Hanging around Charlie and company has done awful things to Husk's ability to remain in his preferred state of apathy. For the most part, he finds he doesn't mind as much anymore, until the day he realizes Alastor is hiding wounds from them, and the compulsion to do something about it stands in firm contrast to his hatred for the man who stripped him of everything he'd once had.

He doesn't care about him.

So why is he going through all this trouble?

(A-Side)

- Track 1: Checklist -

It started with a cough.

Nothing deep or alarming in any way. Just a light clearing of the throat that drew his attention up from the bar and to the smiling face he'd become all too accustomed to seeing far too much of ever since he'd gotten roped into this gig. Alastor's expression was nothing short of unsettling, entirely normal for the monstrous being, and Husk rolled his eyes and tipped the cheap booze in his hand back and into his own throat, ignoring the sudden urge to clear the burning sensation it left behind in a similar way.

Fuck if he knew why it stood out to him. It shouldn't have, but it made him look, and it was what he would blame for the series of other…irregularities he started to notice about the man who owned his soul.

Well into their plans for reopening, and with the fire of Charlie's passion gaining a new intensity ever since the failed extermination, Husk found himself subjected to many a meeting. New facilities meant new expectations and procedures, including for his (admittedly rather nice) bar, and while he was 'hired' to man said bar, with the very limited staff at the Princess's disposal, he and everyone else, Angel Dust included, were testing out additional hats, as it were. Thus, meetings.

Something about the way they broke for lunch triggered the alarm in his brain that flashed the memory of that stupid little cough through his gray matter, and he found his eyes drawn over to Alastor, who was not sitting at the table with the rest of them.

"Again," something whispered between his ears, like his own mind was either afraid to voice the note or apprehensive of how it might come across.

Charlie had given up asking the pinstriped horror to join them at the table. She'd once offered him the seat next to her, the one Lucifer would occupy when the King himself was in attendance, and he'd declined, and that was that despite her clear disappointment. He didn't sit at the table with the man present, and elected not to change his approach when he wasn't, as though it would make it too clear that his decisions were based solely around her father's comings and goings. Husk had paid it enough thought to find the whole thing childish in a way that only two men whose insecurities ruled their actions could color it, and pondered how long it would take for them to be at each other's throats again as they attempted to mask how they felt about the other replacing them despite it being clear that Charlie had enough room for both of them in her hotel, massive egos and all.

It was stupid, in any case. It wasn't supposed to stand out as weird beyond that, but then it did.

Because it wasn't just at the meetings, that whisper forced him to realize. When Husk thought about it, the sinner hadn't even deigned it worth sitting at the bar for the whiskey he'd demanded during their celebration night, and despite making periodic meals for them because of an enjoyment of cooking that seemed to have carried over from his time on Earth just to spite his personality in Hell, Alastor hadn't actually joined them for said meals. It wasn't like it had never happened before given his decidedly different…tastes, but it was happening too consistently now.

…Had he seen him sit down even once in the newly built hotel?

Husk frowned, shook his head, and returned to the bar for an early afternoon drink on the pretense that he was going to make sure Cherri hadn't raided it while unsupervised, determined to knock the weird thought out of his skull.

It persisted instead, and then multiplied.

In the days following the victory over Adam, Husk realized there were various other things off about Alastor, that little voice within him pointing things out like it was scratching down lines on a list he didn't realize he'd been keeping. The man spoke less. Appeared less, too, though his penchant for abrupt entrances remained mostly unchanged and seemed to delight him just as much. He'd always had an aversion to being touched, with exceptions for few and no qualms with initiating invasions of personal space of his own, but he seemed to actively increase the distance between himself and others lately, and Husk realized the general harassment he typically endured from his contract holder had ebbed to something he might dare call tolerable if held to the fire about his opinion.

Annoyed by his own apparent concern for the change, Husk took to a bottle of stronger liquor to silence his thoughts, and caught something unexpected out of the corner of his eye as he drank.

Alastor, steadying himself subtly with his hand on the wall behind him, just the slightest hesitation to move away from the support, before straightening his spine and following behind Charlie as she chattered on about a new defense idea she and her father had envisioned.

"Sounds exactly like something your father would conjure up!" he replied to her, voice dripping with a false sanguinity brought on by the mention of the King. Charlie either wisely ignored his tone, or more likely missed it entirely, because she also didn't react to the way his voice started out with an unusually loud and stuttering static filter before it evened itself out to an acceptable volume and smoother cadence.

