Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing with a ring, is that it has a center.

The Rings, the Seven Rings, are piled one over another, like the universe most shit sandwich. Pride, Wrath, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Envy, Sloth. Every demon child in Hell knows them, without knowing how you know. Maybe you drink their names from your mother’s tits.

Heaven if he knew.

But a ring is an empty circle, and a circle has a center.

In this story’s center, there should maybe be a crystal but, when he thought back of it, the center of it all was the flat.

_

The flat was funky.

It was in an oddly made building, in the corner and the main rooms all had a strange angle and there were two doors for the landing and who needed two entry points?! But it had two bedrooms, and not one but two bathrooms. Two bathrooms! That was fancy.

(Imp-fancy, which was not the same thing as Goetia-fancy but it still fucking counts).

Loona got the smaller room which was long and ended in a point (funky angles). He had offered the bigger one, but the smaller had the bathroom connected in that fancy-pant way some rooms had (Stolas’ room had a connected bathroom), and a door directly on the outside from the room, so that was that.

Moving the furniture had involved pizza, booze, and money to pay actual people to do the job, and also bullets when said people tried to do away with his stuff. It had been a metepheric… mataporic… a not-literal fucking mess, but in the end Blitzø had been left with a literal fucking mess but all his and Loona stuff in the new flat, Moxxie, Millie and Fizz had left, and he was looking up at the new ceiling made brown by the butt of a beer bottle, laying on the couch that would not, from then on, be also his bed.

He had a real room now. And a real -scrounged from the curb- bed. With an actual mattress.

The crystal on his glove shone in the red darkness. He glared at it. It had been useful. I.M.P. was now the only legal murder organization going murdering on Earth. They had gotten more clients, upped the prices, he had been able to give a raise to both M&M, aside from his Loony of course.

And so he was in a new apartment.

M&M were car-shopping, Moxxie bringing brochures of car-dealerships and fretting, Millie actually speaking to the people, and he, of course, giving help they absolutely, clearly needed.

The crystal had been useful.

He hated it.

__

He had wanted the flat before, of course.

Like, not THAT flat, don’t be a fucking idiot. Just. A flat where he and his Loony could each have a room, and maybe a bathroom each (fancy!!) and then he saw that in this flat Loona could have her own door, and the more independence she had, the least likely she was to leave…

So yeah. He had wanted the flat.

Problem is, he wanted the owl too.

__

He wanted the owl.

But not like this.

As he drove the van with somewhat less recklessness than usual, he gritted his teeth. Mox had taken to send him little passive-aggressive bullshit about how tensing your jaw is bad for you. Well guess what, Mox, biting random people is also bad for you. This is how you get like, disease and shit.

“Could we drive slower?” The imp on the passenger’s seat squeaked. Blitzø glanced at him and snorted. The imps that worked for the stuck-up royals were… different. Softer. Squeaky-clean. There were whole families there, working for the same immortal Goetia and, in some case, for the older Overlords. Loyal to a fault.

The little gardener in the passenger’s seat was like that, clutching the potted plant and curling on himself. Blitzø wondered, briefly, how many generations of his family had lived in the now frozen palace, tending the gardens.

He wondered if Stolas even knew.

Probably not.

He had been a fear of his, becoming… this.

Until he had parked the van in the back street of the palace, where the trash (and Blitzø, who was also trash so it checked) was thrown out, the dark and dank and smelly place that felt so strangely like home every fucking time he went to “visit” Stolas.

Stolas was not like the other stuck-up Royals. But in some way, he was, very much, a stuck up… well.

Not royal anymore.

Had been one though.

Point is, all stuck up royals forget the important parts.

Like that trash needs out, and it won’t get out by fancy-smanchy magic, and so you need a trash-way-out.

This was it.

The rest of the wall was glittering ice, and it sparkled in the oily darkness of Pride in a way that felt, and Blitzø felt like it was, a statement. He despised it. It made him want to piss and shit on it, just on principle.

But here, the wall was just a wall, like it used to be before. With the same door. Which he could open like, real easy.

He opened the door, and snuck it.

The gardens had been destroyed.

Ice had wreaked havoc on the delicate flowers Stolas loved so much, dead plants encased on glittering tombs. It was cold, and Blitzø’s hands, where he had been hurt, itched in pain. But his blood was burning, burning, as he looked at the ice palace that was STOLAS not some icy cunt, STOLAS he couldn’t stop the low growl in the back of his throat.

He was just a fucking imp.

And this, this was Magic. The peacocky cunt had frozen the whole place stiff, could probably freeze Blitzø without a second thought, and without anybody giving much of a shit, what with Fizz and Ozzie having their own problems. But as he stood there, with his blood burning and his lips baring his teeth, his claws flexing and a growl in his throat, Blitzø made a vow.

He would give back to STOLAS what was fucking HIS.

No matter what it took.

Starting with HIS fucking PLANTS.

Whatever was left.

He looked around, and started lugging.

Turns out, quite a lot had escaped the destruction. Mostly, the potted plants. The ones on the ground were goners, and Blitzø ached for them, but mostly for Stols. His bird had lost enough for fuck’s sake. So Blitzø heaved pots, and brought them outside, and put them in his van, until a polite cough stopped him.

He turned, claws spread and spines rattling, to see an imp who was about as wide as he was tall, dressed in a bib overall, and with a keen eye.

They stared.

Blitzø was, technically, stealing. Everything here belonged to, well, probably Octavia, but in reality, to the frozen chicken nugget.

“Are you bringing the plants to His Highness, sir?”

Blitzø blinked at the polite address, and nodded before he could stop.

The gardener, who was the Head Gardener and whose name was Dominic, nodded and whistled.

Three more imps appeared, all in bib overalls, all about as tall as they were wide. Blitzø wondered if they were related to Dominic. Children, maybe?

“Let us help.”

They filled three vans, working in silence, their breath like smoke in the air and their boots crunching ice underfoot, including the I.M.P. one, and Dominic and two of his… offsprings? Relatives? Doppelganger clones? Shit if he knew, where driving them, the third one was with him, holding a potted plant.

He stopped in front of the building. It was getting light, the oily darkness of Pride’s night giving away by inches and with a fighting spirit to what passed for dawn down here. Blitzø had seen the dawn in the Living World, and he had to admit Hell couldn’t compare.

He looked up at the flat, and his mind wandered.

__

It had been months.

Two months, two weeks and six days.

And yes, he was counting. He had never said he wasn’t a pathetic little bitch.

So, two months, two weeks and six days since the Blitzo Sucks Party.

Things sure had happened*.

He had missed the owl.

But Stolas had made clear what he wanted, or not wanted. Sure, he had some feelings for him, back up a time (two months, two weeks, etctera). But now? Nah. He probably was patting his own back thinking how lucky he was that he had dodged a Blitzø-shaped bullet. He had not wanted to see, but he knew about that parrot bitch boy he was seeing.

He still missed him. And no amount of alcohol or sex would stop the hollow feeling, which went together with all the other hollow feelings. The others were labelled “Barbie” and “Mom” and had likely welcomed the one labelled “Stolas” with a nice welcome party in some part of whatever hellborns had that passed for a soul. His was like those fancy cheeses, more holes and hollows than substance.

By now, he should have known that alcohol and sex didn’t help. But it was not for lack of trying.

He had been busy. Kept himself so. Killing people. He honed new skills too. For a month or so he drank too much and fucked too many people, and that included his first ever mortal (in disguise, it was so weird, all soft skin and snappable limbs). It got him constant headaches and a new shiny STD which he went to Sloth to treat.

He almost got into H-8.

But the thought of the look in Fizz and M&M’s eyes stopped him. Besides, he had to be a good role model for Looney (ah).

It didn’t get better.

It just got on.

The murder side of the busy-ness was good for business (ahah!). In a month he got twice the money that he used to.

The second month was twice as much as that.

Hence, his flat and M&M’s car.

The flat was, as said, funky. He liked it. He was funky himself. It had four angles and none of them was a boring, square one. The rooms weren’t square, neither. It was less moldy than the one he had before and previous occupant, some sinner who got himself offed during the last extermination, had kept it rather well, which was rare in Hell. It was close to Cannibal City, but not IN Cannibal City, which may be part of the reason the price was so low: a lot of Hellborns didn’t like the Cannibals much. There is nothing like turning the wrong street and being invited FOR dinner because you didn’t fit whatever bullshit aesthetic they had going on.

The Cannibals really committed to the bit.

Plus, they were hideous.

The walls were boring-white, but the kitchen had all the appliances, and the bathroom had a huge shower that could fit three of him and as such was good for Loony if she wanted to use it, and there were huge windows that were clean, a wonder, and since it was on the higher floors and the elevator actually worked (the handyman was a Cannibal. The Hellborns made themselves scarce when he came) the views were great too, and it was on the last floor so he could go to the roof and look on whenever he wanted, and Loona could invite people and party there.

