Chapter Text
It started with a boom.
Or, more accurately, ended in one.
The last thing Alastor remembered was a bright light.
A Holy Light. A cleansing light. A light that felt like molten lava being injected into his veins, burning him inside and out.
It was explosive.
A last hurrah that left Hell tearing itself open in a shrieking crescendo of circuitry and flame with Vox standing at the center of it.
His antennae bent, screen cracked, suit ripped, grin unhinged, and eyes wet.
His voice rang in Alastor's ears.
“As long as I wipe that smile off of Alastor's fucking face,” Vox had spat through smoke and static, a tear falling from his eye, “I don't care what happens.
Alastor remembered glaring back at that gaze. That gaze that held so much hate that the deer couldn't ever hope to even match.
Yet despite that hateful gaze Alastor could see through those cracks. He always could when it came to this pathetic box. It wasn't a glare telling him to die, it was a glare telling- begging him to look, to watch, to see.
The longer Alastor held that gaze and observed, the more he noticed the way the hatred in those eyes weakened. Faltering enough for something raw to slip through.
Here, Alastor may have understood something a little too late.
This- this whole scheme, this whole plan. It wasn’t just about Hell. It wasn't just about heaven.
It was about Alastor.
And perhaps… that was what was most damning of all.
He could almost remember…
Vincent.
Oh Vincent.
A man Alastor could almost respect. A charming fellow, who was foolish enough to be earnest in hell.
A man with a past of manipulation, of killing for power.
How was Alastor to take that pitch if not for what it implied?
Alastor didn't need help. He didn't need a partner. And he certainly wasn't dumb enough to believe that friendship business wasn't a ploy to manipulate and betray him when Vincent saw fit.
For most of his life, Alastor had treated those assumptions as undeniable fact.
But face to face with what Vincent has become. With who Vox used to be. Alastor found himself…
Regretting.
The deer wonders, probably for the first time, had he not let pride guide his actions.
Had he listened and seen the words for how pathetically genuine they are.
Had he accepted.
Would things have been different?
Alastor closed his eyes, not to brace for impact, not even an act of acceptance of death. No, as the Might Lilith charged up to its fullest power, Alastor, the most powerful sinner, the feared Radio Demon, closed his eyes like a coward.
Because Vox's face crumpled in that last moment, and Alastor couldn't stomach the sight.
'Perhaps… I've treated you too harshly. I'm… sorry, old pal.’
—
No, no, no!
This- he wasn't-
Why was he still alive!?
Fuck! Dammit!
No no- Please!
He was supposed to die with them so why-!?
—
The air was wrong.
Not wrong as if to say there was poison in the air or there was a fire nearby.
But wrong in the way that it lacked any wrongness at all.
There was no sulfur. No smoke. No screaming feedback loop of dying broadcasts.
Just dust and the scent of old wood.
Alastor’s eyes snapped open.
He was… sitting. Sitting in a chair he used to know too well. A chair he hadn't had the time to sit in for a while.
The leather of it cracked in familiar places beneath his fingers. The smell of aged paper, polished brass, and ink wrapped around him like a ghost of comfort that he never thought he'd miss.
What…? Where..?
Slowly, almost hesitantly, Alastor lifted his head and felt himself freeze. Radio feedback screeching through the air before abruptly being cut off.
This… was his old studio.
The first one.
It was nostalgic being in here again, why, Alastor almost forgot what the place felt like.
It was a cramped room with faded burgundy wallpaper and gold trim that he’d once insisted made the place “tasteful.” The heavy velvet curtains. The tall standing microphone gleaming beneath the yellow glow of a ceiling lamp.
It was all here. His studio, one that Vox destroyed during one of their first kerfuffles. The reason he cemented Vox as someone he disliked.
The question is… how? How was it all here and not rubble leftover from decades ago?
Alastor stood.
His hands were steady out of habit, but something unsettled pulsed beneath his ribs. He moved toward the mirror mounted beside the equipment.
The reflection staring back at him was younger.
Sharper.
No fine fractures along his smile. No faint exhaustion hiding behind charm. His old striped suit adorned his person.
It was as if staring into a time machine.
A deranged almost hysterical smile forms on Alastor's face.
Holy fuck.
Was he in the past? How was this even possible? Did heaven interfere-? How did this happen?
Alastor drags a hand down his face, letting out an almost shaky breath. His smile strains.
Then it falters as the memory of Vox's face -tear-streaked and blazing- forcing itself to the forefront of his mind.
The takeover, the words, the suicide bombing, the explosion.
