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The bed is soft and warm and snuggly, but there are footsteps coming down the hall.
You recognize some of the footsteps as your absolute favorite person, the best ear-scritcher in Hell. You can always tell when he’s coming home: you know all the ways that he can sound like, whether it’s quick staccato steps or uneven stumbling or slow one-foot-at-a-time dragging himself down the hall. Tonight he sounds steady on his feet, ambling along, and he isn’t alone. You trot over to the door to investigate.
“— judge me, but — oh, hey, Fat Nuggets.” Favorite leans down to pet you, so everything is right with the world. You enjoy it for a moment and then trot over to his companion; you recognize him too. He’s the Snackgiver from downstairs, grumbly and less affectionate than Favorite but in possession of lots and lots of delicious things.
“Hey there, moocher.” He leans down to pet you too, which is nice — normally you have to follow him around for a while before he gives you the attention you deserve. You check his hands carefully, and whuffle briefly at his ankle since you can’t reach his pockets. “What, you think I got olives in my shoe?”
“Hang on, you two know each other?” Favorite sounds suspicious, the way he usually does when you’ve gotten into something new and delicious but he hasn’t yet discovered that you ate it. “Since when can you get out of here?” he asks you. You trot back over and lean against his leg.
“He could get out in the old hotel too,” the Snackgiver says. “He comes down when you’re out and follows me around until I let him have some of the bar snacks. Couple times a week.”
“Fat Nuggets, you two-timing little ho,” Favorite says. You don’t know what that means, but he says it a little high-pitched and drawn-out like he always does when you’ve done something good, and he leans down to scritch behind your ears, which is the most important thing in the world. You whuffle happily at him, but he shoves you away after a minute and stands back up. “Let me know if he bothers you too much, I’ll, uh. Do something, I guess? Ask Charlie about pigproofing her doors? I don’t know how he’s even doing that.”
“Eh, it’s fine, I’ve had worse company.” The Snackgiver rubs the back of his head. “You know, way back at the beginning, the pig was how I figured out that there was a real person under your bullshit.”
“Wow, really trying to get my panties off in a hurry, aren’tcha?” Favorite isn’t really mad, though, you can tell.
“Hey, this was back when the whole hotel thing started!” the Snackgiver protests. “I don’t think I’d heard you say a single sentence that wasn’t about sex or booze yet. But then there was this fat little pig following you around, looking like the happiest thing in Hell. Didn’t really fit. And I thought, huh, I guess he can care about something other than the sound of his own voice, because someone’s been taking real good care of that pig. I wonder what else I’d notice, if he stopped talking.”
“Hey, if you want me to stop talking, I can think of a few ways you can make that happen.”
“Nah, these days I like listening to you.”
Favorite makes a noise you’ve never actually heard him make before, kind of an awkward squawk. It’s closer to the sounds he makes when he’s squeezing your face than anything you’ve heard him make around people. “Asshole. Will you get over here and kiss me already?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
They lean against each other and make mouth noises for a bit, which is very boring of them. You flop down and sigh pointedly, in case they’ll notice they could be paying attention to you. It doesn’t work.
“Thought I’d never ask?” Favorite finally says, barely disentangling himself. “What the fuck did you think I was talking about, a peanut butter sandwich?”
“Of course I knew what you meant, you ain’t subtle. But I felt like making you actually ask for it.”
“Oh, that’s how it’s gonna be, is it? Please, more, daddy —” His voice goes weird the way it does sometimes when he’s talking into one of the rectangles with little people in it, but then he squawks like you just stuck your nose in his armpit. “Hey!”
“I mean, if I spank you it’ll just make you do it again.” It looks like the Snackgiver just poked your demon in the ribs. You eye him suspiciously in case he does anything else, but that seems to be all for the moment, and Favorite is laughing.
