Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Angel had been to nearly every kind of party Hell had on offer. Swanky Overlord soirées where he got to wear fancy ballgowns and cling to Valentino’s elbow like the pretty armcandy he was; gritty raves in the neon lights of the Doomsday District where he covered himself in blacklight make-up and danced with glowing bracelets and necklaces and suggestively sucked pacifiers to make local schmucks cream their pants on contact; porn social gatherings that turned into orgies where he was do doped up he couldn’t remember who he was being passed around to and why; ragers with mosh pits and loud music where they sold cocaine next to the condoms in the bathroom vending machines; and everything in between.

He had never been to a hellhound party.

There were a number of reasons for that- the main one being that he wasn’t a hellhound, nor did he have any close friends that were. As someone who occasionally acknowledged his privilege of being both a Sinner and a household name, he hadn’t particularly felt that his presence would be welcome at parties that catered to the lowest of lowborn of Hell, because barely any other place would have them, and therefore had not indulged the whims of selfish celebrity desire to demand that no door be closed to him. When there was a party in every district most nights, there was no reason to crash the one not for him.

And then he fell out of vogue- three months out of work beyond freelance and cam stuff would make any household name worth dirt and the porn studios seeking to fill the power vacuum left behind by Valentino’s death were just as greasy and sleazy as he’d been. Angel wasn’t about to fall into another contract just to maintain his celebrity. Suddenly, there were plenty of doors that had welcomed him before that wouldn’t let him so much as lean on the velvet rope much less lift it up to let him in. Suddenly, he was back to exactly where he was before he ever met Val.

Except not really, because he had a support system- a place to come home to, a partner he adored, and friends who would never let him end up in a gutter. He might be losing his fame one day at a time, but he was gaining plenty of other shit. So what if he made all of his money selling ass shots on Only Sins and doing guest spots as the sexy heavy on long-running cheap porn soaps? So what if his nights were occupied with dancing onstage for no tips, just a tiny stipend given to all the performers, at Skrim’s burlesque theater? He was living, not like there wasn’t a tomorrow, but like there would be a thousand tomorrows.

And now he was here at one of those hound parties he’d written off as a cute little curiosity that wasn’t worth showing his ass in order to get into, all because he actually had hound friends- well, Sinner hounds, but it was hard to tell the difference between a hellhound and a dog Sinner unless you were native. Arkady said it was a smell thing, but all he could smell at the moment was dog (of all varieties and none of them distinct enough to classify), booze, and the sweet, sweet smell of cotton candy when he entered the garish, brightly colored warehouse that had looked abysmal and gray on the outside, like all the others in this district.

“Oh this is lit, bitches,” Cherri beamed, punching both Arkady and Pippa in the arm in her excitement.

“Yeah, Bee must be here,” Pippa drawled- she was masc today, so her girlishly gangster moll voice had dropped an octave to something that sounded distinctly Katherine Hepburn. Angel longed to have the relationship with gender she and her wife did- to dip in and out of it both on the stage and off, but getting too femme always shot him through with a wave of dysphoria that made him nauseous and with no one to point a camera at his face and tell him to choke it down, he had stared forlornly at his wig collection and left them shut up in his closet.

One day, he’d feel comfortable in drag again. Arkady and Pippa were well on their way to working on it with him, even if their practiced ease made him unfairly jealous.

His weird emotional train derailed and shrieked to a halt with the grinding of metal in his head as he suddenly processed the words in Pippa’s mouth as opposed to the voice she used to say them. “Wait a minute. Bee? As in Beelzebub?? The Queen of Gluttony is here?”

Cherri, unimpressed, folded her arms behind her head. “What’s the big deal, Ange, you stay in a hotel with the King of Hell.”

“Yeah, but…” That was Lucifer- one could forget he was the Big Boss of Hell Itself, given his, uh… everything. The idea of other Sins wandering in from Pride was still an entirely new thing- he’d seen Asmodeus from a distance once and had nearly pissed or jizzed (or both simultaneously) himself. There was just something about the Sins that was primal, so completely bodying their elements that it affected the air around them.

And judging by the hungry looks in the eyes of all the hounds and imps sharing drinks and snacks and drugs, the effect was worse for the natural born of Hell. They all looked practically dazed as the wiled away the moments from something stronger than whatever it was they were snorting.

The little twitch in the back of his head that warned him when he was jonesing hard started up. He sucked in a breath and held it, worried he’d get a contact high from the fumes alone. He was doing so well weaning himself off the stuff and even when most parties he was going to on his downtime were full of party drugs, he’d stuck to shots in moderation and been careful. Cherri was getting better at not enabling now that she saw how serious he took this and what an overall better effect it was having on his mental health, but she still tried to coax him into a little- mostly edibles, which were bountiful here, alongside drug-free sweets for the even more cautious. The fact that Beezlebub had created a space for everyone to partake and enjoy to their heart’s content without feeling pressured to consume anything they didn’t want was nice.

He released the breath and Arkady tapped his shoulder, just as masc as her wife in her suspenders and cabbie hat. “I warned Tex that you’re on the mend, boyo. If you overindulge beyond your limit, Bee will take care of it. She’s sensitive to shite like that. This is the best type of party for someone who doesn’t wanna push their luck, but wants to have a good time.”

