Welcome back! Sorry about that little oopsie ... but we're on schedule and coming into a lot of two-update weeks in the next few months!

How are we all feeling after season 2 of Hazbin Hotel was fully released? Who's listening to the soundtrack until they hate themselves? Just me? LOL

OK well where we left off, Alastor returned a very nice thing Grace did for him with some ... less than nice things. Because asshole, remember? Well, maybe keep that in mind for this chapter, too. LOL

A month long dry spell of Alastor's affections for Grace commenced following the disasterous aftermath of the hotel’s anniversary party. Regardless, he still insisted on keeping her close. 

She knew he did so only because she was a valuable commodity to him and probably to a lesser extent, he didn’t want his investment of tolerating her pain-in-the-ass-iness to go to waste should something irreversible happen to her. She didn’t know what that could be, of course, but maybe Alastor knew things she didn’t.

Well, he definitely knew things she didn’t.

On a morning toward the end of the first week in December, when Charlie hadn’t planned any activities for the day, the resident sinners assembled in the dining room for a quiet breakfast.

“Anyone got fun plans for the day?” Kofax asked around a mouthful of ring-shaped, red-dye-40-doused, vaguely-fruit-flavored cereal. The cereal box at her elbow was labeled Oops! All Red Dye 40!

“Oh, just kickin’ it here,” Grace replied. Avoiding Al as much as possible—god why! At least this stretch of evasion hadn’t been met by accurate accusations that she was avoiding him. Not yet, anyway.

“Anyone wanna take a bet that Grace has never used the phrase ‘kickin’ it’ in conversation before?”  Angel said through his laughter.

“Hey, that is —” With a cringe, she admitted, “—totally accurate. You bastard.”

“Speakin’ of bets,” Cherri chimed in with a grin.

Grace cringed harder yet. “There’s a phrase that rarely ends well.” Especially for me. Here.

“Look what I brought!” She smacked her hand onto the table, leaving a deck of cards behind. “Tada!” 

Expectedly, Husk’s face lit up. “What’s your game?”

“Poker,” Cherri replied without missing a beat.

Grace couldn’t resist a quiet but gentle barb: “Poker. How original.” 

“Oh, is that too boring for you? We could always make it interesting.”

Grace polished off her piece of toast, leveling a deadpan stare at Cherri. “If you’re suggesting placing bets, I’m out. You all know my ass is broke.”

Angel’s eyes glinted with mischief. “It’s not broke if we’re playing strip poker!”

“I knew it, I knew it.” Grace groaned. “Nothing good comes from making things ‘interesting.’”

Cherri wagged her finger at Grace. “Hey, now! No being a party-pooper!” 

With a snort, Angel pointed out, “It’s not like we all haven’t already seen yer tits ’n’ bits.”

Oh, Lucifer’s left nipple! “Holy shit. I hate that that’s true,” Grace grumbled.

“Okay. All garments and pieces of jewelry count as individual items that can be anted,” Cherri explained as she shuffled the deck. Before she dealt the cards, she glanced at Husk with a raised eyebrow. “You in or out, bar jockey?”

“Pssh! In!” 

Angel and Grace regarded each other with roughly the same amount of surprise.

As Cherri dealt the cards, Grace cast a casual glance around the table. Husk appeared to be at a raging disadvantage with his usual attire of three total garments. Unless the suspenders were detachable. And he wore underwear—she desperately hoped. Cherri and Angel seemed to have a pretty equal playing field with seven—ish?—pieces of clothing, each. Grace had more to lose at eight, which was fortunate for her considering she’d always sucked at games of skill and was even worse with games of chance. This could end astronomically poorly for her. Kofax would easily be the last one dressed, a fact for which Grace was indifferent.

Just as soon as the last card was dealt, another voice joined the group: “What are we doing?”

Grace had been so preoccupied that she hadn’t noticed the charge racing down her skin, but Alastor’s voice emanating from the entryway felt like the worst ever static shock. She refused to turn toward him or in any way acknowledge his presence. Not as if he’d even notice she was freezing him out.

Again.

“We’re playin’ poker!” Angel chirped.

