Previously: Husk manages to not to get killed, and Alastor should probably not have taken that much medicine.

Now: There are too many things between Husk and the bar.

Updating earlier than usual because I want to post all of this before November, since I'm taking the month to work on the novel I want to publish one day.

- Track 6: Drown It -

After he finished, Husk found himself sitting back and taking everything in somewhat numbly.

Alastor, unconscious and half-dressed on the bed, his own blood still covering various parts of his body, the number of stitches keeping closed the massive wound across his chest too many for Husk to count. The floor, covered in bloody rags and towels and pills and buttons and various bits of furniture debris and office items, a mess he couldn't even fathom starting to mop up. Himself, shaking a little, adrenaline gone and a lack of inebriation leaving him to deal with the knot in his stomach made up of too-complicated emotions and all kinds of other things he didn't want to acknowledge, and uncertain what the future held for him now that this event had taken root in his history.

Don't think about that, he reminded himself. Nothing good would come of it this sober.

He should probably bandage the wound, but the thought of trying to manipulate Alastor's unconscious body so that he could do so left him feeling all kinds of uncomfortable, so he opted to seek out someone's help with the matter to make it less of an awkward tangle of limbs should he wake up in the process.

Washing his hands in the sink took him longer than he thought it would, exhaustion creeping in and making his gaze linger on the way the water ran over his palms and took with it the blood that had dried under and around his nails, but he succeeded in getting himself clean enough to at least open doors without leaving behind traces of Alastor's insides, and proceeded toward the only one he hadn't opened yet. Opening it revealed two things: the hallway, and a person.

Lucifer.

"I've, uh…been here pretty much the whole time," he confessed as he scrambled to his feet from where he had been sitting on the floor on the other side of the hall, gaze not quite meeting his as he spoke. He had bags under eyes that were a little red, like somehow sitting there for the hours Husk had been inside that room had drained him just as effectively. The absence of his hat and overcoat made him look smaller than usual. He continued, "You know…Just in case? Because this is kind of my fault, and Charlie asked, so…yeah."

Husk found himself taken aback, somewhat dumbfounded and unsure how to respond to the knowledge that he'd been there that long, which didn't help the King's apparent anxiety. He fiddled with his clothes, then his hands, and shuffled his feet uncomfortably in the silence.

"He's alive," Husk finally said, shelving the idea of parsing out the man's emotions because he had way too much shit to deal with in his own head to contemplate someone else's. "He was worse off than I think even you could have guessed. Don't beat yourself up over it."

"Who- Who said anything about beating myself up over it?" he rebuffed quickly, attempting to mask the obvious lie with a laugh that came across as forced, which did nothing to temper the relief that flashed across his expression at the news. "I'm certainly not! Nope! Not one bit!"

"…You ain't gotta convince me," he opted to say before the man dug that hole too much deeper. "But since you're here, I need a hand with bandages."

"Oh, uh…" he looked somewhat nervously past him and into the room, stretching onto his toes a little before apparently thinking better of it and putting his heels back on the floor.

"He went and passed out a while ago," Husk told him, guessing the issue and jutting a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing vaguely to Alastor. "He ain't gonna know." Unless he woke up, but he decided to keep the possibility of that to himself in favor of getting this last step over with.

The expression on Lucifer's face shifted into one resembling alarm for a moment before it hardened into something more determined, and he gave a quick if uncertain nod. Husk was a little surprised, given his earlier disdain for the idea of helping the man, but he figured whatever Charlie had done to get him to agree to hang around must have pushed that button labeled "ways to overcompensate for being absent" hard enough that he could get past his misgivings, especially if he was actually feeling as guilty as he looked.

He stopped abruptly upon entering the room, though, looking around at the mess for a long moment. Husk thought he should have expected it, given that most of the bloody destruction had occurred before Husk had first stepped foot in the room, but apparently he hadn't gotten much of a look, or the addition of the medical mess was jarring enough to give him pause. He eventually swept a hand over the room, red smoke and golden sparks traveling in its wake and then sweeping across the floor, over the walls, wrapping around broken bits of furniture and scattered items. The mess vanished while the remaining objects righted and repaired themselves. Only Alastor, the bed he lay on, and the cart of supplies Husk had gathered remained untouched.

Husk huffed, grateful that he didn't need to lift a finger but somehow slightly annoyed by the casual display of power.

