Chapter Text
Taking a long breath, Pentious closed his eyes and dove into the pool. Water swirled around his body as his tail worked its way side to side, pushing him forward. He finally emerged at the other end, breaking the water with a toss of this hood. There was a certain elegance to swimming that even his graceful slithering couldn’t match.
Niffty clapped. “My turn, my turn!” she said, holding her nose and jumping off the diving board.
Pentious waited for her to come back up, but when he realized he was seeing only bubbles, he made haste for the deep end to grab her.
“Thanks,” she coughed. “I’m going to get it right next time!”
“I think that might be enough diving practice for now, Miss Niffty. There’s only so much pool water one demon should swallow in a single day. Be sure to shower the extra pool chemicals off before you change. They can be hard on your skin,” he encouraged as she climbed up the ladder out of the pool.
As he reached for the ladder himself, an arm reached up out of the water and seized his. He didn’t have time to catch his breath or scream before he was pulled under. A mob of white hands gripped his arms and tail, dragging him down, pulling him far deeper than the hotel pool could possibly go. A pounding, throbbing noise filled up his head, making it impossible to think. His body grew cold as the hands dragged him into blacker waters, where no light could possibly reach him. He tried to scream, but his mouth filled with frigid water, running into his lungs and turning them to ice.
The water closed around him, swallowing him up, leaving nothing left inside his soul.
.
He woke with a start and touched his arms, realizing he really was freezing. In his tossing and turning, he’d pulled the plug for his electric blanket out of the wall. Funny to think one could be cold in Hell, but the drafty hotel wasn’t really designed to accommodate a large, cold-blooded serpent.
Speaking of hotel, it seemed unusually quiet that night. It was just approaching midnight, and usually someone was out clanking about at that time. Pentious shrugged it off and removed his phone from its charger. He was wide awake now, and at least he could check Fiendbook before he tried to go back to sleep.
Charlie had insisted they friend each other when he moved into the hotel, and it was Charlie’s post he saw first on opening the app. The princess, her girlfriend, Husk, Angel, Niffty, Cherri, and a mildly annoyed looking Alastor were gathered for a photo. Even the stupid fish man was there, although he was almost cut out of the photo. “At the Hell’s Bells concert tonight! Third row seats!” the caption read.
Pentious’ hand tightened around his phone to avoid dropping it in his anger. Some time ago, when he’d just arrived at the hotel, he had observed that Hell’s Bells had a local concert coming up to Angel while they were sitting opposite one another in the dining room. “I’d really like to go, but I don’t have anyone to go with.” Niss had already expressed that he wouldn’t be able to attend, as that concert hall was unionized by a rival group. Angel had simply shrugged.
Angel had known he wanted to go, and yet… there they were, all at the concert without him. Well… I can’t leave the hotel because of Ghost, he tried to reason with himself. Angel isn’t your friend. He has no obligation to invite you anywhere.
Still… the fact that Angel had seen fit to invite everyone EXCEPT him stung. He could have at least said they were going but understood why Pentious couldn’t join them. He could have offered to bring back a shirt or something.
But… that was the kind of thing friends did for each other, and Angel wasn’t his friend, he reminded himself once again. No one at that hotel was really his friend. He didn’t even belong there. He was only there to get away from Ghost. If Ghost were captured, Baxter and Angel would probably be the first ones at his door to help him pack up and leave.
He had watched a certain movie meant for kids because it seemed ridiculously popular even among adult demons, and he didn’t want to be left behind on the trends. He’d never been able to get a few specific lines of a song out of his head. “Or are you someone out there, who’s a little bit like me? Who knows deep down, I’m not where I’m meant to be?”
.
Across the pentagram, Arackniss was working late again. He wished he could be snuggled up with his snake, but… duty calls. His phone started to ring, irritating him as he knew that ring tone meant an urgent call “Hello? What? What do you mean?! I had Greg and Lou on watch! … You can’t find them either? Well, get someone in there to put out the fire and someone in there to find them. Do I have to tell you how to do everything you…” the tirade of words that came out next were all in Italian, but anyone would have known they were impolite.
He set down the phone and rubbed his eyes, all of them. He picked it up again and started to dial Pentious’ number, then stopped. He… the news could wait until morning. Pentious didn’t need to be awake all night worrying about it.
.
The gym at the hotel, being a gym built for creatures of hell, contained equipment such as dance poles and aerial hoops. Needing to work out some of his anxious energy, Pentious grabbed onto the hoops and twisted himself around until he got his tail up as well. He’d done some hoop work during his time on the show circuit, although not a lot of it.
Still, besides swimming, it was one of his favorite physical activities. He was fond of both for the same reason. Normally, at least half of his body constantly dragged along the ground. Having his massive body lifted felt freeing. Maybe that was also why he was so obsessed with airships.
Grip with the tail. Change hoops. Handstand. Arch back. Spin. Spin upside down, using only the tail to hold on. Use the position of your arms to change spin speed. It was a routine he hadn’t done in decades, but his muscles still remembered it all.
“When I said you should go for amateur night at the club, I didn’t know you’d take it so seriously,” Angel said, breaking his concentration. He was wearing stripped leggings over his boots, and an oversized white t-shirt over shorts that made him look like he’d just walked out of an 80’s aerobics video. Pentious, for his part, was wearing a charcoal grey tank top. Simple, but efficient to work out in.
