Work Text:
Vaggie
She runs into him in the hall one night, when she can’t sleep and is aimlessly walking the halls to try to find some kind of peace.
“Vaggie, my dear,” the Radio Demon says, his teeth flashing in the midnight dimness, the hotel’s lights down low. “What’s got you astir at this hour?”
She ignores him and moves to brush past him.
“Insomnia?” Alastor continues, turning to follow her. “Sign of a guilty conscience, perhaps?”
Vaggie snorts, not bothering to look over her shoulder. “This is Hell, Alastor. Everyone here’s guilty of something.”
“Oh indeed, my dear!” he says, the radio distortion of his voice dopplering in and out as he keeps pace with her and she keeps trying to walk faster to leave him behind. “Even you, redoubtable Vaggie, hoplite of the hotel and protector of the princess, are here for a reason!”
There is something in the way he says this that stirs something dark and angry in her. She turns to look the bastard in his glowing red eyes. “Listen, Alastor. I know you’re not here just because you want to watch sinners fail. You want something from Charlie.”
“Of course I do!” he laughs, suddenly beside her and slapping her on the back in an infuriatingly familiar manner. “I want to see her reach her highest potential! I want to see her spread her wings – you know that feeling!”
A lump catches in Vaggie’s throat. She remembers what it was like to be able to fly.
“I know it’s more than that,” she says, realizing abruptly that she has been thinking for too long. Alastor will notice that, she knows. She doesn’t think he can actually read her mind, but he can certainly pick up on the slightest hint of vulnerability, the barest whisper of pain.
“Oh, but you don’t!” Alastor tells her. “You suspect, certainly, intuit, absolutely, believe, completely! But know? My dear Vaggie, what you know could be inscribed on the head of a pin – the kind angels dance on, naturally!”
“Whatever,” Vaggie growls, brushing past him and starting to head back to her and Charlie’s room. “That’s always been a stupid saying anyway.”
“Come now, Vaggie!” Alastor continues, following her and perfectly matching her pace without apparent effort. “I would think you would enjoy a little verbal tango, being such a natural dancer! And anyway, don’t take it personally! Knowledge is such a fickle thing! It’s better not to know too much, wouldn’t you agree?”
“No.” Vaggie flips him off over her shoulder as she stalks away.
“My, my, Vaggie! Such rudeness!” She can hear him chuckle to himself, static crackling through the mocking noise. “Then again, of course, you’re no angel, are you?”
She stops dead in the hallway, a horrible chill laddering up her spine.
The silence stretches out, brittle as a hollow bone, the only sounds her ragged breathing, the beating of her heart, and the faintest radio whine on the air.
Finally, she turns around to look at him. She could have sworn he’d been keeping pace with her, but all she can see is his faint outline and his glowing red eyes.
“How did you know?” she asks, something in her warning that a denial would be profoundly unwise.
“Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face,” he says, his voice unbearably casual, intolerably smug. “I would say I’m surprised that Charlie doesn’t know… but I never prevaricate when the truth is so much more amusing.” His fangs flash with his grin.
“Are you going to tell her?” Vaggie asks, forcing the words out despite the fact that they feel like shards of glass.
“Certainly not. I consider my silence in this matter a good deed, and aren’t good deeds their own reward?”
Despite her overwhelming fear, Vaggie feels her lip curl in a sneer. “Bullshit.”
“Ah, fine. Truth be told, I don’t desire to deprive myself of the deliciousness of watching you lie to her by omission day in and day out,” Alastor says, materializing again out of the gloom to loom over her, his smile impossibly wide. “After all, I am here for my own amusement and edification! Why would I disrupt this little domestic drama when deigning to refrain from damaging your disguise is far more delightful?”
Vaggie swallows hard, her throat horribly dry. “You mean it? You won’t – I mean –”
“Please, belle femme. I’m not interested in your soul and I find blackmail distasteful.” Alastor twirls his cane and starts walking away. “After all,” he muses, his voice carrying perfectly to Vaggie despite his facing the other direction, “if I told her the truth, she would either assume I was being mendacious, or she would interpret the revelation as a blunt instrument I was using to try to hurt her.”
Forcing herself to turn and look at him as he goes, Vaggie asks, “And you don’t want to hurt her?”
“My dear, I want to hurt everyone!” Alastor laughs. He looks over his shoulder, eyes flashing like warning lights.
“I just want to watch you hurt her more.”