Still, he hadn’t gotten better.

Just on.

__

Blitzø turned toward the imp who was clutching his emotional support plant and looking an interesting shade of brown.

“Get out.”

He got out, too.

Dominic was already out, and Blitzø had to admit, it was the kind of name that slap. You could call him Dominic or what, Dom? Yeah fuck to the no.

“Last floor is mine, roof is thrown into the bargain. There is water, like, a pump or some shit.”

Dominic looked up at the wall and nodded. Neither his nor his clones seemed to be put off by, well, anything. Shit, they could be his literal clones, Stolas wouldn’t, but some of his relatives definitively would clone imps to get the same gardeners and save themselves for like, having to hire people and stuff.

They went back to work.

Blitzø knew he was fit, it came with the job. You were either fit, or you fit in a casket (ahahah!). But those four gave him a run for his money. He gritted his teeth and kept moving potted plants until his muscles burned and his back stopped knocking politely to tell him to stop and started to bang pots and pans to tell him to STOP FUCKING NOW!!

“Alright, this is good. His Highness can move them as he likes himself.” Dominic spoke, and everybody stopped working.

Blitzø, who had been debating the pro and cons of just collapsing, sat on the ground, groaned and tried to lean nonchalantly on the wall. Dominic smiled at him.

“Thank you. For the plants. His Highness will… like this.”

Blitzø sure as Hell hoped so.

“Hey if the four of you don’t know where to go…” They had started moving, they stopped. Blitzø cleared his throat. “Wrath Ring. Rough n' Tumbleweed Ranch, belongs to Lin and Joe. They good people, always need ranch hands. Not the same as being a gardener for a…” he almost said rich prick. He stopped himself just in time. “Goetian, but it is a job, and they good fucking people. Say that Blitzø Buckzo, the o is silent, sent you.”

Dominic and The Clones looked at each other and nodded. The smiles they gave him were true.

“We… just may. Thank you, Blitzø.” They tipped their hats to him, and left.

Blitzø debated just dying on the roof, then discarded the idea. A shower sounded really fucking good right now. He went to the -functioning!- elevator, and down to his funky flat.

He dragged himself inside, and somehow got washed, and then looked at the door of what was technically his room but now held a, hopefully sleeping, owl.

He threw himself on the sofa, and fell asleep before his horns had hit the arms.

Thanks fucking Satan for Saturdays.

Blitzø had heard other people woke up groggy. Like, not knowing where they were and shit.

He didn’t.

He opened his eyes, and knew exactly where he was, what had happened, and from the shadows he knew it was around lunch time.

He sat up, stretched, and looked around. The flat was still a mess of furniture and boxes and shit. Nothing had been moved from when he had gone to sleep, about like, six hours ago.

He stood up, scratched his junk, and went to wash.

He sniffed. The bathroom smelled of lavender, and oil, and Stolas.

Uhm.

He brushed his teeth and went to knock on the bedroom door.

A second later, it opened.

His owl looked…

Blitzø was not a masochistic bitch. Ok, he was, but like, very rarely and only when the mood hit and anyway, that wasn’t the point, the point was he hadn’t seen Stolas nearly enough for a fucking long time (two months, two week, etcetera) and now he could look at Stolas properly and the owl was there in the flat and Blitzø felt a bit like after the first tall glass of water after a huge hungover.

Like places of him he didn’t even knew were dry had suddenly sprung back to life.

Though, objectively, Stolas looked like shit.

In the harsh light of Pride, he could see the places where his feathers hadn’t been preened right. His clothes were slightly askew. He didn’t have his tall-ass regal hat on his tall-ass head. He had a simple sweater, and long pants which hid his long legs which was a shame, because Blitzø really fucking like his legs.

And his red eyes were rimmed, and lost, and he was looking at Blitzø and his beak was trembling slightly like he was trying not to cry.

Something in his newly watered body squeezed.

“Hi Stols.” He said, softly. “Want breakfast?” He thought a second. “Lunch? Brunch? Whatever.”

Stolas swallowed. “I… I wouldn’t want to, to impose…”

Blitzø rolled his eyes. He had fed the owl bacon and eggs yesterday, so Stolas wasn’t starving, and he was pretty sure Stolas had slept at least a bit, which was good. There were Rules in this kind of shit, and one of them was: nothing is improved by being hungry and tired.

Eat, sleep, THEN fuck shit up.

He went to the fridge and looked at the possibilities. Uhm. They were going to have Problems, but not right now.

He grabbed milk, cereal, and then poured two bowls, putting them on the table, which had come with the flat so was already set up.

Stolas was still looming on the bedroom’s door, like the world fluffiest slenderman.

Blitzø groaned, marched there, took one of his hand, dragged his lanky ass toward the table, and pointed at a chair.

“Sit.”

The chairs were something between his size and Stolas, so they would be only moderately uncomfy for both of them. He could live with it.

Stolas sat.

Blitzø pushed the cereals toward him.

“Eat.”

Stolas ate.

“Good bird.”

Blitzø had good eyes, and was looking at him. Stolas fluffing up could be imperceptible to others. Not to him. He’ll need to get that Earl Grey tea for him, later. Figure Stolas is such a fancy dick even his tea is noble.

“So, here is the deal. Explain to me in detail like the idiot I am what happened, so I know which favor I need to call in” Blitzø had brought in his rolodex from the office and is flipping it. The people connected to the royals for sure. Fizz is out, Mammon is out for his and Asmodeus’ asses. He thinks he can help here.

Later.

“There isn’t very much to tell. They are freezing my assets as they evaluated how much fault I have in the divorce, so I can’t shuffle them around. And… Via has… decided she wants to, to stay with her mother.”

Blitzø gives Stolas, who was staring into his cereals like they were his precious starry skies, a Look. Which is totally lost on him, but whatever.

“Details, birdbrain”

Stolas sighs. Stolas did some amazing sighing. It was the feathers, they puffed up and made him look around twice as big. Blitzø could now admit he found it endearing. But only just.

“… Whatever my relationship with you is… a fault, in the divorce.” 

Blitzø nods. He had assumed as much. “Since I can’t believe monogamy is a big thing for Goetia, I assume it is more the fact you went imp-fucking the problem.” He frowns, clicking his talons on the table. “No, it doesn’t make sense. I am sure you aren’t the only one who got their fancy with a lower-class peasant… uhm. There is an angle here.” He mutters, and goes back to the rolodex.

He takes out some of the names, and numbers.

Stolas is staring at him now, instead than at the cereals. Blitzø nudges the plate toward him with his tail, rolling his eyes. “Eat, Stols. Nothing improves on an empty stomach.” A hard earned lesson, that one. “Anything else?”

“… How I lent you my… grimoire” He pronounces it in that fancy pant way of his, grimouar, rolling the r in the end, and Blitzø should not feel the surge of affection that warms his probably nonexistent heart but here he is.

“Alright, can work with that.” He stands up and stretches. “Gotta work, if you wanna go out there is a spare key in the bowl, and also food in the fridge. Your plants are on the roof, and your Head Gardener, Dominic and the Clones, told me they’ll need some TLC. Make yourself at home.”

Stolas’ pupils flare.

“My… what?”

But Blitzø is already out.

He has people to kill, and favors to call in.

He doesn’t look back at Stolas, but it takes something out of him.

Chapter Text

“His Highness is WHERE?”

“Oh shut your dick sucking lips, Mox. He is with me, as I said, because he has nowhere else to go. And that is all.”

“… B, are ye sure it is like, wise?”

“You too, Mills? I am a big boy with big boys pant and a big boy dick, I know what I am doing. And now let’s go, people aren’t going to get murdered by themselves. We got Wednesday off, let’s make this Saturday count!”

 _

“Yes, I need a list of all the Goetia who have dicked or pussied down imps or hellounds.”

“That is going to be a mighty long list, B.B.”

“It figures. Fancy pants prolly can’t even come among themselves. Any chance of something juicy?”

“Sure, but I am telling ya, it will cost.”

“You don’t worry about it. Get me that fucking list and whatever can be used as blackmail material. Especially about that Stella bitch and her cunty brother.”

“Kk, B.B.”

“So let me get it right. It was fine for the Big Cock to be dicking you with his kaiju, but the problem is that you are all lovey dovey now? You are STILL hypocrite by the way.”

“Pretty much, yes. Why are you asking it now, Blitzø? Hang on, is this about Stolas?”

“No it is about the plumber, who also happens to be a Goetian. Of course it is about fucking Stolas.”

“You shouldn’t fuck Stolas. It didn’t end well last time.”

“Oh Christ on a stick, Fizz. I am not fucking him. He had nowhere to go and I gave him a place to crash, that’s all.”

