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It can be tough, being the backbone of the insane clusterfuck of a polycule that is the Vees.
Well, Velvette amends to herself, it should be tough, anyway. Fortunately, she is damn capable and also that #bitch. But sometimes, even someone as incredible as she is hits a snag.
Case in point: she and Vox are on ice at the moment. They’re never really off ice, but this is the chilliest he’s been in absolute ages. After he grew his body back, he and Val fucked it out over the course of a week and they’re back to normal again. That’s not even within the realm of things she might potentially consider a possibility, so she has to figure out another way to fix things between them. She needs him to let her back into the Vee Tower Voxflix account, mostly.
On her way up to his office, Velvette considers her angle of attack. She can’t call it “relationship maintenance.” The old fuck would laugh, call her woke, and not even listen to her offer. She barely thinks she can call the thing between them anything other than a business relationship to his face—wait.
She stops in her tracks.
Does Vox know he’s in a polycule?
The question is so wildly basic, she can’t help but cackle. Her laugh edges toward hysterical when she decides the answer is no. It’s such fucking typical Vox behavior, she can’t believe she hasn’t considered it before.
Her fingers are typing a text to Valentino before the thoughts are even fully formed.
Velvette leaves him on read. Val is easy, as usual. She appreciates that about him. He manages to do less than the bare minimum at every opportunity and gets away with it, but she kind of admires him for it.
Unlike Vox, who does exactly the bare minimum and is a right prick about it the whole time. She can’t wait to remove his head again later in the week, however they decide to do it. Which is just what he deserves for giving her the cold shoulder, the bastard.
Speaking of which—she rolls her shoulders and grimaces. Her whole body is wound tight with stress and the ball joints that connect its segments together are full of gunk that manages to be both greasy and abrasive in the worst way. Not to mention the chafing texture of all the lint they’ve accumulated. The dirt isn’t visible, thank God, but it is driving her to distraction.
…Maybe that’s her way in. Vox likes mechanics, right? He’s into all that nerd shit, and she knows he’s bragged about the car he used to have. It’ll be more annoying and make everything take longer, but it might also thaw things between them, at least a little.
It’s not until she’s shoved open the door to Vox’s weird, creepy, windowless office that she realizes she still doesn’t have a way to pitch this.
“...Hey, Vee,” she starts. The greeting hangs awkwardly in the air as her eyes adjust to the reflected light of several dozen monitors and the dim blue glow coming from the aquarium.
“Velvette. What can I do for you?” His tone is neutral, and he doesn’t turn around.
She feels her face heat up, frustration immediately driving any thoughts of a coherent pitch out of her mind. “Oh, fuck off, Vox. I’m tired of this. If anything, I should still be mad at you for getting us into that fucking mess in the first place! At least fucking look at me!” Oh shit. Her voice is starting to waver, like she’s a frustrated child. (The comparison’s not as crazy as she’d like. She just barely holds back a stamp of her foot.)
When the cunt finally does spin around in his dumbfuck gamer chair, his mouth sits in a thin line at the bottom of his screen and his hypnotic eye is swirling. Velvette quickly flicks her eyes to the floor, just in case.
“For fuck’s sake, Vel. I’m not gonna hypnotize you. At least look at me.” There’s still no emotion in his voice as he throws her words back in her face.
“Sorry, okay? Can’t blame a girl for being paranoid.” She grimaces and flaps a hand at him before he can respond. Her wrist feels like a rusty door hinge and she’s almost shocked it doesn’t sound like one. “No, sorry. I came here with…a peace offering. I shouldn’t be bitching at you.”
Vox raises one eyebrow. “A peace offering?”
“Yeah. Um, I was wondering if you’d be interested in…helping me with some scheduled maintenance?” Velvette grits her teeth. This is awful.
It’s slightly worth it, though, because Vox brightens a bit. “You want my help? With tech?”
“Not…exactly.” Velvette starts rolling her wrists, then stops because it feels like rubbing two nail files against each other. “The maintenance is for me.”