“Please be more considerate, you could have made me slip and fall,” he snapped. He wanted to say Did you have fun at the concert, but he held it back.
“Seriously, though, that was good work. Not as good as me, but maybe good enough to take second billing to me some day with a little more practice.”
“I almost had this routine ready to take on stage, before Ghost pulled the plug on it.”
“I can see why. You could have had all eyes on you, and no one would have even remembered he was standing there. You know I don’t like you, so I’m not just blowing smoke up your ass to be nice. I can tell you’re self-taught, but a few lessons, you might actually be pretty damn good.” Yes, he knew very well Angel didn’t like him. Last night had rubbed his face in that.
“Did you just come up here to criticize my technique?”
“Nah, I wanna practice a new routine. I gotta turn the music on for it, so you can either shut up and enjoy the mood or you can leave.”
.
“Really? Brittney Spears?”
“What did I say about shutting up and putting up?” he asked, taking hold of the pole and stretching out. “Not like you could keep up with me anyway, old man.”
Pentious narrowed his eyes. He was somewhat naturally competitive, and began to follow the spider’s moves, changing them as necessary for the fact that he was on hoops instead of a pole. Angel noticed, and to his surprise, didn’t get offended. In fact, he seemed to get more into it with a workout partner. It became a challenge, to see how the snake would react to following his movements. Pentious, for his part, was determined to prove that he could virtually anything the spider could do, with adjustments for his different choice of technique and lack of legs. Angel thought Pentious would get exhausted quickly and was surprised by how well the snake was keeping up with him.
“I’m not that innocent!” Final big finish. Both were absolutely huffing, their chests rising and falling from the workout.
“WOOO! WOOOOOO!” a voice called. “FUCKING ENCORE! Unf, I think I came.”
Pentious fell off the rings for real this time. “Cherri??? How long were you standing there? And were you… filming!?”
“Angel gets me to film his routines so he can watch them back and look for places he needs to make changes.”
“You… you could have gotten my consent before filming me, too!” the flustered snake protested.
“I didn’t know you were going to invite yourself to the show. But seriously, that was awesome, and is gonna make a whole bunch of guys jizz in their pants.”
“… And I just got them to stop messaging me after the burrito video.”
“I’m not posting the whole thing, because the point is just to tease them enough to get bodies in the seats with tip money, not to give them a free show.” While she didn’t exactly approve of Angel’s boss (if asked bluntly, she downright despised him), but making sure Angel made enough to stay on his good side was important to her. “If you’re so worried, I won’t tag you by name this time, okay? I’ll call you… Mx. Stery!”
“… That’s terrible. Even by my standards.”
“Aaaaaand it’s posted, so too late.”
.
“Boss?” one of the other girls who worked the same club as Angel asked, drawing the attention of the tall, thin moth. “Who is this? Does Angel have a new partner? I thought I was supposed to be on routine with him next week?!” she said angrily. Working with Angel meant good tips, and she didn’t want her turn to be skipped.
The smile her boss made when he watched the video sent shivers down her spine.
.
Pentious was elated to get a surprise visit from Arackniss. “Niiiiiiss!” he cried happily. Fortunately, snakes don’t sweat, so he didn’t have to worry about being all stinky after his work out. “Niss?” he asked more tentatively when the spider didn’t smile back.
“There’s… I’m just going to give it to you straight and be honest with you, Pent. There was a big fire at your house last night. The two guys I had guarding the place are… well, they did a shit job of it, didn’t they?”
“… Big fire?” the snake asked, looking a little shaky. “… How big?”
“Just,” he paused and sighed. “Just be glad your airship is here and not there, because it might end up being the only thing we can salvage.”
He watched the air go out of the snake, the coils deflating as he sank down. It wasn’t entirely the loss of the material possessions. He’d had to start over building up things several times since arriving in Hell. It was when the message of ‘I’m going to take everything from you’ included things he couldn’t replace that it bothered him.
“It has to be Ghost. He’s putting everyone in danger because of me,” he finally said.
“No. He’s putting everyone in danger because of his ego. You have nothing to do with his decisions.”
“But if he does anything to you because of me…”
“He won’t.”
The snake wouldn’t meet the spider’s eyes. They both knew that his two confrontations with Ghost so far had resulted in a draw and a loss.
.
Earlier that morning, Arackniss had been on-site to study the fire damage when received the worst possible news that only what was *left* of Lou and Greg had been discovered. Ghost wanted them to know that he was very much still in possession of the angelic weapon, and that he had no problems using it.
There was another problem. His father wanted to know why he’d spared the expense to put guards around the house of what, to his knowledge, was a simple gunsmith with a drug addiction. After evaluating the damage for himself, Arackniss sank down against the burned remains of the outer wall of what had been the house, lost in his cigarette. He couldn’t tell what smoke smells were coming from it and what smells were coming from the damaged building behind him. The last thing he needed was those kind of questions from his father.
If Ghost found out about his father’s feelings towards male-male relationships and his father’s feelings about the idea of him being in contact again with his porn star brother… ugh. Ghost could use those things to his advantage far too easily. He punched the ground, needing something to take his anger out on. He was going to have to do something about that crawling snake.