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"What is wrong with that motherfucker?!"
"Who? Al? The sociopath?" Husk scoffed the obvious. He took one final sip from his liquor before handing it off to the Princess, using it to clean black goo from Vaggie's hair.
"Oh wow Husk! This is working so much better than the oil," Charlie said with a flimsy smile, though the goo was starting to firm up in contact with the alcohol. Whole globs were becoming tacky enough to be scraped away.
"Feel lucky it's hair and not feathers. Had to give up flying to wait for my next molt with that shit before."
"Like it fucking matters," Vaggie groaned.
Niffty tittered over the moth's filthy hair. "Oh trust me, it definitely does! But what I don't get is what in hell you did to piss him off. Alastor is always nice to ladies--see he's one of the few guys who still values chivalry--really he's a bit of a simp if I'm completely honest about it. Men make enemies of him easily but he's always had lots of lady friends. In fact I think you're his only guy friend, Husk, which--"
"Chivalry?!" Vaggie squawked, "one of the first things he did was slap my ass, and tickle my chin like some bad training video on officeplace sexual harassment--"
Niffty balked.
"YOU GOT TO SECOND BASE WITH HIM BEFORE ME? Oh wait that's different haha." Niffty resumed picking now firmed globs from Vaggie's hair.
"Oh, well, Vaggie..." Charlie tried.
"Why me in particular? For fuck's sake, between slapping my ass, shoving me around, pulling my hair, stealing my eyepatch and magicking all of my hair ribbons into snakes and--and--dumping this black shit in my fucking hair!!!"
Husk's eyes shot open. He fixed a look of disbelief onto the bedraggled moth demoness. Charlie looked up from her work, met his eyes for a moment then swiftly looked at anything but back at Husk.
"Y-you knew?" He stammered. Charlie stared more intently at Vaggie's hair.
"I don't know what you're talking about!" She said, voice high and nervous. Charlie was the worst liar. It made Vaggie suspicious, throwing a look to Charlie over her shoulder. A look which Charlie avoided, looking up at the ceiling, giving up on her work in favor of twiddling her thumbs.
"Knew what, Charlie?"
"Oh-ho, I see what this is about...I think..." Niffty trailed off.
"I can't believe this shit." Husk rubbed a hand down his face.
"Believe what? Charlie? Husk?? Mind clueing me in on whatever little fucking secret you two got going on?"
"Basically--" Husk started, claws scratching over his chin, "Al is a fucking kid in a grown man's body. Such a fucking child."
Vaggie raised a brow.
"Two seconds ago he was a sociopath and now he's a little kid?"
"Didn't say he wasn't the type of kid to tear wings off butterflies and torture squirrels--but yeah, he's a like a fucking bratty-ass kid picking on a girl on the playground, doesn't have a clue what to do with his feelings--pulling her pigtails. "
"Um, Husk," Charlie attempted to interject.
"Get to the point already." Vaggie crossed her arms.
"Little radio fucker's got a crush on you."
"Excuse me?!" Vaggie all but shrieked. She swiveled her head to look at Charlie, the princess giving her an uncomfortable little nervous smile. "Why the hell would he get a crush on me? "
"I dunno, but it's pretty obvious now that I think about it. Probably likes the way you flip him shit." Husk grimaced. All of this was uncomfortable, but as long as he'd known the guy, it seemed pretty on point for Al to get a schoolyard crush on a tiny little moth who shoved a spear in his face.
Vaggie buried her face in her hands. "Fucking Christ."
"Yeah...I noticed it a while back, I thought he'd get over it but he just, um..." Charlie was playing with her fingernails now, digging black goo from beneath them. "I think it's harmless, he doesn't seem like he would ever act on it, it's just--"
"Harmless? Charlie look what he did to my hair!" And to Husk she said "and I thought he 'wasn't interested' in that sort of stuff. I just had to be fine with his asexual ass being all touchy-feely and oh my god he was fucking feeling me up--"
"Oh hi Al! How long have you been lurking over there?" It was Niffty's interjection that drew the lot's attention to the far corner of the entrance hall, where Alastor stood dragging an overlarge burlap sack behind him. One which had an annoyed pink spider's head peeking from the top, tape over his mouth. An interesting scene, and all the more so when Alastor stood completely still, eyes the widest they would go--a rather deer-in-headlights expression--and flushed nearly the color of his hair.
"I--" Al began haltingly "--retrieved your. Wayward spider. And." His eyes flicked to Vaggie's. "And I would never do such a thing!"
"What." It wasn't really a question, it was just a shocked remark from the moth demoness. Alastor answered as if it were, however.
"Feel you uhH--Husker, what have you been telling them?" Husk just groaned.
"But I betcha got a real good feel of my ass though, as familiar as your hand is with it, goddamn pervert!"
"You are sorely mista--" Alastor, ever poised, had absolutely no composure here aside from his smile, so caught off guard was he.
"If you really do got a thing for someone, you got a funny way of showing it."
And with that, his face reddened again and then he was consumed by shadow, running away from the uncomfortable situation, one which he had no current plan for.