The realization that Arkady and Pippa might have brought him here so he could party without the usual concerns that came from dives and raves that put way too much pressure on overindulgence so they could make money and take advantage of those who couldn’t hold their drugs and liquor nearly melted his heart. Barely three months of knowing them and already they were looking out for him as well as the hotel and Cherri did. He’d forgotten how easy it was to make friends when you put in the effort, instead of acting like a fucking druggie shitlord diva.

“Okay,” he said, pounding two fists into two palms. “We gonna stand around like a buncha idiots or are we gonna party??”

“Fuck yes!” Cherri howled and rushed to get a round of shots. Pippa and Arkady ran to say hi to Hadley, the imp girl from the theater, who was here with a group of friends, leaving Angel to recline on a bright orange sofa, his feet up on an ottoman, just observing the proceedings. The infamous Beezlebub was nowhere to be seen just yet, but the big burly wolf-like hellhound that Arkady had identified as Tex- her boyfriend- was mingling, acting as her surrogate as he checked in with everyone.

The crowd parted at one point, revealing a cream-colored hyena with a mohawk tipped in dark red wearing a tight-fitting black dress. Red spots dotted her fur, particularly around her nose, giving her the impression of freckles and her tail was red and fluffy and wagging excitedly as she completed a keg stand. She was way too small to have taken the much larger hellhound who’d been her opponent to the cleaners, especially given he was currently vomiting on the floor while she was standing as tall as she could, given how tiny she was.

“CRYMINI! CRYMINI! CRYMINI!’ The crowd chanted as the hyena waved her arms, encouraging their reverie.

No one else noticed, but Angel definitely saw the sway in her steps as she began to stumble, clearly more intoxicated than she let on. That didn’t stop her from accepting another shot from a handsome, leering jackal-like hellhound, who leaned down and trailed a finger through her mohawk.

Angel got up immediately, pushing through the crowd. Just before the girl- Crymini- took a sip of the offered drink, he snatched it out of her hands, stomped hard on Mr. Jackal’s foot so that he would open his mouth and poured the drink down his gullet.

“Back up, asshole,” he snapped, while the hellhound reeled and choked from this turn of events, unsure of whether he wanted to throw a punch or just keel over. If what was in that drink was what he thought it was, the decision would be made for him in short order.

Crymini balled her tiny hands into fists while Angel kept his own hands inching towards his guns. “The fuck is your problem?!”

The jackal stumbled off- good riddance- so he turned his focus entirely to her. “Did you die yesterday, kid? You don’t take drinks from strangers in a place like this.”

“It’s fine. Crino would’ve told me if it was spiked. Geez.” She rolled her eyes.

Angel looked around to see if anyone was hovering nearby that might fit the description of ‘legal guardian’ or ‘boyfriend’ or whatever the fuck this Crino might be and found nobody paying attention to them at all. Evidently the whole mess with Jackal Bitch was pretty par for the course.

Seeing his look of confusion, Crymini reached into the fluffy mass of her tail and produced a plush toy that resembled a floppy-eared black dog with raven wings. She hiccuped as she held him up. “This is Crino. My boyfriend.”

He blinked at her. “Kid, how much have you had? And what have you had? ‘Cause I don’t think it’s agreein’ with you.”

“I’ve only had Beezlejuice.” Another hiccup. “I don’t take drugs, okay? I’m strictly a- hic- hard drinking punk rocker.” She threw up the shocker and then sauntered off while Angel was left standing there, too dumbfounded to follow her.

Beezlejuice was hard shit, especially for a Sinner. She was gonna drink her way to oblivion if she kept at it.

“I see you’ve met Crymini,” a deep, bassy voice spoke close to Angel’s neck, startling him out of his shock with a fresh one. He turned quickly to find Tex had joined him, a look of deep consternation on his scarred face. “She started to come to the parties we hold here in Pride about eight months ago. She gets shitfaced, makes a damn fool of herself, and then scuttles off ‘til the next one.”

Angel saw a vision of himself, stoned off his ass, staggering from party to party, only to wake up in a gutter. That scene had repeated itself so many times until one day he looked up, the rain that had woken him up cut off by an umbrella as a tall, simpering moth demon leaned over him.

Oh poor baby. Do you need some help?

His knight in shining armor, who turned out to be a dragon in disguise.

“Bee’s here tonight ‘cause of her,” Tex went on. “She’s keeping an eye on things, but that kid’s a firecracker. Liable to take your fingers off if you don’t handle her right.”

“Yeah,” Angel agreed, vapidly, barely cognizant of the words. He was seeing that poor girl in a gutter, muddy and hungover, with some shadowy, hungry figure leaning over her.

“There you are!” Cherri suddenly exclaimed, throwing one arm around him and thrusting a shot into his hand with the other. “What’s with the long face? Here. This’ll put your smile back on, bitch.”

Angel stared into the shot and only saw Crymini’s face, hopeful, hand outstretched, reaching out for something that would drag her down into the depths.

Eventually, Crymini was pushed out of Angel’s head entirely through a combination of cannabis-infused treats and liberal amounts of sweet cotton candy cocktails, leaving him with a decadent buzz that thrummed through his whole body as he danced to the rhythmic pop songs being pumped through the speakers. Beezlebub had made her grand appearance and was mingling herself now. Were he less stoned, he might have caught the glimmer of anxiety in her eyes as she hovered, her honey-like mane and tail flickering as she fed off the vibes and found some to be wanting.