“Uh-uh. And who is sleeping on the couch?”

“Me. Why?”

“No reason. No reason at all. Look, Blitzø, I just don’t want to have to glue you together again.”

“It won’t happen. And you didn’t, I was totally fine. Completely peachy.”

“Suuure. Ehy, about your bird…”

“He is not my bird.”

“Whatever. About Stolas, I heard they had something particularly damning on him as I was presiding at Ozzie’s a couple night ago. I’ll snoop around.”

“Thank you, Fizz. I owe you one.”

“After how you helped with Mammon, I am the one owning you, brother.”

“…”

“Blitzø?”

“…”

“Blitzø are you crying?”

“-crying- no?”

“Oh for… see you later, Blitzø.”

“Bye, Fizz, see you… see you later.”

__

Blitzø entered the flat in the evening, aching all over, and he knew immediately two things.

One, Loona is here.

Two, Stolas isn’t.

He frowned, turned on his hooves, and went up the roof.

Stolas is there. He is kneeling by some of the plants, some kind of tools in hand, talking softly to the many-toothed monstrosity.

Blitzø looks at the scene and something in him ease, just a bit. He can do it. He can fix this. Maybe.

He clears his throat and Stolas’ head whip behind in that creepy way it has. Blitzø yelps.

“Christ on a stick, Stolas. Don’t do that.”

Stolas blinks, one eye at a time, and then turns his body on the right side, and stands up, dusting his knees from the white dust of the roof.

“Oh, yes. Hello, Blitzø. Dom came, with his sons, told me how you… met, yesterday. About your, your suggestion too.” Blitzø looks around. The roof has shaded part now, made with strange gazebo-like structures he has strong suspicious had been previously part of STOLAS’ palace gardens. From the faucets (of which there are four, he discovers) a rather complex system of pipes has been installed. The plants have been correctly (he assumes) arranged. And is that… he squints. Is that a fucking lounge chair with a table?!

Yes. Yes, it is.

Fucking Stolas, he swears.

Blitzø grinns. “Well, I am glad you and your Dom have had fun.” He leers, for good measure.

Stolas blinks at him again and hoots a huff. “Hardly my Dom. Just our Heard Gardener. Had been so for… many, many generations.” A pause. “He was my father’s before. Thank you for… for thinking of him.”

Blitzø shrugs and turns. “So you say. Come on, birdie. Time for some food, I am starving.”

Stolas follows him.

There is, of course, no food ready in the house. Loona had left a note on the table, she likes to, sometimes, instead of sending messages.

Going out with the band. See you later.

Don’t fuck too loud.

Blitzø rolled his eyes. As if. Their fucking times were gone, Stolas had woken up and found no interest in him anymore.

He tried not to think about it.

Stolas looks at the kitchen and then at him.

There were still a cereal dish on the table, likely from food Stolas had in the afternoon.

The owl was staring at them with confusion. Then his cheeks reddened, and he jumped on.

“Oh! Oh I apologize, I, I’ll clean immediately!”

He put the dish in the sink and looked at them, and the sink.  Blitzø thought he would have been angry at Stolas’ lack of thought, but he was mostly… amused.

“Stols.”

Stolas turned toward him, his eyes huge.

“It is all fine. We’ll wash them with the dinner plates.” He took out his coat. “Go wash your hands. We are making pasta.”

He got the minced meat and then looked at the fridge. There was food, but… his mind went to calculation, and adding another adult to the mix, and when the money for the new hits would come, and he cursed under his breath.

Then he turned toward Stolas. “Time to cut some shit. Can you use a knife?”

“Uh… for… ritual purposes?”

Blitzø substituted it with no and showed him. Stolas picked it up quick. In half a hour, they had a Bolognese going, and forty minutes later he was dishing out two plates of Bolognese pasta.

Stolas, who had spoken little the whole time but had obeyed the order diligently, tried it. His eyes shone briefly, and then started showing the pasta in his beak.

Daintily.

Blitzø picked at his food. He was hungry, but if you eat slow, you get full of less food.

Stolas got himself a second serving and Blitzø packed half of his away. There were leftovers. Good.

He stood up and put half of the food in the fridge. It would serve for tomorrow, and the leftovers were for Loony later. He turned toward the owl.

“And here is how you wash dishes.”

Stolas learnt to wash the dishes, and he was a diligent learner, to the point Blitzø felt like he could leave him to finish while he went to take a shower. He went, washed, and put on his pj, the old horse shirt and boxers, comfy like anything. Stolas had put everything away, and was in the room. He was sitting on the couch when the owl put his head out of the room, carrying all his stuff. Blitzø rolls his eyes.

“Christ on a stick Stolas, leave your stuff in the bathroom, you don’t need to carry everything around.”

Stolas jumped, and looked at Blitzø on the couch. He nodded and went to get a shower.

At least when a dry Stolas got out, he wasn’t carrying stuff.

Blitzø was laying on the couch, his horse blanket on him, and ready to sleep, when he had the feeling of Being Watched.

He turned, and the eldritch red eyes of a Demonic Prince bore into his soul.

He groaned.

“Christ on a stick, Stols… what is it?”

“… are you… are you sleeping on the couch?”

“No, I am currently awake on the couch, because someone is watching me.” He looked at Stolas, pointedly.

Stolas fidgeted. “… why are you on the couch?”

“What the…” Blitzø groaned, then started pointing at rooms. “Loona’s room. Bathroom. Bathroom. Your room.” He made jazz hands. “No other rooms”

Stolas’ eyes widened, and he walked hastily toward the couch. “I, I didn’t mean to, to usurp your room, Blitzø, I apologize, I’ll take the c-“

“Stolas, your stilt legs aren’t gonna fit on this couch. Relax. I’ll be fine. I have slept on this here couch for five fucking years. I can go on.” Yeah, he had hoped to leave his couch days behind him, but he understood Priorities.*

Stolas’ beak chittered and his expression set.

“No. I must insist. I cannot have you out of your bed when you are already, already housing me and feeding me and… and you went, and saved, saved my plants.” His voice wobbled. Blitzø looked up, alarmed. Stolas wasn’t about to cry, was he?

Shit.

“And I didn’t even thank you for that. I am sorry, Blitzø. I am… I am very grateful, for, for everything, you didn’t have to and I…”

“Hey!” he threw his hands up “Looks, Stols, it is ok, ok?”

“No. No, it isn’t. I won’t have you… sleep here, not for me. I’ll take the floor if needed.”

Blitzø groaned.

“Fuck, as if we hadn’t shared a bed before” He bitched.

And then Stolas stopped, looked at him, and he was a silhouette in a purer darkness than anything else in the room. There were many types of darkness and any demon who had left their ring knew it. Blitzø had seen the darkness of Earth too, the pure, see-through dark of starry night, and envied mortals who slept under such a nice dark. Pride’s darkness wasn’t like that. It was syrupy and cloying. Greed was oily, leaving you feeling dirty and with a taste in your mouth like day-old cum. Lust darkness hinted more than hid.

Stolas was none of those darkness. Stolas was like the starry night, pure and clean and smelling of nothing.

Stolas looked at him.

“We… could? The bed is… big enough?”

Well.

Blitzø looked at Stolas.

“… ok.”

He stood and went into the room, followed by a too tall, too beautiful, too hot owl, and then put himself on the half of the bed Stolas had not chosen.

It still smelled like him, and some part of him squeezed painfully in his chest.

“Sleep well, Stols.”

“… goodnight, Blitzø.”

And if Stolas spoke more, Blitzø didn’t hear, because he was fast fucking asleep, and dreaming of unicorns frolicking and shit.

He woke up in the middle of the night because somebody was crying.

The person was very good at not making crying noises, but Blitzø was even better at being aware of his surrounding, which is why he got to the frankly impressive age he had. Sometimes he wondered if his fears of dying old and alone were bitch-fears, because realistically? He wasn’t going to get old, let alone old enough to croak of it.

But none of this mattered, because Stolas was crying.

Which, of course. He had lost bloody everything and, as usual, it was Blitzø’s fucking fault. Blitzø wondered rather idly for a second if Stolas would want revenge, but then discarded it for two reasons:

1. Stolas was too nice;
2. Blitzø wouldn’t care one way or the other.

He did care, though, that the owl was crying, and a lot, and he chewed on his lips, thinking, looking at nothing, trying to ignore the growing pit at the bottom of his stomach.

Then he turned and reached for Stolas. If the owl didn’t want him, he was free to like, turn him to stone or some shit.

When his fingers touched a feathered shoulder though, the one who seemed to turn to stone was Stolas himself. He stopped, and for a second, he was completely and wholly immobile before he spoke, his voice hoarse, wobbly.

“I apo, apologize I didn’t mean t-“

“Oh Christ on a stick, stop the apologies, Stols.”

