#((I've had a couple of one off threads with husk & niffty RPers—))

[concubuck]

((The refs reminded me in a roundabout way, if you've got time to answer this at some point, what is/was Alastors relationship to Husk? I'm curious about their dynamic because I thought 1. Husk could potentially teach Alastor (or baby) how to fly and 2. "Any hole is a goal" Husk could have potential to be a fuckbuddy, depending on that dynamic. So if you want to answer I'll be really interested in that extra lore!))

((I headcanon that Alastor isn't friends with anyone who was in his debt, Husk and Niffty included.

I've never been terribly fond of the idea that Husk and Niffty are unique amongst Alastor's underlings, except insofar as they happen to be the two among many he chose to call on to help with the hotel. The fact that he's infamous as a dealmaker suggests to me that he has a LOT of people in his debt/control, and the fact that he said he'd "call in a few favors" when he summoned H&N suggests that he didn't call them because they're his full-time employees or his friends, but because they owe him. They might be two of his preferred underlings, but that's a little like being "employee of the month" at an Amazon warehouse; you probably worked yourself half to death for that "honor" and you're still just one of hundreds of workers.

(One of the reasons I most dislike Husk & Niffty being "special" is because, if Alastor DOES have countless other souls in the exact same position as those two, it seems an absolute waste to treat them like the only ones that matter when we could be imagining up the possibilities and lives of all the other people he could have the exact same dynamic with... but I digress.)

On the one hand, given what we know about Alastor in canon and the implications of being a "dealmaker" in Hell, a location well-known for folklore about soul-selling deals-with-devils, it seems probable that what he's doing is bargaining people into debts where if they can't pay him off he'll eventually come to own their souls—or, he's just straight up buying their souls. Which, in Hell, where you ARE a soul, means they're selling themselves to him. This, y'know, sounds a lot like enslaving people.

On the other hand, Alastor was a Southern man with Black family who was born 30-odd years after the Civil War, so you'd think he'd probably be anti-slavery—even if not because he has a pristine moral compass himself, then at LEAST because he could feel the weight of his family's judgment breathing down the back of his neck.

So he skirts around acknowledging his hypocrisy in two ways:

One, he tells himself that what he's doing is different because it's not like he's, say, for example, personally hunting, capturing, and enslaving people, or exploiting totally innocent children born underneath his control. He's only taking advantage of people who "deserve it": because they were naive enough to trust his obviously exploitative offers, or because they were stupid enough to get into so much trouble that they need his help, or because they were weak enough to give into his offers... or maybe they just simply deserve it because they're damned and therefore terrible people. It's their own fault, so really, he's enacting a kind of cosmic justice by taking advantage of them! [/sarcasm]

And two—this is the bit where Husk & Niffty become relevant—Alastor personally considers forcing someone under his power to act friendly to him out of fear for their livelihoods/safety/freedom to be the worst thing a boss/owner can do. Whether that means "hitting on a debtor" or "inviting an employee to out-of-work social activities" or far far worse things, that is what Alastor considers the worst abuse someone powerful can commit. So his idea of kindness is never, ever putting his underlings in a position where they feel obligated to act like his friend.

(These aren't good excuses for his hypocrisy. But they're the kind of excuses consistent with how real people—especially abusive people—justify committing evil actions: either by saying that their otherwise heinous actions are acceptable because their targets deserve it, or by splitting hairs when defining "evil actions" so that they can tell themselves that they're okay as long as they don't do the things they've personally defined as morally unacceptable.)

The upshot of all this is that he feels like he has a moral imperative to never force anybody under his power to fake emotional intimacy with him. Which is admittedly a noble motive, except that he takes it to extremes ("NEVER make friends with anybody I've got power over, because they'd feel like they can't turn down my friendship,") and he uses it to feel honorable while pardoning himself for far worse behavior.

This was his position with Husk & Niffty. He didn't own their souls, but they were in debt to him for favors performed decades prior, slowly working off their debt. (He intentionally writes his contracts to be slow and hard to pay off—to trap as many people as possible into eventually losing ownership of their souls and to keep those that do ultimately pay him off working as hard as possible in the meantime.) He held their eternal futures in the palm of his hand. Therefore he didn't, and couldn't, consider them friends.

Now, this is all past tense. For the purpose of this AU, when Alastor decided to become full demon, he knew that would be a massive transition and that he'd need at least a couple of months of complete solitude, followed by who-knew-how-long adjusting to the change. So he decided to settle up with all his outstanding debtors before his transformation. He gave each debtor a one-time-only chance to pay off as much as they could with whatever they had at the time—cash, goods, services, favors, etc—and have the rest of their debt forgiven, in exchange for freedom... or, if it seemed easy enough, he pushed them the rest of the way down into forfeiting ownership of their souls.

Both Niffty and Husk were among the debtors who had their debts forgiven and were freed from Alastor's service.

He hasn't spoken to them since.

He doesn't want to speak to them. They saw him when he was at his peak—and when he had power over them. He doesn't want them to see what he's been reduced to... even worse, when he's just their equal, and doesn't have the authority to silence their judgment and mockery.

Because of their prior power imbalance, he'd feel inappropriate being friendly with either of them—and he'd feel infuriated and humiliated to be in a position where either of them has any power over him, such as teacher/student. Sleeping with them is nigh on unthinkable.))