Eventually, the siren call of the couch beckoned and he and Cherri fell into it in a tangle of limbs and sleepy giggles. Angel closed his eyes to forget why Bee’s focus on bad vibes ought to be bothering him, focused entirely on the story Hadley was telling about the rumors that there was already someone looking to fill the void left by the Vees but before she could drop a name, he heard a sharp feminine alto cut through the crowd as the music suddenly stopped.

“Back off. You’re not my mom! I don’t care who you are!”

Angel’s buzz vanished like someone had dumped ice water on his head. He extricated himself from Cherri’s arms and let her fall against the armrest, zonked out from a sugar crash, bounding across the suddenly stark-still party to the center of the dance floor where there was a stand-off between all of five foot tall Crymini and the Amazon goddess of a Sin whose bright eyes had turned extremely insectoid and only Tex rubbing her shoulders and pushing her down the ground was enough to keep her to blink it away and calm down.

“I know I’m not your mom, sweetie,” she said, through gritted teeth. “But you’ve had a little bit too much and it’s, like… wow when you do. I’ve had come pretty gnarly complaints about you. Like, hey, I get it, you’re a party girl. I’m a party girl too, but you gotta know when to stop, okay?” She looked around, laughing in a way that spoke more to her anxiety than any furtive glance or wringing of her multiple limbs. “So, uh… who did you come with? I think maybe they should take you home…”

Crymini was saying “I didn’t come with anyone” at the same time Angel suddenly yelled “She came with me” and his was louder, spurred on by a sudden onset fear that if no one claimed her, someone like Jackal McRapeyFace would and Bee might be too annoyed with Crymini’s everything to vibe check him. He didn’t trust that well, no matter how hard Arkady and Pippa vouched for a person. Not until they proved it and this wasn’t the kind of situation where he’dleave anything to chance.

Bee looked him over and her swirling colors settled on a deep golden hue. She sighed in relief and very gently steered Crymini over to him. “Hey, I know you! You’re one of Charlie’s, aren’t you? She’s a big cutie. I wish I could say it’s nice to finally meet you, but this is kind of a shitty meeting, so like… it’s nice to meet you, even if the sitch is less than nice.” She gave Crymini a little hipcheck into Angel’s arms.

“Just get her home safe and you can come right back. These parties go all night!” Bee rose up into the air on the last two words, the music rising with her, all in the name of getting things back in order so no one was staring and unhappy at the interruption. Under the cover of sugar-coated distraction, Angel hauled Crymini out of the party, sending off a quick text to Arkady.

takin’ this kid home. if cherri wakes up, tell her i’m back at the hotel. don’t mess up her fun on my account.

The answer came from Pippa’s phone- Arkady notoriously never responded to texts. It was just two words, only tangentially related, and with no indication if he was being admonished or praised: boy scout.

He had a good chuckle at that. Yeah, maybe.

Go figure. Maybe this redemption shit was worth something. Maybe he had to pay it forward before it really started to stick.

Or maybe it was the right thing to do and that was all that mattered.

Chapter Text

The problem with leaving a party with a surly adolescent was the fact that the surly adolescent didn’t want to leave and had no issues squaring up to a Deadly Sin and therefore had zero hesitation in squaring up to a seven foot tall spider demon.

“What the fuck was that?” She snapped as he hauled her out of the warehouse by her spiked collar, while she kicked and yelled the whole time, serving the most ‘you’re not my mom- I don’t know you’ energy without actually using any of those words. The guttural growls and hyena yips were easily translatable.

It was early enough in the night that the sky was a bruised purple instead of the usual red, the lamps situated just far enough apart to make the whole warehouse space a little spooky had barely come on and lurking moth demons of a lesser ilk than Valentino gathered around them to make their shady deals and dare each other to touch the light. Despite knowing they were nobodies for certain, Angel still kept his eyes open until he lost full sight of them behind another warehouse.

“Are you even listening?!” Crymini snapped as Angel let out a breath he’d been holding since he saw the moths. If she’d said a word since then, he hadn’t heard it, but he had to imagine it wasn’t anything more articulate than ‘what the fuck is your problem?’

“Not really,” he quipped. This place was a maze of buildings and he was still a little doped up from the fucking edibles, so his sense of direction was shot.

“I’m going back,” she snapped and that Angel did hear. He grabbed her arm and wrenched her back. She screamed a series of words that would have probably called a cop over if he was particularly chivalrous on Earth, but wouldn’t do anything in Hell but encourage a bunch of sick freaks to come watch and maybe request to have a turn. Angel wanted neither option and clamped a hand over her mouth.

“Okay, first of all? Don’t yell shit like that or people’ll see it as an invitation.” Her eyes widened in surprise, but she believed him, so that was good. “Second of all, Beelzebub could rip you in half with her bare hands. Is that what you want?”

He released her snout so she could answer. “I’d just come back.” Her laugh was an anxious, hyena cackle, full-throated and a bit terrifying. “That’s why Hell’s so cool. I can do whatever I want to myself and it doesn’t matter because I’m already dead!”

Oh kiddo… The immediate surge of understanding, sympathy, and compassion warred with his desire to shake her until all of her fur fell out. Angel slapped his forehead with one hand while the other three stayed firmly on his hips. “Okay, yeah, that’s how it fuckin’ works, but it’s no way to live. And obviously you’re not goin’ out doin’ every dangerous thing ‘cause you won’t even try drugs, so personally I think you got a lot more convictions than you say you do and if you got convictions then that means you ain’t completely lost in the sauce here.”

Crymini bared her teeth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Angel prodded her in the nose. “It means I’m callin’ you fake, toots.”