He tugged.

Stolas went with the motion. Maybe it was the surprise, but Blitzø found himself with an armful of owl.

The pit on his stomach promptly closed, and some deep muscles he hadn’t even been aware of went slack, a sensation of rightness settling on the back of his skull, making his spines relax and his tail flop on the bed.

Christ, he was a bitch for this bird.

The thing with Stolas, is that he was soft. You could say it was the feathers, but he wasn’t the only feathered bird Blitzø had fucked, and the others didn’t feel nearly as soft as he was. Stolas felt soft and good. Just good. And they were in mother-fucking Hell, there were very few good things.

Stolas was one of them.

Blitzø put his hand on the back of Stolas’ skull, where the black of his head-feather gave back to the blue-gray of him. Roan blue. That was Stolas’ color if he was a horse. It was rare and beautiful**. Like Stolas.

He massaged the skin here, careful of the feathers.

“Look, I am not about to lie and say some bullshit about it being alright because it fucking isn’t. But. You aren’t alone, ok? Ok. We’ll get through it. I already have people looking into it, and we’ll find a way through. We will” he added, fiercely, and his tail was around Stolas’ waist, and his arms were holding the bird tight. “… I have an idea about your kid, too.”

“Via?” the whisper was so full of hope, it made him ache.

“Yes. The frozen chicken nugget and his cunty sister must have filled up her brain with bloody nonsense, but she is a smart cookie. Must be, she yours. And she hated that fake-ass clown, so she has some brain.” A soft hoot, almost a laugh. Stolas was gripping him. It was good. Just good. Blitzø swallowed. “Tomorrow, we’ll talk about your daughter, and what we can do, and I’ll explain to you, ok? Ok. In the meantime, we can sleep. And cry, I guess, if you feel like it.”

Stolas was clutching him now, and trembling. Blitzø stroke his back, attempting to be soothing.

The trembling intensified.

Well fuck.

…

Oh for fuck sake… fine.

Blitzø cleared his throat.

And started singing.

It was a song from one of his favorite shows. It was about a horse.

    You're okay

    You're all right

    I'll never, ever leave your side

    I will stay

    And I will fight

    With you***

… Shit it was even more touchy-feely that he remembered. But Rider in the story sang it to Horse, and so it was like, fitting right?

Stolas stood still as a statue. He was trembling but like. Less.

“Th… Thank you, Blitzø.”

He whispered, and Blitzø used all of his willpower to avoid shivering at the wet puff of breath from that beak against his neck.

It was so strange, and so intimate. He licked his lips, and caressed Stolas again.

The trembling subsided, this time.

“No need to thank me, pretty bird. Now rest. From tomorrow, we fight.”

*

Loona > Blitzø

Stolas > Blitzø

They were nice and easy priorities in Blitzø’s opinion.

**

Ever since some months ago, Blitzø had discovered roan blue was his favorite type of coat for horses. He was sure this meant nothing whatsoever.

***

Tell me Blitzø wouldn’t love Centaurworld go on lie to my face.

___

To be clear: Blitzø was aware he loved Stolas and was also in love with the owl.

He was not fucking stupid, despite sometime overwhelming evidence of the contrary. He had known he loved Stolas since that Blitzø Sucks party. It was because he loved Stolas that he had stayed away and tried to fucking forget him.

With… very limited results.

If asked, though, he would deny it ferociously. His love was his own fucking business, thankyouverymuch. He would not saddle anybody, least of all Stolas, with it.

And he knew it.

Of course, Stolas had, very sensibly, gotten over whatever puppy crush he had. Which was very good for him, and also shredded whatever Blitzø had as a soul, but that mattered less (See, priorities*).

Stolas didn’t seem to hate him, was alive and unmaimed, which was the best ending to any relationship Blitzø had ever had to anybody whom he had loved up until now. Now, if Blitzø could only make sure Stolas had what was HIS back, he could let Stolas go and die inside with the awareness he had done the right thing for the demon he loved so, so much.

Blitzø thought all of this, more or less, as he was falling asleep, and if there were some teeny tiny flaws in his reasoning, he didn’t seem to notice them before he was, once more, asleep.

Chapter Text

Stolas didn’t understand.

This had not, up until recently, be a common occurrence. He had understood much of his life very well. He had understood his duties toward his family from an early age. He had understood he had no choice in marrying Stella, none at all. He had understood he was not particularly good at social functions and the networking that was so important for his kin. Sometimes, in his most charitable moments, he had wondered if he had been paired with Stella because her strength in that regard balanced his own weakness so well. In his more realistic moments, he knew nobody had cared enough.

He had understood Octavia must come first since the moment she was laid, a so-tiny eggs in his hands. He had understood that Stella had some truths in her words, coated in rough barbs as it was. He had understood… well. Almost anything. His life was as understandable as it was miserable.

And then Blitzø had exploded in his life.

Blitzø was a mass of contradictions in red and white skin. He wanted to steal from him but he also fucked him so good Stolas understood for the first time why people wanted sex. He was loud and brash and abrasive, but he touched Stolas so gently, and not only when they were fucking. He was an imp, but he had his own, thriving, business. He fought and fought and fought and was afraid of nothing, but he hadn’t come to save Stolas when Stolas needed him.

Up until he had.

And then, as Stolas looked at the frozen wreckage of his understandable life, his heart screaming for his lost daughter, he had found himself in an apartment. He was fairly certain they hadn’t portaled. Also, he must have gone to his room and packed, because he had a truck with some clothes. But he couldn’t remember anything. He remembered Blitzø telling him to eat and to sleep, and he, always a good little goetian until he wasn’t, had obeyed.

And then he had woken up, and he was in the flat.

The flat was… peculiar. Strange angles, and a lot of windows. It was, also, very clearly had just been inhabited by Blitzø, pieces of furniture still needing assembly scattered around. Blitzø made him cereal and quizzed him. He had some kind of… revolving object in his hands, with cards, and was taking them out as they spoke. Stolas’ brain was sluggish, but he was starting to wonder if Blitzø was planning to… do something? About his situation?

A tiny flicker of hope warmed up in the cavern of his chest.

Then Blitzø, like the whirlwind storm he was, left the house, mentioning…  “Your plants are on the roof, and your Head Gardener, Dominic and the Clones, told me they’ll need some TLC. Make yourself at home.”

He had felt his eyes shine, and his beak hang open.

“My… what?”

__

His plants were on the roof.

Stolas stared.

His plants were on the roof.

Stolas closed his eyes, and then opened them again. The plants were still on the roof.

He walked toward them as if in a trance. Dorothea was there. He lifted his hand toward it, and he noticed he was trembling. He caressed her petals. He had had Dorothea since he was a child. She used to live by the fridge in the palace.

Blitzø must have gone back yesterday after he was in bed, and worked all the night to save whatever plant he could. Not because he cared, because he very much didn’t.

Because Stolas did.

Stolas closed his eyes, tears squeezing from them. Many plants had… likely not survived.

But some had.

It was more than he thought he could have. So much more.

A well-known, discreet throat clearing behind his shoulders.

Stolas turned.

Dominic, the Head Gardener, with his sons Alistair, Burrich and Carlisle, were here, all dressed in clean bib overall and looking at him with their usual polite respect in their gaze. They had brought several feet of hose with the necessary attachments, plant-shading supplies, and assorted paraphernalia.

Stolas blinked away his tears as his throat closed.

“Where does His Highness want the plants to be?” Dom asked, polite as always.

Stolas looked at himself, at the red robe he had hastily thrown on. “Give… give me time to change, and we will, we will discuss it, Dom.”

He changed in his bib overall and set to work.

The work… settled him. Gardening always had. With the help of Dominic and his sons he put on rat traps to get enough meat for the carnivorous plants. He should have enough to avoid any need for buying any, providing he stayed a bit on top of it. They rearranged the plants in a way to ensure they would thrive in the new environment. Not immediately, of course. Plants don’t like change (Stolas emphasized) but eventually.

It was after he had eaten a second hasty bowl of cereal due to sheer hunger (there was nothing ready. Of course there wouldn’t be, there were no servants. He hadn’t expected Blitzø or Loona to prepare him anything! But it had been disconcerting, not finding any ready food. Another discordant note, another hint that his life was… different. Worse.), well in any case it was after that that Dom mentioned the Wrath Ring.

“We are going to move down, Your Highness.”

Stolas blinked at him and waited. The imp, his horns tilting upward even as his head was down toward the plants (he preferred Blitzø’s horns, the pleasant sweep back, the… alright, not helpful), continued. “Mister Blitzø gave recommendation for a job in Wrath. Rough ‘n Tumbleweed ranch. Spoke on the phone with the people who run it. They say they are waiting for us. It will be a rougher job, but the youngsters are excited.”