Husk, of course, did not miss it. Not the voice, not the subtle way his strides were shorter, and not the way he hesitated just long enough to pick up a paper that had fallen from the stack Charlie had all but shoved at him in her excitement that the Princess apologized with a laugh and got it herself, allowing him to avoid bending forward, which was a generally necessary requirement for getting up from a chair.

Another line appeared on his mental list, and Husk drank more furiously.

Being buzzed did not help him feel any less annoyed by his own thoughts. It amplified the feeling instead, enough that Angel was asking him what had crawled up his ass and died, and he grumbled about stitched-on expressions and this hotel shit rubbing off on him before asking him outright, "You notice anything off about Alastor?"

Angel raised a deceptively delicate eyebrow, pointing out Husk's flawed wording without having to utter a single one himself, and he nearly smacked himself on the forehead. There was always something off about the Radio Demon, given his entire personality and that obstinate grin of his. After a moment and a chuckle, Angel replied, "If ya mean how he hasn't said anythin' lately about how entertainin' our failure is gonna be, sure." He shrugged, apparently not having noticed anything beyond that, and then elaborated with a chuckle that puffed up the fur on his chest with humor, "Bet havin' his ass handed to him gave him some perspective."

Husk twitched. Defeated? Alastor?

"You think he got beat?" he asked. He couldn't imagine it, even as his mental list started pointing at the very conclusion lighting up like a neon sign in a dark alley at the end of it, as though it had been like that the whole time and he was supposed to have seen that himself much sooner, but he'd instead put on a blindfold that smelled of fermented sugars and was decidedly red in color.

The spider looked perplexed, shoulders relaxing and head tilting one way as his eyes pinched in curiosity. "Why else you think he disappeared durin' the fight?"

It was Husk's turn to shrug, feeling out of his element suddenly. "Figured he wanted to watch us struggle for his entertainment," he replied honestly, a mental image of the man running radio commentary in that tower of his too easy to bring to mind. "That fight was going too smoothly for a while. Probably a little boring for him."

It had been an easy conclusion, even despite Adam completely decimating the entire building in a single stroke of his axe guitar and thus committing the radio tower attached to it to much the same fate, but Angel's suggestion put cracks in the image, a spider's web of lines and distortions, and he now wondered why it had seemed so fitting for the Radio Demon to have just left in the middle of everything.

Angel frowned, further fracturing it. "Smiles agreed to defend the hotel, and deals are kinda his thing, right?" Apparently aware that he was sounding like he was defending the guy to someone whose soul was owned by him, he waved his hand dismissively before adding, "'Sides, Adam crushed his barrier like it was nothin'. Broke his mic, too. Figure he was stronger than he looked, especially after the way he took out Pents. Just…poof, ya know? Easy to underestimate a guy unironically calling himself 'dick master.'"

They shared an amused huff at the absurd ways the First Man's massive ego had manifested, before the reminder of the cost of that collective underestimation settled a heavy cloud of grief over them for a long moment, and Husk found himself staring into the neck of the bottle in his hand.

He knew Alastor was strong. Terrifyingly so, for most. Even when he was an Overlord himself, he hadn't held power like that. Husk was a children's nightmare, a mere monster under the bed compared to the unyielding shadow that lingered in every corner, constant and chilling and yet inviting in the way darkness attracts even those who swear they will never turn to it only to find themselves drawn into a knife-sharp jaw as it snaps closed around them. Alastor was a force of nature dressed in a tailcoat the color of blood, a charismatic smile painted on a reaper's scythe. Having to consider a terror beyond him was something he avoided thinking about, mainly because his soul couldn't be in much worse hands.

"Why ya askin'?" Angel prompted him, and Husk tipped the rest of the liquid in his bottle into a glass to slide across the counter and into one of Angel's several hands. Something to occupy the other's mouth while he thought, because typically it was he who was the one pointing out the obvious, not the other way around, and he needed a moment to sort out his brain.

Despite knowing how hard the fight with Heaven was and that Alastor had found himself cornered before and desperate enough to sign his own soul away, he hadn't considered that THE Radio Demon had been forced to run. He didn't know why. It seemed so obvious now, hindsight being what it was. Maybe he was too caught up in being afraid of Alastor and the power he displayed after all those years away, in how easily he was left a trembling, cowering mess of regret at the sinner's feet. It was easy to have your vision skewed when the thing staring back at you could literally swallow you whole.

