Chapter Text
“….and that stupid bitch couldn’t even bother to get me a martini. Vox? Vox!” Valentino’s sharp, increasingly annoyed voice rose past the fog invading Vox’s head.
Vox stayed silent, facing away from the moth pimp, hoping that if he continued to ignore him Val would eventually get frustrated and leave just as he had been for the past month. Vox found it had been getting harder and harder to care about the woes of Valentino, of every minor inconvenience that had him exploding and shooting and making VoxTek look bad.
Or. Vtech. Whatever.
Violent pain zipped up from the base of his neck to the tips of his antenna.
“Ow!” Vox roared. “What the fuck was that for?” He shot up and faced Val on their bed, noting with some discomfort that Val still had his hand raised in a chopping motion in case he had to get Vox’s attention again by hitting his healing decapitation wound.
“You weren’t listening to me!”
“Well maybe I would if you said things that didn’t make me want to jump off the roof of the fucking tower!”
“Ugh,” Val turned away and stood up from the bed, his tattered wing slapping Vox in the face. “You don’t get to mope all the time. It’s been a month since your stupid plan failed. Get off your ass and do something with your sad life.”
Vox gave him the finger and promptly flopped back down onto the mattress. Val sighed and walked out of the room. His parting words brought painful tears to Vox’s eyes that he was glad Val couldn’t see.
“He couldn’t have been that special.”
____________________________
Vox sat on the couch in their shared living room, mindlessly flipping through channels. An uneaten plate of pizza sat next to him. He landed on 666 news, curious despite himself what shit Val and Katie were spreading about him now. Val and Vel had mentioned they had an interview today, but they refused to tell Vox what it was about. Their slightly guilty expressions made him sick to his stomach and had sent him spiraling. He turned up the volume on the TV.
“So, Mister Valentino,” Katie’s disgustingly desperate voice oozed out of the speakers. God, she was always so desperate for a lay, wasn’t she? “We’ve all heard the rumors. Is it true you and Madame Velvette are gonna be kicking that loser Vox out of Vtech?”
Vox, prepared to zone out to the point of dissociation, shot up from his slump on the couch at a speed that would make the fastest flying angel do a double take.
“What the fuck did that bitch say?”
Valentino’s grin turned sharp and focused. It was a look Vox had seen too many times, a look that had his stomach churning.
“Yeah. He’s, like, not good for business anymore. He just sits on the couch and mopes all day. God, it’s so pathetic.”
“I imagine it is. Tell me, is he still as good in bed as you claimed him to be?”
Valentino spit out a downright malicious laugh. “God no. Are you kidding me? He can barely get it up anymore. The one time he did was because I had slipped Viagra into his goddamn soup.”
Velvette snickered beside him, her black gloves matching her black lipped sneer perfectly.
Katie cackled obnoxiously. “What a deadbeat. I’d feel sorry for anyone who would have to deal with such a sadsack every day.”
“Vox sure has got his wires in a twist, hasn’t he?” Tom Trench interjected.
“Shut the fuck up Tom!” Katie cracked her head towards him and shoved him off his chair without missing a beat.
Valentino, Vox, and Katie laughed and laughed at Vox’s expense. Vox wanted desperately to turn the TV off, something he never thought he’d catch himself desiring. His fingers twitched for the remote, but his arm suddenly felt heavy. His whole body felt like its organs had been ripped out and replaced with lead. He sat staring at the screen, its shape mocking him. Making it look like he himself was putting on an image of the people closest to him giggling like gossiping teenagers.
Half an hour later he heard the elevator ding, signifying that Val and Vel had returned from the news station. Vox yanked himself out of the fog he had been swimming in and scrambled to turn the TV off, trying to make it appear like he hadn’t been gazing forlornly at the screen for the last 30 minutes.
“Hey V! How’ve ya been today?” Velvette’s cheerful voice grated on Vox’s nerves and made his head feel waterlogged. She jumped onto the couch and immediately pulled her phone out to take a selfie with him. Her with her fingers in a peace sign, one eye closed and tongue sticking out. Him with his undereye pixels darkened from depression and lack of sleep, his mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Fine.”
“Oh, come on babe! Don’t give me that. What have you been doing all day while Val and I were out?”
Vox squinted at her. Velvette was being unusually kind to him. Vox had seen this act countless times over the years when she went to break up with whatever girl she had been dating at that time.
“Vel! Where’s my horchata?” Valentino called from the kitchen. The moth hadn’t even bothered to greet Vox when he came in.
Velvette rolled her eyes and held up one finger to Vox. “One second. Val! For the love of all Hell you drank it last night after you killed my new group of models!”
A garbled mutter of Spanish and the clicking of heels entered the living room. Val leaned over the top of the couch, closer to Velvette than Vox. Velvette rolled her eyes and wordlessly opened the fast food app to order Val’s horchata.