At that moment, Vox hadn't wanted victory.
He'd wanted acknowledgement.
From him.
The realization twisted something in the deer's cold dead heart, causing Alastor to inhale, slow and deliberate in an attempt to cage the unpleasant sensation rising in his chest.
Regret was an undignified emotion. Sloppy. Weak. Entirely unbecoming of a demon such as himself.
And yet.
Now, when not faced with death and the epiphany he is forced to now apparently live with?
Alastor couldn't help but think back on every sneer, every public dismissal, every insult. Of every time he’d reduced Vincent’s excitement to something childish, every time he didn't take the picture box seriously, mocked him, laughed at him, made him feel smaller.
Couldn't help but think of how at some point it stopped being Vincent who Alastor hurled these things at and became Vox.
Alastor had a hand in that. In twisting Vincent into somebody unrecognizable.
The deer always thought Vincent tried too hard in those early years. Too eager. Too bright. Too loud in a way that felt almost… hopeful.
And Alastor had found that irritating.
And even worse.
Threatening.
Now he's back here in the past, and that Vincent still exists. And he… was regretting.
Alastor paced once across the room, tailcoat swaying behind him, ear twitching.
“This is absurd,” he murmurs to himself, voice low, frayed at the edges. “I do not regret.”
But the image of the explosion, of Vox's trembling smile collapsing into something pained as the world vanished, would not leave him.
Then… The old-fashioned brass of the telephone that sat atop the wooden desk near the window began ringing.
It was sharp.
Jarring.
Alastor froze.
He knew that ring. After all, only a few knew his number.
He had memorized it once upon a time, when it had first started happening. When it had been frequent. When he had still answered with something almost resembling… anticipation.
The ringing echoed louder in the quiet studio.
As if mocking him, as if begging him to answer.
And Alastor wasn't one to leave a… pal left unanswered, so he stepped toward it slowly, as though approaching a trap.
His hand hovered above the receiver.
Alastor swallowed.
The telephone rang.
He lifted the receiver.
“Alastor..?”
The voice on the other end wasn’t filtered.
It wasn’t layered with distortion or arrogance.
It was clear.
A little breathless.
And hesitant.
Alastor’s fingers tightened imperceptibly around the receiver.
Vincent’s voice had once carried an easy excitement, a theatrical sharpness that grew over time into something biting. But this-
This was softer, almost scared. Worried.
It can't be…
“Vincent..?” Alastor said back carefully, heart thumping dangerously in his chest.
“Hey, I'm so glad you picked up. Listen, I'm really sorry for whatever I said or did the last time we hung out. Whatever I implied, I didn't mean it! Tell me what I did wrong- I swear I won't do it again- I didn't mean to upset you- Please stop avoiding me, please don't be upset with me-” Vincent said, or rambled more accurately.
And this, this whole spiel is when the reality truly set in for Alastor.
That he's in the past, listening to Vincent apologize for something that didn't even bother Alastor in the first place.
No no, the deer back then only acted like that to get a reaction out of Vincent. Because it was funny. Entertaining.
Alastor said nothing for a moment.
He was listening.
Not to the words.
To the absence.
No venom.
No performative swagger.
Just… a fumbling mess of words full of worry..
Alastor’s smile faltered briefly.
He remembered this version. The one who could read Alastor too easily. Or at least, believed he could. The one who had admired Alastor without armor.
“It's… quite alright pal,” Alastor replied at last.
His voice came out quieter than intended.
There was a pause on the line.
Vincent noticed. Alastor finds he always did.
“…You okay?”
The question was careful. Genuine.
Alastor’s first instinct was to deflect. To turn it into a joke. To needle Vincent until he laughed or got upset enough to forget he’d asked something so vulnerable.
Instead, a reckless thought stalled Alastor.
The deer could end it here. He could follow the same script. Push the tv away. Dismiss him. Begin the slow corrosion all over again.
Vincent filled the silence nervously. “If this is about the thing that time, I swear I wasn’t trying to be an ass. I just thought of the concept of combining- you know- the formats- Of the- your radio audio with visuals was cool! But if you hate it, that’s fine. I just-”
His voice cracked faintly on the last word.
Alastor closed his eyes.
“You weren't being, as you put it, an ass.” Alastor said suddenly, cutting Vincent off.
Silence.
On the other end, the tv demon could be audibly heard to have stopped breathing.
“…What?” the voice on the other line said weakly.
Alastor’s jaw tightened. Emotion clawed unpleasantly at his composure.
