Chapter Text
Alastor has no chance of returning to any sort of normalcy after he has had to send Vox home.
(He didn’t have to dismiss him. Vox had even said so, as Alastor alternatively watched the stairs for Husk’s return, on one hand, and some of the most wrongfooted, awkward attempts Vox could make at conversation with Angel, on the other.
It was possible that Vox had done that for his benefit. Likely, even.
And Alastor knew—with the terrifying sense that he might be belatedly developing a conscience—he shouldn’t keep Vox all day. His home was the site of a disaster. His partners had experienced an episode of mild to moderate terror. Even a child with a favorite toy would have the decency to share it, at a time like this.
So he’d walked Vox out to his car, pretending at that minimal amount of decency. And he’d reached in through the open window to treat himself to the dazed and bewilderingly carnal reaction Vox had to Alastor buckling his seatbelt. And then he’d laid his hand on Vox’s throat and murmured the words to break his collar into pieces.
“There,” Alastor had said, as Vox leaned in to press against his claws. “Now I’m returning all of you.”)
Of course Alastor doesn’t feel normal after that.
Husk was a fine (irritating) distraction, but that could only occupy a few minutes of his day. Now he has hours more to persevere—with the queer itch of a shattered contract like a bug bite he made the mistake of scratching, with the uneasy stalemate he’s arrived at with Husk, and with someone who is categorically not a hotel guest dogging his steps for fear that settling in and staying still might imply that he’s taken a new residence.
The only saving grace that can be found, in Alastor’s reckoning, is that Angel is a somewhat more helpful duckling to be followed by than Charlie.
“Yeah, it’s all the bulbs in this wing,” Angel announces, strolling out of one dark hotel suite and into the nearly pitch-black hallway. Alastor’s shadow recoils melodramatically from the light of his cellphone. “So. Do we, y’know, call the ‘Lightbringer?’”
Alastor withdraws his original impression. Angel is not helpful at all.
“Absolutely not,” Alastor rebuffs, turning on a heel to be followed. When Angel’s long legs carry him close enough, Alastor drags them both by shadow to the basement.
They’ve traveled this way several times already. There are fewer foul pronouncements from Angel this time, than the first, when the shadows spit them both out of the dark.
“...can I ask why?” Angel asks, plucking at the front of his t-shirt as though eternal darkness left a residue.
A deeply petty part of Alastor is inclined to say no, and see what happens.
“Because I don’t want to hear about it for the next millennia.”
The shattered tile in the lobby is bad enough. No doubt, Lucifer will be making comments about that incident all month, nevermind that Lucifer is a (purportedly) divine being with nothing better to do with his time than work on minor construction projects anyway.
If Alastor were willing to ask for Lucifer’s help, he would sooner send him to Vee Tower as an architect than up to the fourth floor. Perhaps Alastor could even salvage something of his rapport with Vox’s partners if he dragged the devil to their doorstep as an indenture.
Alastor ventures to one far wall. Angel follows, peering over Alastor’s shoulder at the lines of unlabelled breakers in their box.
“That actually bothers you?” Angel asks.
When Alastor twists his neck one hundred and eighty degrees to glare at Angel for the observation, Angel doesn’t even have the decency to flinch.
“Y’know, you could just ask him to stop teasing you.”
He could just.
He could just?
Sure! Of course. And while he’s at it, he could have just gotten down on his knees and begged Rosie for the power that she owed him.
Perhaps he could try just praying to God to close his infernal wound!
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” he tells Angel sincerely, and turns back to study the blank switches of the electrical panel for any inkling at which might have a line to the fourth floor.
Angel squints over his shoulder. Alastor knows, without looking, because Angel has leaned close enough to make one of his ears flick.
“What kind of asshole electrician doesn’t label the breaker box?”
“The ‘Lightbringer!’” Alastor exclaims, feeling unreasonably like jumping up and down about it. Far off to one side, he sees his shadow fling its hands into the air in validated solidarity. Would that he could. “He built this damned place, didn’t he? He must not have expected to stick around long enough to be saddled with maintenance!”
He has the unsettling feeling that Angel might be reading into his reaction. Which is just unreasonable; of course Alastor is glad to finally have a sane person with which to commiserate. It doesn’t have to have a deeper meaning.
“Dick move,” Angel agrees, after just long enough that Alastor is positive that he’s calculated that reaction.
He doesn’t take it any farther, at least. There are no appeals to Alastor’s better nature (of course, he has none) or suggestions that Lucifer might be a well-intended fool.
If Alastor learned anything at all from living, it is that there are almost never poor intentions. What a shame, that there were so many ‘good men’ on Earth and so many unfortunate misunderstandings.
And what a surprise, that he’s met so many of them again down here.
“Where were you when we were rebuilding, anyways?”
It’s bizarrely casual. Guileless, even; as though Angel thinks he’s asking after an unscheduled vacation Alastor took.
“Planning the downfall of all those involved,” Alastor lies dryly, and identifies one tripped breaker to press upright.
He turns around, and catches Angel looking him up and down.
“How’s that been going for you?”
“I take your point,” Alastor says crossly, and drags them both back through the shadows to check back up on the fourth floor.