Husk
“Hey, boss,” he says one slow afternoon. Angel is out working, Pentious has disappeared – probably to buy more weapons from Carmilla that Charlie and Vaggie don’t know about – and the girls are themselves out on an errand of some sort or other.
Alastor appears at Husk’s voiced invocation, materializing in a stuttering coalescence of black smoke. “Husker, my good man! What can I do for you?”
Husk resists the urge to roll his eyes. Normally he makes no effort to mask his disdain for his overlord, but though Alastor is capricious, he does have certain patterns, one of which is responding well to politeness. So he keeps his expression neutral and his voice as close to pleasant as it gets. “Got a favor to ask, boss. The bar’s great, but the selection’s a little basic. Don’t suppose you could get your hands on some really choice top-shelf stuff.”
Those damn red eyes narrow and the ever-present smile widens into a leer. “For whose sake, Husker? Angel Dust? That little ball of fluff and limbs doesn’t know how to appreciate and savor a good liquor, he just knocks them back like it’s still Prohibition and the gendarmes are on their way! Or are you inquiring to satiate your own… appetites?”
“Point of professional pride, actually,” Husk says, pointedly not rising to Alastor’s bait. “You want me to bartend at this shitty hotel, fine. You’ve made me do worse things, much worse. But if I’m going to sling drinks for people I want them to be good drinks.” He plays his trump card. “Besides, I know you like a good whiskey, yourself. Didn’t you get enough bathtub gin when you were alive?”
Alastor’s head tilts just a little bit to the side and his eyes narrow. Despite himself, Husk feels his stomach tighten a little in reflexive fear. That means the Radio Demon is seriously considering the point, and if he doesn’t agree with it – or feels like Husk has somehow insulted him –
“I’ll make you a deal, my good man!” Alastor says, moving with alarming alacrity and settling himself at the bar. “Libations of the sort you’re describing aren’t effortless to acquire here in Hell, but I could put forth the exertion to patch up your precious professional pride! If, that is, you’re willing to demonstrate your commitment to stocking the shelves with potent potables!”
Husk grits his teeth and grimaces. “Boss, you already own my soul – not that I’d put it up again just for booze. What kind of deal could we possibly make?”
Alastor reaches into his coat and withdraws a pack of cards.
“Not a deal, a wager! Gin rummy seems appropriate if I’m to be acquiring the same!” he cackles.
Husk swallows hard. He is trying very hard to suppress a flashback to the last card game they played. “Boss, I don’t know –”
“Come now, Husker,” Alastor taunts, leaning in uncomfortably close. “What came of your professional pride? If not as a bartender, then as a gambler?”
That brings a growl out of him before he can stop himself. “Fine. Deal, motherfucker. Single match, hundred points. If I win you get me some decent fucking booze. If I lose I keep slinging swill and don’t say shit about it ever again.”
“And what do I materially gain from a win?” Alastor asks, already shuffling the cards.
“The satisfaction of watching me suffer and not being able to bitch.”
“Ahh, Husker, you know me too well, my good man! Agreed.”
He deals them ten cards each and then flips the top card of the deck face-up to start the discard pile. It’s a jack.
Husk picks up his cards and his mouth falls open. Four kings, three queens, two jacks, and an ace.
“You’re the non-dealer, Husker,” Alastor says, his voice slicker than lube on glass. “Do you want that top card from the discard?”
“Uh, yeah,” Husk says, picking up the jack and putting the useless ace down. He is now sitting on a hand of three melds, no deadwood, and a solid hundred points in face cards. He’s going to win instantly after Alastor takes his next turn.
“My turn, then?” Alastor purrs. “I like the look of that ace you just put down!” He picks it up, and then, as required by the game, discards one of the cards already in his hand. It’s another ace. He just effectively wasted his turn by doing nothing.
Husk looks at him, at that smug, smiling face. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”
“Husker, such vitriol.” Alastor’s grin widens even more, becoming impossibly broad. “Whatever prompts such vicious imprecations?”
“You cheated. You dealt me ninety points in my opening hand and put a jack in the discard so I could pick it up and go Gin on my second turn.”
“And?”
On a hunch, Husk reaches for the stock pile and flips the top card up. It’s another jack.
“Big Gin,” Husk growls. “Hundred and ten points, plus the thirty-one Big Gin bonus. And how much deadwood do you have in your hand, you son of a bitch?”
Alastor lays his hand down. It’s two aces, two threes, two fives, two sevens, and two nines. Not a single meld. “I believe that’s fifty points of deadwood added to your score, my good man,” he laughs. “Not a single meld! How odd.”
