#usershady

The one taking notes taps away at her screen for a moment before she answers, “In the elevator with Mister Valentino. He’ll be here in just a moment, Mister Vox.”

“Fuck do those two have to talk about?”

A quick system check finds them in the main elevator, Val crowding over Baxter with an unsettlingly large grin, while the doctor seems far more interested in the screen of his tablet than whatever Valentino’s trying to convince him of. He doesn’t bother to tune into the audio now- they’ll be in the lab any second, and he can always rewatch the security footage later if he feels the need. The Voxtek servers store everything for 48 hours by default. Longer if he saves it himself.

Val is still talking when the elevator doors whoosh open. “-if you know what I mean. You have his measurements, right?”

Vox clears his throat.

“Because I actually drew a mock-up this morning,” Val continues, not even glancing at Vox. Baxter, for his part, climbs straight onto the table to flick open the maintenance panel on the back of Vox’s head. “Do you do texts? Or is it still fax city down here, or something.”

“What the hell are you doing down here?” Vox asks.

One of the techs uses a handheld baster to blow air into his ports, clearing out the dust with remarkable patience considering how hard Vox jumps at every blow of air. Usually Val would have a salacious comment on hand. Now, he swoons around the table to shove his sketchbook on top of Baxter’s tablet, like his stupid sketches are more important than Vox operating at peak condition.

“It can’t be that hard,” whines Val.

“It’s not,” Baxter answers, his first words since entering the room. As he speaks, his thin fingers fish into Vox’s head for the data cable. “I’ve made much more difficult prosthetics than that.”

The surge of electricity from his tablet forces a glitch across Vox’s face and he finally loses his patience. “Hi, hello, I’m right here!”

“And I’m in the middle of a conversation,” Val snipes back. “As I was saying-”

“Can’t this wait?”

“No. It’s urgent. I had an idea for Baxter, and since you never take my ideas into account-”

“What ideas, Val?” Vox sneers, leaning forward enough to pull on the cord connecting him to Baxter. “You only think with your dick, and let me tell you, it’s not a good look.”

For once, Val doesn’t have a quip or complaint back; instead, he rolls his eyes and snatches his sketchbook back. He has to be starved for attention to bother coming all the way down here, but Vox truly doesn’t have time to coddle him right now: he has that scheduled for quarter after midnight, after they’ve both wrapped filming for the day.

“Goodbye,” Vox says pointedly.

Then Val leans against one of the computer consoles and extends his cigarette holder like he expects Vox to light it for him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Vox summons a cable to knock it out of Val’s hand. “You can’t smoke in here. This is- do you-” his screen flashes pink and blue, “I- I’m getting maintenanced right now. Knock it off.”

“I was using that,” Val bites, making to retrieve his cigarette.

Before Vox can get more wires to restrain Valentino with, Baxter drops his tablet with a jittering curse. Routine maintenance usually doesn't set off his system this badly, but the added strain of Valentino tap dancing on his last nerve seems to be enough to have the techs stepping back nervously.

“We’re on a schedule, here,” he reminds them.

Baxter hums. “Then it might be time for your injection.”

As if he wasn’t enough of a nuisance already, Val perks up at the mention of drugs, swanning over to the observation table with bright eyes like he’s about to watch the show of a lifetime. Vox just ignores him. Eventually, he’ll get bored.

A couple of the techs help Vox out of his blazer, another tugs off his bowtie, and a fourth makes quick work of his button down. They usually give him PainKiller through his forearm, which he could just roll his sleeves up for, but it’s more efficient to go the whole nine yards when Baxter has to take a look at his gills anyway. This routine is so well-practiced, so familiar, that Vox doesn’t so much as twitch when the tourniquet wraps around his bicep. He expects the gloved fingers tapping his vein to bring it forward. Even the needle is ingrained in his memory, the gauge perfectly to push through the layers of semi-silicate skin and the dual coated plumbing that makes up his vascular system: too narrow and it bends or snaps in his arm, too wide and it takes a cookie-cutter chunk out of him.

“One and a half in,” Baxter verbalizes for the scribe.

The drug works nearly immediately, washing over Vox like a wave of calm. He slumps forward slightly as the needle withdraws, but the techs hold his arm steady to prevent injury before lowering him back onto the table with learned precision. A hand stays under the back of his screen to keep it off the hard metal. His data cable is positioned to keep it from kinking. Both his legs are lifted onto the table so he can lay comfortably.

When Baxter hands off the tablet to assess Vox’s gills, the gentle touch registers as little more than an annoyance. “How much more smoke than usual?” he asks, lifting the muscle slightly on each to check for obvious discoloration. “And have you felt any symptoms, or is this precautionary?”

“Nothing notable,” Vox slurs out. The dose is always higher when the maintenance is invasive like this. “I think.”

“No, not on the right. Everything looks healthy.”

Baxter pats his ribs almost affectionately before moving to his other side to repeat the process. Just over his shoulder, Val squints through his glasses as if he’s actually paying attention. Vox doubts he’ll retain anything if he is, but it’s still somewhat of a novelty to have him down here in the bowels of the R&D department, in the most secure lab Voxtek has. This room isn’t on any schematics besides Vox’s internal processors.

“Does my smoke actually fuck with him?” Val asks. “He doesn’t even get high.”

Vox’s speakers fuzz with static before he gets his words out. “Sure, pretend I can’t fucking hear you. Real mature.”

“In high concentrations,” answers Baxter, evidently not concerned with including Vox in the conversation either. He remains gentle with Vox’s gills though, only tugging at them enough to tickle as he peers into each one. “They’re more sensitive than his lungs, or yours for that matter. Usually they regenerate on their own, but too much at once can irritate them.” He smooths his cold palm across Vox’s stomach after his exam. “Everything seems to be in working order today, however.”

Baxter retrieves his tablet to study the diagnostic report without Val’s incessant distractions. Based on his own internal surveys, Vox knows there’s nothing of note beyond the usual bugs, which are easily solved by the quick hands of his hardware team at these weekly meetings. It should be a simple all-clear so he can get back to work.

“But you’re not processing out the PainKiller yet,” Baxter says thoughtfully. “There’s nothing special about the dose, but…” he looks between Vox’s face and his screen. “Hmm. Run his blood, see what’s wrong with it. Did you take anything new this week, Mister Vox?”

Val scoffs Vox’s arm is tourniqueted again, this time for a blood draw. “He’s been all over that little deer bitch. Maybe the radio waves are fucking him up.”

“Pretty sure I’d know by now if that was the case,” Vox mumbles.

“Interference causes other problems,” Baxter says dismissively, unconcerned with what Val might do with such information. He stills for a moment when his tablet chirps with the delivery of Vox’s test results. “Simple exhaustion. You’ve been overworking yourself and you need a break.”

Vox groans. “Who has the time?”

“You do, unless you’re aiming for a system crash.”

He instinctively digs his claws into the table in frustration, but the PainKiller weakens him to the point that they merely scratch across the metal with an ear-splitting screech. “Just reverse it, or whatever. I have meetings to go to, I can’t- can’t-” his screen sharply cuts into technicolor as his voice catches and stutters.

“My point in case,” sniffs Baxter. “If it would make you feel better, we can use the downtime to calibrate some of your newer attachments. You missed your last three appointments to test upgrades.”

“Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?”

Baxter shakes his head, his dangling light swinging with the movement. “Not necessarily. There’s a difference between active and passive engagement. All you would have to do is lie there, Mister Vox, and answer a few diagnostic questions if you’re up to it. We take care of the rest.” He turns to the techs. “Prepare another half-dose on standby to be safe.”

“Does he have to be here?” Vox asks, gesturing sloppily towards Val’s silhouette.

Val’s smile nearly splits his face in two. “Uh, you owe me- or did you forget?”

“For what, exactly?”

When he leans down, Valentino obscures the rest of the room to such a degree that Vox automatically adds the overhead security cameras to his visual feed. He always dwarfs Vox standing eye to eye, but something about this position makes him seem especially large, as if he could swallow Vox whole without blinking if he wanted to.

“Letting you drive me and Velvette up the fucking wall with your obsessions,” he coos sweetly, bringing a hand up to caress Vox’s screen. “The doctor said a little down time will be good for you, no?”

Baxter disappears down a connected hallway to visit the parts room for whatever new attachment he wants to calibrate. It’ll be one of the several the lab has tested on the proxy mannequin lately, if Vox had to guess- all somewhat modeled after different sinner species in Hell, none of them similar to his standard dick that came pre-connected with his first body.

“Besides, shouldn’t I get to christen all your new parts, Voxxy?”

“They’re not finished yet,” Vox argues, but he knows he won’t change Val’s mind at this point. With the drugs in his system, he can’t exactly make him leave or restrain him out of the way, either. “So be careful. And listen to Baxter.”

“Yeah, yeah-”

“And! No fucking smoking.”

Val rolls his eyes as he stands up. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, I’m not gonna ruin your stupid lab.”

The moment Baxter reenters the room with a Voxtek branded box under his arm, the techs spring back into motion to pull Vox’s slacks off his body. It stopped registering as awkward at the same time as them removing his shirts, leaving only Val’s hum of appreciation to neg their clinical touch into a familiarity that makes Vox’s dick stir with interest.

“Mister Vox,” Baxter prompts.

“I thought you wanted me to relax,” Vox bitches, struggling to prop himself up on his elbows. “Now I’m changing out parts?”

Two of the techs grab his arms to lower him back down. “Not at all, sir. I merely meant for you to activate standby mode while I switch your attachments, for my safety and yours.”

Vox flicks through his programs for the temporary standby. Lowering his power to ten percent capacity is an annoyance, and often leaves him completely immobile until he restores power, but does lower his risk of short-circuiting himself while his attachments are changed out. In combination with the PainKiller, Vox barely feels the invasive procedure.

“Make it quick,” he advises before changing modes.

Through the security cameras, he watches Val crowd over Baxter’s shoulder to observe the process. Vox usually comes down to have his attachments switched over properly–he has no interest in damaging anything by changing out the parts on his own–which makes this new enough to draw Val’s attention as Baxter disconnects Vox’s usual dick.

“There, and there,” Baxter mutters to himself as he carefully separates each cable from its port, “nice and slow.” Slightly louder, he adds, “You’re doing perfect, sir. We’re halfway done.”

“I don’t think he can hear you like this,” Val says.

Baxter glances back at Val before opening the box. “Of course he can. If not through his physical form, then via the security system.”

That gets Val to narrow his eyes at the darker corners of the lab. His eyesight isn’t good enough to actually catch the lenses, but he knows Vox well enough to hazard guesses at where the crispest cameras will be, and Vox can’t help switching feeds to follow his search. Confusion has always been a good look on Valentino, irritating as it can be. And, honestly, Vox would rather have him caught up in the logistics of surveillance than get involved with such a delicate operation as this.

Even with his senses dulled, Vox still grimaces behind his dull screen at the spark of the new attachment connecting. They always tingle at first as they interface with his system. Coding can only go so far before Vox actually connects to a new piece of hardware, but decades of perfectionism have trained his internal software to get with the program quickly. Within a matter of seconds, he can feel Baxter’s hands ensuring everything has connected, down to the smooth seams at either side of his groin. Like always, it’s a perfect fit. But the sensations are… off. Warmer, he thinks, and more compact.

“Alright, go ahead, Mister Vox.”

Vox restores his body to full power and sits up slightly to look, his complaint about the mismatched feeling dying in his throat. “Where’s my fucking cock?” he hisses instead, tugging away from the techs to cover himself instinctively. His mind goes straight to exposed circuits, the potential for damage if Val sets his sights on fucking pure machinery not designed for such roughhousing. It would mean days of Vox being inoperable for major repairs.

But the second his hands land on his crotch, he pauses. The skin is smooth and warmed to Vox’s preferred core temperature, but not completely flat as he had assumed at first glance; instead, the silicon parts open with his spread legs, revealing a narrow pussy that glows teal on its inner lips.

“What the fuck?” he says, the phrase echoing back to him through the overhead speakers. “Hey, Baxter, what the FUCK is this?”

“It’s cute,” Valentino interrupts.

Vox’s neck cracks with how quickly he whips his head around to glare at Val. He ignores how it makes his vision darken at the corners. “Don’t care, didn’t ask. This isn’t- we didn’t agree on this shit. Get it off me, now.”

“We did discuss it though,” Baxter retorts, tablet held in front of the lower half of his face. “You asked for a more compact attachment that wouldn’t interfere in your battle with Heaven. This won’t interfere.”

Vox’s antenna crackle with static. “I never said to make me a fucking girl!”

Before Baxter can begin to come up with a lame excuse, Val grabs Vox by both shoulders and slams him back onto the table. Vox grapples with him for a moment but still weakened by PainKiller, he only succeeds in scratching Val’s arms- minor injuries that will heal by dinnertime. Worse, Val likes that sort of shit.

“Wanna try that again, babe?” spits Val. Red saliva spills down his chin from the exertion of the fight to drip from his jaw onto Vox’s bare chest. “I think I misheard you.”

