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When Alastor awoke, he was in pain. Not unusual. However, the exact quantity and amount of pain, well… that was quite unusual indeed.
He decided to assess the situation, seeing as he seemed to have ample time to do so. He was lying down, the bed was soft, softer than his bed at the hotel and he didn’t smell his bayou and for a moment he wondered if he was back in his mother’s house because a delicious smell was floating through the air.
No, that was silly. The pink walls and pink ceiling placed him firmly in Rosie’s cannibal paradise mansion. Relatively a safe place to be. Probably the safest he could be in hell. Didn’t mean he didn’t crave freedom of movement.
“Al! You’re awake, how nice.”
Rosie was smiling that big sharp cannibal smile at him as she walked in the room carrying a plate of something.
“I was getting a bit worried you’d die right in front of me!”
Alastor rubbed his eyes. “I die in front of you all the time, Rosie.” He said and tried to orient himself before become even more aware of the firey pain across his chest and deciding laying down was more comfortable, really.
“You know what I mean.”
No, he didn’t. He looked down at his chest and saw- yep, that was a gaping flesh wound. He looked to the side a ways and sat his shirt and blazer neatly folded on the bedside table, he looked to the other side and saw a plate of fingers, baked just the way he liked them with the outsides all crisp and the nails removed.The sight that usually enticed him now just turned his stomach and made him like queasily back down.
“Rosie, I’m sure I can ask a few small, clarifying questions?”
She sat down on the bed next to him, smiling over him. “Of course, deer.”
“Yes… Well I suppose first would be, what happened to me?”
The room was a little spinny and Alastor tried to remember the last thing he saw. A big huge grin not unlike Rosie’s, not unlike his own, and… a guitar?
“You don’t remember a thing, Bambi?”
He growled through his smiling teeth. “I remember telling you if you ever called me Bambi again I’d chop you up and turn you into fast food.”
“Oh yes, and I’m sure you will as soon as you can stand.” Rosie said. “Do you mind if I snack while I tell you? Feel free yourself, anyways. To answer your question, deer, a lot of angelic steel, very sharp angelic steel colliding with your chest.”
Angelic steel??
Oh. It was all coming back to him now.
“Right, that self engorged nuisance, Adam.” He said. He struggled again to get comfortable and found it was really quite difficult to get comfortable with a tightly bandaged chest wound.
“Yes, that self engorged nuisance who squashed you like a bug.”
“He got lucky, is all.”
“You were using your staff, Alastor.”
Full name. He looked at Rosie with a side eye, with an oh shit I’m in trouble kind of glance.
“Yes, about that.”
“No, nonono, you’re not going to about that your way out of this one.” Rosie angrily gnawed on a finger digit and put the bone primly back on the plate. “I’ve always known you’re self involved. I’ve always known you’re overconfident. I didn’t think you were stupid.”
“I’m-”
“Bup bup.”
Rosie was just about the only sinner who could bup bup Alastor and get away with it. Even now he simmered at the sound of it.
“What did you think would happen? You could have outmatched him in any way if you had an ounce of sense. I can’t tell if you wanted to prove yourself better than an angel or if you had just gotten it in your head that you needed to be special, because either way you nearly died and as soon as you’re healed enough to resurrect, I’m going to finish the job.”
She was glaring at him, inky abysses of eyes staring directly at him. Alastor laughed bitterly.
“Why do you care, Rosie?” He asked.
“Because I care about you.” She replied. “And if you didn’t know that by now, you’re even stupider.”
He exhaled another laugh. “That’s a bad look on both of us, Rosie.”
“Exscuse me?”
“Attachment. Caring. If I died, the biggest change for you would be having to sit next to Vox again at those overlord meetings. Is that what this is all about?”
Rosie stood up. “You’re insufferable.”
“I’ve been told, I still don’t quite believe it though.”
“Either way, I have better things to do then sitting at your bedside waiting for you to wake up.”
“Agreed.”
The temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees since they had started speaking, Alastor could almost feel it as he glared.
“But chew on this.” Rosie was by the door at this point, looking back at him. “I was fighting too. And if I had died, how would you feel?”
She left before he could retort. He hated when she did that.
Alastor laid his head back on his pillow and huffed into the air, making his chest scream with pain. Satan, he could almost feel his organs shifting around the dried blood that he could feel crusting the edges of the wound. If he had to enter the hotel looking like this, he might as well have died because what would his reputation be?
Rosie had found him in the battle, took him back, gotten the more qualified servants to clean him up he bet. More doctors than you’d think in cannibal town. With a strange kind of unfamiliar twinge he realized he hadn’t minded his state for the entire conversation. Immobilized and bandaged and shirtless and helpless, he should have been seething but here it was just another thing that happened.
Of course Rosie wouldn’t think less of him, not for that at least. It was uncomfortable, there with only his thoughts and his mind lead down the rabbithole of every single interaction he’d shared with the Cannibal Queen herself. Drunk and laughing and dancing and feeding and happy, really fucking happy. The genuine happiness behind a smile that was so often just a thoughtless mask.
He’d miss that.
The thought hit him like a bullet to the head.
He’d always thought of care, of love, as something that was presented as a choice, one he hadn’t had to make. At the very least he didn’t think it would creep up on him like this, like some crawling fungus or a boiling lobster pot. It seems he’d caught this disease of affection. It was nothing like people described it, really.
His heart hurt. This was because of the spear to the chest of course, aching and roiling and shocking him with arches of pain every time he dared move or breathe too deeply. He hated to admit the other reason. Yes, he would suffer if she died, he would suffer and he knew she’d suffer for him too.
He found himself glad to be in this bed, in this house, staring up at the pink walls and smelling enticing finger foods beside him.
He found himself glad to be alive.