[Rare Words] Hazbin Hotel, Lotus-eater & Hiraeth [T]

[writtenwordsaloud]

Title: back into the swing of things
Author: writtenwordsaloud
Fandom: Hazbin Hotel
Challenge: rare words
Length: 500
Warnings: n/a
Summary: It was never real, but Vox would give anything to return.

It wasn’t real.

Valentino and Velvette had pulled him out of the machine and brought Vox back to the real world. This was reality. Not the place his mind had been. Where he was god, where he hadn’t been afraid to call Velvette his family, where he and Valentino had…

It wasn’t real. This was.

Vox said he was fine. Of course he was. It wasn’t real, they didn’t know what had happened inside the machine, and no one else in Hell knew he had been kidnapped. Vox went back to work, which wasn’t as hard as a part of him screamed it should be.

He was not God here. Vox couldn’t admit to his desire of wanting a family here. Val was…

This was real. Not the place where things went exactly as he had wanted. Vox should have known. Velvette wouldn’t want to be family. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure if she was all that happy being his friend (her word, not his). Val wouldn’t want anything more than they had. If he did, he wouldn’t drive Vox as crazy as he did with everyone else he let into his arms. Outside of work, that was. For work? Of course that was fine.

It was fine. Vox was fine. He got up, went to work, finished work, went to bed. Like the machine he should be.

The machine he was.

“V, I… we’re worried about you.”

Vox stayed planked in his bed. Worry was not a word Velvette should say. “That’s out of character.”

“Yeah, well you haven’t been in character for a bit. So there.”

“I’ve been just fine.”

“Lies, you muppet.”

Her hand laid on his back. When was the last time he had touched her? Probably when she had pulled him out of the machine.

“Getting back into the swing of things,” he rephrased. It wasn’t incorrect.

He was a machine.

The next one to touch him was Val, who didn’t bother to speak and instead simply climbed on top of him. Kissed him. Either cursed or complimented him in Spanish (Vox couldn’t tell by the tone).

“What did it do to you?” Val asked when he finally switched to English.

“What?” asked Vox, who hadn’t moved.

“That fucking machine! I miss you.”

Vox missed the Val he didn’t have to walk on eggshells around. The Velvette he could be honest with. They weren’t real. None of it had ever been real. Just what Vox had wanted.

He waited for the anger to bubble inside him so he could shove Val away. It never came. The real Val felt like the fake one. It was Vox who was the fake. Fake for wanting something which wasn’t real.

Which couldn’t be real.

“Just getting back into the swing of things.” This time it was a lie, but he turned to take Val into his arms.

As long as they weren’t talking, Vox might not miss the world which wasn’t real as much. He might not.

Maybe.