Summary: As Alastor's shadow starts to act strangely, hidden feelings are brought to light.
This wonderful story was written from @lustylita's wonderful idea! The story is completely theirs; I just had the pleasure of putting it into words. Their original post can be found here.
Tags: Alastor x gn.reader, hidden feelings, angst
The last couple of weeks have been very strange to you.
Well, stranger than the hotel usually was.
Over the past few weeks, you have helped your best friend, Charlie, with her little passion project. The Hazbin Hotel - your only chance at redemption!
While you couldn't say that you inherently believed in her dream, you would have been a poor friend if you hadn't tried to help her—emphasis on tried. Growing up within Hell's elite, where someone always handed you everything on gold platters, didn't foster any usable skills that could help run a severely understaffed hotel. The very thought of having to clean your own room had almost immobilised you.
Did you really need to vacuum the walls and the ceilings every week? How did the cleaning staff back at your parents' manor even do it? The manor was huge!
Thankfully, you had not been forced to clean for long because shortly after Charlie had opened the hotel for business, an unwanted guest had come knocking at the door. Alastor and his somewhat reluctant companies, except for Niffty, who seemed to thrive in the chaos, quickly made themselves at home in the hotel.
The same night they arrived, you and Vaggie had sat Charlie down in their room and begged the princess not to let the radio demon stay. After all, the tales of his deeds had even reached your family's manor in the Envy ring of Hell. But Charlie had been persistent, saying that maybe by staying in the hotel, she could change his ways. You loved your friend; you really did, but sometimes you wanted to shake some sense into her violently.
There was nothing you could do about the radio demon and how he just took over many of the work duties you had at the hotel. Waltzing in as if he owned the hotel, he had taken one look at your work and deemed it unsatisfactory.
"No, no, let me do it, doll!" he would say condescendingly, making rage lick up your spine, "We would want this to be done well for Charlie, now, wouldn't we?"
You had lost count of all the times you fantasised about grabbing a chair and introducing it to his face.
He made you feel incompetent, and worst of all, he was right. Most of the work you had done that he had redone was of better quality, more detailed, and better planned. If you had been a weaker demon, you would have given up, apologised to Charlie and gone home to your parents, but so, if the heavens would be your witnesses, you were going to crush that smug little bastard of a sinner!
And so began your imaginary battle with Alastor about who could be the best executive producer. If you had asked Alastor, he would not have had any clues about what you were doing, only that it finally seemed like you were taking your job seriously. That said, he still did not like you. You were a spoiled little demon brat who had never worked a hard day in your life, and worst of all, you were sloppy with your work.
But time kept ticking. The days passed, the hotel was filled with new residents, and somehow, you and Alastor were able to work together. Nevertheless, you only managed to do it by never being near each other, which worked wonderfully for you because the man could actually be quite okay when he was silent and on the other side of the room.
You could have continued to live like this for as long as Alastor decided to live in the hotel. There was just this teeny tiny thing that perplexed you.
Alastor's shadow liked to be around you.
It had begun quite innocently with the shadow coming over to you one night when you were sitting in one of the armchairs by the fireplace with yesterday's newspaper in your lap since you had started to do the crossword puzzle on the back of the paper. You had been staring at the same clue for what felt like an hour, and you just couldn't figure it out. Out of nowhere, a shadowy finger had tapped on the clue to get your attention, and when you looked up, two empty holes for eyes had looked back at you with the biggest twisted grin full of teeth you had ever seen.
"Fuck! Don't do that!" you whispered forcefully, not wanting to disturb the peace and quiet that finally had fallen over the hotel lobby. "What do you want?"
Prepared to be bothered any second now by the radio demon, you got even more confused when the shadow started doing pantomimes. Why in the seven Hells was it swimming across the wall?
You looked on as the shadow began to swim back to you, tapped on the clue and started to swim again.