Then Lucifer brought a hand to his mouth, suppressing a gag.

"Ugh," he complained as though he had swallowed the mess instead of moving it, leaning into himself and bracing his other hand on his knee. Husk didn't actually know where it all went, he realized, and shook his head before it could wander around the various possibilities that thought conjured up.

He muttered a thanks, unsure what to say otherwise, and proceeded back to the small cart where the bandages still sat, looking out of place among the messier items that hadn't been touched by the magic. Lucifer gathered himself and sidled up to the other side of the bed in the meantime, gaze falling on the wound and staying there with a far-off look. Husk found it particularly unsettling that he still looked on the verge of throwing up, so he asked while holding the white gauze and roll of bandages up for him to see, "No chance you can just magic these on so we can avoid the hassle?"

Lucifer swallowed, tearing his gaze up and away before he placed a hand on his own chest, though whether that was an unconscious reaction to Alastor's wound or to help suppress whatever emotion he was feeling as his fingers dug into the fabric of his striped vest, Husk wasn't sure. "Best not," he replied after a moment. "Don't want to mess up when it's hard to concentrate."

Perhaps cleaning the room hadn't been his wisest decision if he was finding it hard to focus, but Husk felt like he was missing a part of the puzzle needed to understand what Lucifer was really saying. It was difficult to imagine that was all it was when it seemed like his powers came rather easily to him despite his propensity toward getting distracted, so there was clearly more to it. He didn't have the energy to pry for answers or encourage the King to elaborate, though, and left the explanation as it was. Hardly his business, anyway.

Disappointed but not deterred now that he was this close to being done with this, Husk moved on. "Then I just need him lifted up enough to get the wrap under him," he explained as he unraveled and layered a couple of sheets worth of gauze into a strip the length of the wound. Something to prevent the sutures from catching on the bandages when he moved, because the man was not going to stand to lay in bed long enough for the wound to heal enough to no longer need them, and Husk refused to be dragged into redoing any popped stitches.

"Right. Sure," Lucifer replied as Husk placed the gauze and started unrolling enough of the bandages to cover the front of him, but hesitated as he reached for Alastor's shoulders, fingers curling back into his palms several times before he could actually complete the action. He didn't seem to know exactly how to accomplish the task, so Husk started pointing out where to put his hands, how to lift him while keeping his head from falling back, how far he needed to raise him so he had enough clearance, all with a carefully neutral voice. Lucifer didn't protest the practical hand-holding, expression forced flat and concentrated, eyes jumping back and forth between his hands, Alastor's face, and the wound.

Husk worked quickly, both because he didn't exactly need the Radio Demon waking up at this particular moment when both of their hands were occupied and he was far too close for comfort, and because it was becoming increasingly clear that something was off about the King. His limbs trembled just enough to be noticeable, and he looked as uncomfortable as Husk felt.

He wasn't sure if it was the guilt he apparently felt or something else that was eating at him, but he kept any comment to himself.

Bandages were wrapped in an alternating pattern diagonally and horizontally across his torso to keep them from slipping. Alastor looked a little like a mummy by the time he was finished, an image Husk found as amusing as it was off-putting. He turned away from it so that he didn't have to determine which emotion to react to, and gave Lucifer the okay to put him down. He did so with a gentleness he wasn't sure he expected even given the way he was acting.

"So, uh…Do we do anything about the rest of the blood, or his clothing, or…?"

The blood on his skin would be easy enough to wipe away by someone who wasn't Husk, because the process screamed gentle, particularly where it came to his face. Husk thought he would die of mortification before Alastor even had the chance to skewer him. As far as the clothing was concerned, while Alastor's jacket had been completely discarded, his undershirt was still mostly tucked into his pants, suspenders hanging off to the sides like poor imitations of the black tentacles he manifested when attacking. They were likely just as uncomfortable to be in given their state, but addressing that was a much larger can of nope on his list.

"I ain't touching that with a ten-foot pole," he declared with a firm dismissal, taking what was left of the clean supplies and walking across the room to the various cabinets and drawers they belonged in, which turned out to be all of one, because everything else needed to be cleaned, thrown out, or sterilized. He didn't know where any of the towels he'd discarded onto the floor went with Lucifer's way of cleaning, but they at least weren't his problem anymore.

"Maybe I can…" the seraph started, hesitated, then apparently thought better of it. "Maybe later," he said instead, and unceremoniously flopped down on the chair he'd repaired in his cleaning sweep.

