Chapter Text
From the moment they met, Angel Dust had a problem with Alastor.
More precisely, Angel had a problem, and Alastor was the physical embodiment of pouring salt into an open wound.
So, after The Hotel got a little Radio Demon Razzle Dazzle, Angel avoided him whenever possible. And when that was made im-possible, they ignored each other. Thus, time elapsed into eight-ish months of treating one another like nuisances. Still, there were some places they were forced to exist in the same vicinity. Like Family Dinner Night or Group Therapy.
Charlie’s terms and conditions that applied to anyone residing in the Happy Hazbin Hotel were outlined in a plethora of Redemption Exercises that included (but were not limited to) arts and crafts every first Wednesday of each month, Taco Tuesday (and the occasional Tortellini Tuesday, or Tea Party Tuesday, or Tabasco Tuesday if Alastor was cooking), and random other Redemptive Activities that resulted in the accumulation of Good Boy (or Good Girl, or Good Demon) Points. These earned the residents a drink at Husker’s bar or cigarettes or a joint or other morally-questionable-but-not-too-questionable rewards.
And then, there was Group Therapy.
It went without saying that previous iterations of Group Therapy did not go well, when it had been exclusively the Lesbian Lovebirds and Angel Dust. In true Charlie fashion, this did not deter her. So, with all of the shining hope in her Disney Princess heart (and the addition of Alastor, Niffty, and Husker to their roster) Charlie bequeathed that once a week they were all required to attend ‘Group Therapy.’
Thus, Group Therapy Part Deux.
Despite Charlie’s hopes and aspirations, their expanded cast didn’t magically make their little gatherings any more productive than before. Any attempts of therapy were subverted by one thing or another; like the fact that it was easy for Alastor to prattle on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, on, fucking on about nonsense, vociferously above Charlie and Vaggie and Husk and Niffty and Angel Dust that by the very end of it all, he’d derailed the conversation so many damn times talking about nothing at all, accompanied by his own laugh track, that no one knew what they’d even been talking about to begin with. And that was the end of it.
Today, however, a challenger stepped up to Alastor’s title of The Distraction. Niffty had spent at least five whole minutes waxing poetic on the intricacies of specific types and sizes of needles required whilst creating festive holiday garlands from the eyeballs of her victims, along with the best way to preserve them in their state, so it would be easier to clean them afterwards. Of course.
Impressively, Charlie appeared to question her Life’s choices for the first time in a good, long while.
“I- that’s, uh- fascinating Niffty, truly innovative, but I- I- I think it’s Angel’s turn!” If Charlie hadn’t chosen him out of the crowd, he might have thanked her for the reprieve. He had never wanted to understand the intricacies of how Hellish species’ eyeballs differed. But here he was, hearing things he couldn’t un-hear.
“Angel!” And didn’t she sound desperate. Angel could work with desperation. “What’s something you like about your work-?”
Angel Dust could spot every single one of the five stages of grief as they ran over her features at maximum velocity - starting from the very moment when Charlie remembered exactly what she was getting herself into. First was the millisecond of denial. Then disgust. The ‘why me,' came after, and Charlotte swiftly amended her sentence, just as Angel was going to open his mouth, “Like, uh-! The people you work with- Or do you have a favourite client! Or routine, since you dance!” As if she could vomit out the words quicker than Angel would be able to declare that he was attempting to champion the world record of getting dicked down on all the surfaces in Hell. Including her father’s desk.
The worst part about all of this was that her line of questioning was so horrifically innocent, in the grand scheme of things. Insignificant, even, to anyone outside of Angel’s own brain jar. But his lone noodle floating around in the spaghetti sauce of his skull somehow had a built-in honing signal for phrases that could hurt him, and his thoughts latched onto the cursed words immediately when they fell from her lips.
Why would Hell’s Number One Porn Star Fifty Years Running have a favourite client? Angel would be a liar, if he said he didn’t.
It was possible that he hadn’t shut down that clenching ache in his heart before it could be transcribed across his features. Or perhaps it had come across only partially, expressed as embarrassment or the youthful sort of naivety that the Princess constantly sought out in others.
That cocker spaniel-y sort of wet, sappy gaze crossed her face, and Angel managed to cut it off, nice and quick, “You don’t stay in the big leagues by bein’ a Prima Donna. So, yeah, the other girls I work with are nice’n all. But there’s a thrill you gotta have when ya do this for a living, y’know?”