"Swimming? But it has nothing to do with activities! It is something about effort," you said as the shadow returned to you. Since it could not speak, the shadow just started to nod its head and tapped on the clue again.
"Is it a word derived from the word swimming?" you asked hesitantly as the shadow continued to nod.
You turned back to the clue before you—a word for no effort needed and swimming.
"Swimmingly?" you asked the shadow, who gave you an even bigger sinister smile and nodded again before it disappeared up the stairs. Again, you were left in the lobby with only the crackling fire as a company, looking over at the stairs after the strange entity that was Alastor's shadow.
The next couple of weeks just grew more and more strange with every day. Out of nowhere, Alastor's shadow started to just interact with you. It began as innocent waves to you behind Alastors back, and at first, you wouldn't wave back, but when you saw how sad the shadow got if you didn't return its greeting, you started to wave back to it. On a few occasions, Alastor had caught you in the act, which quickly prompted you to swat the air around you as if you were trying to get rid of a fly.
When the waves weren't enough for the shadow, it started to appear around you, helping you in various ways. Once, it even helped you find some important paper you needed for your job that you were convinced Alastor had hidden from you.
It turned out that Alastor's shadow was much more pleasant company than its physical part, and you often welcomed the shadow's help with your crosswords during the evenings.
However, you were again thrown for a loop when the shadowed behaviour started to change. It began to interact with you even more, seeking you out during the day and staying for long periods at a time, just hanging around you or observing what you were doing.
One day, it had even brought you a blueberry muffin from the bakery you liked across town. You had no idea how it had even done that. For all you knew, shadows were not physical things and could not interact with the physical world. However, you were promptly proven wrong when Alastor's shadow took your own shadow's hand and pulled you down the hallway to show you the roses that had started to bloom outside of the hotel.
It was a paradox, a mystery that intrigued you. Alastor's shadow, a creature of darkness, was surprisingly sweet, charming, and, at times, downright romantic. How could such a lovely thing be attached to such a vile being?
It had been like any other day. Alastor's shadow had found you in your office early in the morning, going through all the paperwork that needed to get done that day. In its shadowy hand, it held one blueberry muffin and your favourite coffee mug with a sleepy bear on it, along with the text Bearly Awaken written underneath.
The coffee had been divine because, somewhere, the shadow had learned to make a cup of coffee exactly how you wanted it.
You continued with your day in the presence of Alastor's shadow, walking together down the corridor, through the lobby, and out the front door as you chatted with the shadow. You had gotten quite good at interpreting its pantomimes and overexaggerated emotions and often found yourself laughing at any antics the shadow pulled.
It followed you all day as you walked around the city, picking up the materials Charlie needed for her next exercise with the hotel residents. The shadow even helped you pick out the colours for the ribbons and paints.
At one point, the shadow's long finger had brushed against yours. It had been a cold sensation, almost like being touched by mist, but that had not mattered to you as you blushed before looking away. Missing how the shadow practically folded in on itself when it saw your reaction.
Was it possible to date a shadow and not the being it was attached to?
The sun was setting when you and Alastor's shadow got back to the hotel. The lobby was almost empty except for Husk, who was polishing martini glasses by the bar. As soon as he saw the two of you enter the hotel, Husk leapt over the bar and rushed over to you.
"I don't know where the fuck the two of you have been, but you need to leave now before he finds out that your back," Husk whispered to you as he gripped your arm to turn you around towards the door.
"And you!" he said towards the shadow, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
The shadow made a high-pitched whine as it stepped closer to you. You were about to ask Husk what he had meant when a loud voice boomed inside the hotel.
"Where are you?"
Husk's hand tightened around your arm as he started to pull you towards the door. You followed after him, paralysed by action, as a stone of fear got stuck in your throat. The shadow looked at you, then back at the stairs and then back at you again with anxious eyes.
Loud steps could be heard from the hallway above the staircase, and Alastor's shadow began to be dragged towards the stairs as if by an invincible force. It desperately dug its claws into the ground, and the shadow let out a wailing scream as it looked at you with big, pleading eyes.