"…I don't think you'd get away unscathed if he found out you were contemplating undressing him," Husk cautioned, to which Lucifer groaned in apparent disgust, throwing his head back over the chair.

"I meant replacing them with magic," he clarified quickly with a flourish of a hand and a lackluster trail of red following after it. "It's just…Clothes need more finesse, like the bandages, and if I screw up on something delicate…Anyway, I'll think about it later."

Husk mulled that response over for a few long moments before deciding to return to his side and look over the clothing to reassess the need, given that he absolutely hadn't been looking at the task as objectively as he could. The shirt and suspenders could be removed easily enough without too much awkwardness. Alastor really would kill them, or attempt to, in Lucifer's case, if they physically took care of his bloody pants, so that was still off the list, but Husk decided Niffty could probably handle it, both because she was single-minded enough about things being clean that she probably wouldn't think about the action being lewd in other contexts, and because Alastor was more likely to forgive her than anyone else. He was more comfortable with women, anyway.

The clothing was supposed to be all he was looking at, but Husk found his gaze lingering on the man's left hand and the golden band clamped around it that had lost its purpose hours ago. Resigned to feeling obligated to take care of one more mess, he let out a huff of annoyance.

"Unless he throws a fit when he wakes up, you can probably get rid of the cuffs," he noted, returning to the drawer for the bandages again. He hadn't actually intended to do anything about it, but the hand looked fairly mangled and was still slowly oozing blood, so the scratches were probably deeper than he'd originally thought. No sense in leaving other wounds open to more infection. "He was pretty determined to take them off."

"Uh, no. That needs to stay on until he's clear."

Husk frowned as he turned back, because Lucifer's tone was suddenly much stronger than it had been, firm and grave despite him looking like he wasn't sure how to conduct himself otherwise up until this point. He found that same seriousness in his gaze as the King lifted his head to look at him, along with a hint of incredulity for something he didn't understand.

Lucifer apparently read the question in his expression as the silence dragged on. "Because it's drawing out the angelic grace Adam left rocking around in his veins?" he explained like he was supposed to know that. "It's half of what I'm too busy concentrating on to do anything else, because fuck Adam. And fuck Alastor, too; his power shouldn't be this difficult to cut off, but he's as annoying awake as he is unconscious, apparently."

Husk had a difficult time processing what he was being told, but…

Cut off.

"Oh, shit…" he muttered, feeling his entire body shudder.

"Oh, wait. Right, you weren't downstairs when I told them about drawing out Adam's grace," Lucifer continued, waving off his mistake with a flippant gesture of his hand, a contrast to the growing weight of the realization Husk was coming to. "I suppose I didn't actually explain it to everyone else, though… Well, anyway; the short of it is that grace feeds off of demonic power because the whole idea is that good defeats evil and whatnot, so I actually have to block out whatever demonic power he's holding onto to siphon Adam's shitty power out, or it won't let go. Bastard wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise once he realized I was restraining him both physically and magically, and…Well, there was a lot of blood, so I figured I was doing as much as I could, and…probably would mess things up more if I stuck around any longer to try," he finished, glancing back at Alastor's supine form and making a face before looking away to pick at his clothing again.

Husk didn't care. The only thing he could focus on from his entire explanation was that Alastor was powerless this entire time.

Everything took on a new light with that knowledge. He'd been dealing not with an Alastor that was irritated, but an Alastor that was afraid. The demon had been robbed of his teeth and claws. All the spitting and hissing had just been a front.

And it was so obvious, looking back. His inability to pull him to his knees, the lack of overgrown limbs and snapping joints and radio frequencies, his complaint about it being too quiet without doing anything about the lack of noise himself. Hell, his smile dropping should have told him all of this, because it wasn't designed to, not while his power held it in place.

Husk had actually truly had a chance. It wasn't just a brief fantasy that he felt too guilty to indulge in. It could have been real.

Lucifer apparently didn't like how long the silence was dragging on, because he continued, "I'd change it to something less bulky if I could, but it's a delicate balance I have going on here, and I don't want to accidentally feed more angelic grace into him while he's, you know, like this because of angelic grace, so…yeah."

Husk didn't know what to do with any of this knowledge, not at all, so he made the abrupt decision to leave the room as quickly as possible.