Angel hadn’t felt any sort of thrill in his work since before Chuck’s Girlfriend had been a puddle of undigested dude ranch. But that was besides the point.
Without even meaning to do it, the damage was done.
—
Angel called him Handsome.
It was funny. What else do you call a guy that you can't see? That won't let you touch him?
Handsome had appeared in his life not long after Angel had plummeted down to this unfortunate existence in his new, monstrously awkward body. Just like all the other unfortunate sort that found their way here with highly desirable transferable skills.
So, he took on the stupidest gig of his Un-Life.
He could remember his short-lived pimp of the hour saying shit like, “It’s a sweet gig, Angie. You can take it or you can keep doing alleyway blowjobs ‘til you’re leakin' jizz outta your ears next New Year’s Eve.”
Angel could handle himself against most things down here in the pit, but getting sabotaged on Extermination Day wasn’t something he was keen on, even if the threat was weak. He did okay, when he was still wobbling on unsure legs that last Extermination Day. But that didn’t mean he was keen on an encore.
Their first meetings came with rules and stipulations, as if someone sat down and outlined the whole experience at their little desk. It was twenty-four hours a day, for two to three weeks, and that kind of pay was cushy.
You know, if he managed to not get sent into the ninth dimension of suffering, or wherever truly tortured souls ended up going.
The abbreviated rules were: No looking. No touching. No sharing a bed outside of foreplay or aftercare. And No Name. He was also 'Not to expect his benefactor to speak.'
All of that sounded a lot like Angel was going to get cuffed to a bed and used like a toy for a whole month. He’d gone into the experience knowing that this was the sort of thing that girls back home avoided like the plague. Anyone with a shred of common sense knew that a hooker getting cuffed was usually the start of a night that ended with working girls floating belly-up in the bay. At least back in New York.
Hell had a whole other game book to play by when it came to sex work. That was not something Angel would find out with Handsome, though. That would come later.
To the surprise of all involved, Angel had it good with Handsome.
This was especially remarkable, considering the fact that, when Angel asked what this fella looked like.“He’s gotta be some nasty piece’a work, right?” But the sorry excuse of a pimp had not a singular clue. He’d just had a note, a stack of cash, a meeting point, and decided that was enough for him!
Angel had gone to the meeting point and the rest was history. Seventy whole years of it, in fact. Seventy years of being booked in advance for several weeks in the fall. Every. Single. Year.
They were the best days in his entire shitty year. A reprieve. And like the addict he was, Angel craved those days like an absolute monster, all year round.
It was just his luck that the guy who stole his heart would pull a disappearing act.
—
All it took was that one silly little phrase and it was as if no time had passed at all since Angel had figured out that Handsome wasn’t coming back.
He lived in a haze. He could only trudge onward, oblivious to the world around him. To him. Every day in that pea-soup fog was a loop of his own creation, the world continuing to turn passively around him. He could blink, and realize that his body had moved from the Club to a Photo Shoot and returned to the Hotel and he was playing ball on the floor with Nuggies. And then he was back to the Club again, without even registering what happened. What day it was, even.
And then, somehow, he blinked and they were back in Group Therapy.
Vags was squinting at him. Hard enough to make Angel wonder if she could even see like that, with only the singular eye to speak of.
“You’re gonna get stuck that way,” he drawled. It felt like he hadn’t said anything in a while, dry and craggly deep in his throat. The words came out as a croak. It was a miracle he’d even come to group- someone must have come and collected him, for all that he struggled to remember what had happened the week (apparently it had been at least that long) that he was simply checked out.
“Are you fucking high right now?” Vaggie whisper-hissed, though she was just play-acting at being confidential. Everyone could hear.
It was a good question, though.
Angel had to take stock of himself. His many eyes blinking blandly at the space between them, not focused enough to parse her form from fuzzy edges. No. Maybe? Not high enough to deal with this, if he was.
Since she was riled up over nothing, Angel had to poke the bear. “Why? You finally offering whatever’s got you so wound tight?”
Charlie was getting better at the Disappointed Mom Voice since the others arrived. “Angel...”
It was enough for him to open the blinders ever so slightly. To struggle and figure out what was going on around him, beyond his tightly folded arms and the clipboard Charlie was fiddling with. Group Therapy. Right.
“You were, uh... distracted. For a while.”
No kidding.
