A scoff escaped him. Despite that, his shoulders relaxed. It wasn't about the deal; this line of questioning, he could live with, even if it made his nerves prickle with anger.
“Please. I’m the most powerful sinner in this pit, Husker. What do I have need help with?”
Sinner. Not person. Not demon. Not even Overlord. Sinner.
It's a slip. He had a habit of making those around Husk, more than he'd like. He often made the mistake of being comfortable around the bartender. His fingers gripped the lip of the glass from above, until his grip shifted again, and he lifted it back to his mouth, taking a deep drink this time. Part of him thought of abandoning the cup entirely, much the way that Husker hadn't even bothered, but as long as he had the glass in his hand, he could pretend it wasn't that bad yet. He could pretend that he was drinking like he normally did. Sure, he had been a functioning alcoholic since his living days. But there was a baseline that was normal for him now.
But he wasn't, and it was that bad. His chest ached. Resonated, even, holy rot still eating into his flesh with such intensity that it threatened to steal his breath with every expansion of his ribcage. The pain was worse now than he had grown used to since surviving Adam, at least it felt worse, a byproduct of the come down from all of the drugs Vox had kept him on. It had been numbing the injury before, and now? Now it felt like he had stepped right out in front of a freight train that had caved his chest in.
To say nothing of the injury on his arm, untreated, where Shok.wav had clamped down firmly. He couldn't treat it. He was left handed. So he'd wrapped it, poorly, and pulled his clothes on over it. Alastor thought it had quit bleeding, or at least mostly, but couldn't' see the thin, dark strip of blood slowly seeping through the sleeve of his coat.
Already, the whiskey glass he was nursing was almost empty in the few drinks he'd taken. It was one of those nights. He picked the glass up, inspecting the half a drink left in the glass, and downed the rest of it. Alastor almost never drank that way, never threw it back like that, even in the privacy when it was just the two of them. By the time it hit his stomach he was filling the glass again.
But that wasn’t true, was it? He had needed help. To break his deal, first of all. His wound still wasn't healing. He let the silence accumulate around them for a moment as he sat the bottle aside, downed that glass, and some of the pain was steadily starting to let go as he let his head dip, bangs falling into his face as a static exhale slipped through his fangs. There was no real point hiding the fact of the wound or why he was drinking so heavily from Husk, was there? No. Damned girl; he adored Niffty with all of his black heart, but she shouldn't have been there. Husk shouldn't have been there. The amount of danger they had been in... he had been fine. Everything had been going according to plan.
A click as he sat the glass down, hand coming up to curl his fingers around the neck of the bottle, but he didn't lift it yet. Instead, he cleared his throat and lifted his chin to look up at him.
"Fine, Husker! If you really must have the truth, I wasn't planning to," he said, plainly, if a bit sharply. "And why should I have? It isn't like any of you cared."
It was there that the plain edge of his words turned viciously sharp with a hurt that the Radio Demon neither knew how to articulate nor knew how to name. It made him feel more self-pitying than he liked to admit to being, but the alcohol had worked into his bloodstream just enough to start having an effect. Just enough to pry his ribs open and let Husk see what was underneath the mask he wore with such fervor, revealing the anger that had been stewing under there for months since the last extermination.
"So save me the lecture. I'm not in the mood."
It was a small wonder that he hadn't gotten up to leave, yet. He had a bad habit of doing that when he felt things came too close to his surprisingly soft insides.