“I said,” he repeated, more firmly, “you weren't being an ass.”
Another pause.
Vincent let out a quiet, confused laugh. “That’s… new.”
Yes.
It was.
Alastor stared at the studio around him. The untouched equipment, the unwritten future.
He felt strange.
Lighter.
And terrified.
If this was real. If this was truly before everything shattered. Then every word from here onward mattered.
Vincent spoke again, softer now. “Alastor… Did something happen?”
Alastor exhaled slowly.
“No,” he said.
Then, after a beat-
“…Not yet.”
Vincent most likely didn’t understand the weight of that answer. How could he? He was still bright. Still whole. Probably looking at Alastor like he hung the stars instead of trying to outshine them.
“…Well,” Vincent said, attempting levity but failing to mask the concern beneath it, “I was wondering if you wanted to meet up again, if you're not busy.”
Alastor’s fingers trembled almost imperceptibly. Because in the future, he would mock that eagerness. Call it needy. Laugh at how desperate Vincent was for approval.
In the future, he would turn that hopeful tone into something sharp, cruel.
In the future, Vincent would stand in the center of a dying Hell and burn it all down just to prove he mattered.
Alastor swallowed.
“You may come by,” he said.
There was a small intake of breath on the other end.
“T-to your place?” Vincent asked, bewildered, honored
And Alastor realizes what a heavy thing this invitation must seem to Vincent. And it was.
Alastor never showed Vincent his workshop. The only time the television even stepped foot in here was when he threw Alastor through its walls. Destroying not only Alastor's beloved studio, but also what very little trust he had left for Vox.
A shaky exhale could be heard through the other side of the line. Relieved, taking the invitation as forgiveness.
“Really?” Vincent asked, sounding almost disbelieving.
“Yes.”
Another pause.
“…Okay,” Vincent murmured. “I’ll be there in… an hour?”
“Hmm…” Alastor hums an affirmative.
A moment of silence passes.
Vince clears his throat, “O-okay, um, bye!”
Then, the line clicked dead.
Alastor remained still, the receiver pressed to his ear long after the dial tone began its low hum.
Ten O’ clock.
One hour before he saw that face again. Not twisted by resentment, not hardened by betrayal, not flat in its newest tv head model.
Just Vincent.
Young. Insecure. Trying.
Alastor set the receiver back in place with deliberate care before he looked at himself in the mirror once more.
“You will not ruin this,” he murmured, voice tight.
The “not again” was left unsaid, as beneath that resolve lurked fear he’d never admit.
Because if Alastor changed too much… Would Vincent even become strong enough to survive on his own?
Would altering the past create something worse?
Or was the worst already what he had allowed?
For the first time in decades, Alastor felt something dangerously close to vulnerability. Because he realizes the true horror of his situation.
He wanted to deserve that belief.
And despite himself, he just had no idea how.
Alastor busies himself with exploring the station, reminiscing, getting used to it again. It'd be a bad look if the deer acted out of place in his own home after all.
He also cleaned up a little, getting everything neat and in order. He remembered Vincent was quite the impulsive grabber when something piques his interest.
The deer was putting away some papers when he caught a glimpse of it. Equipment that didn't quite match the theme nor the coloring of the whole station yet was subtle enough that one wouldn't look twice at it.
It was sleek and a dark almost black blue. A desk mic, a newer model for this time and certainly not cheap.
This… Alastor forgot about this. It was a gift, a gift that Alastor remembered refusing multiple times until Vincent wore him down enough to have no choice but accept it. After this came Vincent's seemingly endless gift giving affection, thankfully, most gifts were more jokes and held less sentimental value.
The fact that this mic and some of those small little trinkets were kept around his home, even when Vincent never stepped foot in it…
Alastor subtly jolted as a knock came, three quick raps, uneven in rhythm, as if the person on the other side had debated knocking at all and then committed at the last second.
Has it really been an hour already?
Alastor stood still for a breath too long.
He had faced down overlords. Torn through cities. Smiled while the world cracked around him.
And yet his hand hesitated on turning a simple brass doorknob.
He takes a breath and steadies himself before finally turning it.
The door creaked open and there Vincent stood.
Not Vox.
Not the towering, sleek, sharp-edged monstrosity bathed in blinding cyan and red nonsense with an arrogance that Alastor had watched burn the world down.
This was an older model, in more ways than one.
A CRT box television for a head, slightly rounded at the corners, the glass screen faintly curved. A thin antenna extended upward, one bent just a little off-center as if it had been repaired more than once. The screen flickered with soft blue light and a whisper of static, not aggressive, just present, like nervous energy.
