Chapter Text
Angel was tired of being single. He was tired of bar hopping, clubbing, and taking home random men only to end in disappointing sex. He had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that life no longer under Valentino’s chain would have been easier for him somehow. He had, wrongly, assumed that all of his problems would suddenly disappear.
Valentino had never outright forbidden Angel from dating another demon, but he hadn’t made it easy for him to get close to anyone else either. Worse still, Angel had learned just how many men were willing to sell him out to Valentino the second he either vaguely threatened them or offered them something slightly better than what Angel himself could offer. And Valentino was not above simply dragging away any paramour of Angel’s he saw fit simply to prove that he could. There was no denying it, Angel had kissed a lot of toads in his time. Fucked a lot of them too.
Maybe it was foolish to still long to find a prince, he knew a few of them, Stolas was one of his best friends after all. Maybe it was foolish to still want to find his happy ending, even in Hell, but dammit he’d earned that! Maybe he wasn’t perfect, but who was? People found love and happiness in Hell all the time, not even just hell borns either. For as much as Valentino had loved to fuck with him, for as much as he was an absolute piece of shit, he still had Vox. Vox may have had a hard-on for Alastor a mile wide, but they made it work. Angel should know, he had been forced to watch them enough times.
For decades Angel had been told that he didn’t deserve love. What demon could love him after all? He was a barely educated whore from the wrong side of the tracks who didn’t even own his soul. He had been made to believe that everything that happened to him, every pain, every wretched thing was somehow all his fault. All his doing. Somehow. Perhaps if he’d been better in life. Perhaps if he hadn’t been kicked out, if he hadn’t fallen to drugs and sex work, maybe then he wouldn’t have deserved the afterlife he had found himself in. Perhaps if he’d been allowed to get beyond a fifth grade education. Perhaps if his father hadn’t been in the mob, and he hadn’t been forced to be a killer. A million what-ifs, a million lives he could have lived, people he could have been. But Angel wasn’t any of those people, he was him. For better or worse. And he had believed Valentino when he had told him that he deserved everything that happened to him.
And then, Charlie had come along, and sure, okay Angel didn’t believe in redemption or whatever. He hadn’t taken what she had offered seriously but fuck he was just so desperate to get away from Val for even a little while that he had been eager to take her up on whatever it was she was offering. Even if it was a scam. The small beacon of hope that the princess of Hell had offered him felt like the first ray of sunshine on a life that had been mired in perpetual rain. Charlie certainly brought the sunshine wherever she went.
The Hazbin Hotel was both not what he had been expecting, and better than he had dared hope for. It wasn’t just some scam concocted by Valentino in a petty bid to break his spirit. Satan knew he had come close many a time, but still Angel always tried to hold onto some semblance of joy. Some small shred of hope and dignity. It was difficult, some days more than others, but in an ironic twist of fate, Nuggets had always been that promise of hope for him. Sure the piglet had been a gift from Valentino, undoubtedly meant to be able to be used against him. Valentino had, on more than one occasion whenever Angel had pissed him off or he was feeling particularly vindictive, made suckling pig that he had convinced Angel was in fact Nuggets, but thankfully, blessedly, Nuggets had survived his time with Val. And so had Angel. Against all odds, and now they were free.
Freedom was strangely harder than Angel had expected. He was no longer beholden to Valentino’s whims; he could be friends with whoever he wanted, sleep and wakeup whenever he wanted, fuck whoever he wanted, all of it was on his own time, at his own discretion. But it had come with its own set of challenges. Not the least of which was the fact that some demons took the lack of Valentino’s so-called protection to mean that they now had even more free rein to abuse him. He’d been forced to shoot a lot more assholes who thought they had a right to fuck with him, much to Charlie’s displeasure. Ironically, though perhaps unsurprisingly, his tales of demons he had shot had caught the attention of the absolute last sinner that Angel had ever imagined he would catch the attention of. Alastor.