He took the bandages from the drawer, walked over to Lucifer, and tossed them onto his lap. The King reflexively scrambled to grab at them when they bounced off of his leg and nearly onto the floor. "His hand needs wrapped up," Husk said flatly. "I'm going to go get a drink, take a shower, and then get another drink, because this shit is not something I want to think about sober."

"Wait, but I –!"

"He's not gonna wake up any time soon," he cut him off, turning away toward the exit. "I'll send Charlie up or something, so you don't have to stay here."

He walked right out the door, shutting it firmly and ignoring the King's additional protests, consequences be damned. He didn't take the elevator, instead opting for the stairs, because moving was what he needed to do right now, head spinning through too many thoughts and possibilities and squandered opportunities and frustratingly conflicting emotions.

He'd made a choice.

It just wasn't an informed one.

"God fucking damn it," he cursed. What had he become? To allow himself to care enough – because who was he kidding, he did – to sit through hours of cleaning up Alastor's own mess, to worry when it looked possible that it wasn't going to amount to anything, to not want Charlie to end up crying over another oversized portrait of someone she considered a friend, all while he was still chained to that bastard; what he must be was screwed up in the head.

He wanted to get himself wasted, but even that thought gave him pause, because he hadn't been doing that for months now, instead letting himself float around in a buzzed state at most, drinking a little more when they had any of the supervised and pitiful parties for which Charlie relented enough about the hotel policies to agree that in moderation was fine, all because Alastor had pressed her about it. He dressed it up as a test of resisting temptation and making wise choices, manipulated her into thinking it was one more way she could rebuild her projects into creatures worthy of redemption, when all it had really been was a ploy to get her to stop complaining so that he could indulge in his preferred liquor in peace.

He paused to punch the wall as he reached a landing, which was the only reason he realized he was on the third floor, the sign above his fist proudly proclaiming the case in a script far too fancy for a place that used to look so humble.

Frank.

He detoured to room 306 for the nearly forgotten creature, but finding the door locked made him growl in frustration. He didn't have keys for anything but his own room, the bar, and a couple of storage spaces. Frustrated as he was, he gave the door a solid kick instead of waiting to grab someone with a full set or happened across KeeKee, the magical feline that doubled as the hotel's master key. Two more with increasing vexation, and it gave.

The room was unsurprisingly dark, but his eyes acted enough like the cat he resembled to compensate for the lack of light, and he marched over to the closet across the room. It wasn't locked itself, and sitting on the floor inside was the only surviving member of Sir Pentious' crew of minions, who looked up at him with a somewhat bewildered expression and managed to smile wide despite the gag taking up most of his face, which Husk promptly removed.

"Heya, Cat Man!" he greeted him with an enthusiasm no one locked in a dark closet for days should have.

"It's Husk," he corrected for what was probably the hundredth time, but the egg had a strong tendency toward nicknames, and he suspected a very poor memory for anything generally factual. "Alastor's taken care of, so you're not staying in here anymore," he explained as he untied the rope. It was…surprisingly simple. He probably could have wiggled his way out if he had tried, but he also wasn't very bright.

What he was was apparently quite loyal to his new boss.

"But, but Boss said, 'You must remain here until this problem goes away,' and if it hasn't gone away, then I gotta stay here and keep my mouth shut about the giant wound on his chest that looked really painful, or there will be consequences!"

He didn't sound concerned; rather, he seemed excited and sure of himself instead, stance as proud as it could be for someone with his strange body. His imitation of Alastor was poor but appropriately sing-song, enough so that Husk could imagine the phrase from the original source.

It was oddly endearing.

"It's not a problem anymore," he said, sweeping him out of the closet and depositing him on the floor. "He just can't get you himself right now, so it's up to me to clean up his mess, as usual."

"Oh! Then I am going to get some food! My tummy has been rumbling and I was worried it was being too loud for the Boss' task!"

On that cheery note, the egg waddled out of the room, because it apparently didn't take much to convince him despite that loyalty. Husk frowned, sighed, and followed after, though when he tried to shut the door, he realized he'd broken the strike plate and that it would no longer latch.

Something to deal with later. He left the door ajar.