That had the same effect on her as it did on him when it was Husk. There was something heart-warming about that, to use what Husk had used on him and have it get a real, visceral reaction. She wasn’t a 1:1 match for his issues, obviously, but she was clearly playing up a front and she didn’t like having it called out.

“FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!” She shot him two middle fingers and tried to stalk away. Angel started to reach for her again, but he caught sight of a shadow darting between the buildings, caught in the lamplight for only a second before it vanished. Fuck.

“Hey, Crymini, get back here,” he said, hissing, trying not to alert whatever or whoever that was that it had been spotted. That was the surest way to get something to start fighting crazy- ruin its element of surprise before it’s damn well ready.

“I’m not listening to you~” She sing-songed as she put her fingers in her ears. “Lalalala fuck you.”

Holy mother of fuck, is this what having kids is like? He made a mental note to apologize to his ma if he ever made it to Heaven to see her. Walking at a brisk pace, he caught up to her just seconds before shadow man made his move- the fucking jackal from the party.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he grinned. There was a half-drugged cast to his red eyes- evidently, whatever Angel had dumped down his gullet was the appropriate dose for a tiny girl, but barely enough to knock a six foot tall brute on his ass. He was slurring though, so it did something, even if it was just making him more annoying.

Angel growled and pulled Crymini out of his reach for a second time. She didn’t fight him on it this time- good, she was learning. “Can’t you take a hint, fuckface?”

“No,” came the flat response. He started to reach into the back of his tight jeans for what was likely a piece he thought was soooo big. Angel, faster on the draw, now that his adrenaline was so revved up even the edible buzz had burned away, pulled out every single one of his tommy guns, extra arms, included.

“Mine’s bigger,” he quipped before turning the jackal into a nice smear on the pavement. Those tips were blessed silver so good luck crawling out of the Pit to molest some other raver in a week. Overkill, maybe, but Angel didn’t have the patience for rapists that he used to have, especially when they were harming people who weren’t him. He could take it, whether he wanted to or not, but like hell if he was going to let that be a curse someone else got used to on his watch.

He panted and pawed blood out of a tuft of hair on his head, flicking it off his fingers in disgust. “You okay, Crymini?” That was kind of loud and startling. Even in Hell, seeing some twink whip out six tommy guns and making some asshole a conversation piece on the pavement wasn’t a common sight.

Crymini didn’t respond. He hoped it was because she was too shellshocked. He knew the second the thought entered his head that he was dreaming too high.

“Crymini?” He tried again, tentatively. No answer. He sighed, kissed his good faith goodbye and turned to find a total absence of hyena girl.

There was only one word to sum up that level of rage and disappointment: “Fuck!”

It was a well documented fact that in any section of the Pentagram full of empty warehouses, parties would spring up in mushrooms after a rainstorm. In doubling back to seek out Bee’s party in a maze of buildings that looked exactly the same from the outside, he crashed three different parties, eventually finding his target at a rave that was so dark even opening his extra eyes refused to pierce it. He had to follow the flashes of neon, hunting for that telltale flash of red and cream.

Through luck, tenacity, or some big brother instinct lying dormant, he found her in the mosh pit, bouncing up and down near a stage where a gritty underground punk band made up of entirely possessor demons were screaming incomprehensible lyrics into their waterproof mics- and they had to be waterproof given the waterfall behind them, pouring water off into the mosh until people were slipping and sliding and getting crushed and too hypnotized by the music and the drugs and the liquor to care. Angel stepped lightly and while he managed not to slip in the water, demon error was the true danger of the situation. He failed to dodge multiple elbows pinwheeling to the rhythm and to avoid slipping and even got a sharp kick to his ankle that definitely felt intentional, but, limping, he managed to snatch Crymini up and wade out of the mosh with his dignity mostly intact.

Outside in the lamplight, Angel blinked his extra eyes shut to try and drown out the additional stimulus. His ankle hurt and Crymini was wriggling in his arms.

“You’re a fucking asshole! Why are you so obsessed with me, huh?”

He dropped her onto the pavement where she landed with a yelp. He gave her a cursory glance-over to make sure she wasn’t hurt since the fall from even his lower arms wasn’t necessarily a short jaunt to the ground, and once he’d established it was more her ego than her ass, he began to pace, fisting his hands in his hair and chest fluff.

“’Cause I know what happens after this part! You party and you drink and you snort and you shoot up-“

“I said I didn’t do drugs-“

“-and you fuck-“

“I have a boyfriend!”

“-until nothing fuckin’ matters!”

Her jaw snapped shut, but only for a moment, because, apparently, one moment to actually stop and think was all her body needed to catch up to her. She made a hork sound and then delicately turned away to puke her guts out in a foul-smelling stream that reeked of 120 proof Beezlejuice. Angel, for the sake of the girl’s dignity, turned away, but still bent over slightly to hold her mohawk and tail away from the mess.

When she finished, her entire body was shaking, her nose and eyes streaming. He couldn’t tell if she was actually crying or if her body was trying to purge her of every toxin through every means it had. She let out another one of those nervous hyena laughs, declared, “This sucks ass” and then fell over. If he hadn’t been right on top of her, it would have been right into the sick, too, so miracle of miracles, thanks for deciding to be a fucking gentleman, Angel.

He dragged her away from the vomit, limping all the while, and set her unconscious form up against the side of another warehouse, this one silent, so no party had spontaneously generated inside of it yet. From here he could try to sort out what to do next- a full tasting menu of bullshit options.