The day proceeds more or less in the same way. Angel continues obviously trying to distract himself from the inevitable eventuality of returning to his chosen home. And Alastor is tetchier about it than he means to be.
It isn’t his fault. Absolutely everyone is pissing him off today, except for the one person that is no longer here. It’s a good thing that Alastor brought an end to his and Vox’s contract. There have been several moments where he’s longed to summon him. Vox would probably look hilarious being dragged through a portal, unawares. He would probably be adorable: surprised and overeager to see that Alastor had had him for hours and still wanted more of his company.
“Hey, Smiles?”
Alastor jolts. This is horrific; it’s like he’s caught something, to be anything close to this distractible. He looks sideways to find Angel slowly raising one eyebrow, and narrows his eyes in case a clear warning might help.
Angel ignores the warning, grinning impishly.
“Are you just counting the tiles, or is one of them supposed to do a flip?”
“I’m trying to figure out if Lucifer’s ‘repairs’ have had any unintended consequences,” Alastor says, which was at least true of what he was doing five minutes ago. That was before he started...
Daydreaming, he supposes. God, he really is ill. Maybe he should ask Rosie if consumption of robotics always disagrees with cannibals. Maybe this is a stomachache, and not a major, newly-developed character flaw.
“Like?” Angel says.
“Last time he fixed Charlie’s tub, it started spawning fish,” Husker volunteers, revealing his flagrant eavesdropping from halfway across the lobby.
“Like—Koi?”
“Salmon,” Husker replies.
“And he had the gall to be offended when we cooked them,” Alastor says, squinting more skeptically at the tile floor. When he draws near enough, there is some kind of shimmer to the newly-repaired square. Then he steps onto the spot Husk stood last night, and the floor shrieks.
Alastor’s ears pin to his skull.
Then he glances crossly towards the bar, and calms himself halfway to reason through the sight of Husk’s fur puffed dramatically out from his skin.
“Each. And every. Time,” Alastor says, to no one in particular.
“Might be trauma,” Husker has the nerve to joke.
“You think you’re funny,” Alastor says coldly.
“You used to be able to take a joke,” Husker retorts.
Then Angel lodges himself directly into Alastor’s sightline, with two arms out in either direction as if to direct traffic. Or invite homicide.
“Hey,” Angel snaps. “Do we really have to do this? Again?”
Glowering at Angel has absolutely no effect. This must be the first time, Alastor reflects, that anyone has damned himself by refraining from horrible violence. Angel wouldn’t have become so bold if Alastor had been more horrible.
“Ain’t worth it anyway,” Husk scoffs, leaning back against the bar.
Alastor is seriously considering shattering the floor again over that comment when the lobby door flies open.
“Oh,” Husk says under his breath. “Great.”
It’s like some sort of mirage, standing there in beads and feathers.
But then again, Mimzy never could stay away from any venue that had banned her. Of course it’s really her.
“Alright, that’s it!” Mimzy cuts herself off halfway through a holler when she realizes that there is no army waiting in the lobby to bar her entry. It’s only Alastor, who meets her gaze with what he hopes passes for calm bemusement, and not profound relief.
Mimzy shoves the door shut behind her with a clamor, and lowers her voice by—if anything—half a decibel.
“Before you say anything, you smug, creepy bastard—”
Husker leans in conspicuously across the bar.
“Someone should go check out front for loan sharks,” he murmurs to Angel, not even a fraction as subtle as he thinks he’s being.
“—I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not checking in,” Mimzy says, charging across the lobby with impunity.
“…you know what, I think she’s growing on me,” Angel stage-whispers back.
“How’s that for ‘redemption?’” Mimzy challenges, completing her stride just a few paces ahead of the new tile.
Alastor actually said that to her, didn’t he? The same damned day that Lucifer showed up.
“You horrible menace,” he says, with overwhelming fondness.
“You gonna kick me out again?” Mimzy demands.
“Come here,” he says—and Mimzy marches crabbily forward to meet him until one of her kitten heels digs into a ‘scar’ left on the tile floor. When it shrieks, she almost jumps.
Mimzy lifts her foot gingerly until the screaming stops. Then she taps it down again, and Husk and Angel echo the tile with discouraging shouting from the bar.
“Yeah, and that’s what you get!” She tells the hotel itself, with completely unearned bluster.
Alastor’s cold, dead heart does a somersault. Not that he has any intention of admitting it.
“You don’t need to do that, dear,” Alastor says, square-stepping around the screaming tile to guide Mimzy off of its radius with a polite hand on her midback. “If you’d met our guests, you’d know this place’s existence is tortured enough.”
Mimzy lets herself be steered as far as three paces from the tile before she turns on Alastor again.
“I’m serious, y’know,” she says, searching Alastor’s face with recognizable intent. He’s almost sure he knows what she’s looking for—but he would be a fool to show it, in a public lobby where anyone might stroll in. “I’m not leaving until you do. So what do you have to say about that?”
Alastor reaches for Mimzy’s hands. That she lets him take them is—
Not a relief, but it’s very welcome.
“I’d ask where we’re going,” he offers, and the cold resolve in Mimzy’s face softens just before she leaps half a foot into the air to throw her arms around him.