“Okay, okay, you got my number,” he says. “So, uh, if I did want to get spanked…”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” He takes Favorite’s hands in his. “Maybe we just… see where the night takes us?” He takes a step back towards the bed, drawing Favorite gently with him.
“Sounds — sounds good.”
They both sound nervous, so you trot along behind them to supervise as they move towards the bed.
“OINK!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Fat Nuggets,” Favorite says, hopping to get his balance back. The Snackgiver just looks amused. Favorite uses one of his free hands to pat you in apology, so you’ll forgive him, even though he goes back to ignoring you and paying attention to the Snackgiver right away. It’s not even interesting. They just sit on the edge of the bed and put their faces on each other for a while.
Eventually you get bored and start sniffing around the edge of the place, just for something to do. The Snackgiver really smells like he has something good hidden somewhere, something sugary with fruit in it maybe.
The noises above you stop.
“Sorry, uh,” the Snackgiver says.
“It’s fine,” Favorite says, and, oh, you do not like the sound of that, all high and tense.
“No, hey, baby, no. You’re good, I just can’t fucking do this with your pig sniffing at my leg.”
“He’s what? Oh, for…” Favorite peers down at you. You whuffle up at him. “You’re really cockblocking me here, Nuggs, you know that?”
You bonk your head against his shin. He sighs really loudly, but he also reaches down to pet your ears some more, and that’s what really matters.
“I can, I don’t know… put him out in the hall, I guess?” Favorite says, not to you. “If he’s wandering the place anyway?”
“What do you usually do?”
“You think I bring my hookups back to my place?” Favorite scoops you up — you wiggle a little, but put up with it — and heads towards the door. You rest your chin on Favorite's shoulder, and catch a glimpse of the Snackgiver smiling like someone’s scritching behind his ears.
Then Favorite plops you in the hallway outside and, for some reason, closes the door. That must be a mistake, but it shouldn’t be hard to fix. You bump your head against the door, but it doesn’t actually move.
Very rude. You bump your head a little harder. Still nothing.
“Oink!”
Nothing from the door, but there is a sound from the end of the hall. You sniff the air, and then go very, very still.
You know this one. The pig-shaped part of you wants to call him a wolf, but you are a demon, if a small one, and you know that of all the things that threaten pigs, this man is the Judas goat. He is the smiling ally of the killing floor, and he is so deeply what he is that it crackles in his voice.
He folds his hands on the knob of his stick, looks at you, looks at the door, and says, “Hm.”
You make yourself very small, head lowered to the floor.
“This will be either mildly entertaining or unspeakably tedious!” he says, and then, to you this time, “Oh, calm down, you’re barely enough for a snack.”
You keep your head down and stay entirely motionless until his feet and his stick tick away down the hall. Then you go back to being a pig and staring at the door.
“Oink. Oink…”
More footsteps from the same end of the hall, friendlier ones with no tapping stick. After a moment you recognize the smell of Razzle’s person. She tends to squeeze you a little too hard, but she’s otherwise all right, so you whuffle at her and nose plaintively at the door.
“Oh, hey, Fat Nuggets! Did you get out somehow? I really need to do something about those doors…” She leans down to rub your ears, which isn’t as good as opening the door, but you’ll take it. Still, you don’t complain when she stands up and knocks.
From behind the door you here, muffled, the Snackgiver saying, “Oh for fuck’s sake.” Razzle’s person’s eyes go very, very wide.
“Oh! Oh, uh — sorry! I’ll just, um, I’ll just go, it’s not important, I am so sorry. Fat Nuggets!”
What? You didn’t eat anything or break anything.
This doesn’t stop her from scooping you up like a sack of beans. “We,” she says, “are going somewhere else, and you are going to leave Angel alone, and — ooooooh, I’m so happy for them!”
It’s quiet, but very high-pitched, and she squeezes you a bit when she does it. You sigh gustily and are borne away to your fate.
(She’s nice enough to leave most of a bag of chips in her easy-to-open nightstand drawer for you, at least.)