Angel sucked on his teeth, willing away the sharp jab that waited on his tongue. He wrestled with it, and fought it down with the reminder that he hated lashing out at Charlie. She took everything to heart and looked like a kicked puppy when he did. And Angel, softie that he was, liked little creatures.
“You said somethin’ to me, Cha-Cha?”
She did that thing with her mouth, pressing her lips together and drawing their corners back, like she was fighting her own battles to keep from saying anything. She nodded, instead.
“I was just asking what your favourite season was, since no one had anything they wanted to talk about today. Mine’s summer!”
As if he couldn’t guess.
“Fall,” Angel said, without thinking, like a dumbass. Just another little reminder.
“Oh?” Charlie got excited in a way that always made him want to take a step back, but today’s was especially bad. Like she’d somehow unlocked a hidden back story of his with that one word answer.
Did no one else bother to say anything? Or did she start with him? Hard to tell when he glanced at the rest of them. Husker did his damndest to appear as if he were passed out in his chair like an old man. Niffty’s little leg was bouncing at super-sonic speed, very nearly invisible with her struggle to sit in one spot for so long. Vaggie had her glare on lockdown. And Alastor? He glanced up for a fraction of a millisecond and then back to his book. Whatever he was so engrossed in was as thick as a damn dictionary. Angel wasn’t positive it was even right-side up.
“Yeah- Uh- Leaves changing colours and all’a that is nice,” Angel mumbled, trying to think of something other than the trail-mix of feelings that was roiling up from his sternum.
Charlotte opened her mouth to move on. Or at least that’s what he hoped she was doing. Angel’s focus faded out, and any of her words fell on deaf ears. For all intents and purposes, Angel Dust was just a warm body anywhere he went.
The lights were on but no one was home.
He didn’t want to be home, right now.
—
During their last meeting, Angel had been a moron. That’s the only way to put it. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and Angel had five years worth of hindsight to contend with.
After seventy years, Angel had grown a sense of the sort of magic that always encapsulated Handsome. Not just the actual magic that he would sweep around Angel, in the periphery of his senses. Like the hairs of the back of his neck standing on end, he wouldn’t know how to describe the sense to anyone else. But it was familiar, after so long. His vision would be swept away under a silk blindfold, and Angel’s mind was set at ease.
This lead to Angel Dust opening his big, fat mouth.
“Ya know, you’re gonna have to bring me flowers on our Anniversary, right?” When the vague shape behind him that Angel recognized as His Fella didn’t speak, probably puzzling his words out, Angel grinned wider, reaching up to touch the silk of the blindfold. “Next fall makes seventy years, Handsome.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Angel knew that, now. It had been a silly little joke. He wouldn’t have brought it up if he knew that next year he wouldn’t be accosted by silk and shadows.
Or the year after that.
Or the year after that.
And at first, he couldn’t figure it out. It made no sense- For all of the stupid shit that he’d said over the course of their time together, it didn’t make sense that flowers would be the last straw. Why Handsome wouldn’t return to him.
It was tragically simple, when he finally put all of the pieces together.
What happened every year after the fall? Winter. And New Years. Extermination Day.
It was a hard sell, at first. Handsome was smart. Too smart to go out like that, or so Angel had thought. But he hadn’t felt hide nor hair of that magic since his disappearance from Angel’s life, where he’d always danced along the periphery. Even in their off-seasons, though he’d never reached out.
It was easy to draw the conclusion that his Shy Guy was gone-gone. It fit in perfectly with the trend of Angel’s life. To have his heart stolen and then lost.
—
Blink.
The glitter on his face was crusty and flaking off. That was Angel’s first clue that his body had been to work recently. The ache between his hips that happened after a long night was harder for him to notice. He’d grown too used to running himself ragged, when all he had to do was move, and the world could fall away in aubergine smoke.
It was easier to tell that he was on the roof of the Hotel. Not many people could mistake the Frankenstinian creation for anything else.
If he jumped, he would hit about ten thousand things on the way down. Like a sack of potatoes down a flight of stairs.
Angel took a hard step away from the edge and sucked in a hiss of cold air through his teeth. He’d been zoning out, getting sucked into that thought. That was not an event he wanted to repeat. He had to focus again.
Come on, Angel, where is your head?
He clapped his hands over his thighs. He needed something sharp to snap him back into his body.
He was on the roof of the Hotel. He had... hot pants on? A cigarette drooped, forgotten and unlit between his lips. Why was he even up here? It was fucking freezing...
Since he was up there already, though... Angel's fingers were stiff when he lit the cigarette. He was trembling from head to toe.