It hurts, a little, to catch her. That’s inevitable, with the wound hidden just beneath his button-down. But it also does something to soften the same ache that clinging to Vox this morning soothed. It’s better than that, even, because Mimzy is clinging back.
“I can’t believe you made me come back here,” she gripes, close enough to his ear that it twitches from the breeze. “Don’t’cha know I have a reputation?”
Fond humor tickles the back of Alastor’s throat.
He really doesn’t want to let go of her. Actually, he thinks he’d like to either apologize immediately or put Mimzy in his pocket, which means that he really does have to make himself set her back on her feet.
“Well, that was done for when you first decided to keep my company.”
Mimzy tries to swat at him. Alastor catches her hand, seizing on the momentum to turn her into a spin. At the end of it, she grabs his wrist.
“And like I said before, you’re not getting rid of me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Alastor swears.
“You couldn’t,” Mimzy says, “‘cause that would be a nightmare.”
Alastor snorts. He can’t even bring himself to argue—there’s already something lighter in the air between them, now. To think, he had no idea how he was going to resolve things himself.
(It had been on his list of things to deal with for a while now. It’s just that it all felt so… insurmountable.)
“What’s wrong with you, anyway?” Mimzy adds, casually as anything.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Niffty said I’d find you here,” she says, “but I told her, if Alastor’s missing his own party, he’s laid up or he’s dead.”
(His what.)
Mimzy completes a full circle around Alastor before he’s sorted out whether or not to turn in place to match her—and then she springs up on her toes, touching his forehead with the back of her hand.
“No fever,” she says seriously. “Shoot. D’you think we’re dead?”
Stupid, giddy humor bubbles up in Alastor’s chest.
“What,” he jokes, “do you really think they’d send us to the same place?”
“You better mean ‘cause I’m an angel.”
“You’re at least as deadly as any that I’ve met,” Alastor teases, and Mimzy grins fiendishly back.
“And cuter than those feathered freaks, right?”
“—not to interrupt the love fest,” Angel pipes up, “but where’s the party?”
Mimzy looks the lobby up and down, turning halfway towards Angel with crossed arms.
“What, was this tacky place built under a rock?” Mimzy guffaws. When surprised offense twists Angel’s features, Alastor struggles not to laugh. “Alastor. Baby. Dollface. If you thought you were gonna take Vox’s soul and not get people dancing in the streets, we’re gonna have to get your head checked out.”
—oh.
Well.
Alastor is almost certain that he penciled that whole thing in as ‘Vox’s problem,’ several hours ago.
(“What the fuck?” Husker demands.
And Alastor decides to pencil that part in as ‘Angel’s problem,’ now! You break it, you bought it, as the saying goes.)
“Well, that doesn’t seem civil,” Alastor demurs.
“Fuck civil,” Mimzy says, “he dragged you through the streets and cut your ear off!”
“He got a little carried away.”
“Wow, it’s worse than I thought.” Mimzy squints at him. “Niffty said you needed a girl’s night, but I had no idea it was so serious.”
“By definition, that seems—questionable,” Alastor says, peering down at Mimzy as she raises an eyebrow back at him.
“It’s an honorary membership.” She tells him. “Like how they give celebrities degrees!”
“Is this, like, an invite-only thing?” Angel pipes up, popping his head up from where he’s been whispering to Husker at the bar.
Mimzy twirls herself halfway to face him, and raises a finger to her lips.
“You a girl?” she asks directly. “I’d say you don’t look like one, but—eh.”
Mimzy twists her hand in a so-so sort of gesture while Husker drags his palm across his face.
“Oh, I can be a girl,” Angel retorts, adjusting his top conspicuously over his full chest. “And I’m a celebrity! So, y’know. Make it honorary.”
Mimzy turns to Alastor with unmasked skepticism. Alastor huffs out loud.
“He can come,” he relents. And then, adds— “If he can brave his old room for something more presentable.”
A shadow passes over Angel’s face, some ways between ‘stricken’ and ‘surprised.’
“My stuff is still—?”
“Preserved to a museum quality,” Alastor says, “if Niffty’s had anything to do with it.”
“Where is that little cutie, anyway?” Mimzy peers around the lobby, searching. “I need somebody else to be the lightweight tonight.”
“I’m here!” Niffty comes flying—literally—from the second-floor balcony. Angel stretches four arms up to catch her, and the momentum sends them both spinning. “I’m ready!”
Here and prepared, it seems, if Niffty’s freshly-pressed dress means anything.
“How long have you been scheming?” Alastor asks mildly, as Niffty flashes a broad grin.
“Since this morning.”
“Wretched busybody.”
“You love those,” Niffty says, with the exact cadence of one child teasing another about their crush. It’s one of the most ridiculous things that Alastor has heard all day.
(It’s almost making him miss Vox.)
“Gimme like—ten minutes,” Angel says, setting Niffty down mid-stride. She skitters off to stand by Mimzy, fussing with her skirts and brimming with pride. “Fifteen, tops.”
“Five, or we’ll leave without you,” Alastor threatens, on a whim.
“Okay, okay, I’m moving!”
