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At six-thirty in the morning, Alastor left his room and started making his way down to the hotel lobby to start his day. He could have phased through the building as a shadow and spared himself the trip, but he'd had a real urge to move his legs lately.
Going by foot also allowed him to cross paths with Niffty, hard at work already, wiping down baseboards and stabbing stray beetles. Even for an early riser like Alastor, Niffty always seemed to wake up earlier, both physically and mentally. Alastor needed to go through his morning routines and rituals to be properly awake, so he gave Niffty a quick and simple greeting—cursory, but still warmly well-mannered.
Niffty looked up at him to return it, then did a double take. "Whoa," she said. "You look weird today."
"...well," Alastor said, mildly taken aback by her bluntness, "that's not very polite, is it?"
Niffty rose to her feet and peered at him with her one eye. Alastor raised his eyebrows and gave her an extra charming smile while he waited. She scrutinized his appearance for a moment longer, then said, "Aha!" and before Alastor knew it, she was climbing him. He still couldn't figure out how she did that—and he should've by now, because she'd done it with surprising frequency in all the years they'd known each other. But, as usual, by the time he processed what she was doing, she'd already summited his shoulder.
She held onto his head for balance as she took hold of one of his ears. It flicked reflexively out of her grasp, and Niffty grabbed it again, undeterred, and stood it up straight. Only then did Alastor become aware of the fact that both of his ears had been pinned back. He tried to relax, and he raised the other ear before Niffty could touch it. She hopped off of him, indulging in a dainty yet dizzying twirl on her way back to the floor. Alastor watched her lean back to regard him with a squint, holding her hands out like she was putting a picture frame around his face. Satisfied, she gave him an A-okay sign.
"It's not a real smile if the ears aren't up!" she said, as if it were an old, oft-quoted maxim the two of them shared.
"Yes," Alastor said with a little laugh. "And sometimes not even then."
Niffty lowered her hands and gave him a funny look. Alastor thanked her for the correction, and for being a such sharp lookout and keeping him on his toes. And then, with a gentle reminder about boundaries and personal space—which he never quite meant when it came to her, but still, it was good to reinforce the habit—Alastor continued on his way to start his work, and Niffty resumed her own.
For the rest of the day, Alastor glanced at himself whenever he passed a reflective surface. He was disgruntled to see that his ears were angled back about half the time. Thank goodness for Niffty, he thought as he straightened up again, and her helpful, semi-tactless reminders.
It was Alastor's third day back at the hotel. Three days since he'd helped nullify a WMD, somehow. (He liked to go uncredited for that, as he did for most collaborative projects—a decision he almost always regretted eventually.) Three days since his stay at Vee Tower ended.
Three days of walking around, unknowingly displaying little signs of...something. Discomfort, Alastor supposed it was. The ears were a small feature, but so visible. He almost wished that they'd been cursed with the same magical fixative as his smile, just so they'd stay up on their own and he wouldn't have to bother keeping track of them.
He never used to need to, though. Odd.
Aside from this little development, a lot of what Alastor had dreaded upon his return to the hotel hadn't come to pass. He'd been bracing himself for an offer from Charlie to start attending those insipid little group sessions, but none had been forthcoming. Maybe she was worried that it would seem less like an offer than an olive branch. She had, after all, left him in the lurch with the Vees. (Not that Alastor—whose plan had relied on a total lack of interference or any ill-conceived, misguided rescue attempts—saw it that way. Though Charlie, with her excessive self-flagellating tendencies, surely did.) Perhaps what was why she hadn't extended an invitation. Perhaps she was afraid of what Alastor might end up saying.
Not that he wanted to attend, anyway. Though, admittedly, it would've been fun to see how long it took to get himself kicked out.
But no—he had better ways to occupy his time. He'd decided to put his radio program on hiatus. It might've been a good idea, tactically, for Alastor to jump back into the fray, to control the public perception, and to start repairing some of the damage to his reputation. But getting behind the scenes of the Vees' operation had been an enlightening experience. Alastor had always put out the types of shows he wanted to do, and the types of entertainment he valued. He didn't concern himself much with his audience's opinions and preferences.
The Vees concerned themselves with little else. Everything they produced revolved around viewer retention, viewer engagement, and viewer-specific advertisements. And yet, for all the money and time and attention they spent on the whims of their audience, the audience, Alastor realized, simply did not care. They had nearly no tastes or preferences of their own. They sank their teeth into whatever latest scandal was presented to them, and then, when a new one came along, they realized that what they were holding in their mouths was a chew toy, not sustenance at all. But over there—there was the real meat of the story. And off they went, following the scent.
Alastor had been chewed up and spat back out, and now that the Vees' internal shakeup and instability was the hottest topic on the airwaves, he was starting to think that the best course of action would be to let them take the heat, let everything else fade into background noise, and then for him to start broadcasting again whenever he damn well felt like it.
It went entirely against his control freak nature. But...well. Loath as Alastor was to admit it, he was tired.
So, instead, he focused on his managerial duties around the hotel. He left the guest interactions to Vaggi, claiming that the "host" role was better suited to her and Lucifer. "A host of angels, after all!" he'd explained, beaming. She had not appreciated the wordplay. Oh, she'd understood it all right. She just didn't appreciate it. She never did.
Alastor had nothing against Vaggi, all things considered. But she was the most abysmal improv partner he'd ever seen.
Still, she was happy enough to take the guest-oriented responsibilities off his plate, so whatever virtues she lacked as an improv partner, she more than made up for as a coworker.