A blue spark fizzles off the end of one of Vox’s antennae and his screen brightens further. “What are you saying?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Vox, do I have to spell everything out for you?” Velvette pauses for dramatic effect, and because Shok.wav shoots her a sharp warning look through the aquarium glass. She knows exactly where she lies on his priority list. All the fire leaves her voice, and her gaze glues itself to one of the monitors over his shoulder. “My body. It needs…a tune-up, I guess you’d say. I can’t do it myself.” This is not technically true. She can, but it’s a real bitch, and she may have neglected her maintenance schedule for a handful of weeks longer than she should, and she’s trying with him. She really is. Unfortunately she does care about the dumb bastard, and she wants them to be okay.
Vox is apparently experiencing some kind of malfunction, because he just blinks at her.
“...Vee? You there?”
He smacks himself in the side of the head with the heel of his palm. “Yeah. Here. Are you asking me to take you apart? As, what, some kind of trust exercise?” He’s laughing at her. Not out loud, not yet, but the incredulity in his voice and the suggestion of a chuckle ring clearly in the otherwise quiet room. “Have you been going to the princess’s little therapy sessions or something?”
Velvette feels the seething anger rise in her chest again. She turns around, and the grit in her knees is almost bad enough to make her wish for death a second time.
“You know what, Vee? Forget it. Hope you fucking choke.” Her hands clench into fists and this time the sandy sensation is audible. Fuck. She reaches for the door handle and, salt in the wound, her elbow squeaks. When Vox doesn’t comment, she storms out and heads down the hall.
#######
“What’s going on, chiquita?” Val corners her in the kitchen as she’s making herself a third cup of coffee, in hopes that if she gets wired enough, her shit will sort itself out and she won’t have to take herself apart after all. It’s a futile task that’s less miserable than sitting on the couch, trying not to make any more embarrassing noises, but only just.
Velvette sighs. “It’s Vox. I tried to fix shit with him and he laughed in my fucking face.”
Val gathers her up into his many arms for a long hug, which makes her feel especially small and pathetic. “Want me to kill him?”
She laughs unconvincingly into his torso. “For me?”
“For literally a stale corn chip, amor. I did it once, I’ll do it again. And again and again.” He tips her back by the shoulders and lets go with one hand so he can tap his chin thoughtfully. “Heyyy, maybe I should make some snuff films.”
“Maybe,” she agrees through a sniffle. “I’ll make you a potion for them.”
“Hey, there we go! That’s more like it.”
Velvette can’t hold back another laugh, though this one is accompanied by a loud rattling noise from somewhere in the vicinity of her lungs.
Val looks at her with concern. “Do you need a doctor or something, babe?” When Velvette only shakes her head, he forges onward. “Okay, no doctor. Dooooo youuuuu…wanna fuck about it?”
She huffs amusedly before looking up and realizing he’s serious.
“Just as friends, of course,” he reassures her quickly. “I know you and I aren’t usually the two getting down and dirty—we’d make a hell of a power couple, by the way. But I bet fucking my brains out would make you feel better.”
She shakes her head again, weirdly touched that Val would offer to bottom for her. “Not this time, but we might have to come back to that later.” She sighs. “I just wish Vox would have said yes. We’d be talking again—we’d be okay again.”
“Oh, I can do that.” Val picks her up bridal style, and the sensation of her knees bending over his arm makes her want to claw her fucking eyes out. Come to think of it, her eyeballs feel…loose, like they want to fall out. Have they shrunk? She wants to ask Val, but his vision is shit and he doesn’t know about her body’s unique needs and she likes not sounding completely insane. “C’mon. You don’t even have to say anything if you don’t want to.” His expression darkens. “Voxxy and I will just have a little chat. KITTY!” he bellows at the little robotic imp. “Bring my ball-stomping boots. Just in case.”
#######
Velvette can’t help but join in the fight, once it starts. “All you had to do,” she screeches, “was what I asked you to. It was that fucking simple!”
Shok.wav has seen that now both mummy and auntie are yelling at his daddy, and has backed off accordingly, so she can really let loose.