Vox watched them, how easy they were interacting without him, and felt queasy again. It had been like this for the past month. Velvette made polite conversation with him, still trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy, although Vox could tell she was only doing it to keep him from holing up in his room all day. She said it made him smell bad. Valentino, on the other hand, hadn’t talked to him since the other night, when Vox was trying not to care about his problems. Val treated Vox as though he were as insignificant as one of his lowest paid whores. Both Valentino and Velvette seemed to be moving on from the Incident just fine. They were moving on with their afterlives, the company looked better than ever, and they were both more well respected than they had ever been with Vox backing them.
They didn’t need him. They never had.
Vox cleared his throat. Velvette glanced up at him from her ever present phone screen. Val raised his eyebrows, looking bored already.
Vox shifted uncomfortably and rubbed his aching neck. He started to speak, but his voice cracked with emotion he was trying and failing to hide, so he tried again. “Are you guys kicking me out?”
Velvette at least had the decency to look guilty. Val just plastered a cruel smirk onto his stupid bald face.
That was all the confirmation he needed. “I’ll pack my bags then.” He started to get up, but a hand stopped him.
“Vox. We love you, we really do. But,” Velvette put a hand on her hip and cocked a knee out, a stance she usually reserved for when she felt the need to pity someone. Or send them running for the hills. “You aren’t exactly helping our reputation. We’re still busy rebranding after the shit you put us through. Val and I have been talking and we agreed that it would be a good idea for all of us if you shacked up somewhere else for a bit.”
Vox just stared at her. “I don’t know where to go.” He protested weakly.
Val walked up next to Velvette. “Where else? That stupid hussy hotel where your boyfriend lives.” His words were pure venom, sending it splattering into Vox’s already shattered heart.
“He’s not my –”
“Shut up, Vox,” Valentino snapped. He shook his head and turned around. “Just, shut up.” He stalked away, leaving Vox with a confusing mix of anger and resignation.
“Vel?”
Velvette’s phone rang. She glanced down. “Shit. I have to go deal with this.” She hurried out of the room, already rapid firing ways to fire and subsequently kill whoever it was that had gotten on her bad side this time.
With nothing else to do, no one else to talk to, and nowhere else he could possibly go, Vox vanished to his room where he would pack the few things he cared about anymore and head over to the Hazbin Hotel.
________________________________
Alastor stared at himself in the mirror, his bare chest reflecting back at him. He ran his finger over the jagged scar appreciatively. It really had healed quite nicely, if a bit more raised and painful than his other scars. Reaching over to his chair he shrugged his shirt on and buttoned it up slowly, from bottom to top, admiring the way the fabric covered up his body slowly. Clothes had always felt like a shield to him. Whenever he was feeling grubby or angry or – God forbid – insecure, he pulled on his best shirts and waistcoats, adjusted his coat with a flourish, and went out to remind Hell of who he was.
Shadow popped up in front of him and straightened his bowtie. Alastor huffed in feigned annoyance. “I can tie my own bowtie, you know, I’m not a child.”
Shadow wriggled his shoulders. “I just thought you should look extra nice today. There’s an important visitor coming to the hotel.” His grin curled at the edges, betraying that he had asked the shadow realm for its secrets once again.
“You fool, I told you to stop looking. Fine. Who is it that I have to engage in boring small talk with?”
Shadow cocked his head. “How should I know?”
“Ugh,” Alastor wrinkled his nose. Shadow enjoyed getting a rise out of his friend, and true to Alastor’s own nature he only did things if it benefited him and his entertainment. Meaning Shadow had gotten answers, but not enough that it would actually be useful to Alastor.
Shadow giggled and disappeared to God knew where. Alastor sighed. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t asked Rosie for an assistant. This one could get quite bothersome.
Alastor’s ears twitched at the familiar sound of the hotel doors opening. He prepared himself for the bone chilling task that was teleporting through the shadows, but stopped when he heard the doors immediately slam shut again. Curious, he summoned shadow again.
“If you would be so kind as to go downstairs and see what is going on, that would be lovely.”
Shadow stared blankly at him. Alastor’s neck cracked 90 degrees, although he knew this never did seem to bother the shadow. “Go downstairs! Or are you simply going to infuriate me all day?”
Shadow waggled his fingers at Alastor, stuck his tongue out, and seeped into the matching shadow on the ground behind Alastor. His real shadow, the same as everyone had. Alastor groaned, miffed that Shadow had apparently decided to hibernate for the rest of the morning.
“Fine. Fuck you too.” Not wanting to engage with the impish shadow and his equally frustrating realm more than he had to, Alastor trudged out of his room and over to the stairs.