Stolas looked at Dominic. His family had been working in the palace for many, many generations. For his father, and now, himself. But he couldn’t pay them now, to look after the plants on this roof. There weren’t enough plants for four gardeners full time, and beside, how would he pay them?

Stolas had no hellish idea on how much a gardener costed. It dawned on him, he didn’t know what… anything costed, very much, really. When he wanted something specific, he asked to Pringles, his butler, for it, and it appeared. Otherwise, his needs were just… met.

How much was Dominic’s work? Fuck, how much was a carton of milk?

Stolas wasn’t stupid. He knew that you went to grocery stores and bought… stuff there. He had seen movies and shows where people went in a grocery store and bought stuff. You put them in the cart and then paid, right? But how did it work? How do you choose? How much the singular items costed? Did everything cost the same, or were things more expensive than other things? Logically, yes. But what was more expensive than what?

He had never been in a grocery store. He had no idea.

He blinked.

“It is… very good for you and the younger to have a job lined up, Dominic.”

Dominic nodded, emphatically. “Yes. Very good of Mister Blitzø to think of us. Good worker, too. Worked all night, didn’t complain any even after that kerfuffle earlier.”

Good worker was high praise by Dominic. Something proud flared up in Stolas’ chest.

“Yes. He can be… very nice.”

And then they went back to work.

_

The cup was still on the table.

Stolas stared at it. Of course it would be on the table. There was nobody here to wash it for him. But he hadn’t thought of that.

Oh shit. Did Blitzø thought he believed that Blitzø or, or Loona should clean after him? He flushed red and jumped up, babbling something…

And then Blitzø cut him off, and Stolas had his first cooking lesson.

Blitzø explained everything. Down to how much water to put in the pot to cook spaghetti. Stolas was pathetically grateful for the detailed instructions. He cut the carrot and onions diligently as described, and helped brown the meat which gave an incredible aroma making his beak water, and then when the pasta was ready, he felt an incredible glow of satisfaction.

He ate until he couldn’t anymore. The first meal he cooked!

Perhaps if his Starfire ever forgave him, he could make her pasta. Perhaps she would like it.

Stolas just ate and tried not to think about… very much of anything.

-

Robbing Blitzø of his bed was unacceptable.

(Blitzø had slept on the couch for years? Why? It wasn’t a, a preference he got himself a bed. Why the couch?)

Blitzø had been a literal lifeline. Stolas had known he was fucked from the moment the preliminary judgment on him had been passed, but it was starting to dawn on him just how much he would have been fucked without the imp. He had also the feeling this would be a long, ongoing realization.

Blitzø had put his life on the line for him. Had given him shelter, and food, and kindness, and plants. He was not about to repay all of this by taking over his bed.

And this is how he found himself with his back to Blitzø, trying to sleep.

Blitzø was asleep. The imp could fall asleep in the middle of a hurricane, Stolas believed. The once-prince wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he also fell asleep.

He knew that, because he woke up crying.

Stolas tried to be quiet. He didn’t want to wake Blitzø up. Luckily, he had years of experience in crying quietly not to wake up other people in his same bed. Well, another person.

He had fucken up. He had fucken up so bad. And it was all his fault. He should have thought it better, done it better, talked with Via more. Explained to her. Not send her away after Striker tried to kill him, or at least told her why.

He wept.

And then there was a hand on his shoulder, and he found himself crying against Blitzø’s hard chest, and Blitzø’s hands were caressing his back and head.

“You are not alone.”

Stolas squeezed his eyes.

He didn’t understand.

He believed Blitzø. Blitzø had, apparently, put some of his contacts out to work on Stolas’ problems. Which were, again, Stolas’ and not his. He was housing and feeding him and had put himself in danger to fight Andrealphus (as an imp! Fighting a Goetian!) and then again to get him his plants.

Stolas wasn’t stupid. He believed Blitzø.

But he didn’t understand him.

It had been two months and two weeks since the last time they had met, at the disastrous Blitzo Sucks Party. He still cringed at the thought of it. He should have never been there. He had asked the internet later what “KYS” meant and had felt physically ill at the idea he had been in such a place, where people were telling Blitzø to kill himself.

Blitzø may have hurt him, but he had not, not for a second, not for an instant, wanted the imp to die. Or to, to kill himself. Never. Absolutely never.

He hoped, so much, that Blitzø knew it. The alternative was… unacceptable.

But Blitzø had not tried to contact him. Neither had he. He had thought they were… through. Done. That Blitzø had never cared about him. It had hurt, ongoingly so.

Stolas wasn’t stupid. Blitzø wasn’t acting like he didn’t care now. To the contrary. He was acting like he cared a great deal.

Stolas inhaled Blitzø’s scent. He didn’t have a very good sense of smell. His earing and sight were incredible, but smell? Not so much. He needed to have something close to smell it.

He could smell Blitzø now. Gunpowder and blood and himself, spicy and true. His beak opened a little, and a shudder that wasn’t tears racked his body.

Oh.

Oh.

Blitzø.

Something that wasn’t the bleak despair of the last few days flickered in his chest. Knocked on the door of what he had instead of a soul.

And then Blitzø started singing.

Nobody had ever sung to him. He had to Via, when she was small and couldn’t sleep. Blitzø’s voice was slightly rough, like his hands on Stolas’ skin, like the gentlest of growls. It made Stolas curl up against him and listen, and his tears dry up, and his beak hang open a little, as if drinking the words, his face pressed against the imp’s neck.

And the words.

Fuck.

The words.

    You're okay

    You're all right

    I'll never, ever leave your side

    I will stay

    And I will fight

    With you

Stolas had known, previously, that he cared for Blitzø. That he had… feelings. But in the last two months and two weeks he hadn’t had a lot of time. What with how his life had imploded and everything. He had thought that it perhaps meant he was growing away from them.

He had been an utter fool.

Because as Blitzø was singing to him, and caressing his neck where his feathers transitioned from the ones he had all over his body to his head feathers, said feelings were simply. Here. Like they had never left. Like they had been here all the time, waiting.

… Nobody had ever said to Stolas they would fight with him. Let alone sing it to him.

Stolas had previously envisioned falling in love like a process with a start and a finish. You start to fall in love, and then you are in love. You have, as it is said, fallen in love. The hint is in the word itself.

In the arm of the imp he loved, had never stopped loving, would never, he was starting to think, stop loving, he realized the word was a bloody liar.

He hadn’t fallen in love and was now in love, completely so. He was, yes, but he was also falling in love again. Right now. In this very instant. He pressed his body against Blitzø and scrunched all four of his eyes closed.

With you

Blitzø sang the last words to his head feathers, and Stolas could feel the vibration of his breath down to the calami in his skin.

He could do this, he realizes.

He could earn his daughter back. He could live this strange, different life. It would be hard, yes. Challenging.

But for the first time in fucking forever, he was not alone.

… And it felt like endlessly falling.

Chapter Text

“So, here is the fact. I bet you they are keeping most of the imp servants. And I would wager they don’t like that bitchy cunt of your ex or her frozen cloaca of a brother very much.”

Blitzø was throwing up pancakes in the air as he spoke. It was Sunday, which meant it was, apparently “pancake Sunday.” Loona had come in, apparently to check that Blitzø was indeed making pancakes, and then retreated in her rooms again.

The pancakes were purple.

Stolas, sitting on the slightly uncomfortable table with his hands around a cup of tea, listened.

“This is… likely. Stella was not… loved by the help.” An understatement, he realized now. Thinking back, Stolas could think of so many times Stella had been… well. Herself toward the servants. He sipped his tea and managed not to gag. It was… something. It tasted like Earl Grey. Barely.

He glanced at the cup. He had never seen tea made with a pre-made little packet. How odd. How do you make tea? When he wanted some, he asked Pringles, and the tea arrived, strong and flavourful and perfect.

… Stolas didn’t think Blitzø knew how to make good tea.

Focus. They were talking about important subjects.

“So, I think they can be a way to communicate with your daughter. I know you tried like, calling and sending messages and shit but there may be a lot of reasons that it isn’t the best. Very easy to control, all I am saying.” Blitzø glanced at him behind his shoulder.

Stolas shook his head. “No, Stella, Stella wouldn’t hurt Via, me, yes, but Via…”

“She already fucking had.”

He jumped at the snarling, but Blitzø just smiled his happiest smile. “Looney baby! I am making your favorite pancakes!”

He slid a plate to the hellhound who had padded so silently toward him, even he hadn’t notice. Her air was a mess, and she was dressed in what was clearly casual clothes, fit for home. She was showing her teeth in a half-snarl which reminded him so much of Blitzø, he wondered how could they not be related.

“I… I beg your perdon?”

Loona growled. “You are on my chair. Move.”

Stolas moved.