Angel had been sitting at the bar, recounting his latest incident—some asshole who thought it appropriate to grab Angel’s ass to Husk. “So I gave 'im 'til the counta three ta unhand me or I’d shoot his fuckin’ arm off.”
“Lemme guess, he didn’t unhand you,” Husk replied.
“Well—not by choice,” Angel said as he pulled out the sinner’s hand. Alastor’s laugh echoed throughout the room and Angel looked over, surprised to find that the demon was sitting just a few seats down from himself. He patted the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief and Angel couldn’t help but grin. He had made the radio demon laugh, and fuck why did that make him feel powerful? Sure Alastor laughed a lot, but not a real genuine laugh. Usually his laughs were as manufactured as that smile. Surrounded by fake audience laughter, or, perhaps it had been real at one point. Perhaps it was the souls of his many victims, forever trapped somewhere, forced to do the Radio Demon’s bidding forever more. Either way—Angel wasn’t sure he had ever heard a true, genuine laugh from the radio demon before, and he found he liked it. Moreover, he loved being the cause of it.
“Here, I brought ya a treat,” Angel said tossing the arm Alastor’s way. Alastor caught it, his eyes and smile so bright they could have given Charlie a run for her money.
“How very thoughtful of you, my dear,” Alastor said with a hum. Angel wasn’t sure what he had expected when it came to how Alastor devoured other sinners. He had seen him take care of those sharks unhinging a massive jaw and swallowing them whole, and he’d seen him delicately eat venison with a knife and fork, but this was different. Alastor all but unhinged his jaw, holding the harm by one finger and slipped it into his mouth. Angel watched with interest as Alastor’s lips closed around the whole of the arm, then like a magic trick, Alastor pulled the remainder of the arm from his lips, only now it was all bone. Whatever tissue had once been there had vanished leaving only bone behind. Alastor hummed, had he even chewed it? Angel wondered.
Angel’s dick twitched and his pussy throbbed at the sight. It shouldn’t have been erotic but learning that the Radio Demon could apparently swallow any size object was a lot sexier than it had any right to be. Alastor licked his lips, his long, prehensile tongue slithering out to lap away any stray bit of viscera that may have been there. Angel squeezed his thighs together. He was grateful he had opted to wear panties today as he was entirely certain it was the only thing keeping the stool he was sitting on from looking like a puddle. He shivered. Alastor dabbed his lips with his handkerchief and smiled. “That was simply delightful,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” Angel replied, mouth practically agape. He was pretty sure his brain was currently dripping out of his pussy and onto the barstool but fuck that was the hottest thing he had ever seen. He needed to unhand more assholes, he decided. Alastor said something, excusing himself from the bar and Angel found himself watching him go, all but leaning off of the barstool to do so. The barstool wobbled, and Angel had nothing to grab onto when it finally gave way, sending him literally head over heels thanks to Alastor. Husk laughed, a hand on his stomach, doubled over sort of laugh; Angel glowered at the bar cat.
“Ha ha, real fuckin’ funny jackass,” he growled as he got up, righting the stool as he did so. His tailbone hurt, frankly so did his pride but he wasn’t about to let Husk know that.
“S’what you get for gaping at the Radio Demon like a stuck fish,” Husk said with a shrug. Angel wanted to swat the cat with a newspaper. But he wasn’t wrong. Angel had been staring. He could hardly help it, Alastor was handsome. Angel shook his head and did his best to take his mind off of the Radio Demon by going back to drinking. He would not think of how Alastor had eaten that sinners arm. Nor, for that matter, would Angel allow himself to think about how badly he wanted to see him do it again.
Fortunately for Angel, the opportunity to take another asshole’s arm off presented itself later that same day. Men never learned. The demon wrapped his arm around Angel's waist so, Angel gave him an ultimatum. “Take it off or I’ll break it off,” he warned.
“That’s no way to treat a client baby,” the demon purred. Angel shrugged, no one could say he hadn’t warned him. Angel pulled out his Tommy gun and shot his arm off at the shoulder. The demon screamed, falling to the floor, cursing him, and his family for good measure, "...fucking psycho bitch..." but Angel didn’t care. The arm fell from around his waist, but Angel caught it, and stuffed it into the same spot where he hid his Tommy guns.