He looked down at a scene that immediately promised a headache of epic proportions by the end of the day. Charlie was flapping her limbs and yelling with that voice that always had Alastor wishing he could chop his ears off. Vaggi was trying desperately to console her while simultaneously shaking with a rage that rivaled Alastor’s own. The supposed King of Hell was trying and failing to calm them both. Husk was nowhere to be seen, most likely deciding that whatever buffoonery that was about to go down was a waste of his time. A note from Cherri Bomb on the railing told him she was out trying to find a way to bring Angel Dust back to the hotel. Poor man. Alastor pitied him. Nifty was busy cleaning, the perfect little monster. And the new one, Alastor had never bothered to learn his name, seemed paler than usual, his lure flickering on and off in agitation.
Well, such a scene couldn’t possibly be ignored, now could it? Alastor stepped onto the railing and dropped down, landing with perfect precision onto the hard tile below. Pain shot up his ankles from the impact, and Alastor welcomed it. He cleared his throat.
Charlie’s manic eyes flickered towards him, and began to tremble uncontrollably. “Alastor! Alastor oh fuck this really isn’t the best time for you to be down here do you have paperwork or something to do I think if you do you should go do that or maybe teleport to cannibal town or maybe there’s an overlord meeting right now something anything just maybe don’t. be. Here. Right. Now!”
Alastor cocked his head, amused by Charlie’s uncontrolled speech. “Now, now my dear! Surely whomever is at the door won’t upset me so much that you need to be this worried!” He patted her head like the little dog he took her to be.
“Alastor,” Charlie’s paramour growled. “You really can’t be down here right now. Charlie and I can solve this ourselves, and we really don’t need another Hell – wide fight happening again.” She took Charlie’s shaking hands in hers.
“Yeah, buster! We don’t need you,” Lucifer puffed up his chest and got in the radio demon’s face. Or, chest would be more accurate. The fearsome King really was quite vertically challenged. “So you can crawl back to your creepy swamp room now. Okay? Byeeee.”
Alastor rolled his eyes and shoved the King aside, walking to the door. Charlie and Vaggi froze.
Charlie piped up again. “Alastor, I really don’t think—”
“Come now, dear. I’m sure whatever is bothering you isn’t nearly as bad as you are making it out to be.” With that, he tugged open the doors to the Hotel.
And came face to face with Vox.
Alastor’s ever present grin tightened as a flood of words, expressions, and pain poured into his brain.
A small, frail man hunched over and crackling with raw electricity he didn’t yet know how to control.
An eager grin, complimenting easily and explaining animatedly a new plan he had for their future.
A shocked look of betrayal and sadness, turned quickly into righteous anger.
Ripped sleeves and a manic grin, tears streaking the side of his face. “As long as I wipe that smile off Alastor’s fucking face, I don’t care what happens.”
A split second later Alastor was back in the present. His smile choked itself into a grimace, and he stared at the TV in mock interest. “Vox! To what do we owe this displeasure?” He said, mimicking the pathetic demon before him.
Vox blinked and stayed silent, long enough that Alastor began to think Vox’s processers hadn’t been properly reconnected with the rest of his body. Then finally, the TV spoke.
“Val and Vel kicked me out. Let me in.”
A bubble of laughter rose up in Alastor’s chest. Something else followed close behind it, but he chose to cut it off and shove it down. “Ha! Let you in? Are you serious, picture box? Wow, I knew you were pathetic but requesting room and board at your enemy’s establishment? And to think you couldn’t sink any lower, you do!” Alastor held his sharp ribs and cackled. When he was laughed out enough to take a breath he looked at Vox again and was irritated to note that nothing about his expression had changed. He didn’t look angry, didn’t look sad. He just looked tired.
“Are you gonna let me in or not?”
Alastor stepped aside and allowed Vox to walk into the lobby. The few other sinners that were there gawked at the man, then hurriedly ran to their respective rooms, not wishing to be a part of the fiasco for fear of getting killed.
Vox shuffled inside, glancing at Charlie and wincing. The princess didn’t look mad, despite how Alastor knew she felt on the inside. The foolish girl was far too caring for her own good. Vaggi held her hand in a firm grip but she shook it off and walked slowly, carefully towards the demon as if he were a wild animal she was worried about spooking.
“Valentino and Velvette kicked you out of V tower?”
Vox’s eyes glazed over. He nodded.
“And you can’t go anywhere else?”
Vox shifted from foot to foot, then drew himself up as though preparing for a fight. “This is the only place I could think of that would let me in.”
“Hold on,” Vaggi stomped over to Vox. “How do you know we would even think about letting you in after all the shit you pulled last month? The hotel’s reputation almost flatlined! Hundereds of people died! Why would we let you of all people stay at the hotel?”