So Alastor focused on property upkeep, as he was supposed to have been doing from the start. He managed the inventory, performed building inspections, and lent Niffty a hand with fluffing the throw pillows after Angel Dust and Cherri went around karate-chopping the tops of them. At first, Alastor thought they were doing it to relieve excess energy, or even some kind of anger. Then he caught them in the act and realized they were doing it with methodical purpose. They sincerely believed that putting a giant crease in a decorative pillow looked aesthetically pleasing. From there, it became Alastor's and Niffty's mission to re-plump all the pillows, so they didn't look like guests had been leaning their elbows on them for three hours straight.
Alastor was confronted about it in the employee lounge later that day. He came in for his afternoon break and was almost immediately accosted by Angel Dust and Cherri, who demanded to know why he—and they knew it had to have been him—had undone all their work on the throw pillows. Alastor's voice oozed saccharine sweet patience that made Angel roll his eyes and Cherri look like she wanted to deck him in the face, as he explained why properly plumped pillows looked better and more uniform than pillows that had been literally attacked. "When you make your beds in the morning," he said, "do you punch the pillow at the end, so it looks like someone's been laying their head on it? Would that make it look more put-together and inviting? Or would it, perhaps, make it look slovenly and off-putting?"
Angel laughed at the idea of making his bed every day. "Man, what world are you livin' in?"
"F'real," Cherri said. "Besides, who's looking at an unmade bed and thinking it's not inviting?" She elbowed Angel, who snickered, and Alastor steeled his nerves and reminded himself that he was dealing with puerile, overgrown children who simply could not help their own stupidity. It wasn't their fault. Their brains clearly hadn't finished developing in their human lives, and now, in Hell, they never would. The best thing Alastor could do was stay vigilant, make the corrections as needed, and go on with his day.
Alastor left the room, and as he walked down the hallway, he knew, without needing to check a mirror, that his ears were angling back again.
At the end of the day, Alastor went downstairs for the one, single drink he allowed himself to have outside the privacy of his own room. It was his first visit to the hotel bar since he'd returned. He and Husk had interacted in passing, but they hadn't gotten any one-on-one time until now. Alastor lurked for nearly an hour among the shadows, waiting and watching until the last guest left the bar.
And then Alastor waited a little longer, just to give Husk false hope that he was done working for the night, before he stepped out of the darkness.
Once Husk saw Alastor approaching, he rolled his eyes, though not in an entirely unfriendly way. Alastor grinned. "Hellooo, Husker," he sang, leaning against a barstool. It felt good to be in his company again. Alastor didn't say as much, but he didn't have to. Husk knew. Husk knew a lot without Alastor having to say it, Alastor was sure. It was one of the reasons he liked Husk, and also one of the reasons he would never feel completely at ease around him. The man was annoyingly perceptive, but without the obvious "scheming confidante" personality to keep Alastor's guard up. Dangerous combination.
"So good to see you here," Alastor said. "I heard you took some time off after I left. A little unapproved sabbatical?"
"It didn't take," Husk said gruffly.
"I can see that. The cat came back, eh?"
"The very same day," Husk said, still gruff, but agreeable enough to play along. Alastor chortled.
"Just couldn't stay away, away, away, away," he recited, while some backing music drifted softly from his microphone. Husk almost laughed at that, which Alastor found promising. "Well, regardless. I had no idea my little gambit would inspire a walk-out!"
He was playing it up, naturally. Husk was the only other person who'd left the hotel of his own volition, and true to his word, he had come back almost immediately. Still, he had quit, and apparently he'd cited Alastor's absence as a major factor in his decision. Alastor was still trying to figure out how he felt about that. Annoyed? Flattered, somehow? There was really nothing to feel about it. Business was business. Deals were deals. And here they both were again, anyway.
"Yeah," Husk said, "well. Good to have you back, boss."
"Is it?" Alastor asked, playfully challenging. Husk hesitated.
"Well...better than not having you back, I guess. Better'n you being out there where none of us can keep tabs on you."
Alastor practically preened. He was always pleased to hear how unsettling and untrustworthy he was at his core, glad that that part of his reputation at least remained intact. He was, however, still slightly annoyed by Husk's use of the term "boss." Alastor pretended to like it when Husk called him that. But he remembered the days before their deal, and even some years into it, when Husk had still called him Al. He'd stopped doing that decades ago, once it became clear that their deal existed in practice as well as on paper, and that Alastor was willing to exert his authority to call in favors. And then favors became requests, and requests became demands, and demands became orders.
From then on, for Husk's own sense of well-being, Alastor wasn't "Al" anymore. He wasn't the Al who Husk could join for a piano and saxophone duet, who Husk could charm with his sonorous singing voice and even flirt with on occasion, because they both had a tendency to get that way when they'd drunk enough, and because they both knew there was never any risk of it actually going anywhere. Because Husk was a smooth operator when he was acting flirty in a general sort of way, but he was endearingly easy to fluster with direct flirtation, and Alastor was as much of a menace with highly personalized and incisive compliments as he was with insults of the same caliber. And because Alastor loved almost nothing more than to prove that he had power and sway over someone in any capacity. And because Alastor had always had an unconventional, but genuine, fondness for Husk.
But those days had come and gone, and Alastor was pretty sure that even if he were to end their deal here and now—no catch, no loopholes—Husk would stop calling him "boss," but he'd never go back to calling him "Al" again. And that bothered Alastor a little more than he cared to acknowledge, let alone admit.
Husk didn't seem bothered by any kinds of thoughts like this. He was setting a glass on the counter between them. "So. The usual, I assume?"
Alastor watched silently as Husk assembled ingredients and started making his customary Sazerac. When he was done, he slid it across the counter to Alastor, who picked it up and held it for a moment. He moved the glass around just enough to make the ice cubes clink. The lemon peel lay draped over the rim like a bright yellow ribbon.