When he returned to the hotel, Alastor was nowhere to be found. It struck Angel that it might be weird to try and hunt the radio demon down just to give him another arm, so instead he asked Charlie to borrow a sticky note and a pen and placed the arm into the fridge along with a note. For Alastor. -Angel. And if Angel had drawn a little heart after his name, well, that was his business.
And so began his new favorite pastime. Collecting random sinner parts for Alastor.
🩷 ❤️
To say that Alastor had been surprised to find yet another arm waiting for him--this time in the fridge--also from Angel Dust was an understatement. The first time had been a pleasant surprise, but the second time... Alastor didn’t really know what to think. Why was the spider lavishing him with gifts of body parts all of the sudden? Not that he was complaining. Charlie didn’t exactly approve of him hunting, but that didn’t answer the question of what the spider was doing here. Did he want something? He certainly had Alastor’s attention. Was this perhaps at the behest of Charlotte? Some effort to do something nice for someone in the hotel gone awry? That certainly made more sense than anything else, save for the idea that Angel might be trying to curry Alastor’s favor. Perhaps he was hoping that Alastor might be able to offer him something. Many a demon wanted what Alastor could offer, power, protection—but Angel had never struck him as the sort to want power, and the very nature of Angel living in the hotel meant that he was already under the Radio Demon’s protection. Everyone in the hotel was, even that silly snake.
He might have been able to waive the gifts away had it just been the two of them. But they just kept coming. Mostly arms, but there were other limbs too. Legs, spines—Alastor would use those for decoration—and on one memorable occasion, a whole heart. It was this particular gift that had given Alastor the most pause.
“Whoa, legs gave you a heart,” Husk said. “He must be really sweet on you.”
“I beg your pardon?” Alastor asked, sure he had misheard. Surely Husker hadn’t just suggested that Angel Dust was sweet on him. The Radio Demon. No, no, no, there must have been a miscommunication somewhere. People weren’t sweet on him. He had fans, certainly. Adoring audiences true, and those who, again, came to him for power, but not those who saw him as a potential suitor. Surely there was no one mad enough for that.
“How many limbs has he given you?” Husk asked.
“A few dozen at least.”
Husk gave him a look. “An’ now he gave ya a heart.”
“I still don’t see—”
“It’s symbolism jackass!” Husk snapped. Alastor pursed his lips but otherwise said nothing. “Ya know, giving someone your heart. I mean I know you don’t have one but surely even you’ve heard the expression.”
“Of course I have a heart, Husker!” Alastor said holding up the bloody heart on a dish. Husk rolled his eyes.
“Look—I can’t believe I’m saying this to you, of all demons, about him, but don’t fuck with him okay.” Alastor raised an eyebrow at that. Husk merely shrugged. “He’s a good kid. Clearly has a screw loose if he’s sweet on you—but, he’s a good egg. And he deserves not to be dicked around with. So—just let him down easy.”
“Who says I have any intention of doing that?” Alastor asked.
Husk glared, “What did I just fuckin’ say? Look, Al, I know you like to play games with people. It’s what passes for entertainment for you—but just—for once in your miserable afterlife, can you cut him a break?”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, Husker,” he said. Husk sighed.
“I don’t want to have to go over your head to Charlie, but I will.” Alastor smirked, his eyes flashing radio dials, and a green chain appeared between himself and Husk.
“You have a lot of nerve threatening me Husker, let’s not forget I took over your soul, and your contracts when I didn’t have to. Imagine if Valentino had gotten ahold of you instead of me,” he hissed. “I think you got off pretty easy compared to some. Now then—” he released the chain and it vanished back into the ether. Unseen, but still felt. “Stay out of my personal business, and I’ll stay out of yours. Hmm?” He asked.
“Got it,” Husk said through clenched teeth.