It took longer than it should have to take stock of the rest of his body. That should have been the first clue. Instead, when he tried to use his lower arms to rub over his sides Angel finally realised that in their place was just the ache of a hollow socket on either side of his body and the itch of bandages that needed changing.
The cramping of things missing. Important things. Things that would be keeping him Alive if he was actually Living.
Angel huffed out the breath of nicotine and ash, bright with the fog of warm breath in the cold air. Somehow, it all helped. He could feel the chill of air and the burn of physical agony wind around him like an embrace that fought off the fog that threatened to slip around his thoughts again. The painful way the cold stabbed through him made his brain calm for a moment, where the painkillers did nothing to remedy his body aches.
Angel had always felt too at home in Hell. Especially at night. From the rooftop, he could pretend he’d never expired in that frigid ditch and he was still in New York.
In many ways Angel, himself, was exactly as he had been in New York. Stupid and naïve.
When he’d died, all those years ago, he had felt so unbearably old. Like everything in him had been drained. Used up. But Human Angel didn’t know a damn thing about being used up. It was a bitter thought.
Angel had to lean on the wall as his awareness returned to his body. He was practically vibrating with his shivers, now, in just his hot pants and bra. No point in getting anything else covered in gore.
They’d only stapled him back together.
The good thing about New York- especially at night- was that from certain buildings, anyone could scream at the top of their lungs and the city would simply swallow up the noise. It felt like he was trying to empty out the hollow in his chest that collected nothing but despair.
From the outside it just sounded like heartbreak.
—
For all of his faults, Angel Dust was not a stupid man. Even if he was blindfolded, tied up, and very rarely spoken to for the first five years, Angel had made a game of figuring out who His Fella was. For at least thirty years he did this on his own, and then after meeting Cherri, they bounced ideas off of one another like ping-pong balls in the early morning hours of drunken revelations.
These revelations were also the things that made it hardest for Angel to move on.
Being blindfolded, most of Angel’s clues were sensory. Handsome was a very particular sort of man, in the times when he was more man than beast. He used a silk blindfold on Angel and paid exorbitant amounts of money to keep him every year. He fed Angel well, when he was there, and when Angel was allowed the use of his hands, quickly defenestrated with the rule that he wasn’t allowed to touch.
In the few minutes that he still had on clothing, Handsome wore very specifically tailored dress pants- and Angel imagined it was a three-piece suit. Though it never stayed on very long.
And he always, always smelled of vetiver. Wet earth or rain. Cinnamon whiskey and amber. Iron.
Before his encounter with two girls in a limousine, Angel had avoided things like Red-Hots and going out in rainy weather. A time or two, he would encounter some very specifically-made dress pants while at the club- but, in a blink of an eye, he’d realise he was wrong, and he’d be sad for a moment. But it would pass.
After the Hotel, there was Alastor.
Because other than the sense of wet earth and whiskey and vetiver- Angel spent the better part of seventy years learning how to predict where he was, by that extrasensory feeling of ozone and magic that tingled something in the animal part of Angel’s Hellish body. The same way his fingers always fidgeted, and when he applied himself, they would often weave.
Angel was skilled at recognising Handsome’s brand of magic. He’d been able to distinguish it from all of the rest even at a distance, once upon a time.
This was the unexpected horror of having the Radio Demon in close quarters that had the spider using the better part of his days in the Hotel attempting to avoid him, with varying degrees of success.
Angel had pushed that feeling of heartbreak down so far into his core he thought he'd dissolved it in stomach acid, but, somehow Alastor dredged up those feelings again like the wound had never closed.
So, no, Angel didn't have a problem with Alastor. He just couldn't stand to be near him. Especially not right now.
—
Angel looked like he had been stepped on with the world’s largest slipper.
In a world where Sinners could heal at exponential rates, the price of getting a day off- a guaranteed day off- was not a pretty one. Not for Angel Dust: The Most In-Demand Porn Star Fifty Years Running.
And Angel had desperately wanted a day off.
That’s it. Angel wanted to sleep through any alarms that would normally be set for Redemptive Activities or work. He wanted to be un-beholden to anyone’s schedule- especially his own. Most importantly, he wanted to relax.
But that wasn’t in the cards for him. Even after whatever grotesque horror-show type of shit that left the sockets of his arms torn.