His goal being booze first and foremost meant that finding everyone in the lobby left him frowning. He supposed he shouldn't have expected them to stay cooped up in the meeting room for the hours he'd been occupied, but it meant one, two, three, four more things to keep him from his vice, five if he counted the addition of Razzle hovering around with a pitcher refilling glasses, and he was somewhat grateful he'd retrieved Frank the way he had, because it had allowed him to let off steam on a door instead of snapping immediately at the group as they crowded him following Charlie's shout of his name, obscuring the bar from view and further blocking him from what he needed.

"Guessin' that ain't yours," Angel commented, looking him over and staring pointedly at his chest, where the white of his fur was stained red to varying degrees. His expression left Husk with the impression that he was worried, though either for him or for Alastor, he wasn't entirely sure and didn't want to clarify.

"Bastard made a mess of himself," he grunted, and all but shoved past them.

Bar. Booze.

Niffty skittered around him and then up his leg, halting his progress to ramble, "Oh, you're dirty! Can I clean you up? What about the room? And Alastor?"

He picked her off of himself with a growl and shoved her into the arms of the person closest to him, which was somehow still Angel, which meant he wasn't making any progress.

"Is he okay?" Charlie asked, her voice frantic. She asked again when he kept moving, "Husk, Alastor's okay, right?"

Her hand came down on his shoulder, and his immediate reaction was to pull it from her grip. Scratch that; he still might snap. He felt like his nerves were pulled taut like a rubber band, the pin holding it in place a hair from letting go.

"Hey, asshole!" Vaggie yelled.

The pin gave.

"He's alive!" he shouted back, whirling on them. "I went in there, played nurse to the monster that owns my soul, and even said sorry when he flinched! I only stabbed him with the needle I used to stitch him up, and I only thought about killing him a couple of times, except apparently I care about your feelings, so I didn't! Happy?! Am I fucking redeemable now?!"

Guilt hit him immediately when the red faded from his vision and he took in everyone's expressions in the following silence, the way they had backed away from him, the breaths they were holding. Angel looked worriedly between him and the couple, Niffty in his arms gazing at him with an uncomprehending frown and knit brow. Vaggie managed to express both the anger she so typically resorted to and obvious concern in the look she regarded him with, all while holding Charlie, who…

"Ah, shit, Charlie, I didn't mean…" he started and found he couldn't quite complete the apology as fat tears rolled down her cheeks. It was so obvious that she'd already been crying, eyes red and face puffy, everything about her clearly disheveled and tired, and he'd just gone and given her one more thing to feel responsible for, to feel guilty about. It wasn't her fault he'd started caring. He shouldn't be taking this out on her. On any of them.

"I'm so sorry, Husk!" she said quickly, her words distorting around the sob that escaped her throat. "I should have thought about…Of course this was hard for you!"

"Charlie, he volunteered," Vaggie reminded her, and him, shooting him a harsh look. Razzle, who had drifted over to add additional comfort to the Princess, mirrored that look less effectively.

"I did," he reiterated quickly. "She's right. I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm just…I really need a drink."

He did. He really did, but…

His hands were shaking, he realized, and he didn't know if it was from his anger, his confusion, his sobriety, or the knowledge that he'd really messed this up. Maybe it was all of it.

"You – you did such a good thing!" she continued, interrupted by a hiccup and the process of wiping tears from her eyes. "Even though it was hard! I appreciate you so much!"

"Why don't we save the discussion of Husk's gold star achievements for a little later, eh, Charlie?" Angel stepped in, the two arms not holding Niffty gesturing calmly. "You've been dyin' to go an' see 'im – why don'tcha go check in on Al? If he's acceptin' visitors?"

The last question was directed at him, and Husk found himself swallowing carefully, trying to still his hands. He shoved them in his pockets when they wouldn't cooperate.

"He's unconscious," he said with as soft an expression as he could manage for them, trying not to worry Charlie further, though it didn't seem like he accomplished that by the way her expression tightened with concern. Vaggie looked surprised, too, if not mildly worried. "Didn't wake up when we dressed his wound, so I think he's going to be out of it for a bit, which isn't surprising, considering."

"We?" Vaggie asked, confused. Trust her to immediately pick up on the plural.

"Lucifer was up there when I went to get a hand with the bandages," he explained. "He cleaned up most of the mess in the room, too."

"There's no more mess?!" Niffty interjected, going rigid in Angel's arms.

"Niff, ya don't gotta clean everythin'," Angel noted, patting her head gently. "Ya haven't sat down for more 'n a minute. Try'n be happy someone else stepped up, maybe?"

