Disclaimer: I don't own Hazbin Hotel
Title: Heaven is the feet or whatever
Summary: Vaggie has a thing for feet. Somehow this leads to her learning hoofcare.
...
They don't really discuss it- it just happens.
Vaggie marveled at the adaptability of Charlie, truly. She's been in Hell for such a short period of time, and yet she has not gone without love. Charlie found her that night by the dumpster, her beautiful wings tossed in the trash like they were nothing, and wrapped her eye. She took her home, offering free reign over her beautiful palace to a literal stranger. She helped Vaggie cope, changing the bandages and wiping away her tears. She kissed Vaggie over the dirty dishes in the sink she'd desperately been trying to scrub, wobbling dangerously with her new center of gravity. There's no second-guessing. No questions. She just... accepts her, for better or worse.
(Worse, surely. What use is a dog without a collar?)
(The Lord is the shepherd to His herd- and the Exorcists, created for destruction, are the guardian dogs. Tasked to protect the soft lambs of Heaven. They are also beholden to stricter limitations, as a sheep does not understand when it falters, but a dog does. That's what Sera always said, anyway.)
The question becomes irrelevant when Charlie undresses her for the first time. Just her top, unbuttoning the large undershirt she'd scavenged up while Vaggie healed, the white fabric pooling around her waist. Charlie presses a gentle kiss to her newly healed skin. "Oh, baby," she murmurs. "They hurt you so bad."
Vaggie reached around, feeling blindly for a hand. She squeezes their fingers together and hopes that was enough to show her appreciation. "Yeah." Vaggie swallowed. "Yeah, I guess they did."
"I've never met someone who lived through an angel attack before." Charlie dumps that on her lap like a prize. Her voice oozes pure, unfiltered adoration. "You're a miracle."
I've killed thousands of your people. The words sit on the edge of Vaggie's tongue. She's realizing quickly that Hell is nothing like what she's been taught- and how horrifying is that? How many people had she slaughtered, believing with her entire chest that they were cruel and demented and unable to change? How many afterlives had she cut short just so Heaven could gleam in gold, the clouds tainted with the blood? I don't deserve this.
(For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. James 2:10.)
(Vaggie came preloaded with every verse of the bible. It feels like a greater burden than the blood.)
She can't magically make herself forgivable, but she can do this. Vaggie turns and pounces, throwing the Princess of Hell into the sheets. Chalie wraps her arms around her shoulders as Vaggie presses a kiss to her lips, relishing in the tingly sensation of her fingers on the scars. She never deserved those wings, anyway. She'll never fly again, and maybe that's okay.
They part, panting heavily. Charlie leans her forehead against hers, puffing minty breath into her nose. Vaggie's not as coordinated as she used to be, but she thinks she does a damn good job finding the buttons of her suit jacket. Charlie wrestles it off with a hint of impatience, horns peeking out of her hair, and Vaggie finds that kind of hot, actually. Vaggie's hands dig underneath her shirt to find she's not wearing a bra. Tiny, perky boobs await her. Vaggie's always had a thing for perky boobs.
Maybe this is Heaven, in the ways that matter.
"What do you like?" she whispers, and Vaggie freezes like a rabbit in a trap. Charlie notices, stopping halfway through taking her shirt off. She looks kind of silly with it bunched up on her forearms. "You won't scare me, I promise! I've been around the block."
"Uh," says Vaggie, absolutely torn. It turns out that a lot of the words she's used her whole life are considered slurs in Hell, and kinks is probably on that list. Nothing would kill the mood more than saying something offensive. "I dunno."
"Sweetie," chides Charlie, cupping her cheek. "This isn't Earth. I'm not gonna-"
Vaggie really doesn't want to contemplate Earth right now, blurting, "I like feet."
She blinks once, twice, a third time. Her smile becomes a little fixed. "Oh. Well... that's going to be a bit of a problem."
Oh, God. She fucked this up. She fucked it up. SHE FUCKED IT UP. "It's not a big deal! We can just forget I said it, actually. Forget really hard. Actually, is there a way to destroy the memory? Like a spell, or-"
"I don't have feet."
It's Vaggie's turn to blink a couple of times. Losing her eye hadn't affected her hearing, right? "What?"
Charlie pulls herself into a sitting position underneath her. Vaggie backs off as she undoes the clip to her dress pants, admittedly more confused than horny, and she shimmies out of them. Her legs are hairy- like, Vaggie's not got anything against hair, but this is a remarkable amount of hair going on, thick and bushy. Charlie pushes the pants down entirely and pulls her shoes off with them.
"Oh," she says, feeling a little dumb. "Hooves. That... that makes sense."
(He shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting... one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel... the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel. It's a story in Leviticus. The goat is the sins of the community.)
(How funny is it that the bible invented the word 'scapegoat'?)
"I'm weirding you out," Charlie notes, wincing in sheepishness.
"What? No, no, sweetie. Never," Vaggie replies; she's always been a bad liar. She felt terrible at the sadness in Charlie's eyes- how many people had turned her away for this? A few months ago, Vaggie would've turned her down for this, because being an Exorcist made you a horrible fucking person, apparently. Desperate to change the subject, she pointed at her shoes. "How do you fit them in those?"
"Oh!"
Thank fuck, it's working.
"I have insoles!" Charlie grabs one and pulls out a clear bit of metal that must mold around her hooves, somehow. Vaggie notices a logo pressed into the side that she's pretty sure is on all of the sex toys. She's not entirely sure what it means. "These hook around the back of my heel and fill in the actual sole." Her smile is brittle around the edges, like she's still not completely sold that Vaggie isn't going to run out of the room screaming. Vaggie deems that fair. "They don't make a lot of shoes that work for my kind of hoof."
