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He didn't come home on nights he went to see Stolas. That had always been pretty standard, as long as Loona could remember. She and Blitzø were both adults, and for the most part he respected that of her, let her do her own thing, so she never even considered questioning anything he did. Even outside of the fact that she never really wanted to think especially hard about whatever went on between her adoptive father and the Goetia Prince, it was hardly her place to question the transactional fucking that let them do their work.
Tex and Bee had invited her to another house party after they'd beat the shit out of those nasty little cherubs, and the budding social relationships she was building left her skin buzzing faintly under her fur when she opened the front door. It was late-- so late it was almost early, but Blitzø had specifically mentioned he was meeting up with Stolas, so she had expected to return to an empty apartment. So when a small shadow darted across her line of vision as soon as she turned on the lamp near the door, the fur on the back of her neck prickled with alarm. Hackles raised, she drew her shoulders square and stood to her full height, ready to beat the shit out of whoever had somehow gotten into their apartment. Not tonight, Satan. A faint scuttling told her the shadow was struggling for purchase on the shitty linoleum in the kitchen, meaning they were coming closer but with the barrier of the half-wall barely four feet to her right. She nudged the front door closed carefully with a foot and turned to face the kitchen, edging slowly sideways and letting her eyes adjust the dim yellow glow from the lamp behind her, looking for the intruder.
Startled yellow eyes suddenly blinked back at her, glowing in the din, and the owner of the apartment she lived in cleared his throat to make a fumbling attempt at speech.
"Loonie? W-wow, you're home late, y'scared me. Um, you need anything?" While her hackles settled instantly, they were replaced by a sick sort of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Why was Blitzø home?
"Blitzø? The fuck are you doing home, I thought you were--"
"I made pudding," he cut her off, and the sick feeling dropped cold into her toes. He was stalling and avoiding the clear elephant in the room. Stepping the rest of the way into the mouth of the kitchen, she watched as the imp was illuminated by the refrigerator, reaching into it to pull out a pair of little glass plates with upended ramekins on them and kick the door shut. He only used the few good dishes they owned for special occasions, and pudding was one of his favorite things to gorge himself on when he was refusing to talk about something. That he'd made pudding, on a night he ordinarily wouldn't have even been in the apartment... Worst of all, he probably thought he'd been quick enough in the light of the fridge that she didn't notice how red his eyes were. Ohhh boy, what the fuck.
"Blitzø," she tried again, taking note of the way he didn't look at her, watching the puddings instead as he moved toward and eventually past her to set them on the end table at the side of the couch. He moved past her again, claiming a pair of spoons and stopping in front of her to hold one out. Head tilted and tail lashing, she took it, and watched him circle around behind her again to hold out one of the dishes of pudding. "Why are you--"
"Can-- can you just eat your pudding, Loona?" She turned around slowly to the proffered plate, reaching out to take it just as slowly. She studied her father, waiting. "It's fresh, I know I don't usually do fresh pudding, but I didn't want the cheap store-bought shit." He tapped the back of his spoon to the top of the ramekin on his own plate, set it down, and lifted the ramekin to reveal a perfect, glossy mound of pudding, now drenched in a caramel sauce that had been trapped at the bottom of the ramekin. It pooled at the top, spilled over the sides, and pooled again at the base of the pudding.
Loona mirrored the action, tapping her ramekin with her spoon and lifting it, setting it on the table beside Blitzø's. When he offered the briefest of smiles before circling around to climb up onto the couch, she followed him, sitting down on the cushion he wasn't occupying.
They ate their pudding in silence.
When she was done, she set the dish against her thighs and angled her head slightly, watching as Blitzø took the tiniest fucking bites imaginable of his pudding. On any other day she'd assume he was just trying to savor it because it wasn't something he ate often, and it was honestly pretty damn good, but... She leaned back into the couch cushions, extending one leg so her foot was in Blitzø's peripheral vision. She didn't ask again what he was doing in the apartment. She didn't have to.
"Everything's fine," he said, a little too quickly. He set his pudding aside and reached under the table, holding out one of his gloves toward her. She tilted her head and scrunched up her face, wordlessly asking him what the fuck? until he reached across with his other hand and tapped-- oh. There was... a diamond-shaped thing on his glove? She reached out and let him set it in her hand. "We can still get to Earth."
An Asmodean Crystal. He had a fucking Asmodean Crystal on his glove.
This did not answer what he was doing home, but it was also very clearly a plaintive request to not be further questioned. Everything's fine, when spoken by Blitzø, meant everything was, in fact, very rarely fine. She turned the glove over a few times, looking at the crystal.
"'s pretty," she offered, asking without asking. What is it, why do you have it, how bad of an everything's fine is this? She held the glove back out, and Blitzø reclaimed it in silence, holding it in both hands. His posture was coiled tight like a spring, and he was looking at the thing like it has murdered his favorite horse on My Little HellPony. He folded forward and put it back under the table, presumably with its mate. He didn't reclaim his pudding, settling back into a tiny folded pile of limbs on the couch. She realized he was still wearing what he'd gone out in earlier in the day. Moxxie had called it "not bad".
"I'm really tired, Loona," he said finally, just about when Loona was about to give up and let him be mysterious and angsty for the night. It was so hard to tell with him if that meant he wanted her to go to bed herself, if that meant he was honestly tired and wanted to go to bed, or if it was an invitation to start a deeper conversation. They both hated deeper conversations, but...
She shifted, scooting to the middle point on the couch, and draped her tail across the cushion Blitzø occupied, letting it cover his lap. Instantly, he recoiled his hands from where they'd been resting at his crossed ankles, startled, until he slowly laid them in the fluff of her tail.
"Maybe you should go to bed, then?" she tried, finding the way he carded his claws through her fur oddly soothing. "It is pretty late." Blitzø nodded, seeming nearly entranced by Loona's fur. Neither of them moved, which seemed a pretty clear indication that neither of them were going to bed. Loona leaned back against the couch cushions again. "...dad," she said quietly, and for once he wasn't gross and weird about it. His hands stilled, and he turned his head to look up at her. He looked overwhelmingly tired. Loona pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and tossed it over him wholesale. "Get some fucking sleep, yeah?"
She made no move to get up.
Blitzø was very still under the blanket for some time, to the point Loona realized he wasn't breathing normally, obviously trying not to move. She was about to pick the blanket up and give him shit for holding his breath, or whatever the fuck he was doing, when he shifted sideways and curled against her hip, hugging her tail to his chest like a stuffed animal. She couldn't see him, but huddled to her the way he was, the tremors to his shoulders were a lot harder to hide.
If she draped her arm over the blanket and it happened to fall across his shoulders and draw him the slightest bit closer, it wasn't like she couldn't see him. And if she folded herself sideways toward him, letting him curl into her lap, ignoring that her fur got damp where he pressed his face, well.
Everything was fine.