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Stolas was used to isolation.
That is what he told himself like a daily mantra.
And it may be true but going back to solitary after having something different, something brilliant and freeing, it somehow felt one hundred times more oppressive than before.
He used to think nothing of spending an entire day reading or responding to missives alone in his office followed by dinner. Which, while held in the presence of others, more often than not consisted of little actual togetherness.
He did not even get this much since the divorce. While he grieved the temporary loss of having Octavia present, he celebrated Stella’s absence. It canceled out, more or less.
Until Ozzie’s.
Until he was kidnapped to Wrath.
Until he was left alone in the hospital.
Until Blitz had made it startlingly, painfully clear through (lack of) actions and words that this was not just classism. The rift between them may have been started through improper bargaining and power imbalance but it had evolved.
Or maybe, Stolas finally saw what had always been.
The imp’s words still hung heavy in his mind and on his heart like roaches skittering in the edges of the light.
“I can’t give you what you want! You deserve better!”
How Blitz could know what he wanted when he never once asked was beyond him but it hardly mattered after what he had said next.
“I don’t want this! I can’t–okay? This whole relationship thing, whatever the fuck you’re trying to make it, I can’t. Stolas. I’m sorry.”
That had been that. His memory grew a little fuzzy after receiving the answer he so desperately wished not to hear. He remembers giving Blitz the crystal, remembers their fingers brushing as Blitz gave him back the grimoire.
He can’t remember if he even said goodbye before taking a portal back to his bedroom and sobbing until he gave himself a migraine.
He looks at his hellphone now, silent at the edge of his desk. He barely needed to charge it over the last week.
He is guilty of following Blitz’s Sinstagram, not that he had posted anything recently, just as he was guilty of re-reading their old one-sided text thread and feeling like, just for a moment, he was still in active conversation.
He almost wishes he could feel some kind of anger at the imp for gutting his heart so carelessly but he can’t now. Not now that he’s seen how tall Blitz has built his walls, how he shakes, how his eyes grow shiny, how his very pores smelled like panic while he listed out all the ways he could never hope to be in a relationship.
Stolas just feels something close to wistful.
He does his job.
He smiles for his precious owlette.
He grieves when no one is around, which is often.
He tries to move on, and accept, and rationalize that Blitz is too broken to reciprocate love, no matter how much he wants to give his heart to him.
Above all, he tries not to hold out hope, but some mornings it’s the only thing that helps him out of bed.