There was something strange about Alastor's smile, Husk thought—stranger than usual—but for the life of him, he couldn't place it. And anyway, he'd decided a long time ago that it wasn't his job to pick apart all of Alastor's little moods and shifts in expression. It was only once or twice a decade that neglecting to do this had consequences, and even then, Alastor had never followed through on a threat. He easily could, at any time, and at his own discretion. But Husk couldn't bring himself to care enough to make self-preservation his default mode. It was exhausting. He had enough years and interactions with Alastor in the bank to be reasonably sure at this point that the guy was never gonna kill him.
And if there ever came a day when Husk was proved wrong about that...well, he'd deal with it then. It wasn't anything to stress-molt over in the meantime.
Alastor still hadn't had any of his drink. He was an annoyingly capricious kind of guy, but still, Husk thought, this was weird. Eventually, Alastor set the glass down and slid it back over. Husk looked at the drink, trying to figure out how he'd messed it up. "What? Did I forget something?"
"No. I'd prefer a mint julep, if you don't mind."
"...fine," Husk said, holding back a sigh. "Just go and change your mind for no reason at all. No skin off my back."
"Change my mind?" Alastor repeated. "I believe it was you who assumed the order. And then went ahead and made it without my approval. This was your mistake, my good man." Alastor, despite rejecting the drink, eyed it almost remorsefully. "Waste of good Cognac."
Husk rolled his eyes but did as he was told, taking the Sazerac away and setting it on a shelf behind the counter. He made Alastor's new drink and handed it over. Alastor drained the glass like a fiend, wincing pleasantly as the ice hit his teeth and gums. Then he set the glass down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He stood upright again, thanked Husk with overly fake politeness, and without another word, he left to go back to his room.
Husk watched Alastor walk to the lobby staircase. He engaged in a little feint, setting his foot on the first step as if he were about to walk all the way up, then dissolving into a silhouette that sank to the floor. As a shadow, he whisked himself up the stairs, rippling as he passed over each individual step and out of sight. And Husk was left with nothing to do but sigh, mutter, "Well, that was fuckin' weird" to himself, and get to work cleaning the glassware and enjoying the leftover Sazerac.
The next morning, Alastor and Niffty were in the kitchen, cooking breakfast for themselves and whoever else was interested. Vaggi preferred to eat light, opting for a small fruit bowl and some cheese, but she complimented them on how good it smelled. Angel and Cherri were there, too, barely responsive and still in their pajamas. (At least, Alastor was reasonably sure they were wearing pajamas. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between their sleepwear and the ragamuffin outfits they dressed themselves in before leaving their rooms.) Alastor greeted them brightly and asked if he could tantalize them with some scrambled eggs. Cherri sipped her coffee and said nothing. Angel at least offered a grunt as he grabbed one of the eggs, cracked it into a cup of some pre-packaged, microwavable abomination, and started stirring. Alastor almost wanted to pour on the early-morning geniality even more, just to see how long it would take to provoke them. He decided it wouldn't be worth the effort, and he turned his attention back to cooking.
When Alastor made eggs, he preferred to scramble them with an additional protein, a vegetable medley, and plenty of seasoning. Niffty's recipe was, by comparison, much plainer, but she spread the egg mixture thin on the cooking surface and rolled it up into an omelette, instead of folding it the way Alastor had been taught. He'd asked her before what this was called, then repeated the answer—tamagoyaki—until she gave him a thumbs up.
He was trying to make some headway with the technique. He was a skilled cook with sure hands and a fine attention to detail, but no matter how carefully and diligently he rolled the egg, he could never get it quite right. The alignment was always off, or there were too many air pockets. Niffty responded to his attempts with an encouraging, "Wow!" or "All right, Alastor!" which he had trouble not hearing as patronizing. Her technique looked much more slapdash than his, but she turned out perfect, consistent results every time. He scrambled the next round of eggs in the measuring cup, planning to let her pour and cook so he could focus all his attention on the rolling technique. He was determined to get it right, at least once.
He was just handing the measuring cup over when his ears attuned to a series of small, intermittent pops. Vaggi paused, then scrunched her face up and looked at the others. "Does anyone else—?"
The room lit up with a strobe effect, and the small pops turned into sharp snaps, like a whipcrack. "Oh, shit!" Cherri said, whirling around to face the microwave, but it was Vaggi who leapt across the kitchen with one strong wingbeat to turn the machine off. She waited a few seconds, exhaling slowly, while everyone else in the room did the same. When it was safe to open the door, she revealed what the rest of them had already deduced.
"Okay," she began, laying a straightforward, instructional tone over her lingering panic, but making no attempt to actually hide it. "So, I guess we could all use the reminder: it's standard protocol to take metal utensils out of our food before putting it in the microwave." She took Angel's meal out, handing him the cup and using a dish towel to remove the overheated spoon. He accepted it abashedly. Cherri gave his arm an admonishing little whack with the back of her hand, which he was much less accepting of.
"Oi," she said, unusually snappish with him. "You trying to blow the place up?"
"Oh, you gotta be fuckin' kidding me," Angel said. "You, of all people?"
"Guys," Vaggi said. "Seriously. Be careful. There are so many ways you could start an electrical fire in here. Or a grease fire. Or just a regular fire." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "I don't know. You guys and fire..." She lowered her hand again. "Just please be careful."
Angel and Cherri grumbled, but there was a fleeting apology somewhere in it. As Vaggi left the room, she said, "You too, Al. Make sure that all gets cleaned up."
Alastor was so surprised and confused that he didn't even snark at Vaggi for trying to boss him around. He glanced at Niffty, as if looking to her for an explanation. She was on her hands and knees at the edge of the counter, peering down at the glass measuring cup which had, apparently, been dropped during the chaos and lay shattered at Alastor's feet.
Annoyance flared up in Alastor, and then immediately ebbed away. The poor dear. She could be so excitable and scatterbrained even in the calmest circumstances. And she was so small, she'd had to hold the measuring cup with two hands. Why had he given it to Niffty in the first place, he wondered?