“I just want you to spend some time with me, Vox. I even offered you an activity I thought you’d like. And you still had to go and be a complete arsehole about it! But that’s just fucking typical for you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah!” Val shouts, throwing another Sex on the Beach at Vox’s head. He’s taken a backseat to let her at Vox, seeming to enjoy the show.
Vox, for his part, is at least putting in the effort to dodge the flying cocktails. “Relax, okay?” he yells. “Fucking—calm down, fuck!”
Val throws one last vindictive drink at him before motioning to Kitty to stop bringing them. “Do you have something you need to say to Velvette, Voxxy?”
Vox clenches his teeth. “I shouldn’t…have laughed. At you.”
Velvette grins meanly. “And?”
“And…I regret that my laughing made you feel bad.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, you absolute cunt. Do a proper one.”
“Yeah!” Val calls again.
Vox’s screen flicks to color bars before returning to normal. And if she’s not mistaken, that’s a wisp of smoke coming out of the side of his head. “I apologize,” he grinds out.
Velvette juts her chin out and leans toward him. “Did you like how that felt?” she asks, condescension dripping from every word. That would teach him to force her to apologize for something she wasn’t sorry for.
Vox grunts but otherwise refuses to reply. It’s okay, of course, because they all know the answer already.
“I’m willing to forgive you, on one condition.”
He doesn’t seem all that interested in her forgiveness, but Velvette pushes onward regardless.
“Do the maintenance.”
Vox waits for a minute, then meets her gaze. “Wait…that’s it?”
Val clicks his tongue. “Now, Voxxy, what have we learned about deals that make you say that?”
Vox rounds on Val, and Velvette intervenes to save her current favorite partner from the unspeakable acts of violence that are probably brewing in Vox’s microprocessors.
“Be nice, Vee,” she warns. “Your head’s not any less removable these days.”
“And if I don’t have anything nice to say?”
“Then don’t say anything, papi,” Val chimes in, apparently interested in dying today. “Fuck, were you raised in a barn or what? Did your mama teach you nothing?”
“No other conditions,” Velvette says hurriedly. “Except…don’t hold it against me? The process is kind of a pain in the arse.”
Vox rolls his eyes, but extends his hand. Velvette takes it and they shake once, locking the deal in place.
“So whatever you two are gonna be doing,” Val says, “Can I film it?”
#######
It’s exceptionally cold in the clean room.
There’s nothing in here right now except for the two of them, a shelving unit with half-finished projects against one of the walls, and a bench against another wall with bright LED lights on adjustable stems. The ceiling light is aggressive and bluish. Vox produces a blanket from somewhere and spreads it over the bench’s black surface. It smells of burning plastic and the way aluminium foil tastes when you chew it.
Velvette shivers.
“Go on, get up there.” He’s still being short with her, and she’s reconsidering whether it’s a good idea to let him do this while they’re both still fuming.
She wars with herself for a moment, but she really doesn’t want to deal with doing her own maintenance. It would be nice to force Vox to step up and help her, for once. With a requisite, “God, you suck,” she clambers up onto the bench and gets comfortable, leaning back against the wall while her feet dangle over the edge.
“I’d hate to tell you that you’re in less-than-capable hands,” Vox smiles smugly at her, “so I won’t.”
“Do you even know what you’re doing?” she snaps.
“Taking you apart piece by piece.” The bastard has the audacity to wink.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, babe, and don’t forget the cleaning bit while you’re in there being all self-satisfied.”
Vox’s smile drops and he scoffs. “Just…shut up and let me work.”
For maybe the first time ever in their partnership, Velvette has no objections. She lets herself relax, trying not to think about what’s to come.
She should have known better than to trust in Vox’s ability not to talk. He’s getting prepped, pulling tools out of drawers and locating his box of lint-free lens wipes, crawling on his knees to search under the bench for a dropped Allen key. He is also talking to himself. Well, half to her, but she’s not sure if answering would help her case, or interrupt his flow and piss him off again.
“Why’s this the first I’m hearing of this? Surely you’ve needed maintenance before now.”
