Chapter Text
What the hell was going on in Hell?
Angel had seen slow nights before, but this was unprecedented. Had he missed a raid? A turf war? A PTA meeting?
“Jeez, where the fuck is everybody?” he kicked aside a barbed wire tumbleweed and moved on to the next block. He had a quota tonight, time to make up for. He’d not been in the studio -- again -- when Val had come to check on him and that hadn’t… ended well. According to him, Angel now owed the lighting team, the sound guys, set dressers, fluffers, and the gang that was meant to bang him money and ass for wasting their time. And Val for wasting his.
And Val took with interest; Angel was still limping a bit from the deposit.
A few cars slinked past like alleycats but none stopped, and the few characters he saw on the street weren’t interested. Angel paused, brow furrowed, and slipped another cigarette between his lips.
“Lame.”
The place was like a graveyard. Literally. Even the headstones looked more hellish than usual.
He felt a presence behind him before he heard the footsteps, and tensed up. Someone was walking slowly, deliberately, down the street. Like they were taking a stroll. A stroll through Hell.
What the fuck?
Angel turned, stepping off to the side a little, to let the man pass.
Average height, for Hell, red coat, good taste, messy hair. A cane. Who the fuck used a cane anymore? There were no long-term injuries in hell, not unless an angel fucked you up or you found a piece of their blade and shanked someone. This man didn’t look like the type to easily be shanked, he looked loaded.
Someone came out of a store not three doors down, and immediately zipped across the road and hid behind a dumpster.
“Smooth,” Angel snorted, eyeing the trash, and flicked his cigarette. “Real smooth, fucko.”
The man paused, turning to look over his shoulder. Angel shrugged. “You’re scaring off the johns, man, can ya walk a little faster?”
The way the guy’s head tilted made him look broken. Angel tried to imitate it and got a crick in his neck.
“Perhaps if you smiled, my dear,” the voice was crackled, like it came through a badly tuned radio. Angel was immediately thrown back to a time he was alive, fiddling with the tuner trying to get his own radio to play without static. “More work would come your way.”
Angel gave the man an incredulous look. They all committed to the bit around here, Angel included, but this man… This man was the bit, his voice that perfect, smooth, mid atlantic accent that Angel grew up listening to.
“I charge extra to act like you’re good at it,” he drawled, and watched as the man’s head tilted just a bit further, owlish and eldritch.
“You wouldn’t go to the store half-naked, would you?” The man asked. “Then why go to work without a smile on that charming face?”
From any old john, it would have sounded like a pick up line, even if it had been sarcastic. From this guy, compliments sounded like honey traps.
Behind the man, someone rounded the corner and then immediately spun and fled back whence they’d come.
Angel glanced down at his body, upper half modestly dressed, though with a bit of fluffed up fur mimicking cleavage from the collar of his shirt, lower half clad only in hot pants and thigh-high heels, then looked back up at the stranger with one eyebrow raised. “You think I wouldn’t go to the store half naked?” He asked. “Little slow on the uptake, ain’t ya?”
Slowly, the man’s head returned to the upright position. His smile stretched wider, sharper at the edges. When he spoke, the static had receded to a minimum, and his soft voice sounded almost as if he was in the same room, and not broadcasting from miles away. “You have no idea who I am, do you?”
“The man who thinks he can run up my time for free?”
There was a flicker at the corner of Angel’s eye and he slid his gaze away from the man in front of him to catch it. Nothing. Probably just another moron trying to hide in the trash. When he turned back, though, the man was much closer to him.
“Jesus fuck, ever hear of personal space?”
“You’re absolutely delightful,” came the answer, and Angel felt something in him grow warm. It was said so earnestly, and in a voice that was just somehow so familiar, the everyvoice that spoke at Angel through the radio when he’d been little, reading bedtime stories or introducing the news.
Happier times.
“Thanks…” he replied, unsure how to move away when he wasn’t certain he wanted to get away. “Compliments don’t pay the bills, though, so…”
“Have you had much luck this evening?” the stranger asked, setting his cane between his feet and resting both hands on it. “I’ve found my stroll to be… rather uneventful. I’m eager for company.”
“I’m great company,” Angel grinned, gold tooth on display. “What’re you after? Keep in mind, you go off-menu and I charge extra.”
“Merely a companion to walk with me awhile,” the other replied. “Reminisce, perhaps, about the good times up above.”