And then he was aware of Angel speaking to him, calling him butterfingers, maybe to divert some attention and embarrassment from his own mistake. And Alastor remembered that he hadn't given Niffty the measuring cup after all. He'd still been holding it when the microwave started sparking. When that rectangular and vaguely reflective door started to flash with electric blue.
Alastor glanced at Niffty again, who was already looking at him. She gave him a couple of oddly inscrutable, cyclopic blinks. Alastor looked down. There was broken glass everywhere, and his shoes were splattered with scrambled but uncooked egg.
With a sigh, and after ensuring that Niffty wasn't harmed, Alastor began to clean up the mess. He didn't ask for help, but when Niffty hopped down from the counter with a roll of paper towels, he silently accepted it.
After a busy morning of overseeing supply deliveries, investigating guest reports of HVAC issues, and avoiding interactions with the guests themselves, Alastor decided to give himself the afternoon off. He and Husk ended up in the employee lounge together, sitting on one of the long sofas. Each of them had come in with a copy of that day's newspaper, and they'd started an unspoken competition to see who could complete the crossword puzzle first.
Ten minutes later, Niffty blitzed through the room on a cleaning spree. She wielded a mop that was about twice her height but did nothing to slow her down. As she approached the couch, she called out, "Feet!" and both men obeyed without looking away from their papers. Alastor pulled his legs up in front of him—knees bent, toes pointed, a picture of poise. Husk raised his feet and thumped them down softly on the coffee table, until Alastor cleared his throat with a hum of disapproval, because Niffty had clearly dusted and polished the surfaces earlier. Husk grumbled, but he lifted his feet again and held them in front of him like Alastor, though nowhere near as elegant or as flexible. He had to put his paper down so he could hold the backs of his thighs to keep his legs up.
Niffty bustled past them, swiping the mop head under their hovering feet. They watched her cover the rest of the floor quickly and efficiently, though with an overly generous amount of water and cleaning product. Husk sneezed a few times, agitated by the chemical smell. When Niffty started to mop her way out of the room and was just about to reach the door, Husk glanced at Alastor.
"Niffty, dear?" Alastor called after her. "How long until the floor dries?"
"Twenty minutes!" she replied as she darted out into the hallway. Alastor and Husk heard the plunk of the mop returning to the bucket, and then the muffled roll of wheels over hallway carpet as Niffty moved along to her next cleaning target.
Husk sneezed two more times, back-to-back, and shook his head vigorously. "So. We really gonna sit like this for the next twenty minutes?"
Alastor said nothing, but with a sigh, he handed Husk a throw pillow—one that had been properly plumped, of course, the moment Alastor had entered the room—and Husk put the pillow on the coffee table so he could rest his feet on it. There weren't any other throw pillows in arm's reach, so Alastor slid a coaster over, put his heel on it, and crossed his legs at the ankles.
They returned to their newspapers. After a few minutes, Husk said, "How's the crossword comin' along?"
Alastor had been waiting for him to ask. "Oh," he said breezily, "I finished it already."
"Huh," Husk said, "great. Let me know when you finish the Sudoku, too."
Alastor folded his paper up, tossed it aside, and spent the next twenty minutes in a sulk while the floor finished drying and Husk finished snickering.
When she wasn't cleaning, Niffty had been extra inclined to spend time with Alastor lately. She'd always been an affectionate friend. So had Alastor. But Niffty was on another level, sometimes literally, prone to climbing him like a cat. In the early days, he'd found it so odd, and delightfully endearing in its oddness. Then it had started to annoy him a bit—never enough to confront her about it, but just enough for him to patiently pluck her off his shoulder and set her back on the ground.
And sometime later, maybe after fifteen or twenty minutes had passed, the two of them would be chatting, and it would suddenly occur to Alastor that not only was Niffty on his shoulder again, but also that he had absolutely no idea when she'd gotten back up there. It always happened so naturally. She never acted smug or even mischievous, like she was waiting to see how long it would take him to notice. Maybe that was part of why he was so tolerant of it.
And Alastor just plain liked Niffty's company. He always had. He adored her, even if the little dear had kind of derailed his plans. Not that his plans had been on a steady track to begin with. It had sure seemed that way to Alastor when he'd been sitting on that park bench at the height of his frustration, when any solution at all would have felt like a saving grace, when any epiphany could be trusted more than his present circumstances. Less so when he was flung across the street into a brick wall hard enough to leave a crater.
Still. All part of the plan, in the end.
His stitches being torn out...had not specifically been part of the plan, though Alastor figured it was implicit. He'd known what he was signing up for. He could still feel the searing, prickly pain, burning him not like fire but like chemicals. Like some kind of plant toxin, almost—burning him like wind, like parts of him exposed to the open air that never should have been. Sinew, blood vessels, nerves. Skin.
Alastor remembered the shriek of feedback, the sweat beading on his forehead and sliding down his temple from the stress of it all, and it had all been part of the plan. And then the declaration of we're here, Alastor, which had shocked him out of excruciating pain. The mere sight of Niffty (and Husk, too, Alastor admitted) had given him a second wind to continue a fight that he'd fully intended to lose. It was something in the way she'd matter-of-factly announced their arrival, as if it were tacitly understood among the three of them that of course they'd turn up to help when Alastor was on the back foot.
That one instant, when everyone but Niffty had been too surprised to react—when she'd launched herself and Husk into the fray on Alastor's behalf without any instruction or incentive beyond her love of knife fights and her love, Alastor supposed, of him...it had almost, just for a moment, made Alastor reconsider his decision to leave the hotel in the first place.
But what was done was done. And it had all turned out...well, the way that it had. And that was fine. He was back now.