He’s like a dog with a bone, but Vox still tries to diffuse the situation since he can’t squirm out of Val’s grip, entreating, “You know I didn’t mean it like that-”

“Then what did you mean? Huh?”

Val’s lower set of hands catch Vox’s thighs to hold them open at a much wider angle than is strictly comfortable. He pushes back against it, but it’s no use, and he knows as much. This is exactly why Vox tries to keep Val away from the lab.

“You still have a dick, Val, it’s different,” he tries. “Now get out of the way so Baxter can take this piece of shit off me.”

“No! You fucking owe me!” Val carries on.

Vox runs a quick cost-benefit analysis. Supposing he could muster up someone else to distract Val, it would be a temporary solution, and exacerbate Val’s frustration with him at an already delicate time in Vox’s plans. This would be efficient, at least: he gives his body the rest Baxter recommended, Val gets over himself, and if he’s lucky Vox still makes his next meeting.

He lets his head fall back against a tech’s hand and sighs. “Fine. You can help Baxter calibrate it, but I’m never wearing it again.”

And just like that, Val leans back with a smug grin. “Yay! Okay, what first? Can I eat you out?”

“Wait,” Baxter instructs. His passive permission makes him bold enough to return to Vox’s side and plug his tablet back in to read the output. “And I’d like to give you another half-dose to ensure you don’t damage yourself during calibration.”

“Might as well, right?” Vox knows Baxter will talk him into it no matter what. But, as a tech draws up a syringe, he grabs Baxter by the lure to drag their faces together. “Keep Val in check,” he warns, “got it?”

“Obviously,” the doctor wheezes.

When Vox releases him, Baxter takes a second to collect himself, straightening his coat and inhaling slowly, before he takes the needle from the tech. He doesn't bother asking Val to move for access to Vox's inner arm. Like it's second nature, Baxter works around him, using Val's restraint to find the vein high on Vox's inner thigh instead

It's not enough to knock Vox out in good health, but he does go slack in Val's hands, head lolling to the side. None of the techs correct the angle, and Vox can't be bothered, so he makes the camera in Baxter's tablet his primary visual feed- it isn't perfect, but he can at least see himself and Val close up this way.

“Is he like, good?” Val asks hesitantly.

Vox's speakers sputter when he tries to speak, leaving Baxter to cut in on his behalf. “He's fine. Lightly sedated, as a safety measure, but just as sensitive to positive stimuli.” He strokes Vox's ribs to demonstrate how his gills flare in response. “He can hear, see, and feel- but he'll stay where you put him. Right, Mister Vox?”

Immediately, Val's smug smile is back. They've fucked while Vox was knocked out a couple times--that footage is triple password protected and quadruple encrypted--but he's never let Val near him in the lab before. Vox doesn't do this for the fun of it like him. Abruptly, he wonders if he's in over his head giving Val access. While Baxter has permission to tranq him if he gets unruly, but that predicates on him doing so before Val shreds him.

“You can touch him now,” Baxter allows, “but be careful. It has to be warmed up or you'll break it.”

“I'm always careful,” Val purrs, because the bastard knows Vox can't call him a liar right now.

He releases Vox's arms to slink down his body, trailing his tongue from the base of Vox's throat to the joint of his hip. It doesn't absorb into his skin like it would for other sinners. No, it'll dry there, staining him pink until he scrubs himself raw in the shower. Val strokes his stomach with silk gloved hands, teasing as he studies Vox's new cunt like it's the most fascinating thing he's ever seen.

“Pretty,” Val muses. He drags a finger through Vox's slit to gather some kind of faintly glowing fluid. It's thinner, clearer, than Vox's cum, and when Val wraps his tongue around his finger to taste, he cocks his head to the side. “Mmm, sweeter than usual.”

Baxter jots this down.

“This is actually really good work.”

Val leans his cheek against Vox's thigh as he explores with just his hand first, mapping every inch of Vox's labia as if to bring it all to his attention. It takes nearly a full minute before he lightly brushes over Vox's clit, which is infinitely more sensitive than any of his dicks have ever been. If he weren't put down with the PainKiller, Vox would be a mess of static electricity too intense for even Val to put up with. He tries to tell Baxter that the sensitivity is too high, but still can't construct the sentence around Val's slow ministrations. Each time he thinks he might have a couple words strung together, Val makes another slow circle over his clit that resets his thought process.

He ought to expect Val to stray lower, but it still surprises him enough for his face to glitch when Val dips two fingers into his hole. “You're soaked,” Val observes in a low purr. “So wet for me, amor, and I've barely touched you.”

Vox tries and fails to tell him to shut up.

“You’re so soft inside, like silk,” he carries on without a care. He moves so much slower now than he’s ever bothered to before, whether it was while fucking Vox’s ass or ruining some no-name sinner he wanted to get on contract; he only gives Vox a couple inches at a time before withdrawing. “And tight, Vox, damn.” On each inward push, he curls his fingers upward. He's not deep enough for it to do anything. But this is still better than Val getting too carried away and fucking Vox up– his enthusiasm is a frequent cause for repairs. “This thing was made to be fucked, right?” He asks without looking away from Vox's cunt. “I'm gonna do it no matter what, but like, it’s not gonna make him extra pissy?”

Baxter places a bold hand on Val’s arm to push him deeper, making Vox’s breath stutter and screen flicker. “The receptacle was designed at a base depth of six inches, but can be stretched to nine with the right stimulation. And I modeled it to relax and self-lubricate based on pleasure, like the real thing.” He guides one of Val’s other hands to splay over Vox’s lower stomach and presses Val’s thumb into Vox’s clit once more. “He’s most sensitive here.”

“Motherfuckers,” Vox glitches.

Neither of them acknowledge it.

Val simply continues his leisurely exploration, stroking Vox’s clit in time with each lazy thrust as though they have the entire evening to waste. It’s maddeningly not enough, while simultaneously fraying his train of thought with its intensity. Perhaps this is what Love Potion, Val’s poison, feels like to those actually susceptible.

When Val sneaks a third finger alongside the other two, Vox’s whole body arches off the table by a couple inches before slamming back down, but he doesn’t produce a single defensive spark. He isn’t sure he would want to, anyhow, but it’s often automatic when his system gets overwhelmed like this. And he knows Val’s hands intimately enough to know his fingers, however long, are reedy enough to be negligible. To genuinely feel the stretch of a third doesn’t bode well for what’s coming next.

“Shh, shh, relax, baby,” Val hums, petting Vox’s thigh. “I’m being nice, hmm? It can’t hurt that bad.”

Baxter turns his tablet screen toward Val, who wouldn’t know what to make of the data on it if his life depended on it. “He’s not feeling any pain, Mister Valentino.”

“What a shame,” Val says, long and sweet, the way he speaks when he doesn’t believe a word off his own tongue. “Still so sensitive though, aren’t you? Like a virgin again.” He spreads his fingers slightly and Vox slams his head back into one of the tech’s hands, crunching bone under the back of his screen. “And I can have it tuned up between uses so it’s like this every time.”

Val’s getting confident now, speeding up to a steady rhythm that’s just fast enough to keep Vox from catching his breath. Every exhale leaves him empty before he can draw in fresh oxygen, and every inhale gets punched out of him by Val’s knuckles forcing their way through his entrance.

Even with the knowledge that this is as gentle as it gets for Valentino, Vox still struggles as much as his drugged limbs will allow when Val’s dedicated exploration has him pressing into a spot that makes Vox see stars. Some of the techs not keeping watch over his head rush to help Valentino hold him down flat against the table. Off to the side, Baxter types in more notes.

“If you intend on penetrative intercourse, you should add another finger,” Baxter advises without looking up from his tablet. “The attachment is forgiving, but you heard Mister Vox- we don’t want to damage it on first use, if we can help it.”

That’s all the warning Vox gets before Valentino manages to cram another finger into Vox, stretching him enough for a warning to flick across a screen despite it only registering as pressure-pleasure instead of pain. A low static whine bounces between Vox’s speakers and the ones overhead until Baxter leans in to dismiss the pop-up.

“Careful,” he reminds Val, returning to his side to help. “A bit more stimulation to the clitoris should help him relax.”

Val responds by lolling his long, cherry red tongue out of his mouth to take over for his hand on Vox’s clit. It’s as dexterous as his fingers, but twice as ruthless in its relentless slick glide. His tongue is magical enough for a blow job. Like this- like this, Vox can’t begin to think. It’s all sensation, warm and wet and full and held and floating somewhere just beyond his body. Watching. Feeling.

With Val occupied, Baxter fills the silence as he always does. “See, Mister Vox, a little relaxation is good for you.” His miniscule palm presses into Vox’s hip close enough to nearly touch Val’s antenna. “You’re closing down auxiliary processes- optimizing. Think of how efficiently you’ll run after this.”

A tech wipes his screen for him, clearing oily tears Vox thought his screen too hazy to produce. Vox doesn’t doubt he’ll run better after his cache clears, but not because he trusts Baxter; he doesn’t have the capacity to question anything right now. His system is trapped in a feedback loop between Val’s insistent touch and his body’s refusal to do anything besides occasionally shiver in response.

“Be good for Mister Valentino, sir. It’ll be much easier to take him if you cum on his hand first.”

Encouraged by Baxter, Val redoubles his efforts, massaging Vox’s clit with his dextrous tongue and fucking him on his fingers like he’s testing just how hard he can go before he’s called off the delicate machinery. For once, Vox doesn’t feel like he’ll physically crack into pieces from Val’s attention. Mentally is another question, though he can’t summon the wherewithal to be concerned about it.

Baxter presses down on Vox’s lower stomach and his vision frantically darts between cameras, trying to find an angle that he can make sense of when his mind is spinning, desperate for something solid to cling to, needing any-fucking-thing to anchor him as his world narrows to Val’s touch. His heart jackhammers inside his chest like a warning before three of the overhead lights burst from uncontrolled energy.

“Alright, alright,” Baxter says quickly, nudging Val’s head with a confidence that would get anyone else killed. “Give it a minute. We don’t want to cause a crash.”

Val pulls back with a low growl that Vox feels in his bones. He still can’t catch his breath. Every point of contact between them is on fire. The warmth of Val’s hands on his thighs could be a brand and Vox wouldn’t have it in him to care.

“Can you hear me, Mister Vox?”

He isn’t sure if he nods, but his face brightens back to visibility.

“How does it feel?”

Vox flicks through his auto-responses for a reasonable option, comes up with nothing, and runs through his whole wordbank in search of an answer that would make sense. Eventually he happens upon “Sensitive,” and forces it through his fritzing speakers.

“Sensitive,” Baxter repeats slowly as he types notes into his tablet. “I can reduce the input before its next use.”

“Right now?” asks Val.

For a moment, Baxter seems to consider it. Then he says, “Well, no; it wouldn’t make sense to remove the attachment mid-calibration. I’ll do it after you’ve finished.”

Val’s touch slips away as he stands up properly, letting his wings fall off his body. He’s always beautiful, but especially here: the harsh industrial lights, even spotty as Vox has accidentally made them, leave no part of him in shadow. His body is completely illuminated, regardless of which camera Vox watches him through, to the point that the fine mesh of his lingerie is little more than a color filter over his hand and cock. Vox can’t be sure when Val started touching himself. He can only guess based on the shiny precum smeared across Val’s abs and wrist.

“So, you test all his dicks like this?” Val asks. His prehensile cock writhes in his hold, the tip occasionally slipping between his fingers as he talks. “I’m hurt that I haven’t been invited.”

“It’s a clinical medical procedure,” Baxter replies matter-of-factly.

Pink drool spills across Val’s cheek when he tilts his head. “Doesn’t seem like it.”

He makes slow, casual steps around the table, studying Vox from each new angle. Without him in the way, the security cameras show the pool of juices accumulating under him. His blue mixes with Val’s pink to make a soft lavender not far from the shade of Valentino’s fur. Already, Vox is a wreck, and he knows both Baxter and Val are unstoppable forces. They’ll keep him here until they decide he’s finished.

“How are you doing now, Mister Vox?” Baxter asks, patting the side of his head to get his attention. “You’ve been handling the calibration very well; we’re making excellent progress.”

Vox turns his screen slightly into Baxter’s hand. “Wasn’t that good enough?”

“It was an excellent start,” he says with practiced calm. He allows Val to turn Vox’s head away again, but stays nearby with a point of contact between them. “However, it is my understanding that Mister Valentino also makes frequent use of your attachments, and we have to ensure he won’t break it. Right, sir?”

It’s a good point. If Val breaks Vox’s pussy, or breaks Vox, he’s already down in the lab for repairs. “Yeah. Just…”

“Are you ready to finish calibrating?”

Val returns to his position at the foot of the table and grabs Vox’s calves to drag him down until his legs hang over the edge. “This is a longer break than he usually gets,” Val croons, shimmying his panties down his hips as the techs crawl onto the table to continue supporting Vox’s head and arms, “and I’ll be gentle.”