Angel made a sound, displeased but quiet. Jeez. A walk didn’t pay the bills either.
“I’ll suck your cock for ten bucks?” he offered instead.
The bark of laughter made the tufts of hair on the man’s head shift curiously, as ears would. “No, thank you.”
“Then I can’t help ya.”
“Is a walk really such a chore? You’re walking already, are you not?”
“Yeah,” Angel shrugged. “But you seem to have a voodoo hoodoo creepy field around you or somethin’. I need money , and money comes from people . You seem to ward people off.”
“But not you.”
Angel tilted, perfectly balanced even as he arched his back and ran his lower set over arms over the curve of his hips, ending over his bare thighs, tips of his fingers caressing the top of his boots. “Look at me, I’m a welcome mat.”
The man looked. Down, then back up, slow, but not lingering. His expression didn’t change. Angel sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Most people, normal people, take one look at the goods and fork over the cash. If I’m havin’ a bad night, it’s because somethin’s spooked ‘em.”
“Ah, yes, normalcy,” The man said, with a knowing nod. “There’s such a wealth of it in Hell.”
“People are people, whether they’re human or whatever the fuck freaks like you an’ me are. They have needs.”
“I’m sure they do,” the man murmured, his eyes narrowed, taking in the cock of Angel’s hips. “Suppose I pay you for your time?” he suggested, offering Angel his arm. “What’s the going rate for you to escort me a few blocks?”
Angel blinked. “What?”
“You’re an escort, are you not?” the other raised an eyebrow. “Escort me.”
Angel considered the other things he was usually called in his line of work. Slut. Whore. Back alley bitch. Not worth the time.
Escort sounded like a pay raise.
“Hundred bucks a block,” Angel offered next. The man laughed again.
“You sell yourself short, my dear, but I am happy to start with that.”
Angel couldn’t come up with a clapback just then. This was all too weird. He half expected to be thrown into the first reeking bin they passed and fucked over the edge of it; at least that would be typical. But this guy. This guy.
Angel slipped his arm through the stranger’s and kept pace as they started to walk. Angel noticed that now, before running to scurry away somewhere, those that caught the stranger’s eye immediately noticed Angel there and trembled. That was… something.
“So who are you?” Angel asked at length, looking over at the man. He held himself like… like something that had stepped out of the talkies, but in full technicolor. It was eerie; and few things in Hell creeped Angel out anymore.
“You may call me Alastor,” his companion replied. “And you?”
Angel smiled wide enough to show off his gold tooth. “Angel Dust,” he said, with a heavy lidded look that had worked on every demon who’d crossed his path so far… and got nothing but a wide, blank smile in return. “The porn star,” he added, feeling a stab of… was that mortification? Did he feel shame again? Boy, that was an emotion that had grown cobwebs decades ago.
But it was one thing to be recognized; Angel revelled in the fame. It was another thing entirely to not be recognized, and then have to explain to a classy guy in some kinda tux that you let people come on your face on camera for a living.
“Ah,” Alastor said, the first true emotion tinting his voice. That emotion happened to be disgust, and Angel was about to point out the hypocrisy of hiring a hooker and then condemning porn, when Alastor followed it up with a disdainful “ talkies.”
“What, they didn’t have motion pictures when you’re from?” There were demons older than Angel around, of course, both by decades and by centuries, but except for born-demon powerhouses like Val, most of the guys Angel knew were from the 20th century on. When you got old, you got comfortable, complacent, and you were an easy target for the Exorcists.
“We did,” Alastor said, with a wrinkle of his nose, “But they were a special occasion, and they never quite capture the feeling of a good radio show, I feel. Images preserved eternally in silver, unchanging, growing duller by the day. I prefer my entertainment lively .”
Angel snorted. “My life is pretty lively.”
“Still,” Alastor sniffed, haughty, “not quite how I enjoy my entertainment.”
“Yeah?” A real laugh this time, Angel tightened his hold on Alastor’s arm as they crossed by the mouth of an alley, more from trained response than anything else. “What, you need Great Moments In History, huh? Sam and fucking Henry?”
Alastor came to a stop so abruptly, that when Angel kept walking and found his arm yanked back, he yelped.
“Easy,”
“You remember Great Moments In History?” Alastor asked, his voice strangely lilted, almost… nostalgic? Hopeful? Angel wasn’t well acquainted with hope much anymore, but he guessed that was it.