She sure had, and that first year of existing with her new Hellish body had been perfectly miserable until she’d learned what it was she needed to do. Her joints are perpetually collecting the grit and grime that invades every nook and cranny in Hell, not to mention all the lint that’s part and parcel of working with large amounts of fabric. She takes herself apart monthly and cleans everything out, just to keep the sandy feeling of dirt in her elbows at bay.
Velvette stays lost in thought until she realizes he’s paused in his monologue and is now looking at her expectantly. “Um,” she starts. “Well. When I said I couldn’t do this by myself earlier…I mayyyy have misled you.”
Vox raises an eyebrow.
“I can do it, but it’s completely annoying, and I hate every second of it.” She chews her lip. “And I wanted you to not be mad at me anymore. This was the only way I could think of to make it up to you.”
Vox’s busy hands pause in their work. “Oh,” he says.
“Yeah, oh.” Velvette can’t keep the note of spite out of her tone. “I was trying to be nice to you and you laughed in my face.” She lets her head fall back and hit the wall, the dull thump echoing in her ears. She’s barely even upset about it now, just…tired. They’d all had a big year.
“I’ll do a good job,” Vox promises, and the sincerity on his face is unbearable. It’s not a genuine apology (it never is), but it’ll do.
One corner of her mouth twitches up into a slight smile. “Okay.”
“Can I take your shoe off?”
“You don’t need to, actually. Here—” she unbuckles the strap around her ankle so the joint is free. “And then you just, kinda—” she wiggles her fingers rhythmically, miming the action that’ll allow him to take her foot off.
Vox cups her heel with one hand and starts massaging her ankle with the other. Velvette’s eyes flutter closed and she feels slightly sick at the audible pop of her foot separating from her leg. When Vox steps away, leaving her with only the phantom sensation of a foot attached to her body and the very real, dulled input she’s still receiving from her detached foot as he carries it to a rolling bench a few paces away, she gasps.
That’s…a weird feeling. She doesn’t say anything about it, but she feels it again when he unbuckles her other shoe and detaches the foot that’s in it.
“Wait…what are you doing?”
“Taking you apart, piece by piece,” Vox says, earnestly this time, as if that’s not completely foreign to her. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“Well…” It’s certainly not what she expected. When she does her own maintenance, she works on one joint at a time: detaching one body part, cleaning the joint (while trying not to focus on what the inside looks like, because that makes her head hurt), then reattaching the part. She’s never been fully disassembled on purpose.
The thought sparks something odd, something that feels a bit like a microwaveable beanbag laying across her stomach.
She’s so focused on the strange warmth in her guts that she startles when she notices Vox staring at her.
“What?” she says, and her voice is normal and not breathless at all.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No. I’m meant to come apart this way. I’ve just never…not all at once.”
Vox nods.
“Could you…” Velvette trails off.
“What?”
“Ugh. Keep your fuckin’ tech boner under control.”
Vox fidgets with her foot; he hasn’t put it down yet. He rolls the side bench closer to himself with his own still-attached foot. “It’s interesting.”
“It’s my body. Not a machine.”
He squints one eye and looks down the barrel of her leg with the other. Velvette blushes. He puts her foot down gently on the side bench, standing it up so it looks like a shoe being modeled in a mall window display. “I can’t do maintenance and also not look at you.”
Well, maybe she hadn’t been expecting this to feel so intimate. Maybe she hadn’t thought she’d feel so perceived. She crosses her arms. “Fine.”
Vox places one hand on her knee, and the warmth of his palm is stark against the cold air of the room. She feels the other hand cradling the back of her calf as he begins to work his fingers over and around her knee, searching for the places that will allow him to loosen the joint before popping it out. “Hey,” he says softly, drawing her attention. “Relax.”
Velvette grumbles, but focuses on calming her body. Her leg below the knee comes off, and the chill of the movable benchtop through the blanket makes her shiver. She deliberately relaxes again, and starts to drift.
Her mind wanders, her gaze moving from Vox to the wall behind his head. The warmth sitting in the pit of her stomach is building pleasantly, and she’s able to recognize now that this is, oddly enough, turning her on. Oh, God. She hopes Vox can’t tell.