His dick seeks out Vox’s pussy automatically, always searching for a warm hole to bury itself in. Logically, Vox has always known it’s big–Val fucks him too often not to–but it looks more imposing than usual squirming up Vox’s thigh. When it bumps against his clit his whole body shudders. Val steadies himself with a hand so it happens again, and again, like pressing on a live wire that runs through Vox’s entire body until he can’t tell up from down. Then, once Vox is little more than a jittering, whimpering mess, he finally guides his tip down.

“Deep breath, amorcito,” Val teases, like he did the first time Vox let him top. And, just like Vox did all those years ago, he listens, suffering through a long, jerky inhale until Val’s dick presses into him. Vox thinks it’s slightly wider than four fingers but can’t be sure. No matter what, it’s stuffing him too full to think. “God, how are you still so tight?” Technically, Val is moving slowly, but he doesn’t pause to let Vox adjust, instead pressing forward relentlessly while his cock undulates inside of Vox. On the overhead camera feed, Vox swears he can see it bulging his belly with every upward sweep. “I can’t wait to destroy you next time,” sighs Val between rumbling purrs under his breath. “Fucking perfect. Should’ve gotten you one of these years ago.”

“Val,” Vox moans, equal parts complaint and prayer.

Over the decades, Val has often said it feels like Vox was made for him and vice versa. Their bodies fit together perfectly. Their personalities match even better. As soon as Vox takes over heaven, he’ll be able to spoil Valentino and Velvette like they deserve. But for now, down here, he suddenly understands what it means to feel made for Val. With each slow inch Val pushes into him, he fills Vox like the perfect missing piece of a puzzle.

“That’s right, babe, say my name,” Val encourages. His wings flutter at Vox’s next full-body twitch. “You’re mine.”

Vox nods dumbly. “Val, fuck-”

He’s interrupted by Val reaching the end of his pussy, the tip rubbing up against the sensitive cluster of nerve endings concentrated there. Baxter thought of everything. A fleeting instant of gratitude flutters through Vox’s consciousness before it melts into the wave of sensations. He hasn’t taken all of Val, but the rest of him grinds against Vox’s clit and labia in a way that tears apart any hope Vox had left of coherent thought.

“Could be deeper,” Val informs Baxter casually. “You don’t have my measurements?”

Baxter shakes his head as he takes the note down. “We were guessing- I can lengthen the receptacle for you on the next model.”

A couple of the techs wrestle Vox's fists open to put protective padding between his claws and his palms. Its texture is soft like the ruff around Val's wings, as perfectly imitated as the skin on Vox's upgrades, and his screen hurriedly scrolls through his memories of Val's fluff as he compares the two. He could almost imagine he's holding Val if it weren't for the hands keeping him pinned down and exposed for calibration.

“No warnings,” Baxter muses. “You seem to have prepared the attachment well, Mister Valentino.”

Val chitters, stroking Vox's legs and abdomen while his cock squirms inside of him. “Voxxy's just easy like that.”

He pulls back just enough to push back into Vox harder, the tip of his flexible dick curling around itself so he can fit more inside, uncaring of how Vox's body surges back against the table to escape it. Between Val's four arms and the techs, he doesn't get far.

“He's sobering up,” Val says.

“I can tell.” Baxter tilts his stupid little screen toward Valentino again. “Heart rate and respiration are up, but he's still not feeling any pain. I don't see reason to be concerned. But you're the expert on Mister Vox's responses, so I suppose if you think he needs another dose…”

Val cuts Baxter off with a nasty grin. “You don't need more, do you?” he asks Vox, then immediately answers for him with, “You're man enough to take me without it.”

His next thrust is deeper, stretches Vox even wider, activating more sensitive nerves in a complicated interface Vox would have never designed on his own. When he tries to respond to Val, only strings of binary code stutter out his speakers while his face breaks into static.

“Aww, poor baby. It's too much, hmm?”

Val pulls out almost all the way before burying himself in Vox's cunt, his dick curving inside of him to make Vox take every inch of it.

“Just relax, I'll do all the work.”

He maintains a fairly slow, careful pace by Val's standards: he pulls back slow, so Vox can feel the drag of his movement and the emptiness when he's gone, and fills Vox again at the same glacial pace to keep him aware of just how intense the stretch is. And it's still too much. But all Vox can do is tug weakly at the hands holding him in place, unable to break away from them, completely pinned at Val's mercy. He can't resist when Val lifts one of his legs to get that last half-inch inside Vox alongside the rest of his monstrous cock.

He says something else, then, but Vox doesn't hear it. Just the tone, syrupy and sweet, especially in contrast to the vicious intensity of every thrust. Vox can't process anything beyond how Val feels inside him, against him, when every time he buries himself fully, he grinds against Vox's oversensitive clit.

Some half-baked connection in the back of his mind clicks into focus on true hedonism. It's this, so lost in the pleasure that's only now starting to verge into pain, where nothing--not even Vox's systems--can work past the pure sensation. He feels remarkably human.

Baxter's garbled voice cuts through the haze when Val seems to lose his patience, caring less and less about the force behind every deep thrust into Vox.

“He's fine,” Val drawls, “I've put him through way worse. And he needs to be taken down a peg! I know it, Vel knows it, even you little pricks down here know it. I mean, giving him a cunt was definitely a choice. You had to know he'd fucking hate it.”

He starts pulling Vox back into the the cradle of his hips as he fills him, dragging him along like a rag doll. Vox can tell through the security cameras that his screen has gone into standby to compensate, cutting between bright static colors to fill the idle space and flashes of code rewriting themselves around the new sensations building in his gut.

That, he would recognize anywhere.

Vox reflexively strains under Val and the techs again, wanting to cling to Val, wanting to be closer, wanting feedback from anything besides his pussy to balance him out before his system fails. A few overhead lights flicker in warning.

“Shut up, I'm almost there,” Val growls above him.

“He's going to crash-”

“Okay, and?” Val leans down to nip at Vox's leg, splitting the skin easily on his razor sharp teeth, but the pain is only a faint echo behind the zing that races up Vox's spine. “Always does when he lets me fuck him up. Plus, maybe the reboot will fix your attitude, right, babe?”

“I have to give him something for his pain, then-”

“Don't bother.” Val bites down higher on Vox's thigh, pressing his tongue into the gouges left by his teeth. Then he wedges one of his hands between them so he can stroke Vox's clit directly with a speed that speaks to years of practice. “He's a masochist beneath all that internalized homophobia.”

For all his big talk, Val comes first. But it's the way it fills up what little room Vox had left in his cunt, completely stretching him to the limit of his engineering, that makes Vox's muscles lock up and his heart stutter over its next beat. Every square inch of him, inside and out, processes through the same signal of pure orgasmic pleasure at once.

The remaining lights shatter and the power in Vee Tower fluctuates, but the reboot stays local. As quickly as Vox crashes, his system boots itself back up to sort through the overabundance of data and updates his new attachment created.

He's on his back still, both legs held up and open by the techs, while his hands are finally free to rub his screen and steady him as he sits up. Val has withdrawn exactly far enough to lean against a wall with a lit cigarette.

“I told you not to smoke in here,” Vox sighs. He tries to flick a couple cables to steal it, but they flop flaccidly back to the floor before getting close. “Where the hell did Baxter go?”

Unimpressed, Val points over Vox's opposite shoulder, where Baxter is still typing on his tablet. “Are you back with us, Mister Vox?” he asks cordially without looking up.

“Yeah.” Vox rolls his head from side to side in the techs’ hands to stretch his neck. “Maybe I did need the reboot. I can think a little clearer now.”

“Very good,” Baxter praises, “I knew it would help. Can I take my final readings now?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Baxter sets his tablet aside to climb onto the table between Vox's legs, gently nudging them further apart to better examine him. Through the cameras, Vox doesn't think it looks much different; just wet, now, with Val's rosy cum splashed all over his lower body and more of it leaking sluggishly out of Vox's pussy.

“Speculum,” Baxter prompts a tech.

He doesn't give Vox the chance to react, let alone object, before he's pressing the cold metal tip into Vox's cunt. It's frigid in comparison to Val, and even at its narrowest setting, too much for Vox after already coming twice, but the techs easily hold him in place when he flinches away from it.

“Hey, what the fuck,” Vox gasps as Baxter presses it further in. “This isn't- what-?”

“Breathe, Mister Vox,” Baxter says, a beacon of calm to Vox's racing thoughts. “I have to measure a few things for the file. I'll be as quick as I can.”

Vox shakes his head, turning it against one of the tech's arms. “You've never- what the fuck are you measuring?”

The handle of the speculum settles against Vox's pussy lips once Baxter releases it. For a moment it's near relieving, like a cold compress for his abused flesh. Then Baxter begins to crank it open and Vox's speakers rumble with a choked sob.

“How much it was able to stretch. I noticed Mister Valentino got, uh, creative, with his methods.”

Each tick of the speculum ratcheting open, forcing Vox's hole open wider without actually filling him, makes it harder for the techs to keep their grip on him. He's surprised they haven't given him more PainKiller. But then again, he hasn't managed to get away, and his system hasn't come fully back online enough to produce a defensive shock, so it would simply be unnecessary.

“I believe we'll have to lower the sensitivity,” Baxter says thoughtfully. “This isn't sustainable, even for short usage.” He locks the speculum at its widest setting, still narrower than Val's cock, with a considering expression before dipping two fingers into Vox's cunt to hook against his insides. “See, right here-” Baxter presses against Vox's inner walls, glancing up at his face when he whines, “you wouldn't be bruised like this if you hadn't tightened up around Mister Valentino.”

He withdraws his hand and the speculum, studying the juices left behind.

“Phenomenal fluid expression,” Baxter comments. When he spreads his fingers, it strings between them with a menacing glitter. “I'm surprised you could cry while producing this much lubrication, sir.”

“That's my man!” Val pipes up from the corner. “He's a good cryer.”

Baxter hums and takes a sample vial from his coat to collect some of the spend from Vox's still dripping cunt. “Yes, he is.”

As Baxter drops the dirty speculum and his used gloves into a biohazard bin, he hops away from the table.

“Go ahead and clean Mister Vox up,” he instructs the techs, “but the attachment has to cool down a bit longer before it can be removed.”

“I have a meeting,” Vox complains, though he can't recall what it's about. Or where it is. Or when. “Give me my fucking dick back.”

Baxter shakes his head, not bothering to look Vox in the eye as he disconnects his tablet from Vox's head. “It would damage you and the attachments, sir. We can exchange them after it's cooled down.”

Vox grabs his shoulder. “No, hey, I don't have the-” his screen glitches quickly with the rising frustration, “I don't have the time. I got big shit happening. Just fix it.”

Baxter raises an eyebrow but remains unmoved. “If you're in a hurry, I can remove the attachment after you've attended your meetings.”

“You definitely are,” Val laughs. “It's like, two-thirty right now, so that makes you how late for your meeting, exactly?”

Vox has to double check his schedule, realizes he's already twenty minutes late, and slumps into the table. “I'll have to reschedule it,” he mutters to himself. He can't muster the energy to send those emails now, so he pings Ethan to take care of it. “Fuck. Fine.” On second thought, Vox simply summons his assistant to the lab, since he'll probably need an extra set of hands to get anything done. “I can stay for fifteen minutes, then you take this fucking thing off me, Baxter. Got it?”

Baxter simply nods. “Of course, sir. Fifteen minutes.”

Then he ducks away, leaving Vox with the techs, who set about washing him clean, and Valentino, who watches every moment of it with a cigarette between his teeth.

A few low-ranking lab rats rush forward to lift Vox off the floor. He’s too heavy, especially as twitching dead weight, for one tech alone to carry, but four of them manage to get gentle gloved hands around his limbs and hoist him over their heads. Vox can’t feel it. He can see it just fine from at least a dozen angles, but something must have been knocked loose by Valentino’s temper tantrum and killed his sensory feedback, leaving him as untethered as his electric form.

He scans the room for the head scientist, the only one who knows what they’re doing when it comes to Vox’s complex nervous system.

“WHERE THE FUCK IS BAXTER?”

Ethan, who had the forethought to meet Vox here, glances down at his tablet. “He’s on his way, sir.”

One of the techs pulls Vox’s hand away from his face to start tweezing fragments of glass from it. His screen must be really shattered. Another carefully unknots Vox’s bowtie and pulls down his cravat for a quick exam of his neck.

“FASTER!” Vox demands.

“I sent a drone to pick him up,” Ethan assures, taking a step back from Vox’s body despite how useless it is at the moment. “He’ll be here soon, and I’m sending him live updates as we-”

“DON’T CARE! GET HIM HERE!”

Two more techs drag a portable scanner over to Vox. They’re quick and efficient with it, running the wand first across his throat, then lifting him just enough to check over the back of his head. Its readings feed directly into the network, allowing Vox to follow the diagnostics as well. His spine is intact, at least, and so are the cables connecting his screen to the rest of his body. It’s his motherboard that’s damaged.