“Vaniqua’s right. How do we know this isn’t some desperate little ploy to make Charlie look bad again?” Lucifer seethed, his eyes flashing deep red and his horns branching from his scalp.
“Hold on,” Charlie interrupted. “Vox has been really horrible to us, yes. But his friends kicked him out!”
Vox perked up a little. “Thank you princess—”
“How would it look if we denied Vox a place at our hotel? Anyone can twist that and then our reputation will tank again!”
Vox deflated. Alastor smirked.
Vaggi frowned deeply, nodding. “As much as I hate it, you’re right Charlie. If it got out that we denied Vox a place to stay, that we didn’t help him, sinners might think we aren’t as serious about helping others as we say we are.”
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Come on, Vaneeba! You can’t seriously be thinking this is a good idea, can you? This guy locked me in a weird ass box and tried to take over Heaven! He’s proof that some sinners can’t be trusted and they don’t deserve to get redeemed,” He put his hand on Charlie’s arm. “Sorry sweetie, I just think this isn't a battle worth fighting."
Alastor looked over to the corner where nifty and the fish fellow were. Nifty was vibrating with her broom, clearly ready to hit anyone and everyone at a moment’s notice. The scientist was slowly inching towards the door that led to his underground laboratory, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. He strode over to the princess and her bodyguards, itching to share his unsolicited opinion.
“I for one think it is a fantastic idea to let poor Vox stay at our hotel!”
Vaggi blanched. “But you were just laughing at him two minutes ago!”
“Now, now dear, don’t be so closed minded. A man has the right to change his mind, doesn’t he?” He looked at the TV demon, a mean glint in his eyes. “I’m sure this sad, pathetic creature wants someone to tell him he’s done a good job at being Hell’s weakest sinner.”
Vox continued to stare at him with that unwavering expression of tiredness. Alastor’s ears twitched backwards a bit. Why wasn’t he reacting to his taunts?
Charlie looked hopeful. She grinned at Alastor, who stared back unblinking. “See? Even Alastor thinks it’s a good idea! So it’s settled. Vox, welcome to the Hazbin Hotel!"
Vaggi summoned her spear and shoved in Vox’s face. “I still think this isn’t the best idea. Someone should be guarding Vox at all times to make sure he doesn’t do anything to hurt Charlie or the hotel.”
Alastor nodded sagely. “Excellent idea darling! We can’t have such a dangerous person, dare I say a terrorist, running amok, now can we?”
“Vaggi’s right,” Charlie agreed. “Vox, you need to be under 24/7 surveillance until I know I can trust you. So, you have to be guarded. Alastor?”
“Hmm?”
“I am putting you in charge of Vox until he has proven he is here for the right reasons.”
Lucifer stifled a laugh.
Alastor’s eye twitched. “Pardon?”
Charlie barreled on. “You and Vox seem to know each other well! I think this will be for the best!”
Vaggi held her head in her hands. “Honey, Alastor and Vox have been at each other’s throats for decades. Don’t you think it would be a bad idea to put them together all the time?”
“Um. I don’t know. The only other person I think would be capable enough to do this would be you or dad. I’m not putting either of you in that type of danger. So it has to be Alastor.”
Alastor grit his teeth. “Lovely to know you think so highly of me,” Charlie began to protest, but Alastor stopped in her tracks. “But I suppose I can understand wanting to keep your dear ones safe while still maintaining the reputation of being the most welcoming place in the Pentagram. So for you, Princess Morningstar, I will guard Vox.”
Relief washed over Charlie’s face. “Amazing! Okay, Vox, what do you like to eat? We usually have a buffet but someone got to it a little early today so we have to whip you up something fresh. We have yogurt, eggs, berries, toast, cereal…” Charlie walked in the direction of the kitchen, prattling on about the many dishes breakfast provides, her father and lover trailing after her. She had yet to realize that Vox was not following. Alastor rolled his eyes internally. Such a flighty, self absorbed girl.
He glanced over at Vox, who still remained tired and blank, if a little more alarmed than when he first arrived.
Alastor was reaching the end of his rope. His patience with Vox had always been thin, and he had applauded himself for his restraint the entire duration of his capture. But this new, passive, depressed version of Vox was not something he cared to witness. He raised his staff and bashed Vox on the head.
“Ow!” Vox yelped, then rubbed his hand over the plastic casing of his screen. “What the hell, Alastor?”
Alastor reached his hand out and grabbed onto the side of Vox’s screen. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, picture box, but it won’t work. You cannot possibly think you can get anywhere now. You were never at my level, and you never will be. So I suggest you leave now and stop trying.”
Vox gripped Alastor’s wrist tightly and shoved it away. “I’m not planning anything. I said why I’m here, and that’s the truth.”
For a long moment, Alastor didn’t say anything. Then he chuckled darkly.
“Oh Vincent, when have you ever told the truth?”