“Well not all of ‘em,” Angel snorted. “But yeah I listened. Used to love that shit growin’ up,” he replied.
For a moment, the man was silent, red eyes fixed on Angel in such a way that he felt almost seen through, it was unnerving but oddly welcome. He wasn’t being groped with a gaze, in fact, for the first time in his goddamn unlife he wasn’t being looked at by anyone else. It felt… special somehow.
“What a curious creature you are,” Alastor said finally. Angel shrugged.
“Doesn’t pay to be predictable,” he replied. “Seriously, we don’t even have scripts anymore. It’s just,” he made a crude gesture with one hand against another, a third turning a circle with his fingertip near his temple. “Nuts. Honestly, talkies would be easier to work with.”
“Not much talking in pornography,” Alastor commented, starting to walk again, Angel keeping pace.
“Not unless you count sound effects.” Angel shrugged. They’d walked five blocks, by his count, the money was adding up. And while Alastor looked like he was made of money, Angel needed to see the goods before he could commit to walking the nine damn circles with some voodoo demon. “Where’re we goin’ anyway?”
“I have a charming little apartment on Beezle Avenue, you’ll love the view.”
Ahhh there it was. Alastor talked a good game, put on a fantastic show of not being interested, but he was a man, after all (of a sort) and all men were the same once they got Angel alone. Even in life, when he’d been skinny but not quite so alluringly so, his curves not quite the same, the heights of burlesque fashion made for masculine bodies still a few decades out of reach, they’d all been the same.
Well, Angel knew how to earn his dough. Look pretty, talk pretty, and do whatever the customer wanted, even if it was stupid. Even if it hurt.
Especially if it hurt. Angel had learned to appreciate the finer aspects of pain, down here in Hell, and there was no rule saying he couldn’t have a little fun himself. Love what you do, and you’ll never work a day in your life, as the saying went.
And he did love his job. He did. He had to. It wasn’t like there were other jobs lined up. It was love this job, or throw himself in front of the Exorcists next year, because if he didn’t love this job, if it was torture …
Angel pushed the thought aside and focused on his companion. “Beezle Avenue,” he repeated. “Pretty ritzy joint.”
“It’s adequate,” Alastor said with a dismissive shrug.
“Adequate” was a thirty story elevator ride that let out into a foyer with a single door. Adequate was a wall of nothing but windows overlooking the city. Adequate was a goddamn motherfucking penthouse .
Even Val didn’t have a place like this.
“Holy shit,” Angel murmured, a whistle pulling low after. He moved right up to the windows, all four hands on the glass as he pressed his face to it and looked out. Hell and damn, as far as the eye could see. They were high enough that the pentagram looked like you could reach out and touch it.
This man could ask Angel to cut himself in half and he’d do it for a view like this once in a while.
Behind him, he heard the sound of a gramophone being wound up, the crackle of dust on vinyl before jazz started playing throughout the place. This felt so weirdly familiar, nostalgic, warm. Angel ran his hands up and down his arms a few times to get the shivers to go away.
“So, uh, what are you into?” Angel asked.
“I have varied interests.”
Angel snorted. This guy.
“Sex, what are you into with sex,” he clarified. “Do you wanna fuck me? Hit me? Both? I’ve never been fucked facing a view like that before, bet the window’s strong enough for some fun.”
“None of those fall under my interests,” Alastor calmly responded. Angel drew a hand over his face with a sigh.
“Look, I’m… I appreciate the walk and the eight hundred bucks it earned me, but why did you bring me here if you didn’t wanna bang?”
“Why do people come together with other people?” Alastor mused for a moment, stepping closer. His shoes clicked against the marbled floor without an echo. “Entertainment. Curiosity.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a goddamn money clip, licking the tip of his gloved finger as he started counting out crisp hundreds. Angel felt hypnotised. He’d never seen so much money in his life or his unlife. Who the fuck was this guy?
“Eight,” Alastor said, passing a handful of bills over with a smile. “And another eight to guide you home, since I took you so far out of your way.”
Angel snatched the bills from Alastor’s hand, mousetrap-quick, needing them in his grasp before Alastor thought of a reason not to give them over.
