Chapter Text
Due to its strategic position in the hotel hall, it was just natural for the bar to become a seaport for all the souls gravitating around the Hazbin. Enlivened by a pleasant musical selection, hosted by a barman who was capable to make one cocktail in ten, permeated by a fizzy smell of swamp, the bar had quickly turned into the rendez-vous point for whomever wanted to celebrate something, drink away their sorrows, or simply stop by and have a chat.
At the moment, Angel Dust was sitting at the counter on a regular Friday, soft bag at his feet, sipping the first Harder Daddy of the evening while he waited for the right time to leave for his workshift. The room was nicely heated, and a playlist of faint raucous laughter, screams and metal objects thrown against brick walls resounded in the background.
Husk had just finished serving Sir Pentious his lemon water, when a much nearer cry echoed in the main hallway.
“Aarrrrgh! Malditos cabrónes, for how long do they think they can go on like that?!” cursed Vaggie, stomping in the hall, spear in her hand. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she looked like she wanted to tear her own hair out. She was closely followed by Charlie, and the exhausted look on the princess's face didn't fare any better.
“I was about to ask, what is this noise?” Angel asked from the counter “it’s a little too muffled, but for a moment I thought it was the radio.”
“Oh, it’s just a bunch of brawlers fooling around in the alley back here,” quickly said Charlie, with a swift gesture of her hand “they have had at it for quite a while now,” she added, in a more dismayed tone.
Her words were punctuated by what sounded like the clanking noise of a trashcan being overthrown.
“Really? Ugh, that’s annoying. I am so glad I couldn’t hear anything from my room.” Angel swirled the straw in his drink.
“Didn’t you go out there and asked them to stop?” inquired Pentious “Of course we did!” snapped Vaggie.
“And what happened?”
“What do you think?” she replied, waving her spear “It’s hell! They told us to fuck off and mind our own business.”
“Couldn’t you just poke them a little with that?” suggested Husk, pointing at the weapon in her hand.
“Yes, well…” Vaggie shot a look at her girlfriend, then lowered her gaze “Starting a fight involving weapons doesn’t really go hand in hand with the hotel philosophy, does it?”
“We just want them to leave!” Charlie explained, sounding frustrated “I feel that the use of weapons coming from the hotel staff could be a little…counterproductive.”
“Well, that’s rather inconvenient.” conceded Angel Dust.
“Speaking of inconveniences…” Charlie turned to him with a pleading look on her face “are you sure you cannot be here for this evening’s seminar?”
Angel spread all of his arms.
“Sorry babe, no can do. I have been booked for this gig for weeks, there is no way I can forfeit.”
A bright white oval cut the air in the center of the room, blowing in a light breeze. Lucifer stepped out of the portal, suited and booted, nose buried in his phone.
“Good evening, everyone!”
He was met by a cacophony of greetings, ranging from “Evenin’ dad!” to “All right, your grace?” passing through “Helloooo, Bad Boss Boy!” coming from Niffty, who was sunk in the couch, spraying something that smelled like a lethal substance on the cushions.
“All good, your majesty? It feels like we haven't seen you here in a while," graciously asked Pentious.
It was true.
The king of hell had taken the habit to show up at the hotel almost every day, frolicking around the halls, dishing out jokes to everyone, gobbling down monstrous quantities of mango flavored vodka at the bar, and bickering with the Radio Demon. He sometimes spent the night in a room assigned to him. Of late, he had been more absent than usual.
“Well, yeah,” Lucifer confirmed, stretching out his arms with a yawn “I admit I have been a little secluded lately. I have enjoyed some me-time, with the sole company of a small window to the underworld.”
“He means he spent the whole week at home glued to his phone,” murmured Vaggie.
“Buuuut, it was now time for me to abandon my hermit life and open up to what the surroundings have to offer. In fact, I am here to take Charlie out on our weekly father-daughter evening!” Lucifer proudly declared, waving his mobile “I’ve been browsing all of these locations on Ringadvisors for days. It’s amazing how many new venues have popped up since the last time I bothered to have a social life. Ozzie’s place has marvellous reviews.”