He could call a cab, but the drivers who came out here were more predatory than most, and even knowing how good he was, he didn’t think he could handle a handsy cabbie and keep an unconscious teenager safe at the same time. Plus he’d have to drive the car himself if it came to a fight, and it was for the best that such things be avoided, because, well, there was a fucking reason he was used to being driven everywhere. Arkady and Pippa had driven him and Cherri out here, but to ask one of them to drive him back to the hotel would just inconvenience them after they were nice enough to arrange this outing for them. He could call Charlie, but then she’d fuss and ask a lot of questions and probably ask Crymini a lot of questions that would immediately set her off and yeah no.

Walking was off the table. That was a long walk even with eighty pounds of dead weight and a bum ankle.

So who could he call who was subtle, fast, not likely to ask overwhelming, invasive questions or get all mother hen-y, and would do just about anything he requested with minimal complaining?

He pulled his cell phone out of his top and dialed Husk. He picked up on the third ring, voice slurred from sleep, not booze, so that was good. He trusted Husk to be able to fly even while impaired, but it wasn’t a preference.

“What happened? Did the party go to the dogs?” He wheezed a snickering laugh. Angel blew a raspberry into the receiver and then went full serious.

“It’s this kid… she’s pretty fucked up and I didn’t want her to end up in the gutter, and I don’t got a ride.”

“You can’t stick your ass in the air and flag down a car in that outfit?”

“Ha ha, Whiskers. You’re funny. Do you want little ol’ me to have to pick fights with a slimy cabbie in the Industrial District all by my lonesome? What happened to my big strong bodyguard?”

Husk barked a sardonic laugh right back. “Don’t act like you ever needed a bodyguard.”

“There’s a difference between needin’ and liked havin’, kitty kitty,” he pouted. He could hear Husk relenting with each coquettish word, like he knew if Angel was teasing him, then it was genuinely serious and he was too scared to be vulnerable. There was a lot of compromise going into this relationship- Husk might prefer genuine, honest with his feelings Angel, but that Angel didn’t come out while he was alone in a shitty area surrounded by a bunch of assholes who could emerge from their parties at any time, all hopped up on PCP and ready to fuck or fight and not necessarily in that order.

Finally, Husk sighed. “Industrial district, huh? That’s a long fuckin’ flight. You better be lucky your twink ass don’t weigh much.”

Husk wasn’t going to win any awards for being a fast flier, but what he lacked in speed, he made up for in efficiency. He didn’t ask questions about the unconscious hyena girl too early- just had Angel scoop her up in his arms while he fell back into Husk’s. The exertion was clearly pushing his limit and by the time the Hotel came into view, he was flagging. The only thing that kept him airborne at all was Angel whispering in his ear that he’d get the best back massage of his life later.

Still, the landing came hard, with them all ending up rolling in the grass, awkwardly. Crymini stirred, but didn’t wake, and aside from her cream-colored fur being a little more grassstained, she didn’t seem to be any worse for wear. With Angel limping, arms full of hyena, and Husk favoring his back, they made a pretty sorry pair, but the lobby was empty, devoid of any late-night stragglers who might have had something to say.

If Alastor was still here, he’d have been lurking in the shadows somewhere, Angel just knew it, but looking at every shadow, every cathedral radio still lingering because Charlie didn’t have the heart to throw them out only reminded him of the Radio Demon’s total absence from the space. He could expect Alastor to pop out all he wanted with a cheerful, yet annoying, comment, but he never would, not unless he decided to come back one day.

Three months and no word from him, except secondhand from Rosie. He wasn’t even talking to Husk. It was pretty damning evidence that this was permanent and he still didn’t know how he felt about it.

Husk grabbed a key to a vacant room from behind the bar/concierge desk and the pair of them plus one sleepy teenager made their way up to the second floor. The first thing Angel did when Husk opened the door was drop Crymini, clothes and all, into the shower, prop her up so that she was in no danger of injury or accidental drowning and let the water fall down on her. She stirred perceptively, but came to rest with her chin on the edge of the tub, her mohawk soaked down to cover her left eye.

Angel left the door open so he could keep an eye on her, perched on the end of a bed. Husk puttered about, still grousing and groaning about his back under his breath, returning to the bed with one of the first aid kits that Charlie kept in every room, loaded down for every possible emergency from sprained ankles to an overdose and yet there nothing harder than ibuprofen for pain. Valentino would give him morphine for a paper cut, which, come to think of it, probably wasn’t as sweet as he had thought at the time.

“Let’s see that ankle,” Husk tutted.

Angel cringed. “Oh come on, Husky…”

“Don’t Husky me. You want it to swell up so bad you can never get that boot off?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Angel.”

Ugh. That damn serious voice. If he used it in the bedroom, they both had a tendency to get two completely different responses to it- Husk shutting down and Angel turning all the way on. Maybe the trick to getting Husk not to immediately fear the power he could command in others and the way it could go so fucking wrong for both of them was to try to indulge in nonsexual D/s play, given how easy it came to both of them in and out of bed. Or for Angel to learn that safe words were normal and not ‘pussy behavior’ the way Valentino had drilled into him on set, which was a big chunk of the issue. Hard to know when someone was pushing you past your comfortable threshold when you had never gotten to accept what your comfortable threshold was. They were working on it.

And, either way, that voice did its damn job. Despite all instincts warring within him, telling him this was uncomfortable and he didn’t want to do it, he began to pull off his boot with the pliancy of a practiced sub. Husk froze and then slapped a hand over his face.