Fucking Valentino.

The techs lower his head back onto the table. “Mister Vox? It looks like you need internal maintenance. Do you want us to wait for Bax-”

“YOU’RE ALL MORONS!” Vox snaps. “FIX. MY. FUCKING. SCREEN! AND GET ME BAXTER! NOW!”

Seconds after he speaks, the main doors to the lab slam open for Baxter, suspended from a Voxtech drone by its metal claws in his coat collar like a scruff. At least he has the decency to have a tablet in hand with every reading or observation made by the techs so far.

“This is repairable,” Baxter begins, only yelping a little bit when the drone drops him a few feet from Vox’s body. “Very fixable, Mister Vox. Just a simple short-circuit.”

Vox flails for a moment trying to grab Baxter’s collar before he manages to get a hand onto his shoulder. “SHORT CIRCUIT? LOOK AT MY FACE. ARE YOU COMPLETELY FUCKING BLIND?”

To his credit, Baxter doesn’t flinch. Instead, he inclines his head to one of the techs to tell them to “Give Mister Vox something for his pain, quickly.”

The tech scrambles for their store of drugs. Velvette developed a concoction for Vox’s upgrades a few years ago, something to take the edge off of so many lowly sinners’ hands crawling over his body and brain while they work. It’s a little too much for recreational use–though Val enjoys it–but perfect for incidents like this.

“The screen is easy,” Baxter continues calmly, placing a hand over Vox’s on his shoulder. “We keep spares. But before that, I would quite like to run diagnostics for a full picture of what we’re dealing with. Shall we?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. A tech seeks out the closest vein to Vox’s screen, which happens to be his jugular, and swabs it so another can inject Velvette’s PainKiller into his bloodstream. Immediately, Vox feels better. Still wrong, still broken, of course, but without the shuddering pain of his glitches or the hammering panic of disorientation when his vision is so disconnected from his physical body. Even the hands poking and prodding at him feel less obnoxious as the drug sinks into his mind.

“Plug him in,” orders Baxter.

Vox watches the techs scramble for extension cords long enough to stretch from the main lab computer to the observation table they laid him on. He can vaguely sense the connection; he’s missing the subtle pressure and bite of the jacks going into his ports, but his system automatically flushes with the extra energy and data flowing in and out. His mechanical heart picks up to compensate. That, Vox can feel like a jackhammer in his chest.

A diagram of his wiring fills the monitor, each function color-coded and labeled with flashing warnings to mark the errors. His head is a mess. Aside from his shattered screen, the circuitry behind his right eye has crumpled, severing connections and separating his sensory cortex from the rest of his motherboard. No wonder he can barely move. Without the feedback, he can’t begin to judge his strength or coordination.

“I see,” Baxter mutters to himself. Then, louder, he says, “Since we have to replace the screen, we might as well access the damage through the front. This section is hard to reach through the maintenance panel.”

He pauses.

“Mister Vox?”

It takes a moment for Vox to project his voice back through the speakers. The drug has slowed his processing down, a failsafe against the discomfort of the procedures and to prevent him from inadvertently shocking one of the techs in the middle of routine maintenance. When he does manage to speak, it comes through with a fraction of the vitriol he intends.

“Hurry up, then,” he spits.

Everything sets in motion then, now that Baxter has arrived to conduct the orchestra of techs and ensure they don’t fuck something up worse than Valentino already has. First, they pry open the plastic case around his screen, then pluck the largest pieces of glass out of the way. From an eagle-eyed view, he looks more organic than mechanical like this. Thick, oil slick coolant and blood ooze out of his open head, occasionally bubbling with static, while his wires and circuits pulsate in time with his heart. Each piece of his screen removed makes his left leg twitch like a marionette on strings. As many times as Vox has been damaged and repaired, he can’t recall anything that severed him from his body so completely.

“Ethan,” calls Baxter, “check inventory for a new sensory processing chip.” The next piece he pulls from Vox’s head is bright blue and misshapen. “Absolutely melted. Unacceptable.”

“It seems like there are a few blanks left over from Kitty’s upgrades.”

Baxter frowns down at Vox’s hardware. “If they can take the voltage, I could calibrate it after insertion.”

A tech turns Vox onto his side, causing a fresh flood of pixels and fluid to drool from his open face, but the change in position seems to ease the spasms in his torso. He still can’t feel any of it.

“Sir,” Baxter prompts.

When he speaks again, Vox’s voice whines with static. “Fix it. FIX ME!”

And so Baxter nods at Ethan, who darts away to retrieve the blank chips so that the techs can return to their methodical debriding of Vox’s system. Only three can reach his head while Baxter works, so the rest focus on the secondary repairs: dissolvable stitches for the cuts on his hands, practiced reductions for joints dislocated by his glitching, and damp cotton to scrub the blood from his ports. Were it not for the tweezers rooting between his wires, he could almost pretend this is a well-earned spa session for his hard work. Occasionally he tries to move. At best, he succeeds in twitching under the techs.

“Can we put him under for this?” Baxter asks a tech. “Run his blood, make sure he’s stable so we don’t lose power.”

The tech nods and grabs a vial to hold against Vox’s circuit boards, not bothering with a proper draw when he hasn’t stopped bleeding. He knows from experience the oil will keep pouring out of him until the repair is finished, his new screen fixed into place and his circuits resoldered. He won’t even be bruised by the time his system adjusts. Really, it’s not much different than an upgrade, minus the hangover.

“He’s stable, Doctor.”

Finally, Baxter raises his face to one of the cameras Vox watches through. “Mister Vox, I’d rather sedate you than force a restart. I have PainKiller by Velvette or we can send for-”

“NOT Val,” Vox hisses.

“Very well.” Baxter sniffs and tilts Vox’s head so the light hits it better. “Draw up another dose, and use a higher gauge so we can go in through the ACA without blowing it.”

By the time Vox gathers a response, the needle is already in Baxter’s hand.

He still warns them, “Don’t fuck up my head,” but none of the techs respond.

-

Some time later, Vox wakes up to a bright white light shining into his face. He tries to lift an arm to shield his eyes, but his limbs are still lazy and uncoordinated, like they haven’t remembered their attachment to his body yet. Pins and needles race up and down his spine at the effort.

“And he’s back! Alright, alright, settle down.”

He recognizes the voice, though the name comes on a delay. Baxter. Instantly, Vox gives up on struggling because he must still be down in the lab for repair.

“I have to calibrate your new processor, Mister Vox. Please try not to move.”

Vox wades through the molasses of his thoughts to slur, “Turn off that fucking light.”

“I can dim it.”

The glow darkens from brighter than the sun to blinding as a studio light, which is tolerable, though still not comfortable. Until Baxter finishes calibrating, he can’t adjust his eyes to the bright light, can’t cover his face, can’t get off this table, can’t do anything but lay here and- shit, he might need something for his nerves if he’s not going to fry his entire hardware team mid-calibration. He can only imagine how long this would take if he had to wait for them to respawn.

“His heart rate tripled in the last minute,” one of the techs advises.

Baxter hums. “To be expected. He’s still plugged in, lower it manually by 70.”

He nudges Vox’s screen back and forth, ginger with the motions so as not to tweak his neck as he ensures the repairs haven’t pinched any vital wires or structures. The tactile pressure is there but faint- as though he’s poking at Vox through several down blankets.

“Mister Vox, I’d like you to open your mouth as wide as you can.”

Vox mindlessly listens, watching Baxter’s face as he smooths his fingertips over the fresh screen. They did a good job on the replacement. It fits into his current frame perfectly, without the usual mild irritation around the edges of the glass or fizzling connections behind the display as it gets used to his system. He considers asking payroll to give the whole hardware team a bonus Voxtek coupon as a reward when Baxter suddenly slips two fingers into Vox’s mouth to press down on his tongue.

“Perfect,” Baxter soothes, interrupting Vox’s temper before it can flare. “Can you feel this, sir?”

The longer his latex-gloved fingers hold Vox like that, mouth open, tongue pinned and pet as saliva pools behind his teeth, the sharper the sensation becomes. Baxter does not rush him to answer. Slowly, the weight becomes warmth, then texture, then taste, and Vox finds himself nodding against Baxter’s grip a couple minutes later.

“Very good. Your arms, now.”

Baxter works one arm at a time, lifting the limb so the techs can pull off his blazer and open his sleeve cuffs for better access to his bare skin. The smooth semi-silicate is more meat than machine, packed with nerve endings in a way R&D hasn’t figured out how to replicate on his screen, and wakes up much quicker under Baxter’s methodical attention. Soon, Vox can flex his fingers again. He tries to snap a spark into existence between them, fails, and repeats, until he can sustain a wavelength between palms as Baxter massages his biceps.

“Beautiful.” Something about Baxter’s voice seems especially soothing as Vox’s systems reconnect. “Sit him up.”

The techs muscle Vox into a sitting position and hold him upright, which he reluctantly appreciates, as he doesn’t trust himself not to slump back over like a corpse until Baxter has finished repairing him. Someone reaches around his torso to thumb open the buttons of his shirt. He lets his screen tip back against a blue-stained lab coat and stares at the painted ceiling.

It was an anniversary present from Val some years ago, so he would have something decent to stare at during repairs. As it stands, he’s still too blinded by the lights to make out much more than the shadows right now, and too pinned by Baxter’s hands around his ribcage to figure out where the damn controls are.

Right before he switches to the surveillance cameras again, Baxter brushes against Vox’s nipples, scowling at the way he jumps from the contact.

“Stay still,” Baxter reminds, slow like Vox is too stupid to follow such a short command.

“Hmm?”

“You might hurt yourself.”

A garbled laugh tumbles out of Vox’s regular speakers in answer. “Yeah. But…”

“No buts,” Baxter interrupts, stilling his hands “Do you want to be calibrated or not?”

Vox’s smile is all reflex. All teeth.

“Mister Vox, if you feel perfectly well, I would be thrilled to hear it. But we both know better than that.”

When Vox doesn’t respond, Baxter nods to himself and resumes his exploration, trailing from the hollow of Vox’s throat to his navel and back again as if every inch of Vox’s torso needs to be woken up by hand. Occasionally he strays to Vox’s back, but mainly leaves it in the care of the techs. Their presence behind him, holding him up–holding him in place–seems to be enough stimulation in combination with Baxter’s attention to his chest. It’s simultaneously dull as his circuits reintegrate the rest of his body and overstimulating as the nerves spark back to life. He can’t help struggling against the techs, who hold him as if he’s not stronger than all of them combined at full power.

“Watch his claws,” Baxter tells them.

His fists are pried open, claws eased out of the indents that would have become gashes before Vox noticed he was doing it. Cold, gloved hands fit into his instead. It seems odd, until Baxter squeezes his hip and he tenses so aggressively that he breaks skin on the techs’ hands. One of them whimpers but doesn’t try to pull away.

“You’re doing so well, sir, we’re almost finished.”

“Almost?” Vox repeats through a rush of distortion.

Baxter makes some signal for the techs to ease Vox onto his back again. They keep holding his hands. “Yes. We’re almost finished with calibration, then we’ll give you something to keep you comfortable while your system settles.”

Then his palm settles over Vox’s crotch, and no amount of exhaustion or drugs is enough to keep Vox from jerking away from the sudden touch. Unlike the rest of his body, his dick seems to be overly sensitive, even with his slacks and boxers between him and Baxter.

“Vox,” Baxter chastises.

Vox whines, too overwhelmed to construct a real sentence.

“The more you squirm, the longer this will take. Do you understand that?” Baxter squints at him, head cocked to the side. “Are you capable of understanding that? Or did I miss something in diagnostics?”

That should piss Vox off and he knows it, but it’s hard to be angry when Baxter is subtly massaging Vox’s crotch, loosening and tightening his grip barely enough for Vox to shudder from the sensation. “I understand. I- I just-”

Once again, Baxter cuts him off. “Then I need you to calm down. Yes?”

Vox nods.

“Excellent.”

Baxter keeps up the same glacial pace, barely moving his hand while Vox trembles beneath him. He keeps his other palm against Vox’s lower stomach to hold him down. Somehow, it’s the most trapped Vox has ever felt. And instead of panicking, he’s so hard that he might cry.

“How’s he doing?” Baxter asks.

One of the techs holding Vox’s hand glances at the main computer. “Output is still low, and heart is manually lowered by 45, but stable. Pressure’s rising.”

“Hm. It should drop after calibration. I suppose we can force a reboot if we have to.”

Vox means to explain that he doesn’t have time for a reboot, but all that comes out is a glitching moan as Baxter rubs his thumb over the head of Vox’s cock.

“There we are,” Baxter says. “Just like that.” It’s hard to tell if he’s speaking to Vox or not, but his voice feels like a lifeline in Vox’s hazy consciousness no matter the answer. “Truly a work of art. It’s magnificent, and to know it’s your favorite, Mister Vox… what an honor.”

The words don’t register as much as the tone, so pleasant and praiseful. It matches the way he touches Vox, firm enough to be confident but slow enough to be reverent. Baxter always knows how to fix him up.