Today, the two of them were sitting on the sofa together in the employee lounge. Alastor had been sitting on the sofa more often in general, preferring its spaciousness to single-seater chairs. He didn't sit in those much these days. Even when he visited the bar, he leaned against the stool more than sat on it. Something about chairs like that gave him the feeling that he was exposed, as if he were under a spotlight, or an interrogation lamp. Under surveillance. He liked seats with plenty of room for other people, so he didn't feel like he was somehow on sole display. He liked sitting on furniture that was far too large to move around.
Alastor was looking over some paperwork, while Niffty was engrossed in an enormous book, a comprehensive history of the steam hammer. At some point, she'd scooted closer to him, then turned so she could pull her feet up onto the couch. She put a throw pillow in front of her and stretched her legs out over it, making it easier to prop the book open on her lap, and she leaned back against Alastor's arm. It greatly inhibited his ability to fill out inventory forms and maintenance logs, but he adapted, moving the paper more than his arm whenever he needed to write.
Alastor could have easily spent another hour this way, had Baxter not entered the room five minutes later. Niffty didn't look up at him, and Alastor felt a strange, subconscious, and unaccountable sense of victory. He greeted Baxter with a polite nod while Niffty kept her attention on her book. And Baxter, greeting Alastor with the same fleeting nod, did a double take when he noticed Niffty and raised his hand to wave.
The movement must have flitted into her peripheral vision, because she looked up from her book and perked up as soon as she realized who it was. Alastor could see that she was on the final page of a chapter, but she didn't bother to finish it. She dog-eared the page, left the book on the cushion, and scuttled over the back of the couch to run across the room to Baxter, as excitable as ever. Baxter laughed a little at her boisterous enthusiasm, and they started to chat with each other, heading toward the door while they talked. Just before they left, Niffty turned around and waved her arm over her head, saying, "Bye for now, Alastor!" Baxter waved as well.
Alastor waved in a way that could've been construed as being directed at both of them, though, in his mind, it was really only for Niffty. The pair walked out the door and down the hall, and Alastor didn't stay in the lounge much longer, deciding that he'd probably be more productive in his office. Before he left, he took Niffty's book off the couch and put it on a nearby shelf, where it would be a little safer.
"What do we really know about this Baxter character, anyway?" Alastor said later that evening, at the bar. Husk shrugged.
"We know he helped out when it looked like we were all gonna be vaporized."
"A lot of people helped with that."
"Okay."
"And when did Niffty start spending so much time with him?"
"While you were gone, I guess."
Alastor gave him a look that was borderline defensive. "So it's my fault?"
"Did I say that?"
Alastor glowered at him, then at his not-Sazerac. Husk sighed. "Look, I dunno. They're dating now, or something. Don't really care to know the details, to be honest with you."
"Oh, and I do?"
"Did I say that, either?"
Alastor scowled some more. Something was needling at him, and he wanted to take it out on Husk, because Husk was as safe to fight with as he was to flirt with. Even as an enemy, Husk was one of the safest people to fight. His priority was always self-defense, aiming to nullify threats rather than enact any real harm against them. There wasn't a single drop of sadism in the man. Alastor had always considered that an exotic and intriguing quality.
"He's one of their employees," Alastor pointed out, swirling his drink.
"He was. He hacked into their system and muted the CEO," Husk said, being as careful as Alastor not to use specific names, whether they were the names of people or corporations. "Pretty sure the guy's firmly on our side at this point."
Alastor scoffed. "He built that attack dog for them, didn't he?" he snarled. "He couldn't have disabled that wretched beast remotely while he was at it?"
"I dunno if you noticed, boss, but there was kind of a lot going on that night."
Alastor mulled this over silently, looking down at his glass again. "I don't like Niffty seeing him," he declared. "If that is, in fact, what's going on."
Husk snorted at his pettiness. "Why not? No fun bein' the third wheel?"
He wasn't sure what kind of reaction that was supposed to get out of Alastor. A snide glance, maybe. A sarcastic and pithy little bon mot. But whatever Husk had intended, it hadn't been for Alastor to give him the look he was giving him now, his smile impeccable but his eyes cold, the kind of cold that bit and burned. The smile was so at odds with his eyes that it would've been more comforting for it to have disappeared entirely.
Husk froze under his gorgon stare, trying to figure out how and why the atmosphere had shifted. For a moment, it looked as if Alastor might've been about to say something for real. Then, as swiftly as the cold had set in, Alastor's expression thawed. His posture relaxed, and he said nonchalantly, "I am quite accustomed to being the third wheel, my dear Husker." He took a sip of his drink, as if to prove that he was being perfectly normal again. "Mm!" he said as he recalled something, swallowing quickly so he could add, "In fact, I've been the seventh wheel on no less than three separate occasions, if you can believe it."
"I sure can," Husk muttered, and Alastor laughed. Husk knew he should've just sat back as he'd been doing, responding to Alastor's side of the conversation without initiating any of it himself. But it was easy to let his guard slip, even when he'd been so wary and thrown off a moment before. It was so tempting to believe that there was nothing really to worry about under the surface. "So," he said, "what's the problem, then?"
Alastor rested his elbow on the counter and his chin in his hand. "We don't know much about him."
"We don't know much about anyone who stays here. Gotta admit we know more about him than we do about most of our guests." Husk weighed his options, then took a minor risk. "Want my opinion?"
Alastor didn't look like he particularly did. He cocked an eyebrow, skeptical that Husk's opinion could carry any real weight in this matter. But he was listening.
"I think you see her as a kid," Husk said, keeping it simple and straightforward. Alastor's apathetic look vanished, though he seemed too surprised by Husk's claim to be truly offended.
"I do not."
