Work Text:
If Angel wasn’t going to willingly come back home to him, then Valentino was going to have to force him back.
But how?
He had tried making Angel work long hours at the studio so that he was too busy and tired to even think about going back to the hotel. But that hadn’t lasted, after a few days the spider had left.
He needed something else that would be more permanent, that would force Angel to come back to him and would ensure that he didn’t — couldn’t — go running back to the princess’ little hotel.
Valentino had to find a way to cut all of his ties to that hotel.
If his angel-cakes had nothing there that he wanted to go back to, then he wouldn’t.
The dregs of a plan involving a certain pig demon began to take root.
If Angel didn’t have that fucking pig waiting for him, then he wouldn’t go back there.
There was no way that he would be able to get into that hotel himself, he wouldn’t even get past the front doors. But one of his employees could.
Angel was heading back to his room on his way back from a date with Husk. Their first date. The cat had gone up to his own room.
The door to his room was cracked when he got to it. The spider frowned, he had checked that it was closed behind him before he left so why was it open now?
Had Nifty gone in to clean it? But it wasn’t Monday.
He pushed the door open further and stepped inside, flicking on the light as he went.
His foot hit against something.
Angel looked down.
If he had been anyone else, he would have screamed and or thrown up at the sight before him.
He didn’t scream or vomit. But panic did start to claw at him, its chill settling into his bones.
His foot had hit Fat Nuggets.
Or rather Nuggs’ body.
There was a long gash down the length of the pig’s body that made it look like he had been ripped open. Torn apart. Dried blood was crusted on the edge of the wound and matted into the surrounding fur. Who or whatever had done this to Nuggs had gone the whole way through, Angel could see the carpet on the other side past the exposed bones.
That wasn’t even the worst of it, he realised with a sickening horror.
Fat Nuggets’ head looked like it had been stomped into the ground and then whoever had done that hadn’t stopped for another ten minutes. The pig’s body ended abruptly where his neck should have connected to his body. In its place was a mangled mess.
He didn’t scream or throw up, but he did sob.
Angel fumbled for his phone, nearly dropping it in his hurry as he pulled it out.
The sound of it ringing cut through the torturous quiet of the room.
Husk had gotten back to his room and was about to step into the shower when his phone rang.
Grumbling, he picked the device off of the counter.
Angel.
Angel was calling him.
Why the fuck was Angel calling him now?
They’d just gotten back from a date.
Worry started to take root within him.
“Angel?” he asked, when the line connected. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Why’re you calling?”
Husk got a sob in response.
Angel was crying.
Why was he crying? He had been fine when they parted twenty minutes ago.
“Angel?” he asked again.
“—Hu — Husk, it’s Nuggs—~” the spider choked out.
Husk’s eyes widened at the mention of the pig.
“What happened?”
“He, he’s de — dead!” Angel sounded so defeated
The words were nearly indistinguishable but the cat heard them all the same.
“Shit. Alright — you’re in your room, yeah?” Husk was already pulling on a pair of pants as he spoke, not bothering with a bowtie or his hat, there wasn’t the time.
“Yeah,”
“I’m on my way, stay there,”
He left his room and headed to Angel’s.
Less than five minutes later, the bartender found him still standing just inside the doorway. He was staring numbly at something in front of him. Tears were still running down his cheeks.
Husk peered around him to get a look at it. When Angel said that Nuggets was dead he had assumed that the pig had been murdered, which was true; but he hadn’t been expecting anything like this.
Who the fuck had not just murdered Nuggets, but mutilated him too, inside the hotel?
That could wait, right now he had to get Angel away from the corpse.
He led the spider back out into the hallway. Angel ended up sitting with his back to the wall and Husk joined him, not wanting to continue standing if it meant standing over Angel.
Angel’s tears subside until he was just sitting there with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head resting on top.
“Nuggs’ is dead because of me,” he said, eventually. His voice was still wrecked from crying. “‘cos I refused ta move back into the studio,” Angel explained. “Val said he was gonna find a way ta force me back there with him,”
Then abruptly he was moving, his head whipped up so fast that Husk’s surprised he didn’t give himself whiplash. He stood up and Husk followed suit.
“—Shit, where’s my phone? Val would’ve texted me by now,” Angel rambled, trying to find his phone and found nothing, he must have dropped it earlier.
He got as far as two steps towards his room before the memory of what was waiting for him in there hit him and he stopped.
“Here,” Husk handed him his phone.
Why did he have his phone?
Angel ignored how weird that thought could get and opened his phone, going straight to his messages.
No new ones.
The last one that Val had sent him was from before he’d gone into work that day.
What the fuck?
Shutting off his phone, he sat down again and rested the back of his head on the wall.
“Val hasn’t texted me, he should’ve by now— so what? He had Fat Nuggets killed for no reason?” Angel elected to ignore how his breath had caught on ‘killed’. “His death’s my fault. If I’d just moved back in with Val when he asked, then Nuggsie’d still be alive,” he mumbled. “He’d always said that he could ‘take away that pig as easily as he gave me it’,”
He didn’t see how Husk frowned as he heard that last part.
“Hey, no. Nuggets’ death isn’t your fault, it’s Valentino’s. You made the right choice, not movin’ back in with that insane fucker,” the cat told him.
What does he say to that?
“Doesn’t change that—“ he gestured vaguely in the direction of his room.
“It doesn’t,” Husk agreed.
They sat in the hallway for nearly twenty more minutes, before Husk’s body started to protest so he stood up.
It was nearing two a.m. and Angel should probably get some sleep before he had to head to work later.
“You can sleep in my bed,” Husk offered when he voiced it.
“Thought you weren’t into that kinda thing?” Angel questioned, with a smirk.
The cat frowned, annoyedly this time.
“Head outta the gutter, Legs,” he said. “You don’t gotta go in there again ‘till you’re ready to,”
They left the hallway, Angel’s room, and the corpse and took the stairs up to Husk’s room.
The spider wasn’t really thinking about anything as they walked. Then he’s standing inside Husk’s room. Any other time he would have looked around — the bartender had been inside of his own room plenty of times but this was his first time seeing inside Husk’s. Instead he curled up on the bed and tried to ignore the thoughts of how weird it was to just be lying on someone’s bed and not fucking anyone in favour of getting as much sleep as he could before he had to get up.