Alastor was calling his shadow back to him.
The shadow continued to fight the force of its master's call, leaving deep claw marks on the floor, and, as if a gunshot had been fired at the room, the force wholly let go of the shadow. The shadow rushed back to you, where it clung to your body like a second skin.
"Get back here, you disgraceful thing!" Alastor could be heard shouting as a massive hand gripped the hallway doorframe and pulled itself forward. It was the hand of Alastor's most demonic form.
Beside you, Husk had begun to shake as his claws dug into your skin.
"You need to run. Now!" he tried to push you towards the door, but it was too late. From around the corner, Alastor stepped from the dark into the light, but as he stepped forward, he shrank in size. Still, he looked terrifying.
His eyes were a deep red with volume controllers as irises, hiding any emotions he may have had. His antlers had grown in size, sharp and imposing, making the sinner look almost regal as he sauntered down the stairs.
"Thank you, Husker." he said, his voice dripping in venom, "I can take over now."
Husk was about to protest loudly when he disappeared in a puff of red smoke, and you were left alone with the enraged sinner.
"What do you think you are doing?" Alastor snarled as you started to shake where you were standing. A small whine could be heard beside your neck as the shadow clung closer to you.
"I don't know..."
"I'm not talking to you!" Alastor's look silenced you but confused you for a second before you saw his eyes drop down to your neck, where the shadow hid.
"Come back here and stop resisting," Alastor snarled again and stepped towards you. The shadow gave away a low whine as it clung closer to your body, and you realised it didn't want to return. In a fit of temporary insanity, you placed a protective hand over the arms of the shadow around you and stepped away from the sinner.
"No!"
"What do you mean no? It's my shadow," asked Alastor as he looked back at you in confused rage.
"He doesn't want to be with you anymore," you snapped and turned your nose up. You stepped to the side to walk around the sinner, effectively walking away with his shadow, but as you walked past Alastor, his hand shot out, and he tried to grab your arm. But you were faster; with your other hand, you slept Alastors hand away from you and the shadow.
"Will you stop it! Don't you understand that we want nothing to do with you, so just leave us alone!"
With determined steps, you started walking over to the staircase to get as far away from the deer demon as possible. However, you didn't get far until you felt the shadow clung even more to you as it let out a pitiful sob. Its head had fallen over your shoulder as it looked up at you with longing eyes—a gaze it shouldn't be giving you since you had just saved it from its cruel master.
"What's the matter?" you asked it as you tried to caress its cheek, and out of the corner of your eye, you saw something that you never thought you would see.
Without a smile and ears hanging low against his head, Alastor looked at you with the same miserable longing that the shadow looked at you with. And that's when you remember something your mother used to say to you when you were a child, a long time ago.
Our deepest desires, our most precious wishes and longings, hide in our shadows. Everything we want follows us within our shadows as the weights of our souls.
You wanted to kick yourself for being so foolish, for not understanding until now. Maybe a small part of you had always known, but it had been easy to ignore in your imaginary rivalry with the sinner. But a shadow never lies. Even the ones who can think and act on their own. They will always mirror their owner's heart's wishes and act upon them when the host won't take charge of getting what they desire.
"You're in love with me," you whispered. It was not a question but a statement—a statement that seemed to hang in the air for an eternity but not long enough.
“How? What? When?” you asked, desperate for answers.
Alastor walked hesitantly towards you, looked you deep into your eyes and did something you never thought he would do. He kissed your cheek.
Your breath hitched in your throat as his warm lips softly touched your cheek, and when he pulled away, you could still feel their presence against your skin. As if you were branded by their sweet touch.
"Come now," was the last thing he said to his shadow as he walked around you and back up the stairs. Alastor's shadow made a melancholic chirping noise before it let go of you and followed its master.
You were left alone in the big hotel lobby. Wishing that it was your lips Alastor had kissed and not your cheek.