Vox squeezes her remaining calf as he detaches it. The way he cradles it in his hands feels strangely tender, and that makes something squeeze in the vicinity of Velvette’s heart.
“I’m gonna move you,” he mutters. “You still with me?”
“Mhm.” Velvette feels…floaty. Pliable. Soft. The cold of the room isn’t as noticeable anymore.
“Good. Just gonna lay you on your back. Okay?”
“Mhm.”
Oh, that sounds nice. He thinks she’s good. He moves her so she’s flat on her back on the blanket, and she finds she doesn’t mind the metallic smell so much now.
He’s still talking to himself the whole time, muttering about this lubricant or that joint construction. He moves her arm in its socket, and Velvette is dimly surprised at just how limp it looks, being manipulated by his hands. Each of her fingers comes off, and each gets placed in its own labeled tray. He spends a minute taking them apart further, and it’s so strange to have lost her hands this early in the process. Normally they’re the last to get worked on.
Once her arm segments pop out of their sockets, Velvette feels well and truly hot and bothered. Her brain is only functioning by the most generous definition of the word, and her body is demanding relief.
That doesn’t stop her from feeling a spike of anxiety as Vox reaches for her thigh.
“Vox,” she says, and even to her own ears it sounds like she’s talking with a mouth full of treacle.
“Yeah?” He seems unaffected, which is comforting. His hand rests on her skin, the warmth radiating and fanning the flames in her belly.
“I’m—ah!” she gasps as he pulls her thigh toward him, spreading them so cool air rushes between her legs. “Wait,” is all she can think to say.
Vox stops and takes a better look at her. “Whoa, are you…?”
“Yeah,” she groans. She’d cover her face if she still had, y’know, arms, but settles for closing her eyes.
“What do I do?” He sounds panicked. A giggle escapes her as she realizes he might literally never have had to deal with a woman who was turned on while he wasn’t. “No, seriously! What the fuck do you want me to do?”
Velvette can’t think. Her brain’s moving at a snail’s pace, though the pleasant heat is rapidly fading in the face of Vox’s incompetence.
“Just…ignore it,” she says finally. “I don’t even wanna think about why this is happening right now, let alone coach you through handling it.”
“Really?”
“What do you want me to do, tell you to figure it out on your own?” Velvette rolls her eyes. Yeah, the gentle warmth she was feeling before has completely dissipated, leaving her cold and sore and oversensitive to every twitch of her magically still-connected nerves.
Vox cringes. “I could…call Val?”
“No!” Velvette snaps, before she even thinks about it. She doesn’t want anyone else to see her like this.
Vox raises an eyebrow at her.
“Ugh. Don’t give me that look. Just get back to it. Our little problem seems to have resolved itself, anyway.” She squeezes her thighs together uncomfortably, the slight dampness of her underwear just a reminder of what could have been a nice time, if Vox wasn’t so inexperienced.
He runs his hands up her thighs, palms dragging against her skin. When the sharp points of his thumbs trace the delicate creases at the top of her thighs, the dying spark flares to life again.
Great. Just fucking fantastic. And he’s not even doing it on purpose. Right?
She decides to keep her mouth shut this time and let him work. Vox digs his knuckle into the dip just under the jut of her hipbone, and she sucks a breath through her teeth as something audibly pops and her thigh separates from her torso.
“That hurt?”
“No. Felt nice.” The syrupy feeling is back in full force.
“Okay.”
“Do it again.”
“What?” Vox freezes halfway turned to the other bench, his grip tightening slightly on her thigh.
Velvette closes her eyes again, taking a deep breath. “Put it back on and take it off again.”
“I still have to do the other one.” He’s still not moving.
“What the Hell, do that one twice too.”
“If you think it’ll help.” He slides her thigh back toward her torso and gives it a little push. It slots back into place, and the rush of sensation is divine.
“Yeah, it’s helping,” she reassures him when he looks to her for guidance. Her teeth grind together, caging in any more telltale sounds when he removes her thigh for the second time.