——
The big challenge is finding a place to drink that isn’t packed with tourists. It’s been like Mardi Gras on steroids ever since the news made it to Al’s turf—in that it’s a big party, sure, but also in the sense that everyone who’s anyone (and a ton of nobodies, too) have decided that now’s the time to come visiting.
Luckily, Mimzy’s lived here for triple her whole life. So she knows exactly where to go.
She drags their foursome way past mainstreet and down a bunch of alleyways. There’s a front way into the club where she’s been singing, nowadays, but that’ll have a line out front and a cover charge.
(Also, if anybody sees Alastor go in the front way, it might turn into a mob scene.)
“Hey, Al?” Angel says, as Mimzy wrenches open a side door by the dumpsters that definitely shouldn’t be unlocked.
“Mm?”
“We ever going to go out anywhere normal?”
“Hey!” Mimzy snaps. The door scrapes loudly at the concrete as she props it open. “Would you rather wait out front with all the other assholes?”
Angel raises all four hands at her like a surrender, and Alastor snickers as he waves Niffty first through the door.
“Didn’t know there was a front!” Angel says. He follows backwards after Alastor to keep talking—Mimzy yanks the door shut, hard, once they’ve all made it inside. “If you knew where Al brought us last time, you’d get why I’m asking.”
The noise of the club is pretty muffled from backstage, but a nearby dressing room is rowdy. Niffty pulls a hard stop right outside it, literally transfixed.
“So Alastor’s making me look bad?” Mimzy baits.
“I mean, I didn’t say that, but—”
“Would you get a load of this guy?” Mimzy says, louder, grinning when Alastor laughs.
“I should have warned you about Angel.” Alastor teases. He grabs Niffty by the scruff to carry her past the dressing room without breaking his stride—not even sneaking a little peek. That’s always been Alastor, though; cannibal murderer or not, he’s a total gentleman. “He’s a scoundrel, actually.”
“You’re making me sound like an old timey sex criminal!”
Niffty’s hanging over Alastor’s shoulder when they pull off identical squints.
“So, you’re like a modern sex criminal?” Niffty offers, like she’s helping.
“I’m not a criminal!” Angel says, dropping his voice into a shouty whisper while Mimzy herds them past the backstage. “I’ve never done anything to anybody that they didn’t ask for. Twice.”
“Public indecency’s a crime, isn’t it?” Alastor asks casually. Heads turn immediately when he leads the way out into the club, but Alastor just twirls his staff and keeps on walking.
“That’s—listen,” Angel says.
“What about solicitation?” Mimzy chimes in, just throwing a little extra gas on the fire.
“That’s just, like, an occasional thing,” Angel retorts.
“What’s the occasion?” Niffty asks.
When Alastor reaches the bar, two sinners scramble out of their seats.
“I don’t know, like—I need cash or Val’s in a bad mood?”
And when Alastor doesn’t immediately sit down, another two hightail it off to find a table instead. Then, Alastor sets Niffty gently on one of the far barstools before sitting himself down. Mimzy makes it a point to squeeze in between them.
“That’s the porn guy, right?” Mimzy scoffs, halfway distracted while she looks at a bar menu. It’s just a printed piece of paper; one corner is soaked with somebody else’s cocktail, and every special on the page is a play on current events. (Mimzy wonders what tastes better: a shot of ‘revenge’ or a glass of ‘karmic relief.’) “They’ll let anybody be an Overlord nowadays.”
Angel’s eyebrows go flying. Mimzy stands by it, though.
“She’s not wrong,” Alastor offers.
“You should’a seen the guys Alastor took out when he got down here,” Mimzy says. “Now, those were Overlords.”
“Were.” Alastor agrees, grinning from ear to ear.
Mimzy’s third-favorite bartender skids to a stop in front of the four of them, overeager in a puppy-ish kind of way. She prefers the guy that works Fridays, personally—he’s got more of a sophisticated edge.
“Hi, Jimmy,” Mimzy says, leaning in a little with her tits out, to be nice. When she glances down the bar, in Alastor’s direction, she notices that Angel’s doing the exact same thing. “Look who I got.”
Jimmy’s eyes follow, and he trips over thin air.
“Oh my—Fuck! I mean, hi! I mean—”
Alastor instantly starts snickering.
“Sorry,” Mimzy waves a hand, “he basically died yesterday.”
“And you’ve been telling stories?” Alastor teases.
“Yeah, but only true ones,” Mimzy says.
“Well, those are the worst kind.” Alastor glances back in Jimmy’s direction, from his floppy pair of dog-ears to his cheap button-down. “Pleasure to be meeting you—quite a pleasure. Not to worry; I rarely harm bartenders.”
“Nice,” Angel says loudly, rolling his eyes.
“What!” Alastor beams. A bead of sweat is working its way down the side of Jimmy’s forehead, but that’s his problem. You can’t post up in the Radio Demon’s territory and not expect to see the Radio Demon! “I said ‘rarely,’ didn’t I?”
“Kinda sounds like an understatement,” Angel says.
“Aw, Husker’s a special case,” Mimzy hand-waves again. “He doesn’t count. Say, Jimmy, do we still have the eleven year Old Overholt back there?”
Jimmy looks halfway scared to turn his back on Alastor to check. Obviously, that just makes Alastor smirk, which makes him even scarier looking.