The casing wasn’t polished chrome. It was a matte, almost powdery brown with small scuffs along the edges.
It made him look younger, smaller, and unguarded.
Alastor felt like he was looking at the photo, the one he kept despite everything, despite Vox.
The lower quality of Vincent’s screen was jarring, it wasn't what Alastor got used to. And those eyes, he forgot how wide and doe like they used to be.
Glancing down, in Vincent's hands seems to be… blueprints?
Blueprints written on actual paper instead of the screens and holograms Vox exclusively used. Granted that type of technology would only be discovered far into the future but still.
Said blueprints were rolled and slightly crumpled at the edges from being gripped too tightly from nerves.
When Vincent saw him fully, the static on the screen cleared in a soft burst.
“Alastor!” he said, the name coming out warm and immediate.
There it was.
That brightness.
It struck Alastor harder than any explosion.
For a moment he could not speak.
He had grown accustomed to Vox’s face being sharp with calculation, mouth curled in mocking superiority, eyes constantly measuring the room for advantage. Even when Vox smiled in the future, it was edged with something defensive, something that dared you to challenge it.
This…
This was simply happiness. Happiness at just seeing Alastor.
Vincent stepped forward half a pace, almost like he was moving in for a hug. Alastor stepped back, ears lowered, before he even realized he had moved. Vincent’s shoulders pulled in slightly, lowering his arms, backing away, and laughing awkwardly.
Alastor raises a brow, at the suddenness of the attempt. Making Vincent squirm in place and offer an apologetic smile.
“Ahah- um, sorry,” he said quickly, tone shifting, adjusting his tie.
“I wasn’t sure if you were actually serious on the phone. If this is a bad time, I can come back. I just- I got something I've been working on and I know the suggestion upset you last time, I thought maybe you’d still want to see it.”
The screen flickered with a brief nervous distortion.
Alastor took in the way Vincent seemed to curl in on himself under his gaze.
That action, he recognized it.
He had put it there.
Not entirely, not yet, but he could see the beginnings of it. The tiny hesitation before enthusiasm. The bracing for dismissal.
Alastor’s fingers curled tighter against the doorknob.
It seems he had not gone as far back as he thought.
If Alastor were to wager a guess, this must be around the time he had started noticing his own softness. The time when he’d begun deliberately sharpening his words, fearing how easily Vincent’s admiration slipped under his skin.
He remembered it clearly now.
The first time he’d caught himself smiling too genuinely at one of Vincent’s rambling.
The first time he'd felt... fond.
And how quickly he'd crushed it.
Because fondness became attachment. Attachment became dependence. And dependence became a weakness...
Just look at what it did to Vox.
But if Alastor wanted to avoid that explosion of a future, he needs to let go of that mindset lest he falls back on old habits and ruin his chances.
The door was still open.
Vincent was still waiting.
Alastor straightens himself and finally steps aside.
“Do come in,” he said smoothly, betraying his nerves.
Vincent’s posture relaxes immediately. Relief flickered across his screen in a ripple of lighter blue.
“Yeah? Great!” he said, too fast. Then, softer as if realizing how excited he sounded, “I mean um, thanks.”
He stepped inside carefully, as if entering sacred ground. And to Vincent, it must've been. Alastor has always been against letting the tv even suggest going to each others’ homes. A safety thing.
Alastor closes the door behind him and watches the ridiculous fool flutter about, looking around and barely suppressing the urge to touch everything.
Vincent looked a little out of place in the studio, too modern even in this older casing. Too bright against the warm, analog glow of vacuum tubes and polished brass. And yet, in this era, he didn’t clash the way Vox eventually would.
He fit. Just like the mic.
“So, uh. I know you’re big on audio purity,” Vincent began, words tumbling over each other as he unfurls the blueprints onto Alastor’s work desk.
“And I’d never mess with that, obviously, but I’ve been experimenting with cross-frequency layering, like, imagine if your broadcast didn’t just go through radios but could sync to visual receivers too. Not the cheap stuff, I mean actual synchronized programming. Live.”
His screen lit up brighter as he spoke. Static sharpened slightly with excitement as it always does when it came to the thought of innovation.
“You wouldn’t have to change your format,” he rushed on, glancing up at Alastor quickly before looking back down at the blueprints. “It’d still be you. I just… I think we could expand it.”
We.
Alastor stared at the paper but barely saw it. He barely stopped himself from wincing at the word.
He never liked that word, even then.
Even before Vincent became Vox.