“Strip poker,” Kofax corrected. 

Angel glowered at her; Grace assumed he was hoping to trick Alastor into playing since she refused to be forthcoming with Angel about Alastor’s package and sexual prowess.

To nobody’s surprise, Alastor disappeared into his trademark shadows. Then to everyone’s surprise, he materialized in the empty seat across the table from Grace. “Deal me in.”

“What?!” Kofax, Cherri, and Angel cried in unison. Grace was too stunned to make so much as a peep.

Husk promptly folded and bowed out with abject terror in his eyes.

Oh—oh, my god! That’s how Al won Husk’s soul, isn’t it? She tried to casually conceal her shock with a hand over her mouth but Alastor noticed the motion.

Of course Alastor noticed it. He had an obnoxious gift for noticing every little thing about a woman for which he had no sexual attraction or any other discernible positive feelings. His eyes glittered fiendishly.

Cherri grumbled but gathered the cards, reshuffled, and dealt them again—this time with Alastor playing and Husk standing vigilant in the periphery, an extra watchful eye on Angel Dust. A rather protective eye on Angel.

The first round went quickly with Kofax holding the winning hand and Grace losing.

“Okay, loser.” Kofax grinned. “Lose your loser top!”

Grace tipped her head back with a groan. In the moment when she pulled her blouse over her head, Alastor’s fiendish smile soured. His cheeks went a shade of red to overshadow his jacket.

Wary glances were exchanged around the table.

Cherri broke the uncomfortable silence: “You good over there, Radio Demon?” 

The red in his cheeks spread throughout his face and darkened considerably. “Deal,” he scowled.

“I will,” Cherri said with wide eyes and a slight tremor in her voice. “But only because I feel like I have little choice in the matter.”

The next winning hand went to Alastor and yet again, Grace lost.

All eyes turned to him, waiting for him to instruct Grace which garment to remove. Just when she thought his face couldn’t get any redder or darker, it did. And then there was a snap!

Grace blinked. She was sitting on Alastor’s bed. She frowned, crossing her arms over her chest and glancing up at Alastor who stood, red-faced, at the foot of the bed.

She had questions.

So many questions.

She also knew he’d answer none of them so, instead, she glowered at him. “You left my blouse in the dining room.”

He snapped his fingers and put her in an entirely different outfit suited more to his tastes than hers. As usual.

“That’s not what I wanted.”

“What you want doesn’t matter, Grace.”

She gasped, smacking her thighs in exasperation. “What the fuck!” Even for a well-known prick, that was unusually prickish of him. “What crawled up your ass and died?!”

Alastor remained silent, turning his back to her.

“Oh, big shocker, Alastor refusing to answer me!”

He whipped around, horns antlering in a heartbeat and radio-dialed-stare boring holes that seared into her head. “I don’t know! I’m not answering you because I don’t know why I feel this way, Grace!”

Grace shrunk back with a quiet exhalation. She stared in frozen silence.

He blinked his eyes back to normal but the antlers remained. “You are to stay here until further notice.”

“But—”

Alastor tipped his head, his neck cracking in threat loudly.

She could barely manage a whisper: “What about food?” As it was, she hadn’t had much for breakfast. Toast was hardly nutritious, even for an herbivore.

He took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled in a short huff. “I’ll take care of it.” Then he repeated, “Stay here.”

That lunch heralded a series of unfortunate meals over the subsequent days when he insisted Grace stay holed up in his room.

His first attempt at feeding Grace was with a raw deer draped over his little wrought iron table set for two, as if the part of his memory that knew she was vegetarian had been nuked clear off the surface of his hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and anterior temporal lobes. 

Grace’s immediate reaction at the mere sight and smell of it was to gag loudly enough that Alastor couldn’t ignore her reaction, and then to throw up in her mouth—and almost outside her mouth.

Alastor said under his breath, “Too many damn souls with weak constitutions in this hotel,” before going to—probably literally—hunt down something else for her to inevitably not eat.

By then, she’d lost her appetite altogether, which became a blessing when he brought her something from the hotel’s kitchen that positively reeked of beef. He was stunned when she turned that down, as well, as if he didn’t realize that beef was meat. Or perhaps he didn’t realize the dish had beef in it.