She was worried in her own way, it seemed, because Angel's words only seemed to distress her more. "Alastor could use a wipe down," Husk said, offering her a compromise. "He won't kill you for taking a washcloth to his face, at least."

"Yay!" she shouted, clambering out of Angel's arms in the same manner as an excitable cat, and quickly scurried off and up the stairs, as though she knew exactly where she was going. He wasn't going to chase after her to find out. It didn't seem like any of the others planned to, either.

"…You said Dad helped?" Charlie asked tentatively as she vanished from sight. He hoped the hesitation in her voice wasn't because she was worried he was going to snap at her again. He'd work up a better apology for that later.

"Yeah," he confirmed with a shrug. "But even with Alastor out, he seemed a bit nervous about being in the room, so maybe it's best if you do head up there."

"If Alastor didn't want us to know, though, we might upset him…"

"Well, we know, and fuck him for being a pain in the ass and letting it go this far. He can get over you checking in, and besides, it's probably best not to leave him unsupervised." Or Lucifer, for that matter.

"And Niffty's probably gonna scare the piss outta yer dad if he didn't already hightail it outta there," Angel added helpfully with a shrug and an uneven smile.

His prediction made Charlie go a little wide-eyed at the thought, and Vaggie took her by the shoulders and directed her toward the elevator, saying, "Come on, Sweetie. Let's go rescue your dad and pay that pendejo a visit." Husk didn't think the elevator was going to be faster than Niffty, but he kept that to himself as the two girls and the little goat demon disappeared into it. Maybe Niffty barreling into the room would shake the King out of his awkward funk.

With them gone, it was just him and Angel, and the spider put a gentle hand on his shoulder and gave it a light squeeze before gesturing to the bar. Husk let out a breath and marched himself behind the counter and directly for Alastor's favored whiskey because he fucking deserved the good stuff, before deciding he'd had enough of the bastard for the day and grabbed a pricy bottle of gin instead, guzzling it straight from the bottle. He did not drain the whole thing, but it was damn near tempting, the burn and the weight in his stomach a relief.

"Ya gonna be alright?" Angel asked him as he came back from around the bar and took a seat on one of the stools next to him. He spoke quietly, and Husk could at least tell that it was gentleness and not nervousness that brought it low. "It ain't like ya to lose yer temper like that."

That was probably a lie, but Angel seemed to genuinely believe his own words, and Husk supposed there was a difference between him being generally grumpy and irritated and what had happened a few minutes before. He didn't have an answer, though, mostly because he couldn't put into words the twisted and tangled ball of emotions in his gut that he was hoping the alcohol would ease apart, or at least bury so that he didn't have to deal with it anymore.

He tried to ignore the distinctly recognizable voice that was reminding him how unhealthy the approach was, and the way his hands were still trembling lightly.

When he took too long to acknowledge the question, Angel slipped off the stool and around the bar, taking up a rag and a glass and doing about the worst impression of him Husk could think of when he leaned over the bar and said in a voice that was a few octaves too low, "Seems like you need a bartender to talk to."

He couldn't help the smile that tugged at his lips. Fucking asshole, throwing his own lines back at him.

Angel himself couldn't keep a straight face, and when he was done laughing, he discarded the glass he was cleaning and gave him all his attention. "Lay it on me, Husk."

It'd be pretty fucking hypocritical of him not to, he figured, so he took another drink and let out a long-suffering sigh.

"I had every chance to kill the bastard," he said. "Get myself off his leash, out of his hands. It would have been easy.

"But every time I thought about it, I felt fucking guilty. I had to make up excuses when he asked me why I was helping, because even he knew I should be burying a knife in his heart. When Lucifer made it clear how much Alastor had to trust me not to kill him, I just…I had to get out. I don't want to deal with this shit."

He took another long drink, because he really didn't want to deal with it. He didn't know how to, beyond drowning it.

He wasn't ready to say that out loud.

"Think Al's gonna appreciate all yer hard work?" Angel asked.

He barked a disbelieving laugh first, because the honest answer was no, but then he caught himself on Alastor's strange comments, and found himself unexpectedly having to think about that.

"…He'd never say it," he eventually said. "So who knows. I'm not gonna ask."

Angel let out a whistle, and Husk wasn't sure why until he said, "Helpin' someone ya hate, and not expectin' anythin' in return. That's pretty Charlie of ya, Husk."