“Not the most challenging attachment I’ve made, of course, but still impressive.”

Vox chokes on an inhale as precum blurts into his underpants.

“Ah,” Baxter hums. “Careful, sir.”

“Yeah,” Vox agrees, because he would probably agree with anything right now.

He should’ve recognized the reminder for the warning it was, because once Vox catches his breath, Baxter focuses on the tip of his dick, ruthlessly massaging it until his precum begins to soak through to his slacks. And, as good as it feels, it’s still too much, like his sensitivity has been dialed up to maximum while the rest of his body remains muted. Surprisingly, he finds himself grateful for the techs holding him down as an involuntary spasm nearly slams his brand new screen into the table. Only a fast moving arm to catch the brunt of the blow saves him.

“Heart up ten and climbing,” one of the techs warns.

Baxter laughs under his breath. “I think he’s almost done. Go ahead and let his heart go, it’ll balance in a minute.”

Instantly, Vox’s heart hammers in his chest like it needs to remind him it’s there. He’s alive. Alive in the ways that matter. With static gathering at the edges of his vision and his muscles quivering from strain, the only thought he can grasp is how much worse this is going to make things with Val.

“Are you going to come for me, Mister Vox?”

He doesn’t get the chance to respond. His screen flashes through a thousand technicolor cycles, his hips come up off the table, and he comes so hard his balls ache. It's a miracle he doesn't crash.

Vox isn’t sure he breathes at all during it. If he does, it isn’t enough, because he finds himself gasping desperately for air as his belt is dragged from its loops.

“Fuck,” he growls into the table. “I can’t-”

“Breathe,” Baxter orders him. “You’re a mess. The attachment needs to be cleaned, and so do you, before Ethan comes back with a clean suit for you.”

Vox nods slowly, relaxing into the table as the techs methodically strip him bare. “So ‘m all fixed up?”

“Precisely.”

Instead, he stares through the aquarium window above Baxter's desk, squinting into the water for the occasional glimpse of his sharks. The pups grow down here under careful supervision, but before capturing Alastor, Vox typically found time in his schedule every couple of days to visit them if he could. He even failed his sharks.

On the fourth day of Vox's forced isolation, two security staff drag Baxter into the office by digital purple chains. As Vox watches through the reflection in the aquarium glass, Baxter flails uselessly and shouts empty threats until they manage to force him into his office chair. Then the links fasten themselves to the desk, leaving him exactly enough slack to wander the room, but not to leave. Baxter, ever practical, gives up on his showboating the second security disappears behind his office door with a heavy click of the lock.

“Fuck,” Baxter hisses under his breath, wringing his hands. “Okay. This is temporary. If I can find a way to dissolve these chains…”

Vox's voice is fuzzy with disuse when he speaks. “Good luck with that”

Baxter flinches hard enough to fall out of his chair. He looks around his office frantically, from camera to camera with disconcerting accuracy, before he finally notices Vox's screen propped up in the dock meant for Baxter's tablet.

“Mister Vox!”

Despite his best efforts, Vox doesn't come up with anything witty to say in the pause while Baxter gathers his bearings.

“What-?”

“They put me here for, uh, safe keeping,” Vox says slowly. It sounds better than admitting Valentino and Velvette have essentially locked him in the basement like an unwanted stepchild. “And for you to fix. I think.”

Baxter doesn't say anything.

“Baxter?”

“Why the hell would I fix you?” he spits, more venom in his voice than Vox has ever heard. Whatever illusion of niceties they had as a result of Baxter's employment vanished alongside the rest of the goodwill he spent decades cultivating. “You're a miserable piece of shit, you don't own my soul,” he starts counting on his fingers, “you're not the CEO of Voxtek or my boss anymore, you're literally just a head, and I can hear the PainKiller in your voice. I'm not helping you.”

Vox looks back into the aquarium as a shark pup swims past the window. “And why do you think you're here, not dead?”

“It's not my business,” Baxter sniffs.

But after three days in paralyzed silence, Vox can't let go of the subject. “Yeah, now isn't a good time to get on Vel and Val's bad side.”

“Just shut up, Vox.”

Baxter drops himself back into his chair with a glassy rattle of his chains. When he boots up his computer, Vox’s charging cable begins sharing data between him and the lab intranet. It’s miniscule compared to the main Voxtek system, but the access to anything besides his local drives hits Vox like a fresh shot of cocaine. He sifts through familiar files on his past upgrades: the first flatscreen, the claw redesign, the barbed dick, the stronger arms. Each document is hundreds of pages long, detailing the entire design and development process from Vox’s crude sketches to Baxter’s schematics to the techs’ troubleshooting.

A wave of nostalgia washes over him when he rifles through the document on his first proxy mannequin. It was a feat of engineering at the time. Barely fifteen years into the Voxtek empire, and they had already moved from living, breathing biomechanical sharks to suspended, half-alive clones to farm parts from. They keep four on hand at a time typically, gutted of any circuitry and kept viable by the charging cables soldered to the backs of their heads. Baxter uses them to test new hardware upgrades before he brings them to Vox.

“What about the proxies?” Vox asks, opening the file on Baxter’s computer monitor. “A little worse for wear, I’m sure, but it’s a start.”

Baxter unplugs Vox from his computer. “Your next dose is in two hours. Are you going to be this obnoxious the entire time?”

“Hey! My battery-”

“Okay,” Baxter interrupts flatly, sounding so much more himself that Vox falls silent to listen to him type rapidly on his keyboard. “They’re bringing it early so I can hear myself think.”

Vox’s screen flutters with black and white static as he snaps, “Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m-”

His voice cuts out as Baxter mutes him.

“Absolutely fucking nothing,” the little shit mutters to himself.

Then he lapses into silence, clicking his mouse between bursts of typing as he works away on his computer. In the reflection of the aquarium, the sleek blue back of the monitor obscures half of Baxter’s face, but Vox still catches him glancing over every so often in the few minutes it takes for a tech to show up with a prepared syringe of PainKiller. They don’t say a word to Baxter, nor to Vox, as they open his maintenance panel to inject the drugs into one of his cables.

Vox drifts on it for what must be forever. It’s at least long enough to see Baxter finish at his computer and move to another worktable in the lab. Long enough to hear Baxter hum a nonsense tune to himself while he titrates chemicals into sky blue solution. Long enough to taste the ambient electricity in the air when Baxter pours it on his chains in hopes of breaking them. Long enough to smell it burning through Baxter’s gloves and hands when he fails. Through it all, Vox sits mute and blind on the desk without enough presence of mind to be angry about it.

He enters standby mode eventually to conserve power. Without the system to disappear into, his consciousness lulls into hibernation as well, leaving him in a vague state of half-death minus the agony that an empty battery always brings.

On day five, Baxter plugs him back in first thing in the morning after the techs come, and doesn’t comment on the skitter of his computer screen at Vox’s exploration. Vox reopens the folder on the proxy mannequins for him, but otherwise splits his attention between an idle exploration of the intranet and a passive observation of Baxter’s work. The company-wide daily newsletter announces Val as the new CEO, which Vox knows will lead to an epic crash and burn, and his own image has been scrubbed off the banner at the top with a conspicuous gap between Valentino and Velvette. There’s nothing interesting in Baxter’s emails. Every visit from the techs was logged and copied to him, but none of the reports contain anything Vox didn’t already know.

Still muted, Vox opens a textbox on Baxter’s screen to type a message to him. “NEWS? PLAY KATIE KILLJOY. NEED UPDATES.”

All Baxter has to do is reach for the cable between Vox and his computer. The unspoken threat is enough, so Vox quickly dismisses the text and resumes his nondisruptive perusal of the hard drive.

Shock.wav’s files are here too. Those, Vox can sink into like a comforting embrace. He had an active hand in his baby’s design and development and it shows; his own scribbled notes have been scanned in to accompany Baxter’s dictations, and every few pages boast photos or videos of Shock.wav in his infancy. He had been so small. In one image, Vox cups the tiny shark pup in his hands, up to his waist in water without a care for what the salt would do to his suit or his machinery.

It startles him when the door to Baxter’s office slams open, but the second he sees the reflection of bright pink hair, he dims his screen.

“How‘re you two traitors getting on?” Velvette asks, all chipper faux-politeness and overly saccharine perfume.

Baxter doesn’t so much as glance away from his screen. “I refuse to participate in this company any longer,” he says firmly, “and I’d like to tender my resignation.”

Velvette laughs, properly laughs from her belly until it turns into a mean cackle, and Vox abruptly realizes how much he’s missed the sound lately. Not just these past five days, but for weeks, he’s gone without hearing her sound so delighted. Yet another way he let her down.

When Baxter still doesn’t turn around, she falls quiet. Then, she says, “Oh, you’re actually serious? That’s hilarious, babes. Didn’t you read the fine print on your contract?”

The room flashes with her distinct violet magic, but the scroll that unfurls in her hand is on Voxtek Blue parchment.

“You don’t decide when you quit,” Velvette says sweetly. “Your employment can only be terminated by a Vee, and you’re not going anywhere.”

“You can’t keep me prisoner-”

“Wrong again!” She taps her stiletto nail against one of the paragraphs. “Voxtek employees can be scheduled for indefinite shifts whenever necessary. Your shift ends when you fix the miserable bastard.”

She suddenly approaches the desk to lean over Vox.

“Speaking of, someone’s awfully quiet for once.”

“I muted him yesterday,” Baxter replies, managing to sound dismissive despite the telling tremble of his lure. “He was irritating me.”

Velvette snatches the purple chains confining Baxter to his office and pulls, yanking him out of his chair just to sling him into the filing cabinet against the adjacent wall. “Excuse me?”

“Aren't-” Baxter coughs wetly, “aren't you tired of his nattering too?”

“Obviously I am!” Velvette scoops up Vox's screen and turns him around, finally giving him the chance to look at her straight on. Her hair is curly and voluminous today, rich with the afterscent of Val's cigarettes, and her eyes are wide and bright when they meet his. “He's still Vox, idiot,” she continues, tilting Vox this way and that as if there's a physical button to restore his voice. “Who the fuck gave you the right to mute him?”

Baxter wheezes behind her. “Missus Velvette, I swear, I thought-”

“No, you definitely didn't!”

Vox has missed her so much.

“What are you fucking laying there for?” Velvette barks. “Unmute him! NOW!”

Her digital chains drag Baxter back to his desk, holding him down a few seconds too long so he has to struggle against them to get back into his chair. It takes seconds for him to remove the block on Vox's speech.

“Velvette,” Vox breathes the second he can. More than anything, he wishes he had the hands to cling to her silky dress. “My dearest Vel, my brightest star-”

“Cut the shit,” she interjects.

He doesn't have anything else to say. More descriptions scroll through his processors, but he knows they won't land the way he intends them to.

“Still mad at you, you suicidal fucking moron,” she informs him, staring into his eyes like she could hypnotize him. “Have you got any clue how difficult it is to run a business with just Val? I love him, but oh my God.”

A staticky chuckle bubbles through Vox's speakers. “Yeah, I remember.”

“So just… make sure the lab rats screw your head back on straight, arsehole.”

Velvette kisses the upper corner of his screen, leaving a sticky lipstick print on the glass, before she returns him to his charging dock.

“And you!” She pokes Baxter's face with the sharp tip of her nail, drawing fresh blood again. “Next time I see you, you better at least have some fucking blueprints. Val's been sketching nonstop.”

When he doesn't respond quick enough for her liking, Velvette kicks his chair.

“Have you gone deaf?!”

“Right,” Baxter says quietly. “Yes, ma'am, I'll start the schematics. Should we use his proxies?”

Velvette raises an eyebrow. “That doesn't mean anything to me, so I don't give a shit. Talk to you later.” She meets Vox's eyes in the window. “And you behave yourself, Vox.”

As quickly as she arrived, Velvette leaves again, abandoning him and Baxter in the messy office. Despite her reprimand, Vox hesitates to break the silence first lest he get muted again. Talking, to Baxter or himself, is one of the only things he still has the capacity to do.

“I can cobble something together in forty-eight hours,” Baxter says under his breath, opening his email to draft a message to Valentino's assistant asking for the sketches. “If at least one of the proxies is in good repair, we could have it ready by tonight for upgrades. Then integration tomorrow, calibration the day after- I can do this.”

Vox suppresses the urge to snark at him. “So in two days, I'll be back to normal?”

Baxter hums noncomittally.

“Hey, you know, there's an ethernet cord in here somewhere,” tries Vox. “You don't use it for your computer, but I have a jack.”

“Yes.” Baxter receives an email back from Valentino's assistant with at least ten files attached. “I put it there when I built your head as a back up in the event your receiver was damaged.”

The first of Val's sketches to load is a full-body figure drawing, hasty charcoal compared to Val's usual smooth painted strokes. At the top is Vox's head the way Val always draws him: smooth and smiling, with his hat almost off-center and a heart sketched in the sparks between his antennas.