The cage isn’t closed well enough though, because a small whimper escapes when he moves to the other leg and starts massaging her hip joint. Vox raises his eyebrows and glances at her, but doesn’t otherwise comment as he works. His hands are getting surer in their movements, and Velvette starts to feel more willing to overlook his stumbling earlier.
“Hey,” he finally says, turning back from the bench where her body parts are laid out in formation. She feels the brush of air from the tails of his coat on her left arm next to him as he turns to address her.
“Mhm?”
“Is that everything?”
Velvette considers. She could say yes, and do the rest herself, later, in private. But being in pieces, not having to worry about doing the work of cleaning out her own joints, feels so good. She feels…powerless, in a way, but she trusts Vox not to hurt her. Maybe she doesn’t trust him not to be a bumbling fool, but at least he won’t injure her on purpose despite her vulnerable state.
“...No.” Her cheeks heat up. “No, there’s also my waist and my head.”
“Oh—oh, uh. Okay. And…how do you usually clean your, uh…components?” He winces at the last word, probably used to thinking of himself as the only one who needs to keep a parts list and cleaning schedule.
“A small air blower and a microfiber rag. Like a screen cleaner. Sometimes a soft brush and some soapy water for the really crusty dirt.”
“Do you need, um…” Vox’s screen goes bright cyan.
“Lube?” she finishes for him. Normally, she’d be arching a judgemental eyebrow at him, but she just can’t find the energy. “There’s a bottle in my bathroom cabinet labeled Synth-ovia. Go fetch.”
He nods once and disappears in a bolt of lightning, screen still neon blue, and for once she’s not mad to be left behind. She draws in a big breath and lets it go, trying to brace herself for the inevitability of Vox’s hands on her neck. He returns within a minute, holding a small squeeze bottle.
“Any more questions?”
Vox shakes his head.
“Fab. Go on, then.”
“I’m just gonna…” He trails off, then squats down to dig around for something under the bench she’s lying on. A triumphant grin fills the lower half of his screen when he stands back up, holding a plastic block. “This’ll elevate your hips so I can get to your waist more easily,” he explains, and Velvette shifts her hips slightly as he does just that.
It’s oddly comfortable. She allows herself to relax further, to sink even deeper into that syrupy slowness that wants to take over completely. He lifts the hem of her crop top slightly, glancing at her torso but thankfully not letting his eyes linger. The fact that he actually listened to her doesn’t go unnoticed.
Velvette suppresses a gasp as Vox’s hands wrap almost completely around her waist. His fingers press around firmly, searching. When he finally finds the slightly more malleable area that indicates the edge of her hip section, instead of just popping it off like the others, he hums consideringly to himself and continues to trace over it. Back and forth, the pad of his finger goes, until the claw at the tip of it slips between her body segments.
She moans, and it’s loud. Vox looks like he wants to apologize, but she aims a pleading look his way. Do it again, she hopes her half-lidded eyes are saying.
Their message seems to be received, because he slowly slides in another claw tip.
“Whoa,” he mutters. “I’m not feeling any of your organs or anything. Hell physics is fucked up.”
Bold of you to assume I have organs, Velvette thinks half-coherently, focused on the feeling of him flexing his fingers this way and that. The warmth in her belly is now a full-on fire, and she moans again.
Vox still doesn’t look at her, focusing his gaze on the far wall as he shifts his hand around. She twists ineffectually on the bench, letting her brain fully turn off. Once he’s explored his fill, he pulls his fingers out, and Velvette makes a small noise at the loss.
“Little tug,” he softly warns, and then her hips are crossing the divide and she can see them on the other bench. She can’t see any of the wetness she felt on her shorts, for which she is silently grateful.
“Vel? Hey, you still with me?” Vox traces a claw over her cheek and she turns her face toward him. Slowly, she nods. “Okay. Good. Last one.”
He cards his fingers through the hair at the back of her head, using his thumbs to press up under the corner of her jawline, right under her ears. She chose a short, fluffy haircut this morning, and it’s paying dividends. The sensation of his fingers rubbing her scalp against the grain of her hair is marvelous. The separation of her head from her neck is something felt more than heard, and her disassembly is complete.