Even though Sinners healed at exponential rates down here, that did not save them from the act of actually healing. He’d known this. Angel had done this time and time again over the past five years alone, and that was the entire reason why doing this kind of work allowed for Guaranteed Days Off, if they were on a production schedule. Angel knew he’d had to heal. Somewhere. Far in the deep recesses of his mind.
Healing, unfortunately, was not a pleasant process, and a Demonic Sinner’s body had a way of healing that made things particularly unpleasant. This was not an outside-in type of ordeal like a Human Body would attempt, closing off the wound from any sort of infection and then working its way to solidify itself.
Oh, no, a Demonic Sinner often had to recover important bits first. So the first plan of action was, 'what do I need to grow back so we can mosey along once more?'
The list went as such: structural bones in the spinal column such as the spine itself, ribcage, hips, and skull. Then brain, heart, lungs, and eyes (if one possessed such things). Legs, in their entirety. Or whatever passed for the unfortunate creature’s 'get out of dodge' limbs. And then it was slow going, for everything else, for this was around the time that any completely-flattened and eviscerated creature would regain consciousness and begin the torturous process.
This could take up to three months to recover everything, if one wasn’t familiar with the process. Somehow, the knowledge of required internal organs made this process move along more smoothly than for those who had no intimate knowledge of anatomy.
Angel was no doctor, but he could still return from getting mowed over by a dump truck in two weeks flat.
Har-har.
Angel’s best judge of his current situation was that his entire twenty-four hours off of work were going to be spent regrowing his major internals. With no legs or bones to rebuild from scratch, either, his vivisection gash would still be open and available for the Part Two they were slated to finish the day after.
So, instead of a nice, restful sleep on his upcoming day off, Angel returned home from the studio with the inability to even curl into a little ball without splitting himself wide open again. The staples would do fuck all to keep him closed. Just ask him how he knew.
On top of this, Angel’s body hurt in a way that sent every remaining limb the signal to move. To twitch. Like they all needed to activate to escape something. So he’d put on his comfiest robe and shuffle-limped his way around. Hoping to exhaust himself.
The other reason Angel was down here, instead of in his cozy, private bedroom was named Fat Nuggets. A fully-grown pig could consume two pounds of flesh every minute, and while his Nuggy Baby was still a piglet, Angel wasn’t foolish enough to go to bed with a sliced-open belly or else he would then have very intimate knowledge of the time discrepancy between a fully-grown Earth pig and a Hellish piglet.
Which left him here, shuffling through the hotel lobby in his raggedy old robe, long after Husker had passed out in a puddle of his own cooling saliva.
Angel tried to ignore the other man in red by the bar.
He was not ignored in turn.
“Angel Dust.”
Angel flinched violently, but he continued to drag his failing corpse around the perimeter. His free hand used the walls and pillars as support, gliding along its tacky wallpaper.
“Al-Alastor.” He didn’t even look up from the path he circled.
Angel was lucky to still have a whole pair of arms to fold his robe around himself. It made him feel like some Old Madame in her curlers, squinting out into the night at the youths causing trouble. It had been fifty years since Angel could call this thing burgundy, but the roses embroidered on the collar and sleeves were still somewhat shiny and golden, and the carefully cleaned fabric was soft as down and somehow, even still, felt luxurious.
Angel could smell the cinnamon whiskey, even from the distance he was at. Could tell Alastor was watching.
“I ain’t in the mood for whatever bullshit you got goin’ on tonight. You can do your thing tomorrow.”
This was the part where Alastor did his thing and teleported before Angel, manifesting in an unpleasant puff of fluorescent green smoke like a Disney villain.
This was the part where Alastor snaked his rubber-hose form around and leaned in so close to Angel that he could pick him apart bone-by-bone with just those radio-dial red eyes, scavenging the ruins.
This was the part where he ensnared Angel in a swirling typhoon of dark magic and sealed a deal with a handshake.
“It just so happens that I’m not in the mood for bullshit tonight, my dear.” Defying all logic, Alastor just sat there with his half-drained drink and gestured to the bar stool to his left. “What are you doing?”
Husk’s puddle of drool appeared to lubricate his descent from the bar counter down to the floor, where he purr-snored like a dying chainsaw. Perhaps he’d melt over and aspirate himself silent in another handful of minutes.
“What's it to ya?" Angel made good use of speaking every word with the many prickly spider teeth gifted to his mouth flashing in the dim light.
One of his two remaining hands rubbed over his good eye, and the bone around it. He spent that moment counting to ten, silently. It had never been Alastor’s fault that Angel was a train wreck. Just reel it in.