Beneath that, it doesn't really look like Vox anymore. The proportions are wrong, too short and too leggy, missing the sharp edges of his usual body and posed with such salaciousness that Vox thinks for a moment it's the image of some whore with his own face plastered onto it. His reaction is visceral, pulling away from the computer so quickly as to send a burst of pixelated color across Baxter's monitor. He needs to call Val. Whatever that is, he can't- he won't tolerate it.

“So, connect me, then?” Vox manages through a static squeak of feedback. “I have a company to run.”

“No, you don't.”

Baxter continues clicking through Val's sketches. Vox needs to know what they are, but at the same time, the thought of the first makes his mind churn like Velvette's potions.

“I could help speed up the process. If you let me access the system, I can check the proxies for the best candidate, and I can start the software upgrades- don't need hands to type.”

“Vox,” Baxter warns.

He doesn't stop talking. “No, really! And you can get back to whatever it is you do outside of work. It's a win-win situation. Trust me!” He edges back into Baxter's computer enough to look through its camera, the red light behind the lens glowing like his eyes. “Come on!” He encourages. “Neither of us want to be here, do we? This way, we both get out faster.”

But Baxter doesn't look convinced. Instead, he appears to be on the verge of losing his patience with Vox's talking. Frantically Vox searches his internal memory for any other tactic he could use. He knows Baxter is a traitor, but the why is fuzzy, coded in an off-body hard drive because he can only store so much information in his head at once. Vox scrabbles through jumbling memories of Lucifer's brat, tangled into the panic of being muted for the first time and the adrenaline of Alastor tearing Vox apart with his bare hands.

“Baxter, please,” he tries, plucking out the soft tone Princess Morningstar uses with the residents of her hotel. “It's like being half blind and half deaf. My system is made for a constant flow of data in and out, and I can't think, and-” he makes himself inhale, even without lungs or gills to process the air, “I'm going fucking crazy here. Just connect me to the system. Let me do something, anything.”

Baxter doesn't seem to buy it. His face twists between anger, disgust, and pain, all tugging at him to the point Vox can't pinpoint which one is winning, if any.

“You're a despicable excuse for a man,” Baxter tells him. His tone is unbearably calm compared to his expression. “You should have been killed by that idiotic cannon, Mister Vox, and I sincerely regret that you survived it.”

“Oh.”

He doesn't know why that matters. Baxter is still just another employee under the Voxtek umbrella, and he knows they all kinda hate him. But it's different, hearing it outright like this, from the scientist that's supposed to fix him.

“What I suggest,” Baxter says, pulling Vox out of his thoughts, “is that you use this time to reflect on whatever went wrong in your programming to cause all that. The software RND team will be curious to know.”

Vox can't take Baxter's detached rage anymore and pulls away from the camera.

Back in the intranet, Vox begins reading through his last couple dozen maintenance reports to compile a list of parts borrowed from the proxies. They discarded one recently after taking its screen for Vox's repairs and have yet to grow a replacement, but the other three are mostly intact; one is missing its arms, another is short a kidney and a liver, and the last is so new that they keep passing it over for spare parts to give it time to grow. Its development stalled out a few inches short of Vox's height with a handful of miswired circuits that the techs have been too busy to correct. They might be able to cobble something workable together from those parts, but it would be too painful for Vox to sit awake through integration or calibration, and the edge in Baxter's affect makes him uncharacteristically nervous about the prospect.

At least, he's nervous for a couple of hours, until the techs come by with Vox's next dose of PainKiller and a vending machine sandwich for Baxter. Some of them are new, Vox thinks; he never pays attention to their faces, but he knows the cadence of their footsteps, and it's easy to hear any that fall out of its pattern.

“Has everyone been briefed?” Baxter asks around a mouthful of bread while a tech presses a fresh wave of fog into Vox's thoughts.

“Yes, doctor.”

Baxter hums, pleased. “Excellent. We're working double time, but precision is still the utmost priority.” He shoves the rest of his sandwich in his mouth as he opens a dataset computer screen. Vox doesn't dare make his observation known. “Missus Velvette was very clear that we continue to treat Mister Vox with the utmost respect,” he continues, as if he's been concerned with such an issue himself, “and that includes respect for his time.”

On his monitor, Baxter clicks through the readings from all three proxy mannequins.

“Unsuspend Proxy Theta Twelve,” he instructs. “Run diagnostics, report back, and then we can begin upgrades.”

Then Baxter switches tabs, returning to Val's drawings and Velvette's running list of tasks, which scares Vox off of watching him. Some of the techs crowd around his chair to look as well, and the seamless rhythm of it strikes a chord in Vox. Their perfect synchronicity was never for him. It simply happens as a result of so many hours, days, decades they've spent running the same steps.

“Chest Beta Four, I think,” Baxter suggests, his computer mouse scraping across the desk as he points. “That was Mister Valentino's favorite. All necessary inclusions are stored with it.”

Vox didn't know they were working on something for his chest.

“Hmm. Get a new right hand from Proxy Theta Ten, the wiring isn't fixable on this one.”

One of the techs types the orders into their tablet, loud in the silence between each to come.

“And ribs two through six, from Proxy Theta Eleven. Both sides. He'll need the extra support. Oh, and please, conduct a thorough exam of the spinal cord during diagnostics; I don't want any surprises. Flush the gills too.”

Baxter's keyboard sounds different, heavier, and his fingers fly across its keys much faster.

“Let's do Genital Pi Two, since Pi One went so well. Any questions?”

When the techs have none, Baxter makes a dismissive sound and they file out of the office, leaving him and Vox alone once more.

Vox doesn't think they've ever spent this much time together without maintenance and lab techs to fill the space. The longer it goes on, the less he likes it, and the more he sort of wishes he was alone with the aquarium window again, if only because he can't help peering into Baxter's notes exactly long enough to make himself nauseous despite his lack of a stomach. The continuous loop of PainKiller has built his tolerance. He'll have to tell Velvette, he realizes, because he doesn't think Baxter cares.

He kills the next few hours watching videos of Shock.wav on Baxter's computer to avoid wallowing in his thoughts. Every so often, Val or Velvette appears in the background of a clip, though they're never as enthused as Vox. He sees reality for what it is now: they indulge him, and he always wants more. Now it's blown up in his face. Like his cannon.

“Mister Vox,” Baxter prompts him, startling Vox into a scatter of grey static. “Would it be faster to text Missus Velvette or e-mail her?”

He has to replay the conversation twice in his memory to fully process the question. “Uh, Melissa reads her e-mails, but she checks all her texts immediately.” Vox abandons his video of Shock.wav to delete Velvette's email address from Baxter's draft. In its place, Vox types Velvette's business number. “Here's her personal line.”

A beat later, he remembers to ask why.

“I can't work on your body from here,” Baxter tells him, “so she needs to remove my chains or transfer them to the main lab.”

Less than thirty seconds after Baxter fires off his text, Velvette's face appears on his computer screen in a request for a video chat. He answers it without hesitation.

“Why can't you do it in your office?” Velvette snaps instead of a greeting.

Behind her, Val poses for an array of dazzled paparazzi with a sloppy, stumbling Angel Dust hanging off his arm and a heavy fog of his smoke lapping at their calves.

“My office is not an operating theater,” Baxter replies, “and wouldn't fit the exam table, let alone the rest of Mister Vox's hardware team, the equipment necessary to monitor and repair him, the parts-”

“Okay, shut up, shut up!” Velvette squeezes her eyes shut for a moment to massage the place between them where a nose bridge would be if she had one. “I don't have time for this. Go.”

She hangs up, and seconds later Baxter's chains begin to drag him out of the room with a yelp. He's lucky Velvette decided to open the door instead of yanking him through it. But it leaves Vox alone again, tempted by the abandoned email template. The intranet only allows him to reach other Voxtek employees, but himself, Val, and Velvette have always been under that umbrella, and for as much as he wishes he could talk to them, he finds himself at a loss for words. Nothing he says would be enough to make up for his failures.

A tech comes back for Vox before he can make himself type anything and he's silently grateful for the respite. They carry him gingerly, with both hands, his screen pointed away from themselves so he can see the path to the main lab.

Baxter and the rest of the techs have gathered around the observation table Vox always occupies for maintenance, though there are several additional trays of spare parts littered around it like the rings of Saturn. He tries to make sense of them, eyes darting from tray to tray, but from the low angle of the tech's embrace, the shapes are unrecognizable.

Only after Vox is set on the table, a few inches from the proxy, does he notice they've already strung an IV drip into its left arm with both PainKiller and blood. Neither are strictly necessary. He appreciates the comfort measures nonetheless.

“Start with two,” Baxter instructs as he pulls fresh gloves onto his hands. “The more cooperative he is, the better, but I need Mister Vox conscious if possible.”

Vox doesn't even register the needle going in. He simply stares up at the ceiling, at Val's painting, trying and failing to see the details at such a distance when his eyes won't focus. It's hard to think of anything or anyone he hasn't failed recently. But maybe, if he's lucky, this upgrade will give him the fresh start he needs.

If nothing else, it's buying him time while Val cools down.

“Plug him in,” Baxter orders. “His software has been buggy; I hesitate to trust his verbal observations. The vital output is our guideline. Understood?”

The techs murmur in assent as they angle his head up enough to plug the thick diagnostic cable in. Data flows through it at a trickle: binary code, barely a bit a second, and too complicated to save to his limited memory bank, let alone process.

“I'm going to open your screen casing, Mister Vox. Stay still.”

Small hands join the techs’ on Vox's screen, but they skim to the seam where the frame meets the back of his head. When his fingers press to the half-healed indent from being decapitated, a quiet whimper escapes Vox's speakers.

Baxter hesitates for a split second. “You can-”

Then the pressure increases, and this time Vox's screen jitters before he makes a garbled sound of complaint. It's like pressing the flat of a knife into a fresh wound, dull but still sparkling, and Vox doesn't have a way to get away from it.

“You can't feel that.”

“Hurts,” Vox whines. He doesn't recognize his own voice. It's all feedback, or something like it.

Baxter's lure swings over Vox's face as he stares into his glitching eyes. “You're alright, Mister Vox,” he assures in an unconvincing lilt. “You have a double dose of PainKiller in you and no renal system to speed up your metabolism; it doesn't hurt.”

His thumb presses into the wound and it splits open, bleeding oil onto the table. Another shudder races across Vox's screen. The overhead speakers squeal. He might reboot. None of the input he's processing makes any sense and it comes to him in bits and pieces.

“He can have another half, but no more afterward. I don't want to overdose him.”

There are hands on his screen, wiping his tears and petting his cheeks as if to comfort him, but it only makes him feel smaller. He should have told Velvette about the tolerance. This high is bad, getting worse by the second, and Baxter hasn't so much as paused in his efforts to pry the wires of Vox's spinal cord into the open.

“We can't give him any more. Just hold him, the nerves are almost prepared.”

Vox tries to say Baxter's name, to beg him for relief, but the only words he manages are “Hurts, fucking hurts, it hurts, hurts,” over and over like a broken record.

Sure, Vox typically likes some pain with his pleasure. But this is different. Wrong. Like Baxter's hands are pulling him apart at a cellular level and he's powerless to escape. It hits him that he's alone with a bunch of techs who would happily see him permanently dead, and Valentino and Velvette hate him, and the rest of Hell has spurned him, and he lost his entire empire in a matter of twenty minutes, and he kind of regrets surviving his failed scheme too.

All while the overhead speakers echo his own pathetic cries back at him.

“Could be a tolerance issue. I still don't want to give him more- we're almost through the worst of it.” Baxter taps the side of Vox's screen with his blood slick hand to get his attention. “You should get ahold of yourself, sir. This is unbecoming.”

Vox can't calm himself down when he can feel the pads of Baxter's fingers separating the fibres he's pried out of Vox's head to connect them to the proxy. The drugs must be doing something for it to be possible without a deadly defensive shock, but they're nowhere near enough to address the way each point of contact is like a white-hot poker pressed against the inside of Vox's brain.

Hurt doesn't begin to describe the sensation. It's just the only word he can fit into his quivering mouth.

“Hurts, hurts, hurts-”

At last, Baxter releases the nerves from his overzealous grip, splaying them on the observation table so he can reach for the connections in the neck of the proxy. They usually knock Vox out for this part.

“Baxter,” Vox slurs through his twitching, unstable mouth. “Ba- axter, please. Hurts. Fuckin’ hurts, please…”

His voice cuts out when Baxter plucks out one of Vox's wires to solder to the proxy's matching part. The newly forged connection finally triggers a self-preservation process deep in Vox's code, jerking the proxy's limbs like an unbalanced marionette in a vain effort to escape the agony, but the techs are far more prepared for the motion than him. Before it comes anywhere near Baxter, they have him pinned.

“Vox!” Baxter chastises sharply.