Okay, so much for this working on a nonsexual level. Angel blinked, confused, half-in and half-out of subspace because the lines were sometimes so goddamned blurred and sometimes it was just easier to do what was good for him without the rest of his brain having a say in it.

“I’m sorry- I didn’t… Fuck, Angel.”

“It ain’t you, it’s me. Sometimes it’s easier for me to think of it as a command then it is to think of it as a request? You ain’t makin’ me take my shoes off so you can force me to do weird foot shit I don’t like, so it ain’t as bad.” His contract had specifically said ‘no foot stuff’ on camera, but that fucking caveat of on camera hadn’t meant in the private bedroom and Valentino had never met a boundary he didn’t want to push. The idea of some part of Angel being off limits hadn’t set well with him.

Husk blew out a breath, turning away, embarrassed, and not willing to reiterate the order. Angel, clinging to the last vestiges of ‘just check out and follow orders’ managed to get his boot off without dry heaving about it. It was ugly and unseemly even with the new discoloration showing underneath the fur. Fucking spider legs.

Husk went in with his eyes on Angel’s face, feeling out the swollen ankle and wrapping it without focusing on it too much. Almost like he’d done it before, countless times. Angel leaned on his elbows so that the two of them were practically nose to nose.

“You wrap a lot of boys’ ankles, champ?” He fluttered his eyes until Husk rolled his eyes upwards.

“Show girls. My mother would have me wrap their ankles when they hurt themselves on stage, but she was a tyrant about me lookin’ at their legs. Thought it was sinful for a teenage kid to be starin’ at the feminine form all laid bare like that.”

“But she had no issue tellin’ you not to stare at the men?” Angel snorted.

“I learned to appreciate all types of forms when she wasn’t watchin’, but it’s just polite not to stare.” His voice took on a husky, sultry cadence that made Angel shiver, made him almost forget about the kid in the shower until she groaned.

Husk finished up and gave Angel a pat on the knee. “Go find yourself some better shoes. I’ll take care of the kid.”

Angel watched him vanish into the bathroom, turn off the water, and then immediately get soaked by a half-conscious hyena shaking herself off in his general direction. Angel snickered and limped out of the room to the tune of his swearing.

He could handle this part until he got back. After all, he doubted he was the only one between the two of them who could relate to the girl.

Chapter Text

Husk stared at the hyena in the tub with her fur all poofed out like she was fresh from the salon and bared teeth straight from the Savannah and felt nothing but irritation. A lot of it had to do with the water dripping off his fur from the impromptu shower, but a good portion was making sure that this kid realized that he’d seen bigger teeth on taller demons and nothing she did was going to intimidate him.

“Put your fangs away,” he groused, turning to the linen closet. The benefit of this being a hotel was that Niffty stocked every damn room with towels, whether they were occupied or not. He tossed one at her- thick and fluffy and still smelling like whatever fancy detergent a princess could budget for that smelled good, but probably not exactly what it was labeled as smelling like. Much like everything in Hell, for Sinners everything smelled, tasted, and sometimes even looked just slightly off what you remembered. No going home again and so forth. “You ain’t gonna do shit.”

Crymini took the towel right to the face, but her next words came out sulky. “You fucks ruined my dress. And my night. Ugh. What the hell is wrong with you? I thought people in Hell were awful and didn’t do shit like this?”

That might be the first time ever Husk had ever been presented with that statement as an insult. It made him took back to look at her, currently running the towel through her ruined hair with an exaggerated whimper.

“You’re pissed ‘cause somebody actually came to your rescue?”

“I don’t need to be saved. It’s a little late, isn’t it?” She laughed and began to clamber out of the tub, ending up sprawling in a disoriented heap on the bathmat. Husk averted his eyes out of respect for her dignity more than her propriety. “I’m dead. It’s stupid to try and save me now.”

“Yeah, I’m dead too and so’s just about everyone else around here. Most people still appreciate it when someone gives them a hand up outta their own vomit.”

With his face turned towards the mirror he didn’t have to show her the telltale sign of a lie, but, in exchange, he had to see it close up- that little twitch of his eyebrows. Yeah, so maybe, more recently than he’d like to admit, he would have slapped away a hand that tried to lift him up, but that was all the more reason to prove her wrong. No one survived in Hell on their own and the ones that tried ended up in worse trouble if they didn’t end up double dead.

Crymini clambered to her feet and wrapped the towel around her, shivering slightly, despite her steadfast determination to present herself as a hardass. He could see her reflection glaring at his back in the mirror. “What are you getting out of this? And where are we? Is this some kind of trafficking thing?”

Now Husk turned to face her, belligerent and scandalized in equal measure. “You really can’t accept that people want to help you, can you?”

“No one’s ever tried to help me except Crino and he’s-“ Her eyes widened. “Oh shit. Where is he?”

“Angel didn’t bring anyone else…” Husk started, but was cut off immediately as Crymini began to tear up the bathroom in a frenzy, turning his explanation into a volley of expletives. Any attempt to grab her to stop here from destroying the place was met with a hasty exit worthy of an escape artist. The bathroom left in disarray, she bolted to start ripping apart the bedroom, stopping only when she picked up a dark shape that had fallen near the bed.

A stuffed animal. All that insanity for a plush toy.