"No, not really," Husk conceded. "I know you know she's not. But you just sorta...forget sometimes, right?"
"...well, we all do, I'm sure," Alastor said. "Her height. Her mannerisms, at times. It's easy to forget."
"Not so easy since we all went to that BDSM club. Man...she got a little too into it."
Alastor, forgetting to be surly for a moment, raised his eyebrows. "When was this?"
"Geez...months ago. Closer to a year now. Pen had just joined up, and we were all doing those team-building exercises or whatever. Weren't you there for that?"
Alastor gave him a dry look.
"Yeah. Guess you weren't."
"Mm. And I could just kick myself for missing out."
"I dunno," Husk said. "Kinda a fun day overall, if I'm remembering right. Which I'm obviously not, completely. A few hiccups, but it was good by the end."
"Hmm. Yes." Alastor sipped his drink again, and then, abruptly, he said, "I just don't trust him. And I don't like Niffty spending so much time with him."
Husk barely restrained a groan. He liked to let discussions meander. His method was to put his feet up ahead of him and backfloat through a conversation, letting the natural ebb and flow of its current push things along. So what if they passed by an area a little faster than one of them would have liked? They were moving on to something else now.
Alastor wasn't like that. He wrestled the oar and paddled back upstream all by himself, just because he decided they weren't done discussing a topic they'd long since passed. It didn't even add anything new. It was like being in a boat with someone who saw an eddy, thought, "Perfect," and rowed into it on purpose.
"So, what, you gonna break out the shotgun and interrogate the guy?" Husk asked. "You're acting like she's our kid or something."
He didn't think about the wording until he saw Alastor's mocking smile. "'Our' kid?" he repeated. Husk rolled his eyes. "Freudian slip there, dear boy? Feeling paternal?" Alastor went on, insufferably, gleefully smug. "Oh, Husk. You want a daughter. I knew you weren't as hard as you've always, always tried to act. But good god, man, I didn't expect you to be this soft underneath it all."
Husk started polishing water spots off the clean glasses behind the counter. "I had a daughter."
Alastor had been tapping his claws against his glass in amusement, and it took him a moment to stop. When he did, Husk went on. "Had two kids, actually. A boy and a girl. Boy came first. He didn't make it far, but her...well, she was great. Could've probably let her know that more when I was alive, but...y'know." Husk kept cleaning glasses, and after he set a polished one down on a tray, he rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, scratching briefly at his fur. It was a fidgety gesture. Alastor had never seen it before.
When Husk spoke again, his tone was the same as it had been, betraying none of that nervous habit. "She had a couple kids of her own, too. Second son had just been born when I kicked the bucket. I wonder how they turned out sometimes, but I guess it's probably for the best they didn't have their old man around."
Alastor was studying Husk not as if he were seeing him for the first time, but just seeing him through a slightly different lens. Certain details looking different, standing out more. "I didn't know that," he finally said.
"I know," Husk replied—not pointedly, not accusingly. Just a statement of fact. "You've got that tendency."
Alastor felt insulted and didn't know why. "And what tendency is that?"
"The kind where you forget that almost everyone you know down here used to be human. I know," Husk said, raising his paw to stop Alastor before he could protest. "You don't really forget. Just like you don't really forget Niff's a grown-ass woman. It's just not on your mind most of the time, how we all had whole human lives and families and shit. Or even how we had lives down here, before we got all tangled up with you." Husk finished with the glasses, shoved the rag into his apron pocket, and lifted the tray up by its sides. "That goes for Niffty, too, by the way. Maybe ask her about it sometime."
Alastor stared at Husk, not saying anything, just letting all of his old bartender wisdom sink in. Then he reached across the counter, glass in hand, and calmly dumped the rest of his drink out. It hit Husks's feet, some of it splashing on the front of his trousers, and Husks' reflexes failed him as his wings flared in surprise and he jumped back two seconds too late. The glasses clinked and rattled against each other in the high-sided tray, though thankfully, none of them broke.
"Jesus fuck," Husk said without thinking, trying to step away from the puddle. Alastor shook out the last few drops, then set the glass down on a napkin and picked up his cane.
"Maybe," he said, "you should remember your place and mind your business." He exited the bar, leaving Husk muttering obscenities and looking for an extra rag. Alastor hadn't drunk anywhere near enough to get any kind of buzz, but his petty victory over Husk was...well. Truthfully, it hadn't amounted to much, and it left an odd taste in his mouth as he walked away. Like the wrong end of a cigarette.
Alastor was starting to wonder why he was spending so much of his time in communal areas lately. He went all around the hotel to do his work, but when he was done for the day, he still went to the bar, or, more frequently, to the employee lounge. He didn't interact much with the other residents and staff. At the moment, he was entirely minding his own business, while Angel and Cherri sat across the room with a sofa to themselves, scrolling on their phones. Occasionally, one of them would show their screen to the other so they could share a quick laugh, but for the most part, they were as silent as Alastor.
He was trying to read a book. He was only inspired to try because he knew Niffty tore through books at a pace of one or two per week, and if she could manage that amount of reading with only one eye, then surely Alastor, with two, could achieve the modest goal of one book per month.
It was a bit of a struggle. He'd always prioritized and gravitated to audio-based media. He wasn't used to sitting and focusing quietly on plain text for so long. As a human, he'd never read much beyond the newspaper and some poetry and short stories. As a demon, he saw even less of a reason to make the time and energy commitment that a whole book would require. He wanted to put some music on, but with other people in the room, it would've been rude. Angel and Cherri seemed to prefer the silence for a change.
Alastor glanced at them, not for any real reason. Mostly as an excuse to divert his attention from the book. Angel was leaning back in the corner of the sectional, with Cherri at his side. Alastor had always noticed how often the two of them were together, how closely they sat, but he really saw it now. They were so physically close they could've been mistaken for lovers, cuddled together on the couch, with their feet pulled up onto the cushions and Cherri nestled contentedly in one of Angel's arms.