Loona fell on the chair and started showing pancakes in her mouth. “That bitch already hurt Via. Not hurting her? Bull-shit.”

Stolas’ eyes grew even wider. “No, I mean, I am sure sh-“

“Oh my fucking GOD!” Stolas tried not to jump at the scream. Blitzø continued making pancakes, so he assumed this was… ok? “I didn’t know my father likes them stupid!” Blitzø’s smile grew sappy, and he turned to look at her with shining eyes. “She is fucking using Octavia as a tool to get your fucking money, isn’t she? She has let her icy beige wash-out brother destroy her home in the bloody process. She is spewing bullshit about YOU. Yeah, your ex is fucking hurting Octavia. And guess what, if she can get something out of it, she will hurt Octavia MORE.” Loona glared at him, pancake syrup dripping from her maw like blood, and Stolas’ head was spinning.

“Yeah, hate to be the bringer of bad news, but my daughter is as smart as she is beautiful.” A plate of pancakes in front of him. They were purple as well. “And she is also right.”

“Bloody right I am.” A growl.

Stolas stared at the melting butter on the pancakes, at the swirl of syrup slowly dripping in the dipped surface. Stella would only ever hurt him. Octavia was safe from his mother. That was one of the great truths, wasn’t it? Stella wouldn’t hurt Octavia.

… Except she had.

She hadn’t hurt Via before simply because she had no reason to.

Stolas exhaled, and something left him with his breath. Certainties on which he had clung so desperately were substituted with a dread that seeped into his very bones.

Oh stars

Oh no.

“I, I have to go.”

He jumped on his talons, looking around wildly. He could portal. Likely not inside the palace, the security wouldn’t allow it, but just outside and then…

Blitzø ‘s hand was on his forearm. He almost shook it away.

“It won’t help, Stols.”

Stolas looked at him, at the imp who was looking up at him with something like compassion in his gaze, and then almost, almost let himself drip darkness but…

But Blitzø was right.

It wouldn’t help.

He collapsed back on the chair.

“Eat your pancakes. Being hungry won’t help neither.”

He started eating the pancakes. Cut, spear, put in beak, swallow.

“You could write her a letter.” Loona’s voice was calm now, almost casual. Stolas blinked at her. She rolled her eyes.

“A letter. You know, with paper. I bet Blitzø could have the imps in the place give it to her. She may not read it now, if she is like very poisoned against you. But Via is smart. She’ll get it once they start to turn on her. And they will, those people always do. And then we’ll have a way.”

Loona’s gaze was into his eyes, and there was her father’s kindness and compassion behind her heavy make-up and goth clothes (they reminded him so much of Via. So, so much).

He swallowed a mouthful of pancakes. “It… is probably a good idea. Thank you, Miss Loona.”

“Oh fuck it with the miss bullshit. Call me Loona, I bet you are going to be around for a while.” He couldn’t say if she was smiling, or showing her teeth, or both.

“I’ll get in contact with Dominic and the Clones, see if they can give me an entry with the household imps.”

Stolas blinked. “Alistair, Burrich and Carlisle.”

Blitzø looked at him. He was eating some of the leftover pasta, he noticed. The one he hadn’t eaten the day before. “What?”

“Dominic’s sons.”

“… A, B, C, D? Christ, and I was complaining about my own name. Ok, ok. You write, birdbrain, I’ll be your postman.”

Blitzø flashed him a smile.

Stolas, flanked with Blitzø on one side and Loona on the other, felt…

Marginally less alone and less defeated than before.

__

It took the whole fucking day for the owl to write the letter. He fretted about the thing A LOT. Since it took about half of the time for Blitzø to get in contact with Pringles who was STILL the butler, and who had never given a hoot for him (see it? Given a hoot? Ahaha!) while he was having monthly times with his boss, but who really dislike both the Bitch and the Bitch’s Brother, he spent the other half partitioning the food they have for the next two weeks

It was late evening by the time Stolas handed him the letter (he had to go and find fucking letters. Like. Paper-letters. Who the fuck used paper letters anymore…)

Blitzø had a sense of dev… dej… Whatever the fuck, he had been here before, literally a couple night before, same trash-place, Blitzø outside the frozen place, and Pringles just inside. Darkness enveloped the both them. He looked at the butler. The butler looked at him.

He handed the letter to the other imp, who took it.

“Take care of His Highness.”

Blitzø blinked and looked at him.

The other imp pressed his lips together. “My father… he took care of the prince since he hatched. King Paimon was not… an involved father. I have known the Prince all my life. I didn’t think you were good for him.” A beat of silence. “I may have been wrong.” A pause. “There is a broken brick on the left side of the wall. It has a space behind.”

Then he was gone.

Blitzø looked at the closed door, the darkness everywhere.

Then he turned and left.

But not before he found the brick.

__

“Pringles says Octavia has kept the letter. Not read it but kept it.”

Stolas looked at Blitzø and swallowed a mouthful of homemade hamburger. He licked his beak. He had learnt how to make hamburgers today.

Loona was chewing on the fries. They had made fries too. She was looking at Blitzø. So was Stolas.

For the first time since his Starfire had stopped talking to him, he felt a glimmer of hope in his chest.

“Thank you… thank both of you.” He looked at father and daughter, and his eyes burnt. He would not cry. He had cried enough.

He did sniffle.

Just a bit.

Blitzø, who was not eating (“Got stuff outside”) grinned. “Don’t mention it. Hey, tomorrow, Loona and I are going to work, so you are gonna be alone.”

Stolas nodded. He was used to be alone. He would be fine.

What he discovered was not fine was sleeping with Blitzø.

It was the third night. The first night he had slept alone (And Blitzø had slept very little and on the couch. Stolas tried not to cringe into a ball of feathers at the thought). The second night, he had been too emotionally worn-out and tired to realize… anything.

This was the third night, and a fundamental fact about Stolas of the Ars Goetia reared back its head.

He wanted Blitzø.

Carnally.

This was a basic fact about him. He loved his daughter, the stars, his plants, Blitzø and he also wanted Blitzø to fuck him until he wore his hole out and his throat was sore from screaming the imp’s name as he came enough times to fill a bathtub.

Little facts about himself.

Blitzø was holding him. This was entirely platonic on the imp’s side. Stolas had woken up crying, again, and Blitzø had held him, again. And sang the song, which made his heart do strange little flips in his chest.

It also made his cloaca pulsate with pure need.

Which was rather less wholesome, but there you have it.

It was completely platonic from Blitzø. Heaven, the imp wasn’t even hard! Not for the first time, Stolas was happy to have a clearly superior genital package from a cock. Not that cocks weren’t interesting, he rather liked a lot of them (chief above all: the big, juicy, veiny one belonging to the imp who was currently holding him which felt so good inside… never mind) but they tended to give one away.

Cloacas were… discreet.

At least Blitzø didn’t know he was salivating at the idea of the imp tying him to the bed and fucking him to sleep, leaving him there, and then fucking him awake before going to work. Stolas would be very good, too. And it would be SO relaxing...

…. Aaand that was the kind of thing he should not be thinking right now.

Stolas closed his eyes, told his stupid genitals to stop it, and tried to relax into Blitzø’s arms.

They were strong arms, powerful and good around him, they could literally lift him up and…

Bad. Cloaca.

-

Blitzø held Stolas as the owl stopped sniffling and started to relax, and tried not to remember a time when this very scenario would have meant Stolas trying to get him to fuck him.

Stolas didn’t want him anymore. He had seen the light, or the darkness, or whatever the fuck it was Hell’s Princes saw when they understood shit, point is he had seen it when he had given Blitzø the hated crystal. He hadn’t wanted him anymore. It had all been a grand misunderstanding, Stolas needing somebody to love him and thinking Blitzø could be that demon.

Blitzø, of course, did love Stolas, but Blitzø’s love was like trash. And not even like, the good trash that became stuff for the garden (Stolas had, once, explained composting to him). No, his love was radioactive waste, killing everything around itself.

Stolas could have the love of somebody better. Hell, several someone better if he wanted them. A whole fucking harem. That was the bird deserved.

But there had been a time when Stolas had wanted him, and he had not understood, not then, what it was. That it wasn’t like the other times. That Stolas was true, and painfully naïve, and as beautiful as he was earnest*.

And so, like the fucking idiot he was, Blitzø had lost it. Stolas’ desire and his touches and his want, and the way he looked when he was tied up, and how he sounded when he was being fucked by him or a toy, when he was a good sub and when he was bratty. All of it, really. He had lost it all, because he was, as always, a fucking idiot.

It was enough to make his dick soft, and his desire fled somewhere in the vicinity of Heaven, where he had no hope whatsoever of getting it back.

So now he caressed the owl back, and tried not to think about, well. Anything at all.