Crymini dropped to her knees and began to self-soothe by petting the thing’s head and kissing its floppy ears- some kind of winged dog, its little floppy arms dangling over the side of her arm, staring at Husk with black button eyes as he blinked back the bevy of impolite things he might have said months ago without even thinking about it.

For fuck’s sake, she was just a kid- a terrified, anxious kid who wasn’t coping with her own death well. She didn’t need his attitude. “How old are you, kid?”

Either the shock to her system was too much to remember to lie or she had lost any desire to, because anyone else would have. “Nineteen,” she mumbled as she scooted closer to the bed, drawing her knees up to her chest and clinging to ‘Crino’ like a lifeline.

“And you’ve been dead for how long?”

“Less than a year,” she sniffed and used the towel to dab at her nose. She waited for another question and then blinked at him, impatiently, when it didn’t come. “Well? Aren’t you gonna ask me how?”

“Ain’t polite,” he shot back. “Also it seems fuckin’ obvious.”

Angel reentered without knocking, dressed in his sleep clothes with a pair of fuzzy boots to match. In his arms was an oversized shirt featuring an imp doing an exaggerated orgasm face in the style of The Scream with bold letters declaring PRIDE RING PORN CUM-VENTION 2019. Husk lifted an eyebrow.

“I don’t have a lot of shirts that ain’t made for somebody with my figure, okay?” Angel held his ground, defensively, and simply brandished the shirt to double down on its usefulness. “But I got a ton of these I keep meanin’ to give to Niffty to make rags outta. Good thing I kept gettin’ distracted, huh?”

Husk shrugged to the tune of fair enough. Crymini took the shirt like she worried it might contain trace amounts of something or other that would only be visible under a blacklight, and only accepted the risk because it was either that or sitting around in wet pleather. Sighing, she retreated back into the bathroom and emerged a moment later with a shirt that hit her knees, the extra sleeves dangling limply underneath her armpits.

She looked like a kid wearing her father’s old shirts. Husk pressed his fist to his mouth and coughed, turning away. Angel wasn’t nearly as polite- he snorted and then burst into a full-on laugh as he collapsed onto the bed, wheezing. Eventually, even Husk had to get in on it and the two of them fell together, snickering.

Crymini pounded one tiny foot into the carpet, fists clenched, tail lashing from under the hemline of the shirt. “Okay, so is this the negging part of the trafficking? What the fuck?”

Angel’s laugh cut off abruptly in horror. “The fuck did you say? Is that what you think this is?”

“No one has told me shit otherwise!”

“It’s a rehab, kid,” Husk wheezed.

Crymini bolted for the window so fast it would have been funny if it were being observed, rather than experienced. Both men had to lunge across the bed to grab her before she tried to leap off the third storey and hope luck or a swift regeneration befell her. Angel got her around the waist but not before she clocked Husk hard in the face with her foot and elbowed Angel straight into the bed. “Fuck this! Why the fuck do I need a rehab?! I’m supposed to be punished right?! That was why they killed me!”

The last word was bitten off with a sob. She stopped fighting and rolled off Angel’s stomach, crawling like a child to the safety of the pillows at the head of the bed in lieu of escape. Husk helped Angel up so he could nurse his sore middle and, in return, he got a quick glance at his bleeding nose.

Excellent work all around. They exchanged a silent conversation, told only in eyebrow raises.

Is this worth it?

Was it worth it when you pushed me?

Yeah.

Sometimes people needed to be pushed until they broke. That was how you figured out where the pieces from the last time they pulled themselves together were digging into them. It was a messy process, sure, but Angel and Husk both knew from experience that putting yourself together always left you with pieces that didn’t fit, like doing a puzzle blindfolded. Having someone else there to put you back together and smooth the edges was necessary.

“Who killed you?” Husk asked, finally, when he and Angel finally broke apart.

Crymini glanced towards the only exits, saw her situation fail to improve if she made it to either, and made a decision. That, too, was a look Husk recognized. It was good that it came to her before she escaped to some other party or bar in an attempt to pretend like breaking more and walking around with the shattered glass underfoot was a suitable solution. That put her leagues beyond where Angel was when this dance had been new to them both. “My parents… They, um… It wasn’t like that, okay?”

Their faces must have gone through some form of shock and revulsion judging by how quick she switched gears. “They weren’t fucking psychopaths, but they- they…” She swallowed. “Fuck. I have this in the wrong order. Okay, so… Like, I snuck out and went to this party, right? Whatever. Teenager shit. Except I’d never had anything to drink before and these were college kids that I wanted to like me so much. So I… drank. And I kept drinking until I fell asleep, except I wasn’t really asleep. I was sort of there, but I couldn’t move or say anything, but I could hear-“

“You drank yourself into a coma?” Angel supplied. Husk watched his throat bob, his bottom hands began to fidget together in an effort to soothe himself. He reached over to trap his hands in one of his if only to offer additional support.

Crymini nodded, one hand raking through her hair, the other wrapped around Crino. “Yeah… Yeah, and there was no promise I would ever wake up, I guess? And keeping people on life support is expensive and my parents didn’t have a lot of money and I had siblings and shit so, like… It makes sense, right? ‘She did it to herself! Let her die! We have good kids at home!’”

Husk felt, deep in his soul, that it had to have been more complicated than that, that there were conversations held behind closed doors that she never heard, that there was a mother and father who couldn’t live with the guilt and the ghost of a daughter they had to choose to let go still lingered… And then he wondered what had happened to him to make him have such faith in humanity when it could just as easily have been exactly as the girl described it.

