Chapter Text
The hour was late.
Charlie and Vaggie's quarters were filled with counterfeit sleep. On Charlie’s bedside table, sitting next to her new water bottle and shiny new textbooks with waxy paper that squeaked, an Asmodean crystal glowed ominously.
Tomorrow, Charlie would be starting college, studying psychology and had her eyes set on a masters in counselling and psychotherapy if all went well.
Tomorrow, Vaggie would be left alone to run the Hotel.
Vaggie was lying with her back to Charlie, stiff as an iron rod, her wings a granite tomb around her, carefully counting each breath in a form that was almost military. No, it was military, Vaggie thought bitterly. She made a bad case study for Charlie's redemption project. For Vaggie, sleepless nights were far from unusual, and in fact it was rare for her to drift off without watching the hellish sun turn the sky a washed-out pink behind a milky film of gently swaying net curtains, longing for the starched-stiff canvas of rusted camping cots that were always musky with old sweat. Not because she had any particular fondness for her time in the exorcist army, but because she had been created from loose threads pulled from sun-bleached canvas tents and the hard packed earth of the training fields. She was not created to be wrapped in silks, her only earthly comfort should have been her own moth-soft wings.
Anything more was a sin.
Yes, for Vaggie these long, sleepless nights where the shadows in Charlie's penthouse suite seemed to stretch creak across her peripheral vision, where old ghosts rested uneasily, were far from unusual for vaggie.
But not for Charlie.
Vaggie didn't know what time it was. While there was a grandfather clock in their room, Charlie had stopped it from chiming and its face was too dark to read even if Vaggie dared to stir from her corpse-like stillness, but if she had to guess it was maybe one or two in the morning. Maybe three, it was hard to tell. Outside the drizzle that had threatened all day was finally coming to something, thick black rain clouds chasing away the last of the soft crimson light, leaving their shared bedroom a dim, dusty black. A damp breeze chased the net curtains and chills up Vaggie's neck and arms, tiny silver hairs leaping to attention across her skin. She had thought that Charlie had maybe fallen into a fitful dose for a while, but she was almost certain she was awake again, tossing and turning uneasily, the quilt tugging and snagging against Vaggie’s feathers. The damp creeping into the room did nothing to subside the nervous heat radiating off of her partner like a red hot poker.
The mattress dipped slightly as Charlie sat up, the sheets rustling like old, dry paper as she leaned over her shoulder. Vaggie shut her eyes tight.
“Vaggie?” she whispered softly.
“You awake babe?” Vaggie didn’t answer. There were too many feelings sliding around in her gut like snakes, none of them good.
Tomorrow Charlie would be gone before any of them even woke up.
The silence lay heavy as lead between them, only broken by the mechanical heartbeat of the ancient grandfather clock. Charlie sighed deeply, leaned over and pressed a kiss to her jaw, her hand carelessly bumping against the side of her wing. Her body jerked violently at the touch. The muscles in her wings twinged as she wrapped them tighter around herself.
Like a shroud.
Vaggie held her breath, praying that Charlie didn’t notice. The mattress dipped slightly again as she shuffled back to her own side of the bed.
“I’m going to miss you, you know,” Charlie whispered, more to herself than Vaggie’s supposedly sleeping form.
“And I know I’ll see you when I get home but still…” she trailed off. Vaggie wished that she could roll over and wrap her arms tight around her girlfriend and croon sweet nothings in her ear about how she was going to love college and how great an opportunity it was going to be for her, for both of them, and how she was fine taking care of things at home. She wanted to whisper away all her worries. All she had to do was roll over. Not even, she could whisper it from where she lay. ‘Everything will be fine.’ Not hard at all, only four words. But it felt like she had swallowed a mouthful of cotton wool and razor blades. The silence was laying thick over them again, and Vaggie imagined she could taste it, thick and metallic like blood from a split lip.
Earlier that evening, Angel and Alastor had cooked together, as a surprise for Charlie before her first day at college. Vaggie wasn’t sure who put that idea in their heads and more importantly why no one had put a stop to it. While the pair got on like a house on fire (and really, wasn’t that terrifying), their cooking styles were too different for them to ever cook together when both ruled the kitchen with an iron fist and both absolutely refused to compromise. Angel’s bastardised Italian dishes, Husk had explained to her over a bottle of champagne that Vaggie had tried when she thought no one else was looking, had been shaped by Depression-era New-York cooking, greasy, cheap diner food and meats packed full of breadcrumbs, peanut butter, stale crackers and whatever other odds and ends decaying at the back of the pantry. On the other hand, Alastor’s cooking involved a lot of rice dishes packed full of fresh veg, seafood, and swimming with Cajun spices. He relished very traditional Creole cuisine, Husk had said, aside from his fondness of shoving other sinners into the meat. He was quite drunk at this point and was watching Angel and Alastor brandish kitchenware at each other’s throats with open amusement.