There's different types of hooves? Vaggie's mind blanks at the thought. She's seen a few imps by now- from a distance, yeah, because they were Hellborn and therefore not in her target, but still- and they usually have itty bitty feet that she could hear clicking against the pavement as they ran. It had all seemed fairly standard at the time. "Are they supposed to be, uh... like that?"
Charlie bites her lip. Vaggie notices- clinically, alright, this isn't horny anymore- that the two prongs that make up her toe and sides (hoof wall, that's what it's called. One of the other girls had had a thing about horses) have nails that curl over the white center on the bottoms. Vaggie's reasonably sure that walking on nails would be uncomfortable.
"I need to trim them," she admits. "I just don't really like to do it."
Is there a nice way to ask about this stuff? Fuck. Vaggie's so out of her depth it's funny. "How do you-"
"Clippers!"
"...Like nail clippers?"
"Sort of!"
Charlie bunches her legs up underneath her- to hide them? Vaggie hopes not- and scooches over to the bedside table. Vaggie takes a moment to realize just how truly ruined the sexy mood is (by her own mistake, no less) as her girlfriend digs through a horde of papers and spare items to pull out a pair of clippers. They look (and Heaven help her for thinking this, it's probably mean) a lot like dog nail trimmers, but with a longer blade.
Charlie twirls them with a practiced hand and laughs a little about the dumbstruck look on her face. "I know this is all new to you, but it's okay, really! I don't mind." She studies them a second, shrugs, and holds them out handle-first. "Want to look?"
Vaggie feels a bit nervous holding something sharp that isn't her spear. It's a silly thought. It's not like she lost her eye to these things. She takes them, pressing the little lever to let them unhook. There's something so meaningful in the gesture to her- to take up a blade for this woman whose given her everything- that she almost doesn't feel like a fucking idiot holding nail trimmers. "...Can I try? Clipping them, I mean."
It's Charlie's turn to stare, gobsmacked. "Really?"
"Yeah." Vaggie nods. "You said you don't like to do it, right?"
"Oh, yeah, definitely. It's part of the goat in me, I think."
She's definitely going to need a few weeks to process this, she thinks. "Then I'll do it. Just... show me how?"
Pale white fingers wrap around her own, guiding her to her hoof. She gently has the trimmer touch the pad. "This is the sole- underneath is my quick. It's pretty thick, but let's not risk it, okay?" Charlie carefully hooked the trimmer around the curve itself. "Just try to get it even."
Vaggie's palms feel sweaty. The last thing she wants to do is hurt Charlie (as if her very existence doesn't hurt Charlie, right?) and she takes a few minutes just moving the thing back and forth, testing out the hoof wall. It feels far less brittle than the nails of a human person, but far more dangerous. She's pretty sure hooves can be seriously hurt if you cut them wrong. Charlie is patient and understanding, running her fingers through Vaggie's short hair.
"You want me to do it?" she asks, but her voice hitches with untold nerves, and Vaggie's will solidifies.
The first cut is horrible. Not because she fucks it up, but because it's jagged and curls off to the side. The next few go smoother as she works her way around the edges. She's starting to get into a groove when Charlie produces another item- a rasp.
"Ever shredded cheese?" she jokes, and Vaggie's too in the zone to even feel awkward about the fact that she hasn't, actually.
It's more of a vibe than she wants to admit. Vaggie carefully files down the rough cuts she's made, checking every so often to make sure she's not touching the soft parts. The second hoof goes easier, though she mistakenly cuts into the sole- it's small and not too deep, revealing a milky white below. Vaggie looks up to apologize and is immediately in deeper shit than she was before.
Charlie's just watching her. Red eyes study her every movement with keen interest as horns slowly slide out of her skull. Vaggie wonders where they go when she pretends to be more human. Charlie's furry thighs jump, brushing her hand, and the fur is surprisingly soft. She then tries to determine what kind of hair care products she must use to make goat hair soft. A black tail thumps on the bed.
Vaggie smiles ruefully. It's the first time Charlie's seen her so focused on something. "I'm weirding you out, aren't I?" she echoes.
"No one's ever done this for me before," she says softly. "Not since mom..."
She doesn't finish. Vaggie can kind of put the pieces together from there- child of divorce, estrangement, whatever the case. She sets the clippers aside and climbs up, one hand running through that magically soft goat hair. "I don't know a lot about this stuff," she whispers back, pressing a quick kiss to her forehead. "But I'm starting to really like it."
"Hooves?" Charlie asks, but it's teasing and gentle.
Vaggie rolls her eye. "You, dummy." Her fingers tighten in the hair, tugging. "You're so hot, Charlie."
"Oh," she says, pupils dilating, and maybe Vaggie didn't ruin the mood. Maybe Vaggie managed to not fuck this up somehow. Or un-fuck it up. Whatever. "You promise?"
"Promise," Vaggie promises, swooping in for a kiss. The hoof clippings digging into her knee are totally worth it for Charlie's smile.
(Who gives a fuck about Heaven, anyway? Demons are sexy.)
Author's Note: A commission for a buddy! This was pretty far outside my area of expertise- I am admittedly not big into feet of any kind- but hoof-trimming is kind of relaxing to watch on YouTube!
My buddy and I actually spent far too long trying to decide what kind of hoof Charlie has, and then I looked up specific videos for it. Thank fuck for veterinarians who post guides on YouTube for newbies. I will never do your service king, but I shall recycle it for fanfiction. Anyway, I learned a lot about the hoof designs of characters in the Hellaverse. I will now never use that knowledge again.
-Mandaree1