"Just... tryin' to get to sleep. Not all'a us can run on nothin' and a mouth full'a coffee grinds."
The satellites strapped to Alastor’s head scoped out the environment- listening in to inspect anyone else out and about for the night. With everything deemed safe, Al offered the remaining whiskey in his glass to his many-limbed, grumpy company.
“Maybe this will help you some,” he said. “And, no, there’s nothing suspicious that it’s been spiked with. Anyway, if you’re trying to sleep, then why are you down here?”
Angel wondered if, to make room for an Overlord’s sheer amount of power, they had to completely wipe them of all common sense. Or maybe it could be how Overlords were sought out. Don’t need a brain if you’ve got a Power Dick to swing.
With absolutely no desire to give himself heartache whiplash in the state that he was in, Angel stayed rooted to his spot. Far away from The Radio Demon.
“Al, I really don’t think anythin’ short of a fuckin' Angel Blade’s gonna help me much right now. If ya hadn’t figured it out, I’m missin’ a few things here, right now. So I gotta wear myself out enough that it doesn’t matter. Just ignore me.”
Alastor’s ear did that thing that it did when he was at his very dumbest; a single, floppy flick of over-sized, black-tufted, glorified space bun. If Angel was more himself he would have grinned. He would have adored the flicking of those cute little ear tufts on his head.
He would have asked to touch.
But none of these things happened and Al retracted his offer, whiskey glass returning to the counter top with a thump against the wood.
“How anyone’s meant to ignore a huffing, puffing, pacing- What are you, about eight foot?- spider eating up the square-footage of the Hotel lobby escapes me.” He cleared his throat and then sucked on his teeth. “Your distress is difficult to just ignore. Surely there’s something that I can do to help you out?”
Angel’s scoff worked its way out of his throat, unable to hold off his disbelief that those words came out of that mouth. Maybe the Princess managed to figure out how to possess people.
Everything he’d heard on the grapevine (after Vaggie’s schtick about him being a 'violent monster of chaos') only elaborated that the man was a fucking menace. Experience of avoiding the man for eight months only confirmed that opinion.
He was a Killer of Overlords and Princes and He Could Help.
Angel was tired. So goddamn tired. All the fucking time. He used that one hand to rub over his face again, its twin looped around where his body still had to be held together, even over his staples and bandaging.
"Yeah, guess so. Eight foot, eight limbs, eight fuckin' eyes. Whoop-dee-doo… I'll go pace on the fuckin' roof, Red, don't bother yourself."
“I’ll hear you on the roof, Angel.”
Angel froze, like Al’s gorgon gaze turned him into crumbling stone.
Red (perhaps they were that colour because he never blinked) eyes scanned the whole of Angel’s form with peculiar interest. If Alastor was sober and up to bullshittery, then he might have made some tasteless razz at putting down one of those sticky mats that trapped flies and mice to make Angel stay still indefinitely.
“If you wanted to go to the roof, then you would have already turned your heel and left. But you’re still here, and I can see you mulling things over.”
"Yeah. I've always been a good jumper." It was out of his mouth before he could stop it. Maybe he should just go outside. "Just... lemme be. Not much else that can be done and I'll be outta your hair in a bit. 'Kay? 'Kay."
He didn't even look in Al's direction, just trying to do his painful shuffle through the lobby again for another lap. On the plus side he could hardly smell the cinnamon whiskey over the blood he was tasting again.
"Got nowhere else to be..."
Alastor stood and tap-tapped across the floor to Angel.
It was no trouble for Alastor to grab someone by their arm for a musical number and a dance. But he hesitated, reaching out for Angel, like he was going to catch something from him. Just for a moment (albeit a noticeable one) before his hands rested upon Angel’s shoulders.
“I am so sorry that Group Therapy was dismissed several hours ago but I’m not going to question the cause of your distress and further aggravate you with redundancy.”
Angel would have kneed him right in the jewels for touching him when he’d just asked to be left alone, but getting his leg up that high wasn’t happening right now. Instead, Angel flinched painfully.
“Don't fuckin' touch me."
It was like one of those failed magic tricks. Alastor would pull out a table cloth from under a set of dinner plates and glasses with the intention of them remaining unmoved with his slight of hand, and instead toppling everything over the side in a spray of broken glass and porcelain. And all of that broken china was Angel's heart, after being so stupidly hopeful. That knee-jerk reaction to his magic- too similar to Handsome’s magic, kept faking Angel out.