Charlie had been absolutely buzzing with excitement when the two sinners had served dinner together, squealing as she flung her arms around their shoulders.
“See! I told you that if you could work together it would be a -mazing!” Alastor gestured vaguely.
“The spider’s cooking is passable, I suppose.” Angel grinned, completely ignoring Alastor.
“You’re gonna want to try this, toots!”
“What did yee make, anyways?” Charlie asked as she started passing out plates. Alastor set a steaming dish down on the table.
“Shrimp creole and fresh ravioli,” he said.
“Angel Dust wanted to use dried ravioli.” A sniff of disdain. Angel rolled his eyes as he started piling his plate high with food.
“Husk through a whole bottle of wine into the sauce,” he said with a wink.
“I mean the good wine, and not all of it cooked off. Tonight you won’t know lasagne from spaghetti!” The food was delicious, or at least Vaggie assumed it was, a thick greasy sauce full of garlic, onions, tomatoes and bell peppers, shrimp grown swollen and fat on a fine wine marinade, on a bed of ravioli that Charlie declared was the best she had ever eaten in her life. Vaggie couldn’t eat. The pasta felt wet and lumpy in her mouth, and it felt hard to swallow. She spent the meal pushing lumps of pasta around on her plate to make it look like she had eaten more than she actually had, her stomach twisting itself into knots as if she had been eating live snakes.
Or eels.
At some point Husk had brought out a dusty bottle of the good champagne he kept hidden away in his bar.
“A toast,” he said, a little tipsily, generously filling a champagne flute and handing it to Charlie.
“To Miss Charlie. You’re more human than any of us ever were.” Charlie accepted the glass with a giggle, her whole face glowing with happiness. The bottle did one round of the table, then another. Charlie filled her glass a second time, and then reached over to fill up Vaggie’s for her.
“No thanks,” Vaggie said quickly.
“I don’t drink, it’s sin-” she cut herself off quickly.
”It’s okay babe I don’t drink.”
“Of course, hun,” Charlie said, giving her a quick peck on the cheek that made Vaggie’s heart flutter. If Charlie had noticed her slip, she didn’t say anything. Alastor in particular got redder and redder as the night went on, his smile growing more and more deranged. As they started to clear the table, Vaggie was seriously considering throwing herself on her own spear because who in their right mind wanted to deal with the goddamn Radio Demon when he’s drunk. Angel Dust apparently, who had taken to goading the sinner about being a lightweight who couldn’t even outlive prohibition. After dinner, as Vaggie and Husk started clearing the table, Alastor fiddled drunkenly with the radio until it started playing an old jazzy number that had Charlie clumsily leading her father around the kitchen in some sort of waltz.
The kitchen had slowly and steadily emptied after that. Charlie helped Vaggie with the dishes. Vaggie washed, Charlie dried. The Hotel seemed very quiet all of a sudden, a stark reminder that they were two of seven rattling around a giant hotel that seemed to stretch on endlessly. Vaggie plunged her hands deep into the scorching hot water, piles of white suds creeping up her stone grey arms.
“You okay Vaggie?” Charlie asked as she dumped a handful of forks in the cutlery drawer with a clatter that could have roused the dead.
“Huh?”
“You’ve been really quiet today.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll miss you tomorrow.” She passed a soapy dinner plate to her. Hot water dripped on her feet, soaking her socks.
“I’m going to miss you too,” Charlie said, sighing. She was quiet for a moment, and Vaggie didn't quite know what to say. She had always found Charlie easy to read. The girl wore her heart on her sleeve, but it seemed that two years ensnared in each other wasn't enough for her to catalog all of her emotions. Charlie stared at the puddles of water dripping from the crockery they passed between each other with an expression that Vaggie couldn't place. Indecision? Longing, maybe. It made Vaggie feel wrong footed. Her hands sunk into the water again, cutlery clattering against the stainless steel basin as she groped around the bottom.
“I really wish you could come with me,” Charlie said softly, the damp dishtowel squeaking slightly as she distractedly wiped down the plate.
“Having you around makes me feel so much better. I feel like I could do anything when you're by my side.” A hot blush rushed to Vaggie's cheeks.
“You won't need me there, hun,” she said, a little shyly. She made careful eye contact with the forks and spoons she was scrubbing with more force than what was strictly necessary.
“You're going to do great.” She stole a glance at Charlie as she passed over the spoons. Suds splashed against the flagstones.