“Right! Our dinner! Argh! Uhm...” Charlie piped up, looking hyped and sorry at the same time “actually...dad, would you mind if we bought some takeout, and ate it here at the hotel with everyone? According to schedule, we still got a seminar to run through, and Angel is booked for work tonight. If I leave too, there won't be enough participants left to...”
She wasn’t able to end the sentence. Like a bolt of lightening, and before everybody could realize what was going on, Lucifer had sprinted from where he was standing towards her, and had firmly yanked down the bottom of her suit, letting out an enthusiast cry.
“You got PAAANTSED!”
Acting purely on instinct, Charlie leapt forward to pull it up again, but despite her swift movement, all the bystanders were still able to catch a glimpse of a pair of lovely white leavers lace culottes.
Chaos ensued, as everyone recoiled and yelled at the same time.
“Heeeey!”
“Woah!!!!”
“Holy…”
“Dad!”
“What the actual fuck, your majesty!” howled Vaggie, her spear actually pointed at him.
“Wohoho!” Lucifer chanted, raising his hands in a sign of surrender “Chillax! I’m just following the latest trend of the week. Don’t you know the new challenge? It’s PAAANTSED!"
“Chillax?” echoed Vaggie, lowering her weapon.
“Pantsed?” piped up Sir Pentious.
“Wait, where have I heard this name already?” Angel asked himself out loud. He produced his own phone out of his purse and started typing like a madman.
“It’s the new fad!” the king of hell enthusiastically exclaimed “My feed is flooded with videos of it!”
They all exchanged a vacant glance, except for Angel, who was still buried in his phone. Lucifer chuckled, leaning on the bar counter like a businessman at the airport’s lounge.
“Charlie! You surprise me. You are not informed?” he languidly tilted his head towards Husk, who had resumed wiping down glasses with his rag. “And you’re supposed to be the youth? Yikes! Am I right, whatsyourname?''
“Husk,” he replied “and you’ve been here for a gazillion of centuries. Are you implying that I am somehow close to your age?"
“Well... you caught me off guard here dad, we actually never heard of this... thing?” Charlie said, scratching her neck “Is that new?”
“Everyone started doing it. Look,” exclaimed Lucifer, brandishing his phone.
He started some sort of frenzied dance around everybody, materializing next to one, then to another, to show them a compilation of reels involving people whose trousers got pulled down in different situations. They ranged from amateur shots in private homes with a first-person point of view, to public venues such as coffee shops and shopping streets. There was even a video of a poor sod getting pantsed during the speech of a neighbourhood committee, who was forced to exhibit in front of a substantial crowd a pair of sad, washed-out, polka dot boxers.
“Yikes indeed,” Vaggie deadpanned.
“There we go. Pantsed,” Angel quoted from his phone “that’s an article from IMP Today. The newest challenge that rages in Pentagram City, it went viral on all the social media platforms among the Seven Rings. The more you pants, the higher your rank! Play the game, and collect your victims. But how does it work? And how to inflict it to your neighbour?”
“Yeah, how do you do it?” asked Pentious.
“The rule is simple,” read Angel “there is a pantser and a pantsee. Everytime the victim - the pantsee - during a conversation pronounces the word ‘pants’ or a word that contains ‘pants’ in it, they get their trousers pulled down.”
“So, it’s simply good old high school humiliation with a touch of making you feel like an idiot because you fell for it,” Husk stated with a smile.
“I think it’s humorous!” Lucifer merrily intervened “Everybody loves a practical joke, am I right?”
Niffty jumped up and down the couch, crumpling the cushions.
“I want to play! I want to play!” she narrowed her eye at Lucifer.
“Can you pant me, bad boy?”
“Uh, it’s… that word with a final ‘s’,” Lucifer awkwardly corrected her “the singular doesn’t count. And you actually need to wear trousers in order for them to be pulled down. That’s how you play the game.”
Niffty looked down at her gown and pouted.
“So what, it works only if you repeat the same word?” Charlie said, sounding relieved “oh well, it shouldn't be easy to stumble on a word like that.”