Mimzy has seriously missed taking him out places.
“Just give us two doubles, rocks, and...?”
“Make it three of those,” Angel cuts in. “And a dirty shirley, right, Niff?”
“Yeah!”
Jimmy’s eyes track nervously to Mimzy.
“...is she,” he starts, not exactly saying it. Just to fuck with him, Mimzy raises her eyebrows like she doesn’t know what he’s trying to say.
“My, he is new,” Alastor remarks. Then he props his chin on one hand and leans in. “I’d bet souls she was an Overlord before you were born.”
And just like that, Mimzy learns that Jimmy’s ears perk up when he’s scared. Who knew!
“Alastor’s nicer when he’s drunk, by the way,” she says. “Just a tip.”
Jimmy takes the hint, and Alastor tilts his chin to look at Mimzy.
“I thought that was nice,” he says, grinning like a cat. “...what is a man who was born this century doing in Old Town, anyway?”
“They stopped ID’ing at the door,” Mimzy jokes. “He said something about a digital detox, I don’t know. And we needed somebody to take shifts.”
“Well, I could have helped with that,” Alastor says offhandedly.
“Aw, come on, Husker could’nt’ve pissed you off that bad.” In one corner of Mimzy’s periphery, Niffty starts shaking her head. But if she thinks that’s going to stop Mimzy, she doesn’t know her well enough.
“You should give him more credit,” Alastor retorts. And, when Jimmy puts a glass in front of him, Alastor goes a little overboard on the first sip. That’s just gonna play in Mimzy’s favor, though, so she decides she’s not gonna comment on it.
“Does it have anything to do with Vox?” Mimzy guesses boldly, leaning in.
Alastor glares at her. Mimzy smiles back.
“We’re not discussing that,” Alastor says, putting on his stern, mean voice.
And well, you know what? Two can play at that game.
“Hey,” Mimzy says sharply. “You’re not taking this away from me.”
Alastor obviously doesn’t know what hit him.
“It’s been ninety years and you finally have a problem I can help with!” Mimzy continues, slapping the bar. “I might not be able to do anything about the Overlord shit or the turf war shit or the hotel shit” —she rattles each item off like an auctioneer, folding fingers down as she goes— “but I can handle boy problems.”
She bridges her chin on all of those folded fingers.
“So. Dish.”
Alastor blinks at Mimzy, genuinely stunned.
“I don’t have—this is ridiculous,” he argues, turning halfway to hide his face behind his drink.
“We should pro’lly take it one boy at a time,” Angel pipes up, grinning behind the glass he was just handed.
Alastor looks like he might be about to find religion.
“There are no boys.”
Angel leans past him to reach Mimzy’s ear.
“There are, like, four.”
“And a pretty girl,” Niffty chimes in—which makes Alastor set his glass down so loudly that Mimzy’s a little worried about the crystal.
“Are we talking about the Princess or that little Overlord?” she asks immediately.
“Okay, two girls,” Angel corrects, grinning from ear to ear as Alastor turns on him with violent intent.
He doesn’t back down either, though. Mimzy didn’t take Angel for a halfway decent ally, but there he goes, surprising her!
“Charlie has been better,” Alastor argues, wrongfooted as he hesitates over a lie. Now, that’s interesting. Usually, he doesn’t mind lying at all.
“So she used to bother you,” Mimzy says. “Figures.”
“—And there aren’t four,” Alastor tells Angel, avoiding Mimzy’s gaze.
“Vox. Val,” Angel says, raising fingers in turn, “Husk. Me.”
Alastor gawks at him, but that doesn’t even look like it puts Angel out. Then he slaps a hand on the bar and goes—
“Fuck. You’re right. Lucifer!”
Alastor shoots him a dark look. Angel smirks back.
“It’s five boys,” Angel says.
“Alright, well, forget about Lucifer,” Mimzy says. “I mean, go figure, he’s exactly Al’s type.”
“What?” Angel says, choking on liquor.
“—of victim!” Mimzy adds with a smirk. “What’d he do, anyway? Call you something? ‘Accidentally’ spill a drink?”
He doesn’t answer right away. That’s probably because Angel’s watching; since they both got down here, Alastor’s never had a problem telling Mimzy why he’s killed.
“Did he step on your hoof?” she guesses. “Was he treating you like the help?”
“You could keep listing things,” Alastor says flatly, “but we’ll be here all night.”
(Mimzy’s not watching him directly, but she does see what she’s saying register to Angel out of the corner of her eye. He looks kind of embarrassed—which, eh. She’s been there. It builds character.)
“So, fuck him,” Mimzy says primly. “He’s a powerless figurehead, and you’re the most powerful Sinner in Hell.”
Alastor rolls his eyes, like that’ll stop her from noticing the softened edges of his smile or the way his ears settle back a little from their straight-up pin.
“He’s a persistent figurehead,” Alastor resists, “but I take your point.”
“So, what’d Husker do?” The walls go right up through the ceiling, all over again. Mimzy leans over the bar. “Hey, Jimmy, could we just get the bottle?”
When Jimmy hustles to bring it over, Angel reaches out to stop him, for some reason.