Eight hundred and a good orgy would probably get Val off his back, since Val was probably only expecting a couple hundred for one night of tricks. The other eight hundred would cover Angel’s rent. Then again, if Val found out Angel kept fifty percent of his earnings, kept eight hundred dollars away from him…
‘Hell to pay’ had new meaning since his death, but it still didn’t even begin to cover what Val would do to him.
But then, eight hundred dollars in an hour was also going to go over like a gelato in July: a sticky mess slipping through Angel’s fingers too quickly to get under control.
“Look,” Angel said again, slowly, lower hands braced on his hips, upper arms framing his assets. “I can’t exactly walk in off the streets with this kind of money and no explanation.”
Alastor waved a hand. “You escorted, I paid.”
“Yeah, Val’s waiting up and he’s not gonna buy that shit.”
Static crackled through the air, so sharp and sudden that Angel felt the electricity in his teeth . Alastor’s eyes locked on his face, as if taking in Angel’s features for the first time.
“You’re one of Valentino’s little pets?” Alastor asked, quiet, thick with the heavy rasp of white noise layered over it.
Angel didn’t cower so much as make himself as small as possible in posture and appearance. He knew anger and violence, he got a healthy diet of that from Val every damn day, but this was something else, this was one of the seven fucking sins incarnate. He swallowed.
“Not a pet ,” he tried to argue, though even he knew that came out weak. “We have a…” a what? A relationship? No, not anymore. Not since… well, not since ever, if Angel were honest with himself. He wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t naïve, and he hadn’t fallen to the pits of hell yesterday, he knew how the underworld worked. “A business arrangement.”
Alastor tilted his head just enough that his hair flicked a bit and something… something else moved from behind him, something elongated and enormous, shadowed and filled with teeth.
And then he blinked, and it was gone, just like that.
“I see,” Alastor said, his tone icy, but the static gone again. The jazz continued playing through the gramophone. “He’s quite a collector of business arrangements isn’t he?”
Angel swallowed. “I guess.” Shit, was taking this money going to get him beaten to within an inch of his unlife? Was it worth it?
A part of Angel, a spiteful, childish part, was cheering at the thought, the chance to give Val the finger without getting any of his own broken.
“And what--” Angel noticed he pronounced the ‘h’ before the ‘w’ “would Valentino buy as an explanation for having earned your fee?”
Angel considered his own ‘menu’ of services versus the ones Val offered on Angel’s behalf to his friends and business partners. Eight hundred was… in the latter category. It usually involved several people and hours of work. It wasn’t exactly suck your cock for a tenner kind of play.
“Your silence speaks volumes,” Alastor added carefully, when Angel wasn’t able to give him an answer quickly.
“Look, I can probably twist some sorta story up for him if I stick around a few more hours. It’ll make it more believable.” Angel replied, exasperated. “Eight hundred bucks buys a lot, okay? A lot.”
“What do you offer?”
“I’ve already told you,” Angel groaned, frowning. “You don’t seem interested.”
“Then offer me something that I will find interesting,” Alastor reasoned.
Angel weighed what he knew about Alastor so far, which wouldn’t have tipped the scales against a dime bag of his namesake. What did he like? Was it tits? Because Angel could do tits, in a pinch. If he kept his top on.
But then again, sucking dick didn’t involve Angel’s own body, and Alastor hadn’t seemed interested at all in that . What the hell kind of man didn’t want an easy orgasm?
What the hell was probably right.
“Entertainment,” Angel finally said, when the obvious hit him in the face. “You like yours live, don’cha?”
Alastor tilted owlishly. His joints didn’t creak or crack the way Angel’s would have, as if he was made of rubber. “Alright,” he said slowly. “ Entertain me. Put on the sort of show you’d do for your talkies. Can you manage it in one take? No breaks, no do-overs, no post-production ?”
Alastor spat out post-production in a haze of aggressive static that seemed to color the very air, as if the concept of ‘editing’ was a dirty word.
“I don’t need no do-overs,” Angel assured him. “Just a bed. Or a couch, I guess, but sheets are easier to clean.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to make do,” Alastor gestured vaguely to one of the goddamn chaise lounges by the window. Angel raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t have a bed?”
“I’ve no need for one.”
“How the fuck do you sleep?”
The look Alastor gave him was enough for Angel to hold up his hands in a gesture of peace and move off to where he was told.