“So people keep telling me,” Charlie said, worrying her bottom lip.
“I wish I didn't need you to stay here and keep things running. Uncle Oz would have given you a crystal if you wanted, you know.”
“Really?”
“Of course,” Charlie said, a little disbelieving, as she dumped a handful of spoons and forks into the cutlery drawer. She crossed back over to the sink and grabbed the big pasta pot.
“You’re my girlfriend, why wouldn't he? Besides, you never got a chance to be human either.” Charlie's tone had become oddly melancholy, and that unplaceable expression had crept across her face again.
“No, I didn't,” Vaggie said, her voice croaking. Her hands did not shake. But the butter knives seemed to jump out of her grip as she passed them over to Charlie. The conversation was rapidly heading into dangerous waters. Very dangerous waters. They hadn't really talked about it, no more than those passing words at the Hotel gate when Charlie had come home with an army. Maybe for Charlie, there simply was nothing to talk about. Just water under the bridge, no hard feelings. But for Vaggie there were hard feelings. All kinds of them. Hard feelings that were getting harder and harder to forget when her wings lay heavy over her like a pair of tombstones.
There was a long silence in the kitchen. Vaggie pulled the stopper out from the sink, and the old piping gurgled greedily as it gulped up dirty water. The old yew tree that grew just outside the kitchen window groaned uneasily as a gust of wind chased skittering leaves across the patio.
“Do you really think this is a good idea?” Charlie asked suddenly, dragging Vaggie from her thoughts. She was holding an empty mug, peering into its depths, as if she was reading her future.
“College?”
“That too. But, the Hotel,” Charlie said. She looked up at her, her eyes shining with worry.
“Do you really and truly believe in redemption?” Vaggie crossed over to Charlie, her feet padding on the damp stones. She cupped her cheeks gently.
“Honey, it works. If Emily’s letters are anything to go by, Heaven's council is a mess right now. You've done everything right.” She planted a kiss on Charlie’s forehead.
“I’m going to be right here beside you, no matter what.” Another kiss. The other girl brightened considerably.
“Thanks babe, I needed that,” she said sincerely. She leaned down and kissed Vaggie's cheek gently, giggling a little as Vaggie blushed.
“And I'm going to be here for you too.” Charlie poked her nose gently as if to emphasize her point.
“If you need anything at all tomorrow, just text me. Or call me, okay babe?”
“Of course,” Vaggie said.
“I mean it, no one would notice me gone. And Al said he’d join in on whatever you decide to run tomorrow so it wouldn’t just be you and Angel and my dad if he finally decides to stop the self-isolation.”
“Yay. I'll have tall, dark and antlered, his newest arch-nemesis, and Hell’s biggest trouble maker for company.” Charlie laughed, a bright, clear sound that lit up her whole face and set Vaggie’s heart racing in the best way possible.
“Please don’t stab them, it would make for bad reviews.”
”If I lock them in the kitchen together then I won’t have to.” This only made Charlie laugh more. Vaggie rolled her eyes fondly.
“It wasn’t that funny.” Charlie only shook her head, and kissed her, properly this time. Her lips were soft and sweet and her breath tasted like champagne. Vaggie thought she was going to float away and bounce across the ceiling like a stone grey balloon.
“I love you,” she whispered as Charlie pulled away, her voice slightly husky. Charlie was gazing at her as if she was holy.
“I love you too.” Vaggie kissed her, leaning back against the sink and pulling Charlie with her, cupping them both in her wings, running her hand through her soft golden hair. Vaggie liked to think it was spun from the sun itself. She was more of an angel than Vaggie ever was.
They stayed like that for a while, leaning heavily against the sink, just kissing and giggling like teenagers on a sleepover, their bodies fitting together like jigsaw pieces. Like they were made for each other. The pit of cold, dark eels thrashing in her gut seemed quieter when she was pressed against Charlie’s warm body. It was nice. Vaggie couldn’t remember the last time they had done nothing but exist together.
The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed, deep, musical notes that echoed ominously around the gleaming stainless steel kitchen. Not twelve, but silver horses and gleaming carriages were already turning back to dust and bone. Vaggie was suddenly struck by that feeling of emptiness again, but she thought the Hotel was a lot less empty than it ought to be.
“C’mon it's getting late, let's get to bed,” she said, more than a little uneasily.
“Yeah, a goose just walked across my grave.” vaggie snorted.
“You don’t have a grave.” They went, and as Vaggie was flicking off the kitchen lights, Charlie's words echoed through her head.
‘Do you really and truly believe in redemption? ’
She didn't know. She really and truly didn't know. Because there were hard feelings, all kinds of them.