It feels closer to Heaven than Vox would have ever gotten them.
A sigh whistles out of her lungs, and though her mouth opens to let the air pass, it flows through her neck. Somehow. Vox can’t help himself but look, and she honestly can’t blame him. Her eyes flutter closed, and he sets her head back down on the blanket. He rolls her head back, and rubs the area where her neck connects with what feels like a soft rag. A puff of air that she feels in her teeth makes a few of her finger segments twitch—she can feel them knock against each other on the other table.
“This might be cold. There’s a stubborn—” Vox doesn’t finish his sentence, instead using his claw to pick something crusty off the edge of the flat surface that forms when it’s not attached to her neck, following it up with wet fabric. From the speed her skin dries and the slight sting, she figures it’s an alcohol wipe, which is decidedly not one of the things she told him he could use, but she lets it slide. “Got it. Okay.”
He stands her head up to sit on the table and runs his fingers through her hair. She must look as confused as she feels, because he explains, “Brushing your hair. I figure I owe you a good job after the whole…Heaven thing.” His claws snag on some tiny tangles, and her scalp tingles. Another sigh hisses out of her neck.
“…I am sorry. For the way things went down. I know I hurt you two.”
The apology is so quiet, Velvette almost misses it. But once it filters through the syrup in her brain, it nearly jolts her out of her nice, floaty headspace. The wheezing from her torso speeds up, and she is suddenly so aware of everything that isn’t currently attached to her. That on top of the feeling of Vox’s fingers still being dragged through her hair is overwhelming.
“Shh, hey,” Vox says, placing his palms flat over her ears and pressing her face into the soft material of his sweater vest. “Don’t freak out. You gotta stay with me, here.” She’s heard him use this tone with Valentino. It usually annoys her when he gets all soothing, but apparently he does it for a reason, because she’s able to slow her whistling breaths.
“Good, that’s good.” He carefully pulls his hands back from her head, and moves to wiping the large ball joint at the top of her neck. Once he deems it clean, he drips a little of the clear, viscous Synth-ovia from the bottle onto her neck and smooths it over the whole surface. Some of it slides down her throat despite the skin appearing to cover it, which is always an odd sensation, but it’s completely different with all her nerves dialed to 11. She watches her throat move as she swallows it. Vox lifts her head and in one dizzying motion, places it back on her neck. She gasps, through her mouth this time, and coughs slightly.
“You okay?”
Velvette nods, and the action is so much smoother, she feels the fire in her belly crackle. God, that feels so nice. The skin right around the joint itches as it resettles into its normal configuration. Vox ducks his head to look at the bottom of her ribcage segment, and gets to work with his microfiber cloth and then the Synth-ovia. It’s cold and slippery, and some of it soaks into the blanket while he addresses the other face of the joint, leaning over her hip segment. His body heat radiates through the air between them and she shivers at the warmth soaking into just the lower half of her torso while the synthetic synovial fluid chills the upper half. He lines up the segments, then gently slides her hips back into place.
The sudden wave of sensation has her keening. Her head tips back as her spine arches and she is once again presented with the fact of her absent limbs. Vox has already moved on to cleaning the surfaces where her thighs and hips join, and it’s almost overwhelming.
He works quickly but thoroughly to reattach her leg segments, and Velvette’s world narrows to the soft scrubbing of microfiber, the occasional bright sting of alcohol, the cold slide of the Synth-ovia, and dizzying waves of returning sensation. Once he finishes with her feet, she rolls her ankles. Pins-and-needles prickle her limbs in a loop that barrels through pain and races right back around again to pleasure.
For some reason that she’s too distracted to explore, Vox decides to reassemble her hands next. He pieces together all twenty-two finger segments, getting in there with a Q-Tip and giving each a wiggle to make sure they’re clean enough, before allowing each finger to attach itself to its respective palm.