He had eight hundred bucks in his pocket and a guy who didn’t seem interested in anything sexual whatsoever, and he had to entertain him. Well, Angel lived for entertaining, but improv was another matter. He wondered if he could do one of his routines without a pole…
No.
No this guy… this powerful guy, who lived so high up above the city, had money to burn, scared away demons while taking a stroll in the neighbourhood… he wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted a dance routine. No, Angel mused as he shrugged his jacket off and let it drape over the back of the chaise, no he wanted entertainment, oldschool, uncut, unedited smut.
Fine.
Smut it was.
Next to come off was the skirt, so he could stretch and move how he wanted to. With just panties and boots on, Angel took a seat on his offered stage and made himself comfortable. He kept Alastor in the corner of his vision, curious to see what he’d do once this started, but otherwise ignored him. He could play indifferent too.
It was rare that Angel got off on his own anymore, he spent so often being fucked that the veneer of pleasure somewhat wore away, but once in a while he got that itch, that need to use his own damn hands to get his own damn pleasure. He flexed his fingers, tilted his head back against the arm of the couch and sighed, leaving one leg bent up on the cushions and letting the other drop to the ground, opening himself up for his not-quite-captive but at least patient audience.
It probably wasn’t going to be the act itself that got Alastor’s motor running, which took just a bit of the wind out of Angel’s sales. He was used to a performance being easy, the audience being built in.
But he was still a performer , and a damn good one. And one excellent perk of Hell was the extra hands. No more multi-tasking. He could slide one set of hands up his chest to tease at his nipples, while the other set pet at his thighs and drew a soft sigh from his lips, barely a breath. He teased at his panties, his ‘working’ pair, pink satin and lace, just barely covering him from view as his cock began to stiffen.
He had a bit more to work with there as well, Hell wasn’t all bad.
Angel hooked his thumbs in his waistband, tugging down just enough to show the v of his hips and nothing more, biting his lip to hold back a pleased noise as he scraped his sharp claws over his chest.
“You’re quiet.”
Alastor’s voice shattered the silence, startling Angel, drawing his attention to the narrow-eyed, studious expression the other demon wore.
Shut the fuck up, you whiny little bitch .
Some people liked him loud. Most didn’t. Angel had heard the command often enough for it to stick, an echo in the back of his mind.
“You have to learn to project , my dear. Act for the back row, let’m see you shine.”
Angel felt his cheeks warm a little, and ducked his head, a smile close to escaping. It was almost… cute? The way Alastor spoke, what he envisioned as entertainment. Oldschool, record players and barely-nude pornographic photos, theatre, the goddamned Queen’s English on the radio…
Angel closed his eyes, imagined he was sixteen again, half-buried in his blankets as he humped a pillow to get himself off as quietly as possible so Molly wouldn’t overhear, or worse, their brother. He imagined that frantic need, that youthful desire to just get off because his body was aching for it, because it felt good and feeling good was a right lot better than his real life had been.
“Fuck,” he sighed, slipping a little lower on the couch, one hand peeling back the lace to grasp his cock properly, pressing it flat to his groin so it peeked out over the flimsy fabric when he revealed it again, hands busy with his chest and thighs again. One hand was tickling that spot just behind his ear, the one he loved to have someone nuzzle into as they touched him, that always made him squirm and bite his lip and sigh…
One fallacy of the porn industry was that every scene involved screaming sex. Every panting breath a groan, every sound howled across the sound stage and out the door where the freeloaders were peeking in before security got to them. In truth, Angel was loud when he wanted to be, when someone could get him to be, and that was pretty rare. Most just wanted the act, The Angel Dust™ to perform in their beds for them. Some made sure he made no sound at all, by any means.
Val… Val swung either way.
But this wasn’t about him, he didn’t belong in Angel’s head, and he banished him out of it, returning to the thought of is younger self, his alive self, hands frantic and need growing as he jerked off to the thought of the science teacher in his suspenders and glasses and that ruler in his hand that made the most amazing whap sound as it struck a naughty kid’s clothed bottom.
The whimper that pulled from Angel, back on the chaise lounge, 30 stories above the streets he walked for a living, was absolutely genuine, and it projected.
“Lovely,” Alastor’s voice didn’t jar Angel out of his fantasies this time, pitched low and gentle.
Sound. Of course it was sound, if not sex. The man’s entire aura screamed late night radio show, if there were any kinks to him at all, they’d be voice kinks.