“Always a pleasure talking to you,” Alastor said as he turned on his heel, heart still in hand, and made his way up the stairs toward his room. He had absolutely no intention of even approaching Angel Dust about any of it. Nor did he intend to mess with his head. The truth was, Alastor still didn’t know what to think about all of this. Surely there wasn’t a grain of truth to—Alastor heard a sniffle, and his ears swiveled in the direction of the noise coming from down the hall, he was not yet at his own hallway, but he found himself curious all the same. He turned to follow the sound of the noise. It didn’t take long for him to locate the source, and more importantly the who.
“Nugs, what the fuck is wrong wit me?” Angel asked his piglet as he sat in his room. Alastor couldn’t see him from behind his door but he could hear enough that he could almost see what was going on. Angel was sat on the floor, sniffling to himself. He could hear the individual tear drops as they fell. “Why’d I have ta go an get a crush on the one demon in Hell who wouldn’t have anything to do with me?” Alastor hummed. Despite what others thought about him, Alastor was not self absorbed enough to assume that Angel was speaking of him. Whatever Husk thought. It was preposterous, it was impossible, it was— “I mean a heart? Jesus fuck, Angel why not just shout that you like him from the rooftop,” he was talking to himself now, and that was all the confirmation that Alastor needed. He hummed, eyeing the heart on the plate in front of him.
Alastor had a very big problem, and one that he didn’t entirely know what to do with. Still—manners were everything and hearts held a great deal of power, so the Radio Demon unhinged his jaw and tossed the heart into his gaping maw and pulled a slip of paper out from his pocket along with a quill and wrote Angel a thank you note. He would not include any sort of heart along with his own signature, lest the spider get the wrong message. He decided to slip it under Angel’s door, then disappeared into the shadows and back up to his radio tower. He had much to consider.
The demon’s heart had been delicious there was no denying that. All of his gifts had been delicious, but that still didn’t answer the question of why?
Why did Angel have a crush on him?
More importantly, why did he care?
He could ignore it. Alastor knew that. He could just completely ignore the information that he had learned. It didn’t need to become any big thing. Husker’s words echoed in his ear, not to fuck with him. He didn’t intend to tease Angel about it, nor did he intend to play with his heart. Despite what Husker so clearly thought of him, playing with others romantic feelings was not ever something that Alastor believed in. He could play with other emotions, he could even play with lust, but he drew the line at love. Even he wasn’t that unsavory.
Alastor hummed, contemplating the issue at hand. He could tell Angel not to bring him any more gifts, thoughtful though they were he didn’t want Angel to get the wrong idea that he might have feelings for the spider back. That was preposterous after all. The Radio Demon, with feelings? And anyway even if he did ever have any sort of attachment like that it wasn’t as if he could ever act on it. Alastor could not afford the weakness that such a thing would bring him. He couldn’t afford to allow his enemies any ammunition with which to use to destroy him. It was bad enough he had Niffty, but she was capable of handling herself.
Angel is capable of handling himself, Alastor thought, traitorously. After all— the very reason Alastor had any of these gifts at all was because Angel had removed them from their hosts after they had refused to leave him alone. Alastor couldn’t help but smile as he thought about it. Perhaps the spider had more strength than Alastor gave him credit for. He had, in the end, been the one to deal the killing blow to Valentino. He had sunk his fangs into the moth and finally, filled him full of his poison. Alastor only wished he could have been there to see it. It was about time.
Still—none of that meant anything for Alastor. Angel was admittedly entertaining, and he was very good at giving Alastor gifts that he would enjoy, and begrudgingly Alastor could admit that Angel Dust was pretty too.
Oh.
Oh no.
Was it possible?
Did Alastor have some sort of feelings for Angel Dust?
When was the last time he’d had feelings for anyone? He hadn’t even known he was capable of having feelings any more—not like that anyway, but—if he allowed himself to consider it—it didn’t sound all that bad. He would have to seek out the assistance of his oldest and dearest friend. Rosie.