If his own mother had the choice between spending countless amounts of money keeping her vegetable son alive on the off-chance he might come out of the alcohol-induced coma he drank himself into or letting him reap what he’d sown, he knew exactly where her foot would come down. She’d have pulled the plug herself. His father, maybe, would have had reservations, but he bowed to her. And if his own parents would have been that practical, who was to say hers weren’t?

But fuck if this hotel didn’t make him want to believe better of people. Not enough to say it, but enough to hope, and even that and a nickel wouldn’t even get you a newspaper in Hell these days. Crymini didn’t need to know that maybe her parents didn’t abandon her to Hell out of anger because there was no way to prove it- she needed to know that she didn’t need to punish herself.

And then Angel came in swinging with a point that Husk had made months ago, the one he was building up to, but had clearly too much of a soft spot for a kid to say it as easily as he had then. “Wow. You’re a loser, kid.”

Crymini squawked, voice half-choked with tears. Husk nearly toppled over. Angel didn’t wait for either of them to collect themselves before he flopped onto the nest of pillows next to Crymini, unapologetic for his words. “I mean, yeah… You’re a boozehound failure. I get it.”

“You’re such a fucking-“ Crymini yelped, but Husk, seizing upon an opportunity, slid into the spot on the other side and let the situation continue. Hell loved a reprise.

“Loser? Yeah, kid, we both are. Like calls to like.”

“Huh?” Crymini’s ears swiveled, her head tilted. “What are you going on about? Are you insulting me or, like… Mr. Miyagi-ing me?”

“A wise bartender once told me a secret,” Angel said, wrapping two of his arms around Crymini’s shoulders to press her close. “He said the best way to be a loser is to have other losers around you who get it.”

“Not exactly what I said, but yeah, I’ll take credit for that,” Husk chortled. To Crymini, he added, “Look, I’ve drank myself into a ditch a few times ‘cause I didn’t think there was anything for me. I’ve made plenty of mistakes that lost me a lot of friends and made me think I wasn’t worth shit to anyone.”

“And me, I’ve been down at the bottom, turnin’ every kind of trick for just one more hit of the good shit. And then I came here to this hotel and I met this asshole over here.”

“Hey, you like it,” Husk purred, furrowing his eyebrows into something almost seductive. “And it’s not like you’re some prince, yourself.”

“Exactly my point!” Angel waved his free hands. “And there’s more here than just him that’ll take care of you, if you want. Hell’s what you make of it. And if you don’t wanna be here no more, then maybe you can work hard to better yourself and end up in Heaven. That’s the point of the Hazbin Hotel.”

Crymini frowned, still stuck on the whole ‘being called a loser but, like, as a compliment’ thing, judging by the disgruntled expression on her face. Angel tapped Husk on the shoulder and the pair of them moved away to give her some space while she turned all of that over in her head.

“Is it free?” She asked, after a moment. That was what had lured Angel in at first, too, and Husk elbowed him gently in the ribs for him to be the one to answer as the leading expert on joining on false pretenses, but also committing to it hard as time went on. It was, admittedly, a common sentiment here.

“So long as you do the group activities and don’t blow up the fuckin’ walls. We just had this place rebuilt.” Angel shrugged. “It’s up to you, kid. We can turn you loose tomorrow and you can go back to punishin’ yourself for somethin’ that ain’t your fault and nobody’s holdin’ a pitchfork to your ass to do penance for it even if it was… or you can talk to Charlie and Vaggie about stayin’ in the mornin’. Think about it.”

He ushered Husk towards the door- there was nothing more to do now- well, maybe a musical number, but that was Hell and it’s strange curse’s call, not theirs. Crymini let them go without so much as a nervous giggle of apprehension.

Two hours later, she found her way to their room and woke them up, driven by the whims of Hell’s specific curse, to sing a new verse to a song she’d never heard like something had been awoken in her- Hell loved a reprise, in-fuckin’-deed, and that was literal, more often than not. By morning, she was enduring Charlie’s fast-paced spiel and excitement for a new arrival with a tense smile plastered on her face that spoke of so much intense regret that she was dealing with the kind of grace associated to martyrs going to be burned at the stake.

“She’ll learn to love it,” Angel snickered, saluting Husk with his coffee cup over the massive breakfast buffet Lucifer had conjured in joy at his daughter having another guest. He was still in the early stages of overcompensating for… everything, really. But it benefited everyone else to watch him fall over himself to be impressive and so Husk wasn’t going to roll his eyes about it too much.

“Or she’ll hate it the same way we do,” he retorted, tapping his mug against Angel’s.

Across the room, they heard Charlie say: “Oh! Sure, Angel Dust and Husk can be your mentors! You said they’re the ones who brought you here, right? That was really sweet of them! They’ll definitely want to put special attention on your recovery!”

Husk and Angel spat out their coffee simultaneously, exchanged glances, and then looked over at Crymini, who was now staring directly at them with a devious smile. Charlie, oblivious, prattled on, unaware of the message she was sending with just her eyes.

I’m your problem now, losers.

“Oh shit, what did we get ourselves into?” Angel laughed, anxiously, running a hand through his hair. The entirety of last night seemed to flash through his eyes, spreading dread throughout his body. He hadn’t thought any of this through beyond a need to prevent history from repeating. Of course he hadn’t.

Husk shook excess coffee from his whiskers, resigned to his fate, and went back to sipping from his mug. “Don’t look at me. You’re the one who brought her home.”