“It’s not necessarily the same word,” Angel informed, consulting his phone “Nevertheless, limit yourself not to pronounce the ‘p’ word it’s not the path that grants-” Lucifer, that seemed to be everywhere, materialized next to him and swiftly pulled down his trousers at the cry of "you just got PANTSED!" only to reappear on the other side of the room immediately after, among the groans of those presents. “...salvation. The prank occurs also with the usage of words similar to it in how they sound, words rhyming with it, etcetera.” Angel concluded in a flat tone, not at all perturbed by being stripped.
Husk, that from his station was graced with a plain overview of Angel’s backside, lit up like a traffic light.
“W-what is that?” he spluttered.
“This?” Angel casually remarked. He slightly stretched behind to look at his back, his lower pair of hands framing his hips where they rounded into his buttocks, which were left completely bare by the skimpiest g-string hell had ever seen, a thin line that disappeared in the mound of his cheeks. “This is my latest purchase. I needed new underwear, and this was on sale. I got three pairs for the price of two. Cherri helped me pick it up.” He shot Husk a playful glance, then addressed everybody in the room. “It’s supposed to make my ass look gorgeous. Does it do its job?”
“It seems like you forgot the actual underwear. Like, somewhere in your room,” Vaggie smiled.
“Oh, it’s in here, only my ass seems to have the habit to suck everything in,” Angel shrugged.
“Okay, what the actual ew.”
While Pentious scrambled to ask if miss Cherri had perhaps purchased a similar item for herself, Angel struggled to make his buttocks fit into the tight leather leggings in which he had caged them, causing Husk’s face to degrade into various shades of purple. Charlie clapped her hands one time. Her face had lit up with her signature glow she acquired every time an idea popped up into her head.
“Okay. Great! This is the perfect opportunity to create something new! Since the game has a lot of success, we could do something like that to attract more sinners to the hotel! Something branded Hazbin! Along the lines of this, but less...”
“Creepy?” Angel suggested.
“Rapey?” Vaggie supplied.
“Oh, you guys are no fun," Lucifer said “I really don’t see the harm in it. Having a good laugh at the expenses of someone over something embarrassing that you caused them to experience! You know who does that?”
“Bullies?” Vaggie suggested.
“Abusers?” Angel supplied.
“Hu-mo-rous people! It’s an exchange, don’t you see? Once it happens to you, then it can also happen to me!” Lucifer insisted, tapping his knuckles on the bar counter with an amused, exasperated scowl of the head “There’s no malice if anyone’s the target! You young people today are too sensitive. Don't you think, whatsyourname?”
“Again, Husk.” Husk huffed “and again: how old do you think I am?”
“Speaking of old people,” Angel interjected, hinting at the hallway door, from which Alastor was strolling in directed somewhere, softly humming a tune.
“Alastor!” Charlie greeted him. “How are you?”
“Splendid, my dear, thanks for asking,” the Radio Demon gingerly replied, without stopping nor reciprocating the pleasantry.
“Wait a minute,” Husk howled from the counter, preventing him from leaving “I am missing a can of that liquid pest poison that we had to spread on the east wing of the second floor. You wouldn't know what happened to it, would you?”
“My roaches are festering,” grinned Niffty.
Alastor’s eyes quickly darted from them to the bottle of vodka on the bar shelf. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Sure you don’t.” Husk sighed, throwing the entire content of the bottle in the sink.
“Hey Alastor, guess what? A spot has opened up for the seminar of today,” Charlie quickly butted in before he could resume walking “The theme is ‘Get in touch with your emotions and enhance bond reinforcements through the sharing of life experiences, and how good examples can help to improve yourself’. Maybe you’d be interested in participating?”
“Charlie! That sounds awful!” Alastor jovially declared in his fluted drawl “I am afraid that it is a hard pass.”
“Yeah, hell forbid you should actually learn something,” mused Vaggie.
Alastor twirled his cane.
“Ha! Not a chance.”