When was the last time someone had called him lovely?
Well, no. Val told him what a lovely thing he was all the time.
When was the last time someone had called Angel ‘lovely’ and been genuine?
Whatever he was doing, he was doing it right. Angel felt like it was his first time all over again, learning the ropes, playing coy as he stroked himself root to tip. He knew he must have been pink all over, from just under his eyes, down his neck, blood rushing through his veins.
Shyness and heat. He’d felt so damn pretty the first time he did this, up against a wall in a public restroom with a man twice his age, calling him baby and nuzzling right up under his chin. Angel wrapped a hand around his throat, long fingers not yet pressing, just holding, a comfort.
Normally he liked to finger himself when he did this, but his lube was tucked into his jacket pocket, and he was still sore from Val’s ‘payment plan.’ Instead, he spread his thighs a little wider and arched his back as if he was getting fucked, rocking his hips up into his fist. Everything felt good, for once. Everything felt perfect . Maybe he’d manifest his remaining hands and make his body sing.
Fuck it, why not? Who was there to stop him? To restrain him and tell him that it was cheating using all the limbs available to him here?
Hands in his hair, tugging it a little too hard, baring his throat for another hand to tighten around. Over his chest, catching against the back of his knee to spread his legs wider, stroking, stroking, stroking…
Angel was wrapped up in his memories, floating in a haze of pleasure of the way-back-when. The first guy hadn’t been the last, not even that night. He’d jerked him off and another had come right after, panting into Angel’s hair, whispering filthy things to him that had Angel’s entire body squirming with need.
No, not Angel’s.
Tony’s.
No one had called him that in a long, long time.
He gasped, arching up harder, knees trembling, muscles taut, his orgasm on the very edge, so close he could taste it against the back of his teeth… with the taste of ozone in the air, the kind right before a storm, enough to pulse Angel’s heart faster, adrenaline cold beneath his skin where his blood had been achingly hot, the jarring sensation enough to send him over the edge, moaning shamelessly into the wide room as though he were the only one there.
But he wasn’t.
Someone was watching, and fuck if that wasnt the hottest thing.
Angel licked his lips and lay heavy back against the chaise lounge, his stomach and chest filthy and sticky. As he caught his breath he turned his head and opened his eyes, meeting Alastor’s as they gazed at him. Angel couldn’t help it, he grinned, catching the corner of his mouth between his teeth. He preened, arching up with a hum.
“How’s that for live entertainment, Al?”
Alastor’s default expression seemed to be a slasher smile, stretched wide across his angular features, showing off every pointed fang. It twitched now, just a bit, the red of his eyes darkening half a shade, his shadow flickering, and then settled back into place.
“Adequate,” he said.
Adequate . Angel felt a flicker of displeasure, of humiliation. There wasn’t a lot he was good at. Shooting, stripping, and sex about summed up his skills. But he considered himself to excel at all three, and to be dismissed as adequate --
Angel wiped his hand off against the inside of his shirt and then struggled back into it, a pink flush across his cheeks. “Happy to be of use,” he said stiffly.
“Should I pay you for your further services?”
Angel flinched. Boy, wouldn’t that be fun to explain. He still wasn’t sure he could hide the extra bills from Val, not if Val insisted on inspecting the merchandise when he came home. “Please don’t.”
“You’re offended.”
Angel felt the lower lid of his left eye twitch. Of course he was fucking offended. By the casual indifference, by the magnanimity, by the sheer gall of the guy to bring him here, to the thirtieth fucking floor penthouse in a neighbourhood even Val didn’t set foot in to just--
“Nah,” Angel stepped into his skirt and took his time flicking away dust that wasn’t there, straightening out creases that didn’t exist. “Just got better things to do. Ya know, like things that wanna get did.”
A hum, then, that sounded more like an electronic device plugged in improperly than a creature with human vocal cords.
“Please accept my apologies, if I--”
“Ya didn’t,” Angel cut him off. “But look, hanging with you is fun and all, but I need to get back out there. Ya know, walk those eight blocks back. Nice knowing ya.”
“Now I’ll know where to look should I be in need of a strolling companion,” Alastor replied. Angel didn’t even know what to say to that, so instead he just saluted the demon on his way out the door, fumbling with a cigarette as soon as the elevator doors slid closed and the box zipped down to the ground again.