When he clicks the next cord into place, the resulting surge of electric-sharp pain makes Vox break. “I can't,” he cries, his voice still playing back at him from the overhead speakers. “Hurts. Hurts. Want Val, it hurts-”

“I cannot concentrate over your useless chatter.” Baxter straightens up so he looms over Vox, his silhouette cutting through the bright lights pointing down, and fixes him with a flat, unaffected expression. “If you want a new body, you have to calm down. Do you understand?”

“It hurts,” Vox whimpers.

Baxter tuts disapprovingly. “You're maxed out on PainKiller. It can't hurt that much. You're working yourself up, Mister Vox, and if you-” His words die in his throat when the main elevator doors swish open.

Valentino and Velvette are already speaking to and over each other as they come off the elevator, both snapping like they've been working for days without rest.

“I'm not falling for it,” Val insists in a low growl, “and you shouldn't either, babydoll-”

“But he's really not that good an actor!” Velvette bites back. “And it doesn't sound like the kinda thing he'd broadcast-”

“Well, blowing up all of Hell, us included, didn't sound like something he'd do either-”

“God forbid we check on your fucking boyfriend after he calls for you-”

Baxter clears his throat to interrupt them, one of his hands still loosely curled around the wires coming from Vox's neck. “Mister Valentino. Missus Velvette,” he greets. “Come to see his progress?”

Val enters Vox's field of vision first, leaning over his face through a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke that sinks into Vox's processors. His expression hides behind his glasses. But his touch, his hand gently resting against the side of Vox's screen, is like a balm to the raw edges currently scattering his thoughts.

“He's broadcasting to the whole tower,” Velvette says. “I think he's actually in pain. So, tell me, how come you haven't given him anything for it?”

“I did.”

When Baxter connects the next cord, another spasm runs through the proxy as Vox's speakers crackle with more feedback. He can't stop himself from crying, still: repeating that it hurts, like saying it enough will change something. Knowing it's necessary doesn't lessen the suffering.

“He's been on a timed dose of PainKiller for five days,” Baxter explains without looking away from Vox. “I think he's built a tolerance, but the proxy hasn't, and I assure you this is preferable to an overdose.”

Val sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Yeah, okay- I do remember his last OD. It was nasty. And not in a fun way.”

The next connection Baxter makes triggers vital functions. On the table, the proxy trembles as it comes to life, but Vox's system can only process the sensations that are already familiar. The burn of unoxygenated lungs. The ache of an unmoving heart. The shiver of untested nerves. He needs a software update if he's meant to live with this new body but it's still too soon, and Vox can only wail through his speakers as code flickers across his face.

“Heart's on,” a tech informs. “BPM 145, respiration 24.”

“See?” Baxter implores, “Vox is fine. That's elevated, but well within normal range for maintenance.”

He reaches for the next cable, but Val smacks his hand out of the way before he reaches it.

“I don't care about the why or the how,” Velvette says slowly, “but you need to figure something out. This, the screaming, is fucking distracting.”

Then her hand, plastic and smooth, comes up to smear the lipstick print she left this morning off Vox's screen.

“And Vox might be a bastard, but guess what?”

Velvette grabs Baxter by the front of his coat, yanking him into a deep bow that brings their faces together without her stepping onto the table.

“He's still your fucking better,” she enunciates. “And you're dead wrong if you think that his little crash out gives you an excuse to forget that.” When she glances down at Vox, he swears the tilt of her eyes is close enough to pity that he can pretend it's affection. “Leave the torture to Val, would you? I'd hate to ruin these shoes putting you back in your place.”

A choked sound wheezes out of Baxter's throat before he speaks. “Yes, Missus Velvette. But- but I can't give him more PainKiller, I can't change the-”

“Give him something else, then.”

Velvette and Valentino share a look directly over Vox's face so he can stare up at them. He isn't sure when he forgot how much of his drive for decades was to provide for them, to be everything they needed, to make sure they never went without, but it resettles in his programming now like a comforting embrace. For a moment, the pain fizzles into the background. It's not as important as his Vees.

“His new body,” Val starts, gesturing toward the half-connected proxy as he takes a drag of his cigarette, “has a lower tolerance for drugs, right?”

Baxter hums. “Proxy Theta Twelve had an anomalous development. It was still the best option available, but yes, there are certain disadvantages. I intend to inspect its renal system closer another time, but it's my understanding-”

“I don't have all day!” Velvette interjects.

“Right. Uh…”

On Val's next puff of smoke, he lets it spill from his lips onto Vox's screen. The haze makes it harder to see him and Velvette, but Vox can still make their shapes out above him. And that's the only thing that matters.

“Might I suggest Mister Valentino's toxins, then?” Baxter asks. “They have a different method of action. Yes, Mister Vox would still be in pain, but the endorphins provided would change how he interprets it. The secondhand smoke has already helped tremendously.”

Val doesn't even pretend to consider it. “Just give him Love Potion. I'm busy running his company.” He flicks one of Vox's antennas petulantly and smirks at the weak arc of electricity that chases him. “You're lucky I came to check on you at all.”

“Love Potion has other shit in it,” Velvette argues. “It's got almost as much Ketamine as PainKiller.”

On Val's next hit off his cigarette, he leans in so his face is only a couple inches from Vox's before he exhales. Vox's lungs seize around its thick concentration, but his groan of discomfort barely crackles through his speakers, leaving the overhead ones silent and empty.

“Val,” he snivels, wishing he could cling to him, “and Vel, ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry Val and Vel, I didn't mean it,”

Velvette steps out of his line of sight.

“That's- alright, I guess that's an improvement on the fucking screaming,” she sighs, already on her way back to the elevator. “I can't deal with the melodrama. Just stay here until they're done operating.”

Val stomps one of his heeled boots on the ground indignantly. “I was in the middle of a shoot-”

“Don't take that fucking tone with me-”

“-but I’m the CEO now, so I'm in charge-”

“-Val, you literally needed my help to log into Vox's email this morning-”

“I'm going to get back to work now,” Baxter says firmly, just loud enough to be heard over Valentino and Velvette's bickering. He tugs on Vox's cables to connect the next one and rolls his eyes when Vox's screen shudders. “Unless anyone has further objections?”

Velvette snorts as she flounces away, leaving Vox between Val and Baxter. “I'll leave you boys to it,” she calls over her shoulder. “Later!”

Val mutters something rude under his breath, but sits on the edge of the table so he can cradle Vox's screen in his lap.

But his presence, and the waves of smoke emanating off him, settle Vox back into the comfortable dissociation the PainKiller is meant to deliver. He's usually not susceptible to Val's toxins in the same way, but some combination of his self-contained head, the incredible amount of drugs already in his system, and the flaws in the proxy body make it potent. It still hurts. And yet Vox's processors are content with the pain, filing them away as an ache, not unlike when Val grabs Vox over the same skin he's bitten to a bioluminescent bruise.

With Val, pain never feels quite right. Under the influence of his smoke, as besotted as any nickel-and-dime whore, Vox could almost interpret it as a similar burn to the stretch of Val making Vox take his cock to the hilt. Even the fireworks of Baxter's fingers manipulating and soldering his spinal cord register as intimate pressure in parts of him not meant to be handled.

“He's bleeding,” Val says overhead. “Like, a lot. Is that normal?”

Baxter nods. “We're connecting the circulatory systems. Unclip the blood bag and start at 50.”

Carefully, Val lifts Vox's head enough to adjust his posture. When he sets him back down, Vox can feel the twitching bulge of Val's dick against the back of his casing.

“It’s colder than usual, too. Is he supposed to be cold?” Val's upper set of hands drop to the biceps of the proxy, but Vox hasn't upgraded his software yet to feel the touch. “Oh, shit, he's fucking freezing!”

“Mister Valentino, please, relax,” Baxter says. “This is all normal. The proxy has been in suspension, and the colder temperatures keep it fresh. We're giving him warm blood- here, feel.”

He takes one of Val's hands to hold it against the bag of blood dripping into Vox's arm.

“I know what I'm doing.”

Val returns his hands to Vox's screen, simultaneously petting over his antennas and wiping away his tears. “Yeah, whatever. Can you just do it faster?”

“If you want it done poorly,” Baxter snaps, “then yes! But you cannot rush perfection.”

For reasons Vox doesn't understand, Val accepts this as easily as Velvette's order to stay: with barely audible complaint but undeniable compliance. He settles as much as the metal table allows and blows a fresh dose of smoke into Vox's face.

“I don't like seeing him like this,” Val confesses.

The techs follow an unspoken signal to move the proxy, dragging it up a couple of inches so its neck can be attached to the casing of Vox's screen.

“I'm not finished,” replies Baxter. “The proxy is just a base. After I fix his hand, I'm going to install-”

Val cuts him off with a cluck of his tongue. “Not what I meant, Doctor.”

They lapse into silence while Baxter meticulously stitches Vox back together. His system has started the process of upgrading, rewriting lines of code here and there in its desperation for sensory feedback, but it still only grasps familiar sensations. Pain. Pressure. Penetration. Each bite of the needle punishes his heart with an extra beat that makes his proxy jerk. If he had a dick and the blood to fill it, Vox realizes he would be hard.

“Heart rate,” a tech warns, “170 and climbing.”

Baxter doesn't even pause. “Lower it by sixty, and adjust as needed. I want it in the one to one-twenty range. And Mister Valentino, if you'll give him another dose? We're about to open his chest.”

This time, Val leans down to spit in Vox's open mouth, following it with a kiss before Vox has the opportunity to take offense. And Val's tongue is as dangerous as his cock, just as long and clever, bullying its way into the strange space that makes up Vox's mouth until he has to swallow aphrodisiac venom to avoid choking. His tongue, his saliva, is warm enough to heat Vox from the inside out.

His chest heaves as his heart races exactly long enough to be slammed back into rhythm by the techs.

“Enough for now,” Baxter orders.

Val reels his tongue back between his lips, but stays close enough to kiss. His hands are still all over Vox's screen without a care for what the static electricity does to the fine fur covering every inch of his body.

Vox would sell his soul to be able to touch him.

“Sir, can you help restrain him?” prompts Baxter, reaching for Val's arms. “He's glitching, and I need him to stay still.”

When Val pulls away, a short whine bounces between Vox's speakers and the ones overhead.

“Can I at least get my dick out first?”

Baxter doesn't dignify that with a response, which Val takes as permission. He's barely dressed to begin with, so he simply pulls his panties to the side to free his cock. It wastes no time seeking out Vox's screen like it remembers him, squirming against the glass and smearing sticky precum in its wake.

The only warning Vox gets is Baxter's cold demand of “Scalpel,” before the blade digs into his sternum.

His breath stutters, in, in, in, but Vox still lacks the motor control to escape the unyielding pressure of the cut. Val doesn't give him the room to move anyhow. Between his hands on Vox's shoulders and Baxter's gloved fingers flaying Vox's chest, Vox feels held. Owned. His programming writes this into place twice before a short-circuit behind his eye sends a tremor through his body.

An actual sob wrestles its way out of Vox when Baxter curls a hand around one of his ribs. First, he dislocates the delicate bone. Then, he slices through the connective tissue connecting it to the others. Third, he pulls the pale blue rib up and out high enough for Vox to see it in his limited field of vision.

“Gross,” Val comments, like his cock isn't drooling precum across Vox's face.

Baxter huffs and drops the bone into a metal receptacle of some kind. “Necessary,” he counters. “Rib L2, please.”

Replacing it is a much calmer affair; after positioning the new rib, Baxter must only tack the remaining tendons in place before moving on to the next. By the time Vox is allowed up off this table after his updates, his regeneration will have settled the bones as they're supposed to sit. He still cries wordlessly at each adjustment.

Through it all, Baxter is remarkably careful. Despite the flutter of Vox's lungs in the open air, he doesn't touch them, nor does he prod at Vox's arrhythmic heart. He even goes as far as to wrestle Val's dick across Vox's screen to keep it from pointing toward his chest cavity, tainting his fingers with pearls of fluid that make him frown and change his gloves.

“Don't contaminate the surgical field,” Baxter says sternly. “Not every orifice is designed for your genitalia, Mister Valentino.”

“Never stopped me before,” Val sniffs.

Nonetheless, he reluctantly keeps hold of himself, grinding into the friction of Vox's face while keeping his dick aimed away from the mess of blood and innards spilling from Vox's open chest. His toxins are the most concentrated straight from the source; both his dick and his pussy seem to be endless fountains of aphrodisiac, and the added dose coating Vox's teeth further serves to twist the pain of surgery into something he could almost call pleasure.

“Ribs R3 and R4, please.”

As Baxter works, Val's dick finds its way into Vox's mouth, cutting off his primary airway so that his gills flare to compensate and his throat reflexively swallows anything Val gives him. Vox can't think or breathe straight but he relishes in the distraction from Baxter's manipulations. It's familiar. It's real. It's processable. After so many years together, the weight of Valentino's cock on his tongue is an anchor in Vox's code when the rest of the world is indecipherable.

“Excellent work, Mister Valentino,” Baxter praises.