Husk comes over the bar and gets Alastor’s lapel in his right hand. “What the fuck kind of game are you playing with me?” he snarls. “This wasn’t a gamble!”
Slowly, ever so slowly, Alastor brings one hand up and lays it on Husk’s wrist. The gloved fingers curl, one by one, around the joint, each gliding into place with exquisite machine precision. Husk cannot help but watch these motions with unwavering, horrified fascination.
“This is no game, my good man,” Alastor says. “It’s a reminder, given you out of the goodness of my heart. Your pride was at stake here today. But I’ve no need to win a gamble for it when I can give it to you and take it back at my leisure. And you were so easy to goad into doing what you already wanted to do, which was wager everything you thought you had left, again. Owning a soul is one thing; being able to make the person attached to it dance to your tune without even needing to yank on their chain is real power.”
Husk doesn’t say anything. He knows Alastor is right. He lets go of the Radio Demon’s lapel.
The fingers don’t release his wrist. “One more thing, Husker,” Alastor adds, almost as an afterthought.
There is a crunch of bone. Husk bites back the scream that threatens him, taking grim pleasure in bearing the injury without any more complaint than a strangled grunt.
“Kindly don’t forget yourself and touch me ever again.”
“Yes, boss,” he manages through the pain.
“Splendid!” Alastor says, letting Husk’s hand fall limply to the bar. “Always good talking with you, Husker! I’ll go forth and acquire the aforementioned alcohols!”
He strides away, whistling a jaunty tune and twirling his cane, leaving Husk to grimly focus on knitting his bones back together.
Angel
He drags himself to the bar and motions for Husk to pour him a tall one. The bartender does so wordlessly, and Angel knocks the drink back in one long pull. “Another,” he says.
“’Nother long day?” Husk asks.
“Yeah,” Angel replies. “Valentino was riding me hard today.”
“Literally or metaphorically?”
“Both, of course.” Angel knocks this one back too and then just sits there, head on the bar, enjoying the feeling of not talking, of not doing.
The enjoyment only lasts a minute. Then the inside of his brain starts to itch in the old, familiar way. He needs to forget. He needs to get high.
“Thanks, whiskers,” he says, getting to his feet and striding for the door. “Catch you later.”
“You’re heading out? You just got here!”
Angel glances over his shoulder at him. “I need some air,” he tells Husk.
“You need company?”
“Not tonight. Thanks, though.” Angel opens the front door of the hotel.
Alastor is on the other side. Angel nearly smacks right into him before he can arrest his forward momentum. “Alastor, Jesus fucking Christ!” he snaps. “Gonna give me a fucking heart attack!”
“Oh, I suspect your copious substance abuse will do that far sooner than I will,” Alastor laughs heartily. He takes a long step to the side and gestures grandly for Angel to proceed. “Please, don’t let me arrest you in your quest for chemical liberation from your demons!”
Angel bares his teeth at the Radio Demon. “You got a fucking problem with my substance abuse, Smiles?”
“Of course not!” Alastor says, his voice painfully bright. The radio buzz is almost nonexistent. “I believe it’s every individual’s God-given right to hurt themselves in whatever way best drowns out all of their other pain! Especially if that pain is also self-inflicted! It’s a delicious and beautifully ironic cycle!”
“Fuck you,” Angel says, beginning to walk away. “You don’t know nothing about my fucking life.”
“Oh, Anthony,” Alastor croons. “I don’t need to.”
Angel stops in his tracks and whips his head around. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means that you’re simply not very interesting or complex, my effeminate fellow. Do you seriously believe that you’re unique? That your pain is substantially and appreciably different from the pain of every other sinner in Hell?” Alastor laughs, just once, the sound crackling with mockery and distortion. “I’m afraid you’re very much mistaken!”
“Watch it, pal,” Angel growls at him. “I know everyone says you’re a big scary motherfucker, but I’ll still knock your fucking lights out.”
“I would be amused beyond words to see you try!” Alastor says. “But I’ve no interest in fisticuffs, alas. Violence is useful, even necessary, but it can be so banal! Wouldn’t you rather experience a new and more interesting kind of pain? I can’t help but imagine you’re bored of the old kinds by now!”
Angel stops, fists clenched at his sides. “What?”