__

When Stolas would, one day, think back of this time, he could see it divided in several different cluster,  like they were subdivision of a bigger galaxy.

The first one started when Blitzø bought him to his flat, a wreck of a demon, and he would one day look back at it with chagrin.

There had been so much he hadn’t even seen back then.

Stolas spent the first two or three days catering his plants, and reading the few books he had brought with himself, and, shyly, assembling the furniture. He had never done it before, but he could follow instruction very well, and it was all it was needed, really.

That, and a little magic.

Blitzø had been enormously pleased the day he had come back and found the wardrobe properly assembled. He had used half of it for his clothes, and left the other half to Stolas with no question.

Stolas looked at their clothes, side by side, sometimes, and felt… things.

Things he had not even a name for.

The furniture itself was different from what he was used to. It was lighter, for one. He never mentioned it, it wouldn’t have been polite. But he noticed.

And he didn’t think he would fit in this fridge.

Blitzø always left food for his lunch, and Loona brought a packed lunch. He usually helped made the food in the evening, learning a myriad of skills he hadn’t even known he lacked (how to cut vegetables and meat, how to stir-fry, how to cook an egg in several different ways, how to boil water and milk without having them spill… the list was endless without even touching the “how to clean after”).

This time of… strange peace lasted for about a week.

And then, Blitzø was injured.

*Moxxie had brought him to a show called “The Importance of Being Earnest” which had been all based on that hilarious pun. He had laughed a lot about it. He liked the word. But as a name, shit, Blitzo was better.

Chapter Text

He had gotten soft, that is the problem. Soft and old and spoiled. There was a time when Blitzø could live on caffeine and spite and still kick your ass.

Shit, was that ten years ago? Fuck he wasn’t twenty anymore.

But since I.M.P. had gone big (honestly, having to change offices had helped much as it had been fucking terrifying… well. Another tale for another time) he had gotten soft. Used to eat three bloody time a day. Shit, teen Blitzø would have laughed at him.

The shithead.

The hit wasn’t even particularly difficult, that was the problem. Dead gal wanted her father killed. Which he always respected on principle. Apparently, the fucker had left out some kind of weapon and the tit-haver kid, a snot-goblin under 5, had thought it was just the thing to play pirates and shot his little sister with it.

When tit-haver went to her father with a gun and intent to murder which, again, respect, the dad shot her first, though not before she managed to clip him.

“Don’t know if that is why I am here, or if it was all the meth we cooked and sold.” Blitzø shrugged. He was born here and frankly the reasons why the Sinners managed to get their asses in Hell wasn’t any of his business. But this one looked at him, and her jaw was half-off, and she was fake-dripping.

Now, some demons were like, really into fake-dripping. It was a thing of Sinners and Envy fuckers. It looks like they are dripping some sort of goo, but before it hits the ground, it poofed out. People who liked it swears if feels like, real fucking good.

Blitzø just found it gross.

“But I want the fucker dead. He is the reason my daughter is… and my son…” Blitzø saw what was left of the Sinner’s jaw (he didn’t remember her name. He never did. But he thought of a little boy, growing up knowing he had killed his sister, and something in him went PING in recognition).

“Yeah, fine.”

They (Moxx) got the address and they (Moxx) got ready and they (Blitzø) portaled in.

And everything went to shit.

_

If Blitzø had not been so fucking soft and weak, he would have realized before that a guy who had enough weapons to leave a gun out for a crotch goblin to find AND just to casually grab one when his murderous daughter would come to get revenge had a lot of fucking weapons.

If Blitzø had not became so soft in the last five years or so that some missed meals made him slower (slower! After not even two weeks of eating once a day, Christ on a stick, there had been days like this even as a bloody kid in the circus. He was disgusted by himself) he would have threw himself on the ground in time.

As it was, he got a Shiny New Hole on his thigh, the pain exploding onward. He gritted his teeth, hissing, rolling, shotting from the upside down and one of his bullet got the underside of the old fucker’s jaw just as Millie’s axe separated his torso from his legs.

Blood and guts went everywhere.

Good ol’Millie.

“Good job, everyone!” he shouted. Everyone but him. He rolled, ignoring the pain with practiced ease, and tried to stand. His leg laughed at him, and he collapsed ungracefully on the left, face-planting into the guy’s liver.

Ah, fuck.

He didn’t even like liver.

“Oh crumb, Mills, Blitzø is injured!”

Way to state the obvious, Moxx.

“It is nothing, it is nothing! Well done, everyone, now let’s go back home alright? Alright!.” And the money would come in handy. It would take time to come in, but he had one more mouth to feed now, literally, and with this one they were sure to have enough groceries next month!

Just one more week.

“You look rough, B. Let us help.” Ah, tits. He was weak to Mills. He tried to stand up, ignoring the black blood seeping from the wound and the pain and the head spinning and then opened his mouth to give some sort of cheerful reassurance but before he could, the world grew dark.

_

When Blitzø came back to himself again, he realized several things.

One, he was on the couch. His couch. The couch-that-had-been-his-bed. He knew this couch, and the couch knew him. So, he was home. He had not been home when the light had gone tits-up, so M&M must have portaled him back. Probably Moxx had to perform the alphabet for the Crystal again.

A pity he hadn’t seen it.

Two, his leg hurt like a motherfucker, a dull pain with a hint of sharpness. So somebody had fished out the bullet, disinfected it and sew it back up. Probably Mills, curse her little murderous heart.

He opened his eyes.

Six eyes were looking at him.

Nope. Fucking out of here.

Blitzø closed his own again.

“Nope you fucking don’t.” His Loony growled. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Blitzø opened his eyes and looked at Loony, for now ignoring the fidgeting, four-eyed, tall-ass owl demon on the other side of the couch who was looking at him like he was afraid Blitzø would disappear in a puff of smoke.

Blitzø blinked, trying to radiate innocence and, by the unimpressed expression in Loona’s hard gaze, falling miserably.

“I don’t know what you mean, Loony-tooney! I had some bad luck on a hit.” He smiled, trying for charm.

“The Hell you did.” Her snarl was a sound to behear. “this was not fucking bad luck. You were out cold for far longer than you should have been with that nick.”

“Aww, were you worried about m-“

“Of course I fucking was! He” she jerked her head toward Stolas. “Fucking was. And Millie told me she was sure you could dodge the old fucker. He was what, ninety? What the fuck, dad?!”

Blitzø was mentally passing through his Catalogue Of Lies, when his traitorous stomach decided to complain.

Loudly.

Now, his Loony was not stupid. And… she had been hungry before. Not since she was HIS! Never! But before. He knew that, though he had never asked her, and she had never told in as many words.

He didn’t need to.

Loona’s eyes widened, her nostrils flaring. Then her head turned toward Stolas, who blinked at her, uncomprehending.

“Blitzø” uh-oh. “how long ago did you eat a full meal?”

Her voice was calm. Shit shit shit.

“uh. This… morning… I had breakfast?” By the pale rays of what passes for light in Pride, it is late afternoon. The hit was, technically, after lunch.

Shit.

He had half a bowl of cereal with milk. They saw him. He couldn’t look at Stolas.

“And before that?”

He tried his most charming smile at her. It probably looked like he had some kind of bad paralysis. “Uh…”

Breakfast, the day before. He had half a leftover hamburger. When you are hungry, you remember all the food you eat.

All of it.

And a lot of what you wished you could eat, but didn’t.

It is just what hunger does. It doesn’t really matter.

“I am going to buy double meat pizza with extra cheese and hot sauce for everyone.” Loona was growling. She stood up and looked at the both of them, eyes in slit.

Stolas, curse his rich-prick heart, looked confused. Blitzø thought, for a wild second, that he could still salvage it. Stolas hadn’t gotten it. Thanks for small curses and all that, perhaps he could salvage it…

And then the bird opened his beak and, looking all perplexed and fluffed up and worried and not adorable, absolutely not, what the hell, he spoke. “But… what… why Blitzø? Your physique is perfect!”

“OH MY GOD” Loona’s shouting came from the main door. “He isn’t starving to get thinner you pompous idiot! He is starving himself because we don’t have enough food!”

And then the door slammed and she was gone.

Stolas stood still, like the worlds’ cutest eldritch horror, all dark silhouette and red shining eyes.

Blitzø flopped down, and looked unseeing at the ceiling.

Well.

Shit.

___

Stolas knew what all the words Loona had just said meant.

They just didn’t make a lot of sense, did they?

People didn’t… not have enough food. Not… really. Right? Not in those days and age. Beside they had food. He had been eating it. It hadn’t been the food he was used to, alright, but it was good. And it didn’t taste half bad! He hadn’t complained once!

Yes, he had been eating the food.

But had Blitzø?