Husk hated the man. It was difficult not to, especially after being called a pet before that particular threat, and that wasn't going to change as long as the other held his soul by a chain and the promise of becoming another scream in the background of his broadcasts loomed over him. He was under no illusions that he wouldn't follow through with his words, even as he played nice with the Princess who would certainly find issue with that course of action. Their resident eldritch horror helped the hotel run smoothly for her, Husk would admit, but his relationship with Charlie only went as far as Alastor wanted it to, and when he was done being entertained or got what he was truly aiming for, that would be it. He would remind them what he was, Charlie's feelings be damned. It really was just a matter of time.

If he lived to see that day, Husk would admit that it would probably break his heart a bit when it all came crashing down.

Husk liked the hotel, despite wanting to run from the reason he was there in the first place. Angel Dust made for a good counter to the desire. He liked Charlie, too; for all that she could be naive and overzealous, she had her heart behind everything she did, which was a breath of fresh air for a soul condemned to eternal damnation. As much as he doubted her dream, he couldn't find it in himself to deny her the chance to try. He even wanted to help, feeling less forced the longer he was here, because she was a damn near infectious melody of positivity, and his soul was starved for it.

Alastor being here was a threat, whether he was leashed, full power, or wounded. The rest of them had proven that they could hold their own in a fight against angels, and if Charlie killing off the sinners that threatened her work didn't scream hypocrisy to her cause, she'd probably be a force to be reckoned with if anything else came knocking, but none of them were single-handedly making anyone think twice about showing up with ill intentions.

It was because Alastor was that threat that he held the ostensible role of protector, his reputation for being ruthless and history of backing that up without remorse surviving even his seven-year absence. He might believe himself replaced by Lucifer in that role given his power, but Lucifer hadn't been active in Hell in so long that his own reputation was more curiosity than threat, and more likely to attract than repel. The King also had a whole different rulebook holding him back from throwing his own weight around. Him getting involved in the fight against Adam was bound to have consequences, even if he only stepped in when Charlie was in danger, and Husk couldn't imagine the shit that would go down if Hell's King didn't navigate his involvement beyond that very carefully. There was a reason he was more consultant than staff right now.

Alastor was necessary, and if he couldn't fulfill his role, he was a liability instead, because if anyone with the power to try to take him out realized they might actually succeed, he was going to be painting a giant target on the hotel's front door. Husk didn't want the problems that would come with that power struggle, but that meant he was going to have to stick his neck out to try to do something that was going to look a lot like helping the stubborn ball of crazy at the end of his chain if everyone else in the hotel continued to overlook the signs his mind kept adding to his list.

Eventually, he sighed deeply and with a great reluctance that came with understanding what was to come.

"I'm pretty sure he hasn't recovered yet," he admitted, his voice betraying the annoyance the burden of that knowledge was for someone who was apathetic to the plights of the man in question. "Bastard's acting fine, but if you pay attention, it's pretty obvious."

The porn star hummed thoughtfully, brow creasing in either thought or concern, the latter of which Husk did not want to confirm. The expression didn't last long, thankfully.

"You worried about 'im?" Angel asked, tone doubtful and amused, but eyes a bit more sincere.

"Fuck, no," he scoffed emphatically, leaning forward on the bar with both elbows as though getting his own expression closer to the spider would make his disdain that much more obvious. For good measure, he pointed an ardent finger right between Angel's eyes. "Like I give two shits about that asshole. Let him curl up and die on his own for all I care. Best day of my afterlife as far as I'm concerned."

Angel chuckled, knocking back his drink before setting it on the bar with a sigh and a somehow knowing smile.

"So, ya gonna do somethin' 'bout it?" he asked, that annoying grin still in place.

Silence. Eventually his shoulders slumped with resignation, and Husk put his chin in his hands, groaning.

"…I'm gonna regret it."

Notes

Hazbin Hotel took over my brain. It's not leaving me be, so I keep writing. Alastor probably owns my soul at this point, given how much of my musing have centered on him.

I did not start writing this with the intention of staying entirely with Husk, considering the focus of the story, but I did, so that's where this story will remain. The summary includes "A-Side" because there will be a "B-Side" to this weird cassette tape theme I decided to organize this under, but that's for the future.

This will update at least once a week, probably Thursdays. B-Side is going to be a while yet because for once in my life I'm writing everything out before I post it so that all I have to do are minor edits. It's nice.

Now I just have to stay on schedule.

Side note: Ao3 has better formatting for this story than FFN, if that's something you care about. I'm there under the same username.