Vox picks it up like it’s a live rattlesnake.

Dread constricts around him. He powers it on. He doesn’t bother to check whether or not he still has the tornado footage from yesterday. He’s known, on some level since he woke up, that he will never be seeing it again. What he does do is navigate to their main social medias instead, bypass the sign-in screen by logging in anonymously, and look up @VTek_Official.

In innocuous blue text: Account not available.

Vox, very calmly, squeezes his phone until he hears an ugly crunch, palm spiking with the pain of glass shards embedding themselves in his skin. Then he sets his bloodied phone back down on the concierge desk, turns, and walks away, heading back upstairs.

This isn’t over.

Turnabout’s fair play. Vox understands. Oh, he understands completely.

Alastor was never just a thorn in his side.

Alastor is his sworn fucking enemy.

Miles away on a bus somewhere, the fare paid with Vox’s credit card, Alastor adjusts Valentino’s glasses, peering through the heart-shaped rims at the dashcam in his hands. Outside the window, fields of endless wheat undulate in a gentle, rippling blanket, golden and waving beneath the radiating Kansas sun. The sky is perfectly blue and clear. He skips to the middle of the tape, uninterested in the shots of himself or the sections where Vox is just driving. No, rather he pauses on one particular still frame: the tornado, stretching snakelike towards the ground. Their shared tornado.

He presses play, volume turned down low.

Vox, in the video, watches the tornado form for thirty seconds in perfect silence. Then he murmurs to himself, “Wow. Don’t see that every day.”

Alastor pauses, rewinds. Wow. Said softly, almost reverently. Different from his false compassion or his stark cruelty. It’s something raw, something — dare he say it — heartfelt. He hadn’t thought the man capable. Vox may have stolen a glimpse behind Alastor’s curtain yesterday, but so too does Alastor now have an access pass backstage. Equilibrium successfully maintained.

This is far from over. Vox’s escalation had guaranteed that. But Alastor is grinning to himself when he pockets the dashcam for later, warm with the knowledge that for all the ground Vox has gained recently, Alastor has matched him, beat for beat.

And he thinks, with a vivid thrum like heat lightning in his veins: oh, this will be fun.