Alastor- to his credit- recoiled at the flinch and when he realised this, he attempted to play it off by clasping his hands behind his back. Smooth. Real smooth.
“...I smell blood.”
Angel squinted. This man was an absolute moron. "...You know what I do. ‘Course you smell blood. Not like you get to be Number One in Hell by doin’ cutesy shit all day."
“Normally,” as Alastor's jagged-mouthed shadow circled Angel, “I wouldn’t take issue with someone spilling their guts all over the polished flooring, but- Well. Never mind, actually.”
Alastor, though, remained stationed right where he was. Unmoving. Unblinking.
“Mm, I do know what you do. So, then, let’s do this: I’d like to help you with,” he gestured vaguely at all of the spider, “that and you’ll be compensated for it in return. Name your price.”
Angel blinked slowly. "No. I'm just fuckin’ growin' 'em back, ya sunova-"
Al’s shadow was no smoother than its more tangible half, inquisitively snaking around Angel’s form from the heel of his boots up to his neck. A long catlike slip. And, to keep with the theme of felines, Angel hissed, heart lurching at the feeling of familiar magic creeping up his neck. That was the worst part of all of this. Alastor’s magic was always going. In every corner of a room.
“Just- Fuck..."
He took several long steps backwards, trying to get away from Al- from that feeling- and he nearly tripped on the rug and his own slippers. And Alastor took several long strides forward as though fucking magnetised to Angel’s being.
“Just-" Angel was over-tired. That was all it took to turn on the waterworks. Red-rimmed, hot at the corners of all the eyes that had tear ducts.
"Just-" And like clockwork. Anger. “Why the fuck can't you just leave me alone, huh?!"
“I suppose that you think that being left alone is better,” Alastor said, veering to the side so as not to crowd Angel. Angel, with his watery, bloodshot eyes and his explosive means of safeguarding himself. “Hush. Stop your fussing. You need to rest.”
As Alastor stepped forward, he curled a claw into his own palm; magic always going. He didn’t have to lift a finger otherwise to expedite Angel’s process of growing things back and keeping his organs where they belonged.
Angel realised too late.
His breath hitched and stuttered. It felt like his organs were put inside of a cassette player and that giant finger punched Fast-Forward Mode. Just like the whirring of gears, he whimpered as his ribs audibly crunched back into their proper locations and the staples rejected from his flesh like an improperly placed piercing. Shooting out to catch on his robe and dropping to the ground. They littered the floor with soft ‘tink-tink-tinks’.
“It’s better than whatever this ‘help’ is...”
He should have never gotten in that limo. He should have listened to TLC and stayed to the rivers and lakes that he was used to.
Solid now, Angel pat himself down with his primary hands. It gave him enough time to return to the dread that ran through him, and agreed with his own last statement, out loud.
“...Yeah. Yeah, it is.“ Angel’s breath was wet underneath its hard wall of anger, threatening more tears. “Cause now I’m gonna end up eatin’ my day off- Just- Why?”
“Why?” Alastor tilted his head, over-sized ears flopping almost innocuously to the side. If one squinted closely in the murky atmosphere, it could be observed that his small, four-pointed antlers were looking pointedly sharp and shiny save for the last few patches of velvet closer to the base of his head. “Why what, exactly?” His shadow had since diffused into the penumbras.
“Why-” Angel could have paced the lobby for hours, then slept a little afterwards, and it would have been worth it! Worth the feeling of a night without the urge to claw out his heart with his own bare hands, as if he could rip out whatever wretched feeling that rose up in his body whenever Al came near.
“Why do I even bother-“ Angel wasn’t hurting as badly now that his organs were in their proper spots, but the arms were going to take longer. They always did. “Whatever... Thanks. I guess. Now I’m gonna have to get re-opened tomorrow for that second shoot.”
Angel rubbed a palm over his face, and through his hair for the hundredth time. Then, he turned on his heel to try and head back to his room. Away from Alastor.
“Will you be able to sleep?”
It was that, that made him stop in his tracks. Al sounded so...
Angel scrubbed both palms over his face again (one-hundred-and-one times today, and counting).
“I dunno... Look, it’s- You can’t wave your magic wand and make it All Better, Red...” Alastor and Charlie really were two sides of the same coin in that regard. “Sometimes you gotta leave shit alone. You don’t know what you’re dipping your hands into.”