“A-ha! Gotcha! You just got PANTSED!” Lucifer yelled triumphantly, materializing right behind Alastor and abruptly yanking down his trousers.
A horrible sound of ripped fabric and popping off buttons set a counterpoint to the gasp that everybody let unconsciously out in unison.
There was a moment of perfect stillness, a suspended silence in which everyone was left frozen in their actions.
Angel and Pentious, standing between the couch and the counter, looked like two pillars of salt. Husk, from the bar, appeared even more mortified than when he saw Angel’s g-string; Charlie had brought both of her hands to cover her mouth, while, in contrast, Vaggie’s jaw had dropped, and it was stuck wide open. Niffty’s eye got so big it seemed to have swallowed her entire face.
The crashing sound of broken glass coming from outside clanged with perfect timing in the general silence.
“Charlie,” Alastor slowly uttered, the distortion in his static so deep to make it almost impossible to understand what he was saying “would you be a darling, and ask your father what is it, exactly, that he is trying to accomplish?”
“I’m just playing pantsed, bellhop!” cheerfully replied the father in question, breaking that eerie paralysis spell.
“Excuse. Me?” the Radio Demon's smile never faltered, but his teeth were gritted so hard they could hear them rattle. He was motionless, though practically vibrating on the spot.
“You said a word that sounds like the incriminated one, and you lost! And got PAAANTSED! Have you heard of the challenge? Who am I kidding, you don’t even own a phone, do you?”
Dark clouds gathered over the hotel, as the air sparkled with menacing green shocks of light.
“Oookay, okay. I sense I may have overstepped a few boundaries here," chuckled Lucifer, sounding not the slightest sorry nor scared.
“No kidding,” whispered Husk, ears flat on his head.
“Someone's a sore loser, I get it. You know what, why don’t you just go ahead and do the same to me.”
Alastor’s pupils were two twitching metronomes.
“I am not touching you.”
“All right, all right. No problem! There you go, I am saying it: pants! I lose!”
Lucifer put hand on his belt, and, much to the chagrin of everyone around, he shoved his own trousers down to his ankles with an enthusiastic tug, revealing a rather colourful pair of underwear decorated with a pattern of rainbow rubber ducks.
“Oh. I see.” Alastor snarled, spluttering feedback, antlers ominously cracking “You think this makes things even.”
Vaggie found it wise to try to paper over the cracks before the figurative wall could collapse.
“Uh. Uhm. Alastor, you know what, uhm. Why...why don't you...” she approached the motionless demon with the cautious, controlled step zoologists reserve to wild caged animals, and with the most delicate motion, as if poking a dragon, she pulled his trousers up using the point of her spear. “Oookay. Oh, dear. Oooh, dear. Please, stay up.” She fixed the trousers on his hips using the tips of her index and thumb with her arms stretched wide, neck craned to the opposite direction, all the time looking the other way around. “Yep, there you go. Uh, Alastor, we, uhm…we have a situation outside, with some punks, that I think you could help us manage.”
She cautiously laid the blunt part of her weapon in the middle of Alastor’s back, and when she obtained no reaction from him, she dragged him out of the room still on the tip of her spear, wildly signalling Charlie to open the back door.
They all silently watched them go. Then Lucifer turned to the others at the bar.
“Seriously, what's that guy’s deal?”
“Believe me, if we only knew,” Angel shakily exhaled “does anybody need a drink?”
“I think you can pull up your trousers, now, your majesty,” suggested Husk, who had started passing around glasses.
“Oh. Right.” Lucifer, still lost in thought, recovered from his reverie. He snapped his fingers, and he was again impeccably dressed in the blink of an eye. “So… as for dinner,” he exclaimed cheerfully, straightening his hat. He pulled out his phone once again, and resumed scrolling on his restaurant list. “I presume we are staying in tonight, in the end. Does anybody have a preference? What does a guy have to do to get some pork chops around here?”
A sudden bucketful of blood splattered with a moist sound on the side window. Husk hinted at it with his head.
“Niffty, that’s your cue.”
“Yay!” The little demon piped up, frantically shaking a sprayer.