“The whole point of your perambulations throughout the pentagram is to find forgetfulness in the fog of narcotic nihilism, isn’t it?” Alastor asks. “To escape your deeper pain by finding other, more immediate pain! A venerable technique. But I could give you that same forgetfulness without the need for chemical catalepsy!”
Just visible through the hotel door, Husk starts making huge don’t-do-it gestures toward Angel. Alastor slams the door shut without touching it, cutting off Angel’s view of the bartender.
“I’m not gonna make any kinda deal with you, Smiles,” Angel says, crossing both sets of arms.
“No deal, my effeminate fellow! Just a friendly gesture from one sinner to another! I’ll borrow your offending memories and vices for the evening and give them back to you in the morning!”
Angel hesitates. “No deal? Really? What’s the catch?”
“The catch, Anthony, is right there in the substance of the gesture! The relief, as with all relief, will be temporary! I can’t keep what isn’t really yours to give, but I can hold onto it for a while!”
The inside of his brain continues to itch. He knows this is a terrible idea.
But that’s never stopped him before.
“Sure,” Angel says. “Do it, Smiles.”
He’s expecting a huge green glow, or at least some kind of showmanship, but all that happens is that Alastor’s eyes flicker and go staticky for a split second. There is an audible whine in the air that rises to a screech and then cuts away to sudden, loud silence.
“Enjoy!” Alastor says, opening the hotel’s front door, stepping inside, and slamming it behind him before Angel can even blink.
Angel turns and starts walking away from the hotel into town. What a weird fucker, he thinks. Well, it’s time to –
Time to what?
He knows he goes into town every night, but he isn’t actually sure why. Drinking until he blacks out suddenly doesn’t seem so great. Getting drugged and fucked by strangers holds very little appeal.
So he just walks, wandering through Hell, watching the people go about their crazy, fucked-up lives. Hurting each other, maiming each other, killing and fucking and dying and laughing and crying. He is aware he knows what it’s like to need to be outside himself, to need it so overwhelmingly that he’ll do anything to escape, but he doesn’t know why. He can’t imagine wanting to do any of the things he’s seeing.
Angel takes out his phone and looks at the messages from Valentino. He still knows that Val owns his soul, that their relationship is fucked beyond words, but he can’t say why. There is a curious void where all of his feelings were. Not emptiness, not loneliness, but simple absence.
It feels good.
It feels so fucking good to not be feeling.
He goes up to the highest roof he knows how to sneak onto and looks out at the pentagram, at the seething, writhing mass of billions of sinners.
Another happy day in Hell, he thinks.
He stays there for some hours, just watching, just luxuriating in the feeling of being outside of it all, of being free. Of looking out over a great height and not being seized with the urge to jump.
He makes it back to the hotel as dawn is beginning to creep over the horizon, inasmuch as there is any kind of dawn here in Hell. Alastor and Husk are waiting for him in the lobby, Alastor sitting at the bar nursing what smells like a decent whiskey.
“Anthony, my good man!” Alastor says. “How was your evening unburdened from all these troublesome memories?”
“It was good, Smiles,” Angel replies. He knows he is usually rude, abrasive, or overly sexual, but none of those urges strike him. He just feels like being honest. “Thanks. I mean it. This was really, really nice.”
Alastor’s face contorts itself into the most hideous grin Angel has ever seen. “Oh no no, my friend,” he says. “Thank you.”
His eyes flash, and it all comes crashing back in on Angel. Years upon years upon years of abuse, self-harm, self-hatred, suicidality, assault, pain, terror, despair.
All at once.
The next thing Angel is aware of is lying on the hotel carpet in a pool of his own puke, which is already being ground into his fur by the fact that he has apparently been thrashing around on the floor. He blinks and realizes there are tears in his eyes.
He manages to raise his head to look up at the bar. Husk is behind it, looking horrified and ashamed in equal measure. Alastor –
The Radio Demon looms over Angel, his eyes narrowed to slits, his smile wide enough to swallow the world.
“Never let it be said I’m blind to the suffering of others, Anthony,” Alastor murmurs. “Far from it.”
He straightens up abruptly, flourishing his cane, and walks away. “Please do let me know if you ever need anything else, my effeminate fellow! This was an absolutely delightful evening, I’d be happy to do it again sometime!”
Angel manages to sit up. Husk comes over with a wet rag and starts wiping the vomit out of Angel’s fur.
“Your boss is a son of a bitch,” Angel finally manages.
“Yeah,” Husk says, raising one hand to touch Angel’s cheek.
“I know.”