“Or—hear me out—we pace ourselves a little and remember the whole night this time?”
Mimzy narrows her eyes at him.
“Who’s side are you on, buster?”
A weird look crosses Alastor’s face. Mimzy turns all the way in her barstool to face him.
“What was that?” she demands.
Alastor smiles more defensively.
“I have no idea what you mean,” he says, plucking his glass up from the bartop the second that it’s been refilled and knocking back half of it like water.
“Fine, be that way,” Mimzy dares. “You’re gonna tell me eventually.”
“I am not.”
“So there is something to tell!”
Alastor rears back several inches. Angel blinks at Mimzy with all eight eyes. And behind her, Niffty sips the last bits of undiluted syrup in the bottom of her drink as disruptively as a kid in an otherwise-silent movie theater.
“You know, I’m very good to you,” Alastor grumbles, settling down. “I can’t imagine what I’ve done to deserve this kind of grief.”
Mimzy takes a slow sip of her drink, just in case Alastor wants to use that time to rethink anything he’s saying. When he doesn’t, she puts the glass down and leans in.
“I left you alone for six months, and you almost got yourself killed by angels and actually handed yourself over to a maniac,” Mimzy retorts. “I’ve had outdoor cats with a better track record than you.”
“Until the day I’m eaten by gators,” Alastor says mildly, “I don’t want to hear it.”
“That giant shark was kind of like an alligator,” Niffty volunteers. Alastor shoots a betrayed look across the bar.
(“…the fuck kind of alligators do you guys have,” Angel wonders out loud, but nobody answers him.)
“Right,” Mimzy says, slapping her knee to emphasize. “What are you gonna do with that thing, anyway?”
“Pardon?”
“It was Vox’s, right?” Mimzy twirls a curl around her finger. “You know, I could do with a new purse.”
Alastor’s eyebrows flatten. Eh, it was worth a shot.
“He loves that awful creature,” he says, cagey as he slides his empty glass forward as a signal. Niffty picks up the same cue, waving the sticky remnants of her own drink until Jimmy comes back down.
“Don’t tell me that’s why you didn’t kill it,” Mimzy says.
Alastor glowers at her.
“You know I know you could’ve,” she teases.
“No you don’t,” Alastor lies. He gets way worse at lying, when he drinks. “I was horribly incapacitated.”
Mimzy raises her eyebrows, unimpressed.
“You can only imagine what I’d been through, just before that fight,” Alastor adds, like he thinks she’s just anybody. Like he thinks she doesn’t know him!
“Fine,” Mimzy agrees. “So, now that you’re not ‘incapacitated,’ what are you going to do?”
Alastor’s smile wobbles on his face.
“Also,” Alastor says, obviously coming up with his next lie on the spot, “I have an unpredictable reputation to uphold.”
Mimzy rolls her eyes. Alastor’s loose enough that he snickers instead of trying to look scary.
“Y’know,” Mimzy says, running a finger idly along the rim of her glass, “you’re allowed to like the guy. I’ll only judge you a little.”
“But you will judge,” Alastor says darkly.
“What am I, a saint?” Mimzy starts to ask, but she gets interrupted halfway through.
“—I won’t,” Angel volunteers. Alastor spins in his barstool to turn on him immediately. “What?”
“I find that impossible to believe,” Alastor says.
“Yeah, there’s this old saying,” Angel says. “I think it goes, ‘Let he who isn’t dating Val throw the first stone.’”
Alastor stares at him, flat.
“I don’t care for that comparison.”
Angel grins with all of his teeth.
“Didn’t think you would!”
Alastor sinks into his shoulders, sighing like he needs his whole body to do it.
“Niffty, would you come sit by me?” Alastor says. “I’ve decided I don’t like either of these demons anymore.”
“Yeah!” Niffty chirps. “But you’re not gonna like me, either.”
“I have no allies,” Alastor tells his glass morosely. “They always warn you that it’s lonely at the top, and here I am.”
“Or we’re just the kinds of friends that tell it to you straight,” Angel offers. “Instead of, y’know. Not doing anything about anything until you’re two months into a manic episode and losing all your shit.”
There’s a good long second where it looks like Alastor is considering ignoring that cute little comment. Or maybe biting Angel’s head off.
“What a strange and nonspecific observation,” Alastor says, glaring at Angel out of the corner of his eye.
“Val complains a lot,” Angel replies, with a shrug.
“Keeping Vox around isn’t going to drive me mad.”
“I mean, that’s true,” Mimzy says. “He’s the one that gets crazy.”
“See?” Alastor knocks back the rest of his drink, and slides his glass forward. “It’ll only destroy one of us!”
His smile gets too wide to be anything but a grimace.
“Nothing to worry about.”
It takes until about that moment for Mimzy to realize that it’s serious.
“If he can’t handle himself, that’s not on you,” she says, leaning in a little more intently.
“And if I cause it?”
“Don’t even go there, Smiles—” Angel says, exactly as Mimzy is saying: “—Then it’s on him for making the deal!”
Alastor probably has a quick answer for either of them, but it doesn’t look like he’s decided who to argue with first.
“It isn’t even,” he starts, and cuts off midway through. One of his ears flicks, barely, like he’s trying to keep it pinned upright. “None of this is public conversation.”