*
“Good morning,” said Angel Dust, making his entrance to the break area of the film studios, on time for his morning shooting.
The only people present in the room were Valentino and Vox, who didn’t return the salute. The former was slouched on the couch with a tablet in his hands, feet on a glass coffee table, the latter sat straighter on an armchair consulting his phone, sipping with condescension from a steaming mug. Angel made a beeline for the vending machine, selected a black coffee and blatantly yawned.
“Ask the make-up department to go in heavy today, you look like shit,” chivalrously commented Valentino from his tablet.
“I could hardly sleep,” defensively protested Angel “Mr. Creepy Voice spent the whole of last night mauling a bunch of brawlers that were messing around outside the hotel. Honestly, he could have gotten rid of them in five minutes, but he had to blow off some steam and dragged it along for hours. He started when I left for the gig, and he was still going at it when I came back! Those poor fuckers, I could hear each and every one of their limbs being torn off til the crack of dawn.” he sighed in his cup of coffee “and all for that stupid challenge that’s going around.”
“Hmmm?” interjected Valentino, without tearing his eyes from the screen.
“Well, yeah. You know, the challenge? The one in which they yank down your trousers? It's kinda the new craze. Lucifer had the great idea to pull the prank on the Radio Demon, and pantsed him in the hotel hall. Smiles went berserk, and that is the result.” Angel explained, pointing at his own tired face.
Vox spat out the whole beverage that he was sipping in a brown geyser, watering a plant.
“Alastor is playing pantsed?” he incredulously croaked, with a raucous voice.
“Playing is a strong word,” Angel sighed “Coerced to play sounds more like it - what? I've been browsing through my vocabulary, I need a lotta new fancy words and stuff to survive this shit,” he replied, in response to the glance that Valentino shot him.
“Waitwaitwait. Alastor. Got pantsed? In the hotel?” Vox’s voice was raising, reaching dangerous peaks of shrillness “in front of people?”
Angel raised an eyebrow.
“You know the prank?"
“If I know it? Velvette is the one who's been spreading the hashtag from our channels. We are the ones who invented it!” howled Vox.
“Oh, well…then you are more familiar with the dynamics of it than I am.” Angel said “He didn’t like it. I think he finds the challenge to be in poor taste, and if I can speak my mind... I kind of agree with him.”
“Yeah, yeah, but what exactly happened?” asked Vox, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Well, Lucifer thought it was funny, but Smiles wasn’t particularly thrilled, you see.”
“Hmm, why? Was he wearing something embarrassing underneath?” distractedly inquired Valentino, still engrossed in his tablet.
“Yeeeah! Do tell. How was his underwear?” urged Vox.
“Uh…plain? Black? Boring?” Angel replied, taken aback by that hungry growl “I don’t think that the underwear is the point. I mean…” he paused, looking for his words “he is a very private person, right? For fuck’s sake, have you ever seen the guy wearing shorts? Even once?” he wrinkled his nose. “I guess...for a guy like him, being stripped naked for a prank would be one of the greatest insults you could ever do to him.”
Vox stood up with a burst, spilling coffee on the glass table. “Oh, it’s on. It’s so ON!” he declared, and sprinted away, jumping on the balls of his feet. His manic cackling faded down the hallway with him.
“This makes me think,” Valentino piped up from his corner on the couch “we need to ride the wave of the new craze. I was just picturing the script for a new film. Starring you, my little…” short pause “…star.”
Angel suppressed a grimace.
“Hear me out. You get pantsed during a frat party, but you got nothing underneath. You get gang-banged, double penetration, bukkake, the usual shit. I like it.” He snapped his fingers twice. “Kitty, call Loras at the agency. Tell him there’s been a change for the shooting of today, and to call in those triplets we scripted for the robbery scene. And hellhounds. At least five. And a couple of his bull studs, too.”
He turned to Angel, critically sizing him up from head to toe.
“Wait, maybe you can wear something see-through. Some fancy ass frilly lingerie that just covers your balls, or something.”
Angel sighed and put hand to his leggings.
“I think I got exactly the lingerie you are looking for.”