It wasn't long before Alastor gave up on reading for the day and went back to his room. He couldn't stand to stay there with them. It irritated him, somehow, to see them sitting like that, because they weren't lovers, and therefore comfort-seeking was the only reason for their sitting that way. It gave Alastor secondhand embarrassment to see it. He knew Angel had had his own trials and tribulations with the Vees. Alastor didn't know the details, nor did he care to, but he could guess. God, anyone could've guessed with unstinting accuracy.
Was that not enough visibility for him, Alastor wondered, shutting the door to his room and tossing the book on his dresser, keeping his shoes on and scratching a sudden itch on the nape of his neck and wondering what to do now. Was the trouble he'd been through not blatant enough? Did the need for comfort—or worse, the desire for it—have to be so shamelessly advertised, too?
The next time Alastor and Niffty crossed paths, it was in the second-floor hallway. She scampered up to his shoulder in no time, perching on her favorite spot like a little cat-parrot hybrid. She'd barely started talking about her latest ideas for the bioengineered roaches before Alastor picked her up and put her back down on the floor.
He thought she would keep babbling on without skipping a beat, or possibly make another attempt to climb him, but Niffty cut herself off immediately and looked up at him with open confusion. Alastor hesitated. He wanted to say something to keep the tone light, something in his usual debonair voice like remember, darling—boundaries. But he couldn't bring himself to do so, because that wasn't quite what the issue was.
Niffty gave him a puzzled blink. Then, taking whatever hint Alastor might've been trying to give her, she trotted off down the hall and left him alone.
Within an hour, she seemed to have forgotten their interaction entirely.
Alastor had trouble putting it out of his mind.
A week or so later, Alastor experienced his roughest night since his return. He struggled to fall asleep, and he struggled even more to stay asleep. Eventually, sick and tired of the ongoing back-and-forth, Alastor got out of bed. He went to his bathroom for a glass of water, then to the vanity for a cigarette.
He looked at himself in the mirror. He made a few faces, testing out varying degrees of open exhaustion to see if he could get away with any of them, without people asking if he was coming down with something. And then he made a few more, just for the catharsis of letting his expression be truly tired. He rubbed his hands down his eyes, massaging his face, his smile, his jaw, a crescent of ache from being clenched all night long. The inside of his mouth felt strange. He inspected it and found toothmarks on the sides of his tongue. He rolled his eyes and drank some more water, as if it would help.
As he lowered the glass, his gaze drifted to the brittle crown hooked over the top of the mirror. Impressive, he thought, that a thing made of twigs and dead insects and held together with thread had survived the Fall of the Hazbin Hotel. It had survived well enough for Alastor to have stumbled across it in the ruins at the base of the cliff. When he'd picked it up, his hands dripping blood and beset with tremors, he'd fully expected it to break apart and fall in pieces through his fingers.
His chest had been split open. His staff had been sliced in two. And this little trinket, of all things, had remained intact.
That was the whole idea, he supposed. King Roach, indeed.
He fiddled with the crown carefully, without picking it up. Despite everything, he still doubted its physical integrity. He thought about Niffty. He thought about how her open, unselfconscious, sometimes nonsensical and absurd forms of caring may very well have saved Alastor's life on more than one occasion. They may have been the sole deciding factor. And he thought about how maybe that wasn't so terribly painful to acknowledge, in the privacy of his own mind. Maybe the universe wasn't keyed in to his brain, waiting to pounce if he so much as considered his own vulnerability. Maybe it was all right for him to have a thought and then move on without dwelling on it, wrangling it into submission, and solving it.
He thought about all of this. And then he put it into practice by deciding to stop thinking about it and to just start his day, now that he was up and out of bed. He finished his cigarette and his water, got dressed, and exited his room.
It was nice to walk the hallways without guests around. There were one or two other early risers, but almost everyone else was still asleep, and the up-and-at-'ems tended to keep to themselves. Alastor went to the kitchen to get his coffee, and as he left, he spotted Niffty in a corner of the dining room. She was moving around the perimeter, setting traps along the baseboards for some kind of creepy-crawly. She was so fixated on her task that she didn't even notice Alastor. He came up behind her, took a silent sip of his coffee, and bent down to ask conspiratorially, "What are we hunting?"
Niffty looked up, startled, and Alastor was pleased to see how quickly her face lit up at the sight of him. "Centipedes!" she replied.
"Hmm. And why are we trying to catch centipedes? They help get rid of the other bugs, you know."
"Oh, I know," Niffty said with such undue seriousness that Alastor almost laughed. "And if they keep it up, I'll be out of a job."
"Ah. Well, rest assured, my dear, you'll always have job security here. Anyone who wants to outsource your fine work to centipedes will have to answer to me."
"Promise?"
"It's my solemn oath," Alastor said, crossing his heart. Niffty considered this.
"Can I get it in writing?"
"But of course."
Niffty beamed at him, then furrowed her brow. "What time is it, anyway? Why are you up so early?"
"Quarter past five. Just...one of those mornings. I thought I might take my coffee out on the balcony. Care to join me?"
Niffty paused, thinking it over, then said, "Sure! I'm just gonna go make some tea first."
"Splendid. I'll meet you out there."
They parted ways, and Alastor brought himself and his coffee out to the balcony. It was a nice little space—a bit open and conspicuous right at the front of the hotel, but this early in the day, it didn't matter much. There were only single-seater chairs available at the small patio table, so Alastor brushed off the seat cushion of a solid metal chair and sat down. It wobbled a bit under him, but it was all right.