"We" implied equality. It implied trust. It implied needing someone.
And all of those when pertaining to Alastor are false.
In the future, that word would become loaded, weaponized, twisted into contracts and ultimatums. And basing off the partnership Vincent forms in the future, entirely a lie.
But in this specific part of time, it was… hopeful.
Innocent.
Definitely naive.
Alastor offers the younger to sit on the seat, which Vincent, after some trepidation, does. His body tense, fingers -clawed, slightly trembling- smoothing over the corners of the blueprint.
It was a strategic move, the deer figured that the “height difference” would help him keep his cool, to keep from just… throwing Vox- Vincent.
Keep him from throwing Vincent out.
“I know you probably think visuals are gimmicky,” the picture box continued with a self-conscious laugh. “And you’re not wrong, most of it is. But it doesn’t have to be. It could enhance what you already do. Your voice, your presence, people wouldn’t just hear you. They’d see the terrifying Radio Demon, the strongest in hell!”
The strongest. Funny to hear that from the man who would take that title.
Alastor’s gaze lifted from the blueprints slowly to Vincent’s screen.
The eyes looking back at him were open. Expectant. Slightly anxious.
Waiting.
Alastor knows how he would’ve acted then in this moment. He would’ve tilted his head. Smiled in that thin, cutting way. Make a comment about “parlor tricks” and “needing a screen to compensate for lack of substance.”
He would’ve watched Vincent’s screen dim by a fraction. Feel a deep satisfaction at regaining emotional distance. Because back then he believed it was necessary.
Alastor felt something twist sharply in his chest. Again. The stupid blasted thing.
Vincent shifted under the silence.
“If it’s stupid, just say so,” he muttered, voice lowering. “I just thought maybe-”
“It… Well, it's not entirely idiotic.”
The words left Alastor before he could analyze them.
Vincent froze. The faint buzzing static on his screen clearing a bit.
“…It’s not?” he asked carefully.
Alastor forced himself to not look away. How awfully pathetic of Vincent, to be so affected by something that hardly counts as praise.
“It’s certainly ambitious!” he said, looking away, his smile a little strained, “Perhaps even innovative! Very on brand.”
Vincent’s eyes widened a fraction. Alastor itched to claw that face away, to stop that look.
“And you,” Alastor continued, feeling each syllable scrape against years of habit, “are very… good… at doing that.”
There was a long pause.
The kind that stretched thin and fragile.
Vincent’s screen shifted from a cautious blue to something warmer before laughing.
It was humiliating and Alastor had to remind himself that this specific brand of laughter wasn’t mockery. Not when Vincent directed it at him.
“That sounded painful to get out, even to me,” Vincent said quietly, a small teasing grin forming on his screen before looking back down on the blueprints. “But it also doesn’t sound like you hate it…”
Hate.
God.
Alastor inhaled slowly.
“I do not,” he replied.
It felt like stepping onto unstable ground.
Vincent stared at him. Searching.
Alastor could see the doubt there, the question of whether this was a trap. Whether the praise would flip into mockery in the next breath.
That doubt hadn’t existed at the very beginning.
But it was here now.
A hairline fracture.
And Alastor is reminded of what came next in the old timeline.
Not yet the proposal. Not yet the desperate offer to formalize their partnership that he would eventually laugh at, brutally and publicly.
But this was close to when Vincent started trying harder.
Trying too hard.
Trying to prove he was worth keeping around.
Alastor’s throat felt tight.
“You’ve improved your schematics,” he added, forcing his attention to the blueprints. “Your circuitry layout is cleaner than what you last babbled about.”
Vincent’s antenna twitched upward.
“You noticed?” He asked, eyes bright, giddy at the prospect.
That Vincent was way better at showing his vision through visuals than words? Of course Alastor had.
He always had.
It used to be his favorite way of getting Vincent nervous, twisting those words, making Vincent sound worse than he is. For a conman, Vincent always stumbled when it came to him.
“Yes.” Alastor said instead of any of his actual thoughts.
Vincent’s posture shifted, uncurling slightly. The insecurity didn’t vanish, but it loosened.
“I, uh,” Vincent began, then hesitated. “I know I get ahead of myself sometimes, and I know you don’t like feeling… crowded.”
Annoying.
Annoying how Vincent knew this and yet Vox seemed to have forgotten.
Alastor’s jaw tightened faintly.
“I just don’t want to slow you down,” Vincent added. “You’re… you’re kind of unstoppable, Al- Alastor. I don’t want to be dead weight.”