"Don't start that fucking shit," he warned, draining the rest of the bottle.

"I'm just sayin'" Angel continued, holding his hands up placatingly, the soft smile on his face equal parts irritating and soothing. "I couldn't'a done that if it were Valentino up there."

"First of all, we all hate Valentino," he said bluntly. He couldn't have him thinking his suffering here would be equivalent to that, because it wasn't. "Charlie might've even looked the other way if she was slightly less of a pacifist. I hate Alastor, but I'd take him over Valentino any day. At least he has lines he won't cross."

"Huh. Guess there's some sufferin' even he don't like."

"It's not exactly a high bar."

"Fair," he replied with a shrug, and seemed to leave it at that. Angel turned away to choose a bottle from the shelf behind the bar, apparently noticing his being empty, and produced something a bit lighter than his general taste, but Husk let him pour it into a couple of martini glasses and didn't comment about the glass being wrong or the drink being improperly dressed when he slid it across the bar to him.

The silence was amicable, but Angel wasn't one to let it go on for long if he could help it, so he eventually broke it to ask, "Do you know why you did it?"

"Fuck, no," he said honestly. There were a thousand reasons not to, and Charlie alone shouldn't have been enough to convince him not to take the opportunity to run. None of them should have been, and yet he'd blamed them all the same.

What a mess he was.

"I think I know."

Angel's comment made his gaze snap up to him, and his reaction brought a chuckle out of the spider, whose eyes crinkled in a fond look that made the rest of him look entirely too soft as he leaned into one hand to gaze at him from across the bar.

"Yer a good man, Husk."

Heat that had nothing to do with the alcohol in him rose across his cheeks.

"Fuck you," he said abruptly, averting his gaze as his words nearly stuttered over themselves. The comment was too close to Alastor's joking suggestion that he was aiming for redemption, except it was coming from Angel, who knew how to be genuine when it mattered, who removed his Angel Dust the Porn Star mask when he talked to him like that, and fuck him for being observant enough to know when he did. He drank more to squash the feelings that evoked.

Angel laughed, knowing there wasn't any malice behind Husk's response, and punched him affectionately on the arm that wasn't handling a drink, before they both got distracted by the delayed arrival of Frank. Husk didn't realize he'd passed him, and thought maybe he'd wandered down a different route or had gotten lost, given the new building. Having not known the minion had been located, Angel came around the bar to interrogate him on why he'd been missing.

Frank's recounting left a lot of questions even despite Husk's knowledge, and Angel dismissed it with a kind but doubtful-sounding, "That's rough, buddy," before telling him to go to the kitchen where he'd whip him and everyone else up some food.

As the egg waddled off, Angel turned back to him and patted his shoulder. "I'm serious, ya know," he said, as if Husk had doubted that. "Ya did good. Now go get a shower – ya kinda need one. Food'll be ready when yer done."

Husk flipped him off while Angel laughed. He then finished his drink, cleaned up the glass and straightened up what had been disturbed behind the bar, and headed back up the stairs to his room.

Belatedly, he realized his hands had stopped shaking.

Notes:

Concerning Alastor's smile: for this story, I've written it as self-imposed, given the theme of control his entire character exhibits. I am generally of the mind that it's been forced on him in some way, though whether that's because of his own chains, his Hell form, or what he had to do to gain his powers, I haven't decided (and hope the show will eventually reveal in the future).

On Lucifer: I won't be doing a part with Lucifer's perspective on these events, so you're only ever going to get Husk's interpretation (somewhat neutral, more observant than Lucifer would probably like), and Alastor's (incredibly negatively biased because, as Husk stated, Lucifer is the capital T Threat), so I'll say a couple of things here about how I'm hoping to portray him. Charlie is his number one priority, and he's hyper-fixating on repairing their relationship, which he then messes up spectacularly. Husk is reading him right in that he's feeling guilty, but in case you were thinking he was feeling bad for Alastor being hurt, it's not meant to be that. He's just spiraling and overthinking and suddenly everything, including Alastor, seems like it needs to be handled like glass or he might break his relationship with his daughter more.

You'll get a little more info on his mindset in the remaining chapters, but I wanted to clarify since both of the characters you'll get that from are unreliable narrators to varying degrees, and reading through this, I can see how some of it might get interpreted as minor RadioApple shipping, which, to be clear, I do find cute, but I'm not aiming for in this particular series.