Following the rejection of that meal, Alastor ate it while maintaining her gaze. Sure, he was smiling, but his stare sent a very different, very frightening message.

Despite her challenging palate, Alastor insisted upon sharing his meals with Grace, which proved difficult and at times disastrous.

When she was dissatisfied with the hotel’s offerings, Alastor brought his hostage food from outside the hotel. 

Hoping he’d let her leave the bedroom because catering to her tastebuds was more trouble than it was worth, Grace even turned up her nose at things she would ordinarily consume without difficulty.

So her meals rapidly progressed to him conjuring her food and when that also failed to please her palate, he started cooking in earnest for her. 

He’d set her meals down on the table before her, pissing and moaning about how hard she was to cook for since she refused to eat meat ‘like a normal soul.’

She countered without thinking it through that that was fair since he refused to be sexually attracted to her ‘like a normal soul.’

He seemed unbothered by that response; she, on the other hand, would never forgive herself for thinking it, let alone allowing it to pass her lips.

Regardless of his frustrations, he continued providing her sustenance and openly seeking her approval of said sustenance. When Grace made the egregious error of suggesting he didn’t need to do any of this and that she was perfectly capable of obtaining food of her own volition, he took intense offense to it.

Never before had Grace seen such bullshit.

That is, no man before Alastor had ever displayed to her such obvious ‘courting behavior.’

Had it come from any other man, it would have been sweet and romantic. Coming from Alastor so out-of-his-character-y? It was plumb unnerving.

She didn’t dare reveal to him that all he needed to do was not be Hell’s biggest sadistic jackass to successfully woo her although that had sure gotten her attention in the first place.

With each passing meal, Grace got closer and closer to asking him why he was doing this and what his agenda was—even though she knew fully well he would never divulge that to anyone, probably least of all to her.

If he, himself, even knew why he was doing it; something told Grace he actually didn’t understand it, either.

He grew less and less capable of eating much at all, regardless of what the meal was.

After a full week of this insanity, when Alastor was distracted by stalking through his bayou and shredding every plant he could reach with his claws out and antlers on full display, Grace took a reprieve from his growing madness and slipped out of his room.

It seemed to her that he needed a break from catering to her—for whatever was possessing him lately—and she made him gumbo with a recipe she found on the internet, throwing in the hottest peppers the hotel had on hand: the modest Serrano.

As baffling as his recent behavior was, his reaction to her gift of the gumbo was utterly mystifying. He ate only a few bites of it, praised her for the flavor, and snapped at her that she didn’t need to cook for him. That she shouldn’t have cooked for him. That he was highly offended she cooked for him.

And then his idea of retaliation was to disappear for roughly an hour and return with a dish that had a scent so sinful, it made saliva pool in Grace’s mouth as if she was ogling his erect cock.

It was like they were in an endless tug-o-war with food.

Grace didn’t wait to find out what he’d brought her and tucked in immediately.

It was a casserole comprised of blueberry and—

“Does this have sausage?!” she squeaked with the mouthful of it still sitting on her tongue.

“It does. Vegan. Vegan sausage.” When Grace just stared, Alastor added, looking practically eager for her approval, “For you.”

To test his honesty—and the honesty of whatever vendor he got it from—Grace swallowed. 

She waited a few heartbeats. It stayed down. “Holy shit.” She met his gaze, her eyes filling with awestruck tears as she whispered, “Spots …” It was a daring choice to try out a new nickname for him in the middle of this, but judging by the look on his face, he didn’t object to it. “… Thank you.”

His chest puffed out, smile widening and face lighting up. He replied, “You’re very welcome, Little Fawn.”

For the moment, his unusually hot temper had simmered.

And so Grace took a steadying breath and enjoyed more than her fair share of the Creole blueberry and sausage casserole.

It effectively put her into a food coma and so she retreated to Alastor’s bed to nap it off. He quickly joined her, wrapping himself around her and snuggling as closely as he could get without burrowing into her skin.

She dozed off and on for hours. Each time she roused, she noticed he had still not fallen asleep but hadn’t released her.