Val thumbs another sparkle of tears off Vox's screen and makes a noise of agreement. He often luxuriates in anything he can possibly interpret as a compliment, but his half-hearted response gives Vox the impression he wasn't entirely listening.

“L5, now- we'll be closing Mister Vox's chest soon, sir. He seems to be at an effective dose of toxins at the moment, so I suggest-”

“He can't overdose on it,” Val defends, “and he's- he seems calmer. Let me come down his throat, please, he needs it.”

And Vox does. He needs to stay wrapped in the warm, distant high of Val's toxins if he intends to survive the rest of his upgrade.

“Be careful. Don't break him.”

Val trills low in his chest as he shifts, adjusting the angle of Vox's head in his lap enough that he can press the last couple inches of his cock into Vox's screen. It doesn't make much of a difference to Vox--he still can't breathe or speak around it, still can't see past the lavender haze of Val's body above him–but the breathy moans on each of Val's exhales sink into Vox's system like a reward.

“Keep him still,” reminds Baxter, arranging the new ribs in Vox's chest like there isn't room for them all. “I can't have him moving while I close his chest, Mister Valentino.”

“Got it,” Val mutters half heartedly.

He's never this gentle with Vox under normal circumstances. Even when he's ostensibly playing nice to get something he wants, Val is mean, sharp and selfish, with little regard for the wellbeing of anyone on the end of his cock. If Vox didn't know better, he would assume it's someone else cradling his screen, wiping his tears, and cooing at him like a pet as they fuck his mouth.

Then again, Val has always been good at surprising Vox.

After Baxter finishes with his ribs, two techs pull the split skin together over Vox's chest. Where the stitches had been painstaking, the staples used to repair the chest incision are blunt and fast, pressed into place by a handheld dispenser, and deep enough to secure muscle alongside the skin. The first one lands so close to Vox's heart that he keens around Val's cock and struggles with the reflexive urge to push Baxter off him. Between Val's restraint and the techs’ hands on his chest, he makes no progress.

“We’re almost through here,” Baxter tells him, steadying Vox with a palm against the base of his neck, “You’re alright, Vox. Your heart is fine. Your respiration is fine. You’re taking Mister Valentino so well.” He squeezes Vox’s throat lightly. “Ten more.”

“You can do it, Papi,” Val adds.

When the next staple goes in, Val pushes down on Vox’s arms to keep him from surging away from the puncture. Static fizzles across Vox’s face and through his speakers in retaliation but he can’t move, not even to pull away from the increasingly frantic thrusting of Val’s cock in his mouth. He’s never felt so powerless before. But Val is talking to him, telling him he’s doing well, and Baxter is unflinching in his work, keeping a steady pace that takes him moments to complete.

Baxter releases Vox’s throat as he leans away to hand off the staple gun. “Perfect. Prep his wrist.”

“Fuck, hold on.” Val’s hands slide up and under Vox’s back to support his upper body while Val rolls his hips into Vox’s face. “Just give me a second, I’m close-”

“I’ll work around you, sir.”

While Val pulls Vox’s head into each thrust, a tech urges Vox’s right arm to extend away from his body, stabilizing it at the wrist and elbow while his other is allowed to lie limp against the observation table. At the first press of a fresh, razor sharp scalpel to the back of Vox’s wrist, he sobs, making Val’s wings flare out around them. A few of the techs are knocked back, but their indignant complaints disappear behind the way Val growls Vox’s name.

Like always, Val comes like a flood, finding its way down Vox’s throat and warming him from the inside out. He hadn’t felt cold before, but now more comfortable, he relaxes into the table and turns his face into the sweet caress of Val’s silk-gloved hands.

“Fuck,” Val murmurs, twitching with aftershocks. He’s still coming in waves and fucking his cum into Vox’s mouth. “So fucking good for me, Vox, shit.”

Vox’s speakers crackle around a half-formed sound.

“I know,” Val hums, “but you can take it a little longer.”

Baxter works much quicker on Vox’s wrist than his chest, easily disconnecting the nerves and tendons at their natural junctures rather than hacking through them as he’d needed to for Vox’s ribs, and ignoring the muscle spasms that run up Vox’s arm when he pulls too hard at the cables. Better yet, it doesn’t seem to draw or repulse Valentino’s attention. He simply watches Vox’s face, stroking his screen and occasionally sneaking his fingers in around his dick to feel the points of Vox’s teeth.

One of the techs interrupts by holding their tablet out for Baxter’s attention. “The software team sent the update. Should we begin the install?”

Baxter shakes his head. “No, I don’t want to overwhelm his system.” He sets Vox’s finally dismembered hand aside and takes the replacement from another tech. “He can update after integration is complete.”

At the same time that Baxter connects the first wire of Vox’s new hand, Val brushes his fingertips across Vox’s antennas to tease the electricity sparking between them. “You’re almost done then, right?” he asks.

“He’s mostly repaired,” Baxter agrees. “After I finish connecting his hand, it’s a simple matter of his attachments, and then he can rest while his software updates.” He takes the soldering iron from one of the techs to ensure the connected cables don’t come apart down the line and ignores the hiccuping whine it pulls from Vox’s speakers. “We’ll calibrate him tomorrow- you might wish to assist with that.”

“I’ll think about it,” replies Val airily.

He continues his comforting caresses of Vox’s head and screen, but doesn’t pull away from him enough to give Vox a reprieve from the steady stream of toxin-laced cum. Occupied and acclimatized as he now is, Vox hardly feels the fresh ring of stitches around his wrist, nor does he fully register the hand that slips into his slack, blood-soaked one as soon as the techs release his arm.

“You’ve done remarkably well, Mister Vox. Give me five more minutes, and then you can rest.”

Vox doesn’t have the wherewithal to respond, but Val makes an approving hum on his behalf. Compared to the surgical upgrades and alterations, this part is easy: Vox’s genitals were designed to be interchangeable, and connecting an attachment to the proxy is far simpler a feat than welding together a new nervous system. Still, Baxter lingers long enough for Vox’s speakers to eek out a questioning burst of static, but doesn’t explain the delay. He’s more efficient with whatever attachment has been designed for Vox’s chest, connecting it to both ports on Vox’s nipples before smoothing the seams of the silicate skin.

“Nice,” Val praises, hands tightening around Vox’s screen like he’s fighting the urge to move them.

Baxter chuckles in agreement. “Nice, indeed.”

Then he hops down off the table, shedding his soiled layers of protective equipment as he gives his next set of orders to his team.

“Remove both drips, clean him up, and begin installing the software update. It should take around eight hours to download, six to install, and another eight to boot up the entire system.” Baxter pauses while the techs get to work. “Shall I wait for you tomorrow evening, Mister Valentino?”

Val steadies Vox’s head with the assistance of a tech while he eases his dick out of Vox’s mouth, and leaves the casing entirely in their hands once he gets back to his feet with his wings wrapped around him. “Text me before you start.”

He doesn’t say goodbye to Vox before his heels clatter away, but the mere fact he stayed so long continues to lay over Vox’s anxieties like a warm duvet. Even without Val, his aphrodisiacs keep Vox’s system calm as well, allowing him to relax into the gentle washing from the techs.

Once Vox wakes up after his software update, he’s bound to feel like his old self again. He’ll be repaired, connected, sharp, and steady, the way he’s meant to be. He’s always been able to trust Baxter with that much. As more and more of his processing power dedicates itself to the new incoming code, Vox relaxes into the void of unconsciousness, and assures himself things will be better when he wakes.

“I’ll have someone bring you that drink,” Vox says suddenly, at last pushing off his–obnoxious, ostentatious, and completely unnecessary–desk to circle Alastor like a shark searching for blood in the water. Each step closer forces more ambient static charge into the air. It’s sharper, crisper, than Alastor’s own radio fuzz. “Still take it on the rocks?”

Alastor chooses a building out the window to stare at. He can hear and feel Vox’s presence fine without giving him the attention he so desperately craves. Seconds before his metal claws sink into Alastor’s shoulders, his overworked cooling fans kick higher, giving Alastor just enough warning not to flinch when the sharpened points pierce through the layers of his suit. Vox used to be so mindful with them, back when the claws were new and too big for his delicate hands. Even now the danger doesn't feel pointed so much as careless, as he often becomes in the face of excitement. 

“I don't drink in company these days,” Alastor drawls. “I find it makes people too familiar. Too…” he pauses, pretending to search for a word as Vox idly squeezes his shoulders, “friendly, I suppose.”

Vox snorts and pushes Alastor away from him, letting the chair spin wildly until it tips, slamming Alastor's temple into the marble floor as it skids a few more feet.

“Aww, don't worry, Al,” he croons.

He closes the distance between them with three large, purposeful steps, his pompous dress shoe slipping when he takes the second too fast. As soon as he's within range, he wedges the patent leather toe between Alastor's cheek and the floor to lift his head, which in turn forces Alastor’s neck into an unnatural angle he can barely breathe through.

“I don’t think we’re friends. You made that abundantly clear.”

Steam hisses out of Vox’s pneumatic joints as he crouches down, his screen blindingly blue at such proximity. 

“We really could’ve done great things,” he pratters on.

Back in the day, Vox’s body had been as different as his saturated screen, burdened by its unholy marriage of human, aquatic, and electric. The thing creaked when he moved too fast. Sputtered when he was too excited. Everything has been replaced over time, to the point Alastor wonders whether this is the same Vox he used to know at all. But his stupid antennas crackle just as furiously on either side of his tasteless hat as before.

“A complete monopoly over radio and video. Nobody would even think-” with an charged whine, Vox glitches, his face cutting in and out of grey static, “-of fucking touching us. I mean, you’re the only one brainless enough to take me on, and look at how that ended for you.”

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Alastor snarls back.

At that moment, the door to Vox’s bedroom slides open enough for one of the bright little robots to scutter in with two fresh tumblers of whiskey, staying only long enough for Vox to take the glasses before it speeds out of striking range. The endless wires hoist both Alastor and Vox back upright, but with Alastor trapped in his seat, he’s forced to either stare into Vox’s ugly blazer or crane his neck to watch his expression. It’s as humiliating as the floor. 

“Oh, I have.”

Vox drains his glass in a single long swallow. When he tosses it away to shatter in some far corner of the penthouse, Alastor’s ears involuntary twitch, and though he doesn’t wince or flinch from the pain of it, Vox snorts and flicks them with his free hand before grabbing them tightly. 

“I’ve changed a lot in seventy years, and it’s thanks to your, shall we say, inspiration?”

Instead of delivering another shock, Vox yanks Alastor’s head back and holds the whiskey to his teeth, fingertips just far enough down the glass that Alastor can’t bite him without pulling on his already sore ears. And he pours straight away, apparently not caring whether it makes it into Alastor’s mouth, or whether it chokes him when it does. 

He pulls back with half the glass left. “Not that you’d know much about innovation. And I know, I know, you wouldn’t say I’ve changed for the better, but,” Vox releases Alastor’s ears to sweep his arms in another grand gesture with a faraway look in his eye, trapped by egotistical fantasies or his omnipresent cameras, “because I knew you,” he continues, glancing back over his shoulder, “I’ve been changed for good. I learned the importance of the right team. One that really believes in my vision.”

Alastor sighs, dropping his chin to his scarred chest. “Your delusion, you mean.”

“Delusion!” Vox echoes back, his voice spilling from several of the surrounding speakers with another burst of ambient static. For all his dramatics, he doesn’t try to close the distance between them again, simply spinning his head fully to face Alastor. “I own half of Hell, and the other half does whatever I tell them anyway. I’ve got Velvette and Valentino. What do you have, huh?” He tilts his screen to the side, letting one of his slanderous programs on the Hazbin Hotel flash over his face. “A bunch of nothing fucking losers?”

“This might be the laziest interrogation I’ve ever heard,” Alastor says. “Although I’ll admit your presence is quite torturous, I thought for sure you’d have something more impressive up your sleeve than boring me to death.”

The rest of Vox’s body turns to Alastor again. With a raised eyebrow, his wires drag Alastor out of the chair to suspend him a dozen dizzying feet off the ground directly over Vox. A new angle hasn’t improved the room’s aesthetic, though it does allow Alastor to note where the maids don’t dust, and it leaves him beyond Vox’s immediate reach for the time being. 

“And I thought I was being nice.” He splits into a sharky grin. “Cordial even. Given our history-”

“Now, not this again, Vincent,” Alastor taunts. “How pathetic that after all these years, you still let your emotions get the better of you. You haven’t matured, you haven’t learned, and I’d bet you haven’t thought any of this through.” The cables holding Alastor up tighten painfully as Vox’s antennas alight with energy. “Of course you had your little parade today. But tomorrow? And the day after? What then?”

Vox chuckles, then finishes the rest of Alastor’s whiskey. “Why spoil the surprise? I’ve had decades to plan every minute of our lives once I finally got you under my thumb,” his screen glitches again, this time in technicolor, “where you belong.”

He snaps his fingers and the lights power off. 

“Try to get some sleep if you can,” Vox says smoothly, “because we’re just getting started. Goodnight, Alastor.”