“We could take one of the dressing rooms, but people’ll definitely talk.”
Alastor glances at Mimzy, sidelong, and sighs.
“And they aren’t already?”
They find an empty dressing room.
It’s not a lot of space, but there’s something kind of nice about that: there’s just a vanity that Mimzy steers Alastor to sit at like she thinks she might be about to do his hair, a little loveseat that Angel flops onto immediately, and standing room for Mimzy and Niffty. Perching room, in Niffty’s case, since she climbs up onto the vanity to sit right on the edge.
“Alright,” Mimzy says, seconds after she’s shoved a trunk of beads and lace in front of the door. “Now will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Did you bring the bottle, by any chance?” Alastor jokes.
But joke’s on him; Mimzy always keeps a flask up her dress. Alastor’s face turns ridiculous when she whips it out—there’s nothing funnier than a guy who won’t stop smiling even when he’s trying to signal total exasperation.
“No excuses,” Mimzy dares. And it pays off; Alastor rolls his eyes at her, more annoyed with himself for getting a kick out of it than anything else.
“Nothing’s going on.” That’s a bad lie even before Alastor casts his gaze towards a far corner of the room, eyeing the peeling wallpaper.
“What did Vox do this time?” Mimzy persists.
(“This time?” Angel echoes, raises his eyebrows while he keeps his distance from the couch.)
“Nothing,” Alastor repeats. “He did nothing wrong.”
Mimzy watches him closely. As closely as she can.
“He didn’t go completely rogue to force me to destroy one of my—to make new enemies,” Alastor continues, landing on the last words with difficulty. “He didn’t set me up against a bunch of Angels and then leave me for dead. And he didn’t try to kill me, all those years ago, in case you’re curious!”
He’s still grinning, but it’s one of the awful ones. He used to do this when they were alive, too—but it looked different, then, a grit-tooth kind of grief.
Mimzy’s never liked it on him either way.
“Okay, well,” she says. “Even if you’re right, he still did that last thing a few weeks ago.”
Alastor scoffs. The sound kind of worms its way into Mimzy’s chest and tugs.
“…and who the fuck left you for dead?” Mimzy demands, a few seconds too late.
There’s no answer to that. Not for a minute, at least—Alastor pulls back a little and averts his gaze, instead. He considers the wallpaper.
Niffty snakes her tiny little fingers in between the claws Alastor is using to carve furrows in the wooden vanity.
“I was overstating it,” Alastor lies, without looking at any of them. But Niffty’s eye is getting huge and glassy anyway.
“I didn’t mean to,” Niffty whimpers, and Mimzy’s jaw hits the floor.
Alastor’s right there with her, apparently.
“—oh, sweetheart, no—” he starts, floundering as Niffty starts crying on a dime.
“—I thought you were okay,” Niffty wails, curling herself up to cling around Alastor’s arm and shoulder.
There’s a clear second where Alastor completely freezes up. And, by the way, Al’s had that kind of reaction since before the powers-that-be thought it’d be funny to send him down here as a deer. He’s never had a clue what to do with sympathy.
“For Heaven’s sake,” he mutters—and then he glares at Mimzy, horrified, when she starts to step back to give the two of them some space. So she sort of side-steps closer to the side of Alastor that Niffty’s plastered herself to, sticking out a hand to rub her back.
Alastor somehow manages to extricate his arm from Niffty’s clutches. Maybe she knows as well as he does that he’s just going to use it to cuddle her in against his chest.
“I just thought you had to go again,” Niffty says, muffled against the fabric of his coat. Even in private, it’s vague enough not to raise any eyebrows—then again, they’re not in private, not totally. Mimzy sneaks a glance over her shoulder, and sees that Angel’s sitting up.
When she looks back, Alastor’s grimacing again.
“Of course you did.” He’s cradling the back of Niffty’s skull, his claws combing her hair flat. And then he goes still all of a sudden, his ears pinning straight upright for no apparent reason before Mimzy sees Angel coming to prop his hip on the other side of the vanity.
He looks sort of guilty. As usual, Mimzy’s cursed to be the only one in her life who’s never done anything wrong.
“So, uh,” Angel scratches the back of his head, wearing an uncomfortable smile that almost matches Alastor’s. “Wild guess. But. Any chance this is about the hole in your chest?”
Alastor’s ears pin.
“How do you—”
“What the Hell?” Mimzy demands, letting Niffty go altogether to grab Alastor by both arms. He’s too off-balance to stop her; he turns on Angel instead, glaring hatefully.
“Now you’ve done it,” he hisses, like it’s all Angel’s fault. And Mimzy’ll get on board with that, if that’s the play, but not until Alastor clues her in to what the fuck they’re talking about.
“Did what?” Angel says, baffled. “It was right under your—why are you hiding it?”
(Why Angel has seen Al without his shirt on is a question for another time, Mimzy decides.)
“I don’t need your pity,” Alastor hisses. Angel blinks at him mutely—fair response. If you didn’t know Alastor, you’d just think he was a lunatic.
Mimzy squeezes Alastor’s arms, and pulls a sharp breath through her nose. It’s more to give Alastor a second to prepare himself than to calm herself down; Mimzy’s not going to get calm.