Both hands immediately form fists, like their phantom versions have been doing this entire time. He hums, amused, before laying them down and starting in on her wrists. Velvette makes an effort to relax them and moans softly at the feeling of all her fingers moving smoothly. She hadn’t realized how bad things had gotten until the pain and discomfort were gone.
Before she knows it, her wrists and elbows are finished too, and Vox has both her arms prepared to reattach to her shoulders. Velvette could almost cry. She doesn’t want this to end.
But end it does, with a final slippery press of her arms into their sockets, and despite herself, she lets out a low sob.
Vox, to his credit, doesn’t comment on or even look too hard at her completely ruined eye makeup, her tears tracking it down her temples into her hair. He just drops a clean microfiber cloth on her face and turns away, leaning against the bench, as she scrubs the skin around her eyes. Her shorts, she realizes belatedly, are probably soaked through. Her body feels sore and satisfied, the way it does when she wakes up from a wet dream.
She doesn’t think she came.
And yet.
“Hey,” she croaks, her throat dry. “S’there any water in this hellhole?”
Vox spins around, a smile on his face. He’s preening, the prick. “How are you feeling?” He zaps away, then zaps back in with a bottle of water. In the intervening silence, she takes a steadying breath, gathering her wits.
Velvette jumps at the static shock she gets when he hands the bottle over. “You saw.” She gulps down half the water. “Was it as good for you as it was for me?” she asks, half joking.
Apparently half joking is close enough to earnest for Vox. “It was really cool, actually!”
—and suddenly, she understands what Alastor saw in him. She sees the bright-eyed cringefail nerd come to the surface for just a second, before Vox coughs awkwardly.
“Uh, I mean,” he says, “yeah, it was okay. Did you, um. Well, it seemed like…”
She raises an eyebrow at him. “Come on. Out with it,” she says, lips on the rim of the bottle. While he stammers, she drinks the rest of the water.
Vox’s face is bright blue. “Did. You. Finish,” he grinds out, simulated teeth clenched on his screen.
Velvette smirks at him. “No,” she enunciates. “But neither did you, so I guess we’re even.”
He sputters. “I’m not interested in you like that!”
“Oh good. So what are we?” She grins at him, enjoying the view as he attempts to put a coherent thought together. “Actually, don’t answer that. I know what we are. ‘Partners…in business,’ isn’t that right?” she teases, imitating his inflection from that overheard conversation with Valentino.
It doesn’t seem possible that Vox could turn brighter blue, but he manages. The torso of his collared shirt puffs out as his fans start to work overtime. He looks at the floor like a script is written on it.
“Relax, Vee. I know labels are weird for you. Old fuck.” She says it affectionately, but his eyes still snap up to meet hers, an offended look on his face. “I’m okay with ‘partner’ for right now. Business and otherwise. Val and I did schedule a meeting to talk about that, though. Next Tuesday work for you?”
“I have other meetings all day.”
“Who with?” Velvette’s hands glow purple with runes, belying her innocent tone.
Vox freezes, eyes locked on her newly reassembled fingers. “Uh. No one important. I’m sure I can move some things around.”
“Perfect! We already sent you a Voovle Calendar invite.” She claps her hands, dispelling the runes.
Vox’s eyes glaze over as his attention turns internally to check his email. She takes the opportunity to slide herself off the bench, leaning against it as she finds her balance on wobbly legs. Her joints move almost too well now. That problem will solve itself in a few days, once the first bits of lint find their way back into the crevices.
“Accepted,” Vox says, rejoining her in the real world. He scratches the back of his neck awkwardly, looking for all the world like he’s about to offer aftercare, of all things. “Do you need help getting back upstairs?”
“Oh, fuck off, Vee.” Velvette flips her hair out of her eyes. Her shorts are starting to stick to her, so she waves her hand and changes into a soft loungewear set from her new line. After a moment’s consideration, she puts her pixie cut in curlers too. Vox is still standing there, and she will under no circumstances allow him to find out she can’t walk right now. “Seriously. I…need a minute. Go on, get back to whatever you were doing.”
Vox smiles, and it’s almost soft. “See you later, princess.”
“Fuck. Off.”
He cackles, and is gone in a flash.