Dead weight.
The phrase hit like a physical blow.
In the future, Vox would become anything but dead weight. He would become a rival. A threat. A force.
But right now? Vincent was adjusting himself around him, willing to change just for a fraction of Alastor’s approval or attention. Afraid of being left behind, a reasonable fear knowing how Alastor was around this time.
The deer stepped closer without thinking.
Close enough that Vincent had to tilt his screen slightly upward to maintain eye contact.
“You are not,” Alastor said firmly.
The static flickered.
Vincent went still again.
“Well, heh, you used to imply it,” he says jokingly.
Alastor’s smile twitched.
“Well, one can’t be deadweight when they aren't in a team that requires your input to begin with, hm?” Alastor tacked on, twirling his staff before resting his weight on it, his smile almost mocking.
It would be quite suspicious if Alastor was too kind after all. He needed to… ease Vincent and himself into a new dynamic. He can't handle acting so… soft, not right now, he can’t. It sickened him.
Vincent shifted awkwardly under the prolonged eye contact.
“Are… you okay?” he asks, looking up at Alastor worriedly.
The deer's ears lower, antlers growing, his smile tightening as glitched radio feedback screeches through the air making Vincent flinch and immediately backpedal.
“N-not that I'm implying you're not! I just- you're acting a little weird- WHICH you definitely can don't let me stop you-” he babbles, hands waving all over the place.
Alastor calmed down, reverting back to normal and noise quieting, eyes narrowed.
“Indeed, see to it that you don't.” He says, smiling sharp.
Vincent nodded fast, an apology going past his lips in a squeak.
Alastor takes a breath, how pathetic of him really, getting worked up over such simple words. It wasn't like the picture box said anything triggering.
Vincent stared intently at the floor, fidgeting with his fingers. Quite literally buzzing with nervous awkward energy. Alastor didn't even have to peek into the other's frequencies.
“Now, you said you wished to share your ideas?” he said, almost like an olive branch.
The tv demon perks up, taking it as forgiveness and eager to share.
“Right! Since um, you obviously don’t want to have visuals for your radio,” Vincent said, voice softer now, “You don’t have to. I can just keep refining it on my own. I just… I like building things that might impress you- AND push hell to a new era of entertainment!”
Alastor looked away.
Somehow, meeting Lucifer had been easier than responding to that sentence.
Vincent had no sarcasm.
No ego.
Just the vulnerable truth.
Alastor debated with himself for a second before reaching out.
He didn’t touch Vincent, he wasn’t sure either of them would know how to handle that, but his hand waved to the blueprint instead.
“Hm, it seems you’ve succeeded! At least this time,” the deer says haughtily, checking his nails.
Vincent’s screen glitched.
It was brief, barely noticeable.
As if processing something unexpected.
“…I did?” he asked, pupils growing as he scanned Alastor's face.
Alastor's smile almost looks like a sneer as he looks away, “Yes.” He says with great difficulty, eye twitching.
The word settled between them.
Solid and real.
For the first time since Alastor opened the door, Vincent didn’t look like he was walking on eggshells or bracing for impact.
He looked amused and… hopeful.
And that hope was more terrifying than the apocalypse Alastor had lived through.
Because this, this fragile version of Vincent, could still be shaped. Could still be spared. And if Alastor wasn't careful, even ruined.
Alastor felt the weight of it settle onto his shoulders. Almost as heavy as the chain around his neck.
Vincent gathered a little courage, straightening more fully now, smile less nervous and more opportunity searching.
“Sooo… you’ll at least look over the specs with me?” he asked, almost cheekily. “Tell me what you’d tweak? You know, in the very unlikely chance that you'd consider using it?”
Alastor met his gaze.
In the old timeline, he would’ve made this acquaintanceship corrode. Where his sarcasm became a habit. Where Vincent began chasing validation harder and harder as Alastor played with it and used it.
He had an opportunity now.
A small one.
But real.
Alastor sighs, properly looking at Vincent now, “Yes.”
Vincent’s entire screen brightened. The static smoothed into a steady, excited hum.
“Okay,” he said, voice warmer than before, breathless. “Okay, great!”
As they leaned over the blueprints together, shoulders almost touching, Alastor felt something he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in decades.
Not dominance. Not superiority. Not rivalry. But something he's only ever felt for the women he associates with. Something akin to… fondness.
It was fragile.
Uncertain.
But it was there.
And for the first time since waking in this timeline, Alastor allowed himself an almost desperate thought.
‘Maybe Vincent didn’t have to become Vox.’