“Don’t tell me it was from the hotel,” she says, and Alastor’s whole expression evens out like putting on a mask.
She seriously wants to hit him.
“Alright,” he says, smiling. “I won’t.”
She shakes him instead. That makes Alastor laugh under his breath, and jostles Niffty where she’s climbed into his lap.
“For that spoiled little brat?!” Mimzy demands. Alastor exhales through his teeth.
“She does grow on you,” he offers, like he doesn’t know that’s just going to piss her off.
“Like mold, I bet.”
“Exactly like that,” Angel chimes in. Alastor shoots him a look that’s more exasperated than annoyed.
“Like moss,” Alastor retorts, still petting Niffty absently. “She doesn’t normally do harm.”
Well, that’s a total crock of shit.
“Except when she’s leaving people for dead?”
Alastor hesitates.
“Yes,” he says, “but I’ve accounted for that now.”
Angel puts a hand over his entire face and fully turns around.
“It’s come in handy,” Alastor tells Mimzy seriously, meaning it.
“You’re sick in the head,” Mimzy retorts, with the same blunt edge.
“How long have we known each other?”
She’s going to hit him.
“—fucking Christ, am I an asshole?” Angel breaks in, facing them again.
Alastor looks puzzled.
“Generally, yes,” he jokes, “but that isn’t what you mean.”
“You had this whole spooky enigma thing going,” Angel explains, waving his hands—what, to show what he thinks an enigma looks like?
Alastor’s face twists with offense.
“Had?” He cuts in. Angel ignores that.
“I fuckin’ forgot you’re just a guy.”
Alastor stares at him.
“What, and now you’re insulting me?”
Angel groans out loud.
“You’re a guy, Al,” he says, “a terrifying menace of a guy, but you’re still—we didn’t even look. I didn’t even think about it.”
Alastor arches a single brow over his composed smile.
“Oh, don‘t worry about that,” he says, blasé. “I stopped holding it against you months ago.”
Angel leans over the vanity with one hand flat against the wood. Alastor watches his distress with interest.
“Do remember what I’ve said about redemption,” he says, and Angel groans again.
“I’m not—” he says.
“Trying to be a better person?” Alastor interrupts. “Well, then, you’re doing horribly. I could be worse in my sleep.”
No telling what that’s about. And either way, Mimzy isn’t sure she cares.
“All I’m hearing is that nobody in that shithole cares if you live or die,” she says. “So. Million-dollar question.”
She’s going to have to word this carefully.
“Is anything still really keeping you there?”
It’s nice and vague. Lots of things can keep a person places: stuff they care about, a mission, idiot Princesses that they want to keep hanging around.
(And, you know.
A deal.)
Angel looks up like a shot.
“What?” Mimzy asks.
Then Angel looks at Alastor dead on. Alastor’s smile tightens by inches.
“What?” Angel parrots back, glancing at Mimzy with a loser’s attempt at a poker face.
(Niffty’s just tucked in close to Alastor, minding her business like her life depends on it. Smart girl.)
“Al,” Mimzy starts, vaguely. “What does this guy know that I should?”
Alastor glances sidelong towards the half-barricaded door, narrowing his eyes. And then he looks at Angel, with a sigh.
“Nothing that’s relevant anymore,” Alastor says, cold and precise.
“Wait. So you were—” Angel starts—and stalls, probably because he can’t figure out a coded way to ask whatever he’s asking.
Oh well; Mimzy jumps in immediately.
“You did it?” she demands, a little giddy. Alastor blinks at her.
“No—but it’s over, anyway.”
Mimzy shrieks. It’s not voluntary; it just comes out of her like a giddy explosion, one that also makes her want to fling herself at Alastor. He catches her with a little oof—and then she remembers the whole ‘hole in the chest’ thing, but fuck it, that ship has sailed! She squeezes him anyway.
“I fucking knew you could!” (Alastor snorts at her, but he also frees one arm to hug her back.) “So we can kick that old hag’s ass now?”
Alastor freezes.
“No??” he protests. When Mimzy looks up, she only gets a glimpse of his shocked face before Angel’s open-mouthed gape overhead distracts her.
“Hang on, which old hag is it?” Angel demands. “I know everything else, clue me in!”
“She isn’t a—that isn’t nice,” he says to Mimzy, like he thinks he’s running Sunday school.
“Well, good!” Mimzy retorts, pulling back to posture up instead. “That bitch has a lot worse than that coming!”
Alastor’s ears twitch back.
“You know how I feel about this,” he says, crabby while he cuddles Niffty like a teddy bear. Not that Niffty minds; the tears dried up minutes ago, but she’s still milking them for all that they’re worth.
“Look, it’s her or Vox,” Mimzy says, knowing exactly how unreasonable it sounds the second that it comes out of her mouth.
Alastor chokes on a laugh.
“What?”
“I can only do one bullshit, gracious kumbaya per afterlife,” Mimzy says seriously. “So pick.”
Alastor’s smile trembles. He’s just laughing, though, Mimzy thinks. It doesn’t seem like anything serious.
"You know what?" he says. “I think I might owe Vox.”