Eri

The smartly decorated kitchen and living room suffered the same fate as the door; cables thrumming with electricity tore into the furniture sending shards of wood flying everywhere. Scorch marks began to cover the walls; there was nothing elegant about this, no restraint, no strategy, just the pure frantic destruction that spoke of a desperation Vox wasn't spending any effort to hide.

Nothing mattered but finding the source of that signal.

He knew that signal. It was carved into his very soul. He would recognise it anywhere. The Radio Demon was here somewhere and Vox was going to find Alastor even if he had to reduce the bastard's hideaway to rubble. It would serve him right for leaving Vox alone for six fucking years.

Six years of dead air.

Six years of silence.

Six years of absence that had felt more like hell than the entirety of his time down here.

Alastor was going to pay for putting him through this.

Vox snarled and threw one of the dining chairs through the window. It had only been a blip, a millisecond of frequency that would have been so easy to miss, but he'd latched onto it and tracked it here. The silence was back but Vox knew that Alastor was here.

"Come on out Alastor, I know you're there!" He roared, eye pulsing with power as he let loose the reigns on his own signal. The air began to crack and spark under the weight of it, buffeting the structure that strained to contain the enraged TV Overlord.

Nothing.

A suspicious amount of nothing.

Vox narrowed his eyes and forced himself to focus.

The sort of nothing that was hiding something.

Two screens rose up behind him as he started to scan the space more carefully. Where was the spot radiating that nothing? He walked through the cabin, tracing a claw across the wreckage. No TV. No phone. No lights, only candles. Even the kitchen was rudimentary which Vox knew Al would have hated. The man despised modernity but had even he had an exception when it came to food. There may or may not have been a planned line of Voxtek kitchen appliances before Vox had come to his senses and killed it.

No radio.

Unease prickled at the edge of his processor. Wrong, very wrong.

There.

Vox knelt down to flip over the massive rug that covered most of the living room floor, he practically ripped it off the ground in his haste. Plain wooden boards greeted him. Vox began to tear them up, uncaring of splinters or cuts from the broken wood as that sickening sense of nothing grew stronger and stronger.

Claws scraped against metal.

Vox punched straight through it.

Screeching static erupted from the hole making him wince.

PainHurtPainAgonyHungerHungerHungerAngerHUNGERPainRAGE

Vox knew that signal. He bit his lip and shook his screen to focus as the hissing static clung to him with a frenzied madness. Peeling back more metal, a farraday cage he realised with a swoop in his gut. Vox wasn't hurt by the electricity arcing off the broken structure thanks to his own physiology but he could tell the thing was powerful.

How much strength had it taken for Alastor to send out the blip of his signal that Vox had picked up?

He dropped down into the basement.

No light apart from his screen, bathing the cramped space in neon blue.

"Alastor?" Vox called out, looking for any sign of his rival.

Suddenly razor sharp teeth sank into his arm. Vox hissed and reached up a claw to skewer the assailant only to freeze as recognition hit.

Suit reduced to tattered scraps of red fabric. Dirty hair, mattered fur, one ear torn in half. Wide eyes that flickered between radio dials and pupils of unending darkness. Hissing static and white noise skittered along Vox's skin.

Alastor gnawed at Vox's bicep. Feral. Starving.

Vox's earlier rage crystallised into frozen fury. He began to twist around only to pause as Alastor let out a plaintive whine, claws clutching feebly at Vox's arm in a vain attempt to prevent him from movement.

Vox reached out to cup Alastor's chin, pressing him further into the meat of his arm. He rubbed a claw against the bloody skin of Alastor's neck and closed his eyes as he felt the other demon melt against him.

"…ges…sd…V….OX?…!"

"Yeah Al, it's me. Take what you need, I'm not going anywhere," Vox promised, mind beginning to spin with plans and speculations.

Alastor growled in relief and bit down until his teeth met bone. Vox didn't wince, his blood dripped steadily onto the hard stone floor.

Never mind the fact that it had been instinctual to put his body in between her and the magical bomb she'd unknowingly created.

Thick globules of green goop had seeped into his systems. It would take at least 48 hours for it to clear which meant he was stuck with the little side effect that made the whole situation truly unbearable.

Velvette had the idea of a potion that could force people to only tell the truth; market it as a viral trend of spiking your friends drink and having them blurt out their secrets on camera, concerned about a cheating lover? A few drops of this stuff would clear that right up! Or maybe you just wanted to make someone squeal and didn't have the stomach for good old fashioned torture, then this was the juice for you!

Privately, Vox thought they could get away with selling it for a few weeks before the other Overlords put their feet down and demanded they take it off the shelves. No-one wanted their thralls blabbing company secrets after all. But he was nothing if not a supportive partner so he'd waited to see how Vel would work her magic this time.

On the plus side the potion worked. On the negative side Vox was now a huge liability and had confined himself to his personal rooms to prevent himself from accidentally destroying his afterlife's work by being honest.

Twenty-four hours later and his wires still felt sticky. Even worse he was bored and the magic was so potent it extended to written communication as well so he couldn't even respond to emails.

Fucking fantastic.

Vox was about to settle in for another Jaws marathon when a figure stepped out from the dark corner of his lounge. A familiar figure in red.

Vox's blood turned to ice.

Fuck.

Any other time he'd be delirious with glee at the prospect of Alastor coming to him for once but other times he wasn't doused with truth potion and unable to lie. Lying was a key cornerstone of any relationship! Everyone knew that, and there were things about his relationship with the Radio Demon that neither of them ever voiced aloud.

"Vox, my dear fellow I see that you are still alive and not at the bottom of some ravine after being disposed of by your ambitious partners, a pity." Alastor strode across the floor as if he owned it, completely confidant in Vox's tower as if it wasn't the heart of the TV Overlord's power.

Quickly jumping to his feet Vox started to move towards the door as subtly as he could.

"What are you doing here you old prick? Princess sunshine and rainbows finally get sick of your ass and throw you to the curb?" Keep up the dialogue, one foot in front of the other, don't let him see the urge to run.

Alastor chuckled. "As rude as ever I see, and here I thought you missed me."

Seven years.

Seven years of silence, of dead air, of exterminations, and of an absence so vast it felt as though the sun had disappeared from the sky.

"I missed you so much it nearly destroyed me." Vox snapped, angry that Alastor could brush those seven years off as if they were nothing

Red eyes widened in surprise.

Shit.

Vox abruptly decided that pride was overrated and bolted through the door.

Quick as the electricity he wielded a dark tentacle wrapped around his waist and yanked him backwards. With an 'oof' Vox's back collided with the wall and his screen glitched for a few costly seconds.

Talons that poked through charcoal grey fingerless gloves took hold of the sides of his casing. Vox's eyes flickered back to life and he sucked in a breath at the sight of Alastor all but pressed up against him.

Alastor's smile widened at whatever he saw in Vox's expression. Longing. Pain. Regret. Relief. Or a mix of the toxic concoction that was his feelings for the other Demon.