I really hope it lived up to the expectations, but I loved writing it! It got a lot more angsty than I first intended...
he’s been nursing the incessant throbbing in his head since the morning, but after realizing the aspirin he took earlier had no effect whatsoever, he decides to send you away on a number of tedious errands to keep you out of the lab for the rest of the day—assuming, of course, that you were the reason behind his headache.
this is the conclusion he arrives at after noticing that he’s far less efficient when you’re within his sights. he’ll give you orders for you to carry out separately but still glance your way to ensure you don’t accidentally mix up the vials, lose the specimens, or do anything to impede his research. he doesn’t know why he feels the need to supervise you so closely though, given that you don’t actually have a track record of obstructing his experiments.
in fact, it’s the very opposite. you’re one of dottore’s most useful assets; you’re indispensable, even more so than his own clones at times; you’re efficient, initiative and adapted quickly to his peculiar working habits (unlike the other fools of the fatuus ranks).
there’s also the fact that you take genuine interest in what he’s studying, and not in the way the other harbingers did, which was always out of formality more than anything. no, you liked speaking with each of his segments, you enjoyed reading academic papers related to his areas of interest and you always took time to ask thought-provoking questions without the slightest fear that it would make you look stupid in front of him. you never regarded him with much of a barrier to begin with, not the ones he’s been used to since his days at the akademiya.
I think we, as a general community, need to start taking this little moment more seriously.
This, right here? This is asking for consent. It’s a legal necessity, yes, but it is also you, the reader, actively consenting to see adult content; and in doing so, saying that you are of an age to see it, and that you’re emotionally capable of handling it.
You find the content you find behind this warning disgusting, horrifying, upsetting, triggering? You consented. You said you could handle it, and you were able to back out at any time. You take responsibility for yourself when you click through this, and so long as the creator used warnings and tags correctly, you bear full responsibility for its impact on you.
“Children are going to lie about their age” is probably true, but that’s the problem of them and the people who are responsible for them, not the people that they lie to.
If you’re not prepared to see adult content, created by and for adults, don’t fucking click through this. And if you do, for all that’s holy, don’t blame anyone else for it.
Except this is the last line of consent before the actual work. So if you’re at this button you have already done the following:
1) chosen to go onto AO3 in the first place
2) chosen the fandom you wish to read about
3) had the chance to filter for the things you do want to see like a specific pairing or a specific AU
4) had the chance to specifically filter out any tags you don’t want to see like, oh I don’t know, incest and non-con and dub-con and paedophilia
5) had the chance to set the rating level if you wish to remove any explicit content at all
6) have read the summary of the story, which aren’t always great but are the only indicator of what the story will be like writing wise so something about it was good enough for you to click on it.
7) have read the tags of the story which will tell you what is actually in the story. If you have used filters to remove stories with things you don’t want then there shouldn’t be anything in here that’s a shock to you but maybe there is. That’s why the tags are there for you to check for yourself.
8) Then you have to actually click on the story. You cannot see anything other than the summary or the tags without personally deciding that you are going to open and read this story.
9) Only here, at step number nine, do you get to the adult content warning pictured above. You have been through eight different steps, the last six of which have also been opportunities for you to see that this has adult content. And AO3 has *STILL* stopped you to ask one last time “are you sure you want to read this because it has things that only adults should see in it”.
If after this point you are reading incest and paedophilia then it’s probably because you specifically went looking for it.
AO3 will always contain things that will make you feel disgusted, angry, or uncomfortable. It does not exist to cater to anyone’s single sense of fictional morality, nor does it exist to censor or exclude content on a basis that can be easily manipulated and weaponized.
The sooner you understand and accept that fact—the sooner you prioritize using the tools to filter content instead of going out of your way to find and vilify it—the better (and healthier) your internet experience will be.
this got Numbers on twitter so i’m posting here cause i literally have nothing else going on but working on my webcomic which you can read here and support here
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