Niffty joined him soon with a cup of tea. Alastor had tried some of it before and found it to be surprisingly good. He'd expected a cloyingly sweet concoction, like the stuff he'd grown up with, but Niffty put neither sugar nor cream in hers. Just a blend of herbs that imparted a refreshing if slightly bitter taste. Alastor liked it.
Still, he liked coffee more. And as rude as it might have been, he never offered Niffty any of his coffee in return for her offer of tea. Caffeine sat well with him. He was always a little energized, always "on," but somehow the caffeine seemed to have a soothing effect on him, slotting parts of his brain back into place and enabling him to focus throughout the day. Niffty, on the other hand? Alastor was honestly afraid to find out how his normal dose of caffeine would affect someone as chaotic as her.
When she arrived, Alastor rose from his chair so he could pull one out for her, but she beat him to the punch, hopping straight up onto the table. He sat back down, supposing he should've expected that. She was always lying on tables, perching on counters, climbing on chairs, sitting on shelves. She rarely seemed to use a piece of furniture for its designed, intended purpose. She rarely seemed content to just sit normally.
Case in point: as soon as Alastor settled in again, Niffty tiptoed across the tabletop and stepped lightly onto his lap, seating herself on his legs with that catlike blend of self-assurance, grace, and a dash of audacity. Alastor paused. He was surprised, but not jarred. He simply sat there, coffee held in one hand, the other raised slightly beside Niffty as she made herself comfortable.
She sat perpendicular to him, with both of her legs hanging over one side of his lap. She swung her feet without any particular pattern or rhythm as she looked out at the Pentagram and sipped her tea. After a moment, Alastor rested his arm around her gently to hold her in place. Her minuscule weight on his legs felt...secure. And her minuscule mass was just enough to block his entire midsection, from his knees to his collarbones. Niffty's head bobbed back and forth to whatever song was currently stuck in her brain, but no matter how she tilted it, it stayed more or less level with Alastor's chest, between his still-healing wound and the rest of the world.
They sat in silence for a while, until, abruptly, Niffty said, "Oh!" and launched off on a tangent. Apparently, the song she'd been mentally listening to and silently bopping along to had been in Japanese, and so was the stream of words that flew out of her mouth. It took a moment for Alastor to catch up and realize why he understood what she was saying even less than usual. Although it was rude to interrupt, he said, "I'm afraid you've changed stations without realizing it, my dear." Niffty stopped talking, confused by both the interruption and the explanation. "You're speaking Japanese, Niffty."
"Oh!" she said again. She proceeded to apologize, in Japanese, and then clarified what she'd been saying, still in Japanese. Alastor smiled with warm fondness and listened to her speak effusively to him in a language he barely knew a word of. When she finished, he offered a confident, "Oh, bien sûr," and responded to her incomprehensible statement with one of his own. It took a bit longer for the penny to drop with Niffty than it had with him. She twisted around to look up at him, and he smiled wider at her bafflement, letting go of her so he could gesture while he spoke. When it finally clicked for her why she couldn't follow along with what he was saying, her mouth opened in a smile, and her eye shone with sheer, joyful adoration.
"Alastor!" she said, grabbing onto his hand with both of hers and shaking it excitedly. Alastor chuckled and gave her hands a soft squeeze. "You can speak French!"
"Yes," he said. Then, after a moment, he added, "Well, close enough."
"I never knew that about you!" Niffty said, delighted by this new discovery. "You should speak it more often!"
"Well, no one would understand what I'm saying, sweetheart." Alastor paused. "Though that's a strong argument in favor of it."
"Oui!" Niffty exclaimed. She let go of his hand and resumed speaking Japanese, and Alastor leaned back in his chair, letting her rant, only interrupting in English to remind her to drink her tea before it got cold. While Niffty did as he suggested, Alastor responded to what he assumed she'd said in his own languages. He was glad she didn't know either one of them, because he had to drift a little clumsily between Louisiana Creole and the French dialect to fill the gaps in his recall of both.
They passed the conversation back and forth in a completely relaxed, unbothered lack of understanding. In Japanese, Niffty said, "I'm really close to getting the centipede problem back under control." In Kouri-Vini, Alastor replied, "No, I don't think it will rain until later. Maybe around four."
"Of course," Niffty went on, "without the centipedes around, the spiders are going to get out of control again."
"I'll probably have time to go to the store before the rain starts. If you want anything, let me know, and I'll pick it up for you."
"To be honest, I like hunting the spiders. They live way up in the ceiling corners. It's a real challenge for me to reach them—and I like a challenge."
And so they carried on like this, for almost the entirety of their conversation. Only once—and by pure chance—did their nonsensical chatter dovetail into something coherent, though neither of them knew it. Alastor sighed and said he should really do this more often. His morning coffee was better outdoors, before the rest of the hotel was awake.
"Yes," Niffty agreed, still in Japanese. "You should eat breakfast, too. Or, at least, you should drink tea instead of coffee. It's much nicer on an empty stomach. But food would be better!"
"Why, yes," Alastor replied, switching back to Louisiana French when he couldn't remember the Creole. "I'd love to cook another breakfast together soon. It's been hard for me to eat before noon these days. But I like the way you make omelettes. It's strange to use so few ingredients, but it's probably easier on my stomach."
"Yeah," Niffty said, looking out at the dawnless horizon. "This is nice."
They didn't get up to go to the kitchen, because neither one of them knew how much they agreed on what they'd been saying. Alastor went the rest of the morning without eating, as usual. But they stayed outside on the balcony for a while longer, finishing their drinks. Niffty leaned back against Alastor, readjusting when there was a faint whine of feedback above his head, reminding her to be careful around his wound. Alastor rested his arm around her again, and they sat there in a strange little encapsulation of their entire relationship: hardly understanding each other much of the time, but still managing, without trying, to hit an odd stride together all the same.