Stolas had an incredible memory. It was his curse, and his blessing. His mind flitted back to the last few days, and remembered…

Blitzø, eating half of dinner and leaving the other for breakfast “Eh, I am not that hungry.”

Blitzø, not packing himself a lunch when he made one for Loona, and left food for him. “I’ll get something out, it is fine.”

Blitzø. Not eating enough because…

Stolas stared.

People talk about “dying inside”. Stolas had read it often enough in his books. He was… familiar with the sensation. He had been dying inside by bits and pieces for years in his marriage and sometimes he thought even before that. He had died inside when… when Octavia had…

Well. He had deserved that one.

Now, as he looked at the demon he loved who was very pointedly not looking at him, Stolas felt like dying inside, too.

“Oh.” He said, his voice small.

Blitzø groaned and threw one arm over his eyes.

“Stolas. It is nothing.”

“You aren’t eating, and it has affected you enough for… this. It very much is… something.” He gound his beak. Stupid stupid stupid. “Is there not enough food for everyone?”

His voice was remarkably calm. He didn’t add “because of me.” He didn’t think about all the times he had taken a second serving of pasta, patting himself in the back because he wasn’t even mentioning the lack of other courses.

Stars he was such a fucking idiot.

Blitzø sighed behind his arm. “Look, Stols, it is temporary alright? Alright. I had to spend a lot to get this place, and then the moving, and get stuff.” He gestured, vaguely, toward the flat. Stolas had no idea about how much all of this costed.

He had no idea about… a lot, it seemed.

“Next month the money from a couple more hit will come in. A week, and we’ll have enough dough in so that everyone can get seconds if they want. It is just a week, nothing major.”

Stolas sat on the floor, his hands on his lap, and looked around. Truly looked.

Blitzø had opened his home to him, and feed him, and brought his plants here. And he had been grateful. Of course he had been. He wasn’t a monster.

But he had also… noticed… things. The tea, which was bad and tasted too strong on his tongue. The furniture, which felt light and flimsy. The sheet, which felt coarse against his feathers.

He hadn’t mentioned them, of course not. But he had… noticed them.

He had been pitying himself. Because he, a prince, was living like this.

… He was a rich, pompous asshole, wasn’t he?

The weight of it fell on his head like Andrealphus’ ice, chilling his very bones.

Blitzø, the demon he loved, had given him everything, the literal food from his mouth… and he had been there, judging him. Finding him wanting.

Like Stella.

For a second, Stolas’ brain clicked, and he was in his ex-wife’s shoes, the feeling of superiority because somebody else was inferior so strong he could almost taste it. The taste of bile flooded his mouth, and it was fucking welcome.

Oh. Oh no.

No.

Stolas closed his eyes tight and swallowed.

He didn’t deserve this. He deserved Blitzø to throw him out and let him fend for himself. Because Blitzø had been right.

About everything.

__

The bird wasn’t speaking.

That was always, always a bad sign.

Blitzø took his arm from his face and turned to look at Stolas.

Stolas was sitting on the floor, gazing at nothing, the nothing being in the vague direction of his hands. He may look expressionless, but he wasn’t, not really. The harshness at the corner of his beak, the tension in his shoulders, the subtle way his feathers were pressed down, as if to make him smaller.

Ah, shit, this was bad.

Blitzø would have turned, but he still had a new shiny hole in his thigh, so no turning.

“Hey, Stols.”

Stolas puffed up a little, and turned to look at him. His red eyes were deep as anything Blitzø could think about. He took a deep breath.

“I… apologize not to have noticed, Blitzø. I… should have.”

Blitzø couldn’t help himself. He snorted.

“Nah. I am good at this. Shit, there was a time he could eat every other day and beat everybody ass. Guess I am getting old.” He bitched, without heat.

Stolas doesn’t look convinced.

His hand itched. He wanted to reach, to touch. He extended it, thought better. Once. Twice.

Stolas’ head moved toward his hand, and suddenly he had a palmful of the softest, nicest feathers ever.

He exhaled, stroking them, feeling them between his fingers. Stolas chittered softly, his eyes closed, his arms around his bony legs.

“We’ll share whatever food there is.” The owl’s words are determined, but Blitzø sighed.

“Stols, have you ever been hungry?”

He would bet all his -meagre- savings the prince never had.

A pause.

“No. But it doesn’t matter. I won’t have you starving yourself for me, Blitzø.”

Blitzø snorted. “Shit, Stols, for somebody who likes big romantic gestures you are shit at accepting them.”

Stolas’ red eyes opened in shock, white pupils looking at him, his beak hanging open and what the fuck had Blitzø just said.

“Here are the pizzas YOU TWO BETTER NOT BE GROSS”

Blitzø yanked his hand away from Stolas’ head.

He felt the phantom feathers on his palms, between his fingers, for a very, very long time.

Chapter Text

Blitzø tried to give Stolas more food.

Of course he did.

Stolas glared at the demon, laying currently on the couch and as such unable to bolt for the door. Then, very pointedly, spooned some turkey white bean chili in the imp’s bowl.

Blitzø groaned.

“Stolas, you are twice as big as I am, of course you need m-“

“I’ll eat once you are done with your chili, Blitzø.”

“This is the weirdest fucking foreplay ever, I swear.”

Stolas tried not to blush at Loona’s remark. (Said Loona was eating the chili with gusto and no trouble whatsoever). He did, however, cross his arm on his chest and glowered. He was hungry. He could  wait.

Blitzø groaned, and went to eat.

He ate all his bowl of chili, which was not full (none of their bowls were) and then showed it to him, lifting his eyebrows.

Stolas, feeling a bit like when he was cajoling Via to eat as a toddler, examined it, nodded, and started on his own chili.

It was the third day, and he was hungry. He had never been hungry as a… low-grade, constant state. He knew some, even among his own people, starved themselves for looks. But he had always had the opposite problem. A twig, Stella used to call him. As many of her insults, it wasn’t exactly… wrong.

Not to make too fine a point but being hungry sucks.

But he had seen Blitzø’s eyes go back to shine, and his movements, that had acquired a veneer of listlessness, recover their usual energy. And it was worth some hunger.

He had been able to use his magic for helping Blitzø heal at least. A couple of days after, his injury was almost gone and Blitzø just limped a little. It worried him. He knew imps healed slower, but how much slower?

(How much more in danger was Blitzø than him, in any circumstance?)

Stolas sighed as he scraped the side of the bowl with the spoon. Loona had offered pizzas that first night. It had been, like very many happening lately, an… experience. Greasy, but good. Tomorrow, she would get more pizzas with something called “points”.

Stolas was surprised to discover he was looking forward to it. And how good the not-full bowl of turkey chili tasted. He licked the spoon, then looked furtively at Loona and Blitzø.

Well, they had both done it. When in Pride…

He lowered his head in the bowl and licked it clean.

_

Octavia of the Ars Goetia was not having a good day.

Or a good week.

Or a good month.

Or a good year.

But in a bad week, month, and year, today was a very bad day.

She looked at her mother, who was in her room.

She tried to keep her feathers down. Her mother wouldn’t have liked if she had poofed up. She would see it as a show of attitude.

It was her favourite word for her, lately. Attitude.

Now, Via knew she was a teenager, and sometimes yes, she had an attitude.

But she was unsure about how some of the things her mother thought to be attitude were, well. Attitude-y.

Like now, for example.

Her mother made a noise. Octavia’s head feathers shot up before she could stop them. She had heard that sound often enough, mother making it at her father.

Contempt.

Disgust.

Then her mother’s arm shoot up, and a whole shelf of her prized taxidermy clattered on the floor.

“No!”

She jumped, trying to save her most precious pieces. They were delicate! They would break!

“No?”

Her mother’s voice was high and incredulous. She looked at Octavia, standing in the middle of her shattered possessions.

Octavia cringed. “They, they are mine! Dad...”

She knew she had made a mistake immediately.

Her mother’s feathers ruffled, and she made a low, high-pitched hiss.

“That whoremonger had… indulged… you for far too long.” Mother’s voice was an hiss. Via was on her knees, trying to reach one of the taxidermies, she had gotten it from Stylish Occult when they went together, dad and her, maybe…

Her mother’s foot came down on the little animal’s skull.

The crushing sound could have been the taxidermy’s bone, or Via’s heart.

“My darling sister is right, Via dear, it is time you try to be a proper lady of the Ars Goetia. With all the mud your despicable father had dragged your name in, you’ll need to be impeccable if you want people to forget what… happened.”

Uncle Andre was on the door, his claws tick-tickety on the doorframe. She could feel him coming inside, a cold wind on her back as she looked shocked at her broken belonging. There was not even pain, not reall.y, not yet. Only a sense of unreality. How could this happen?

How could they do this to her?

Uncle Andre’s hand went to her head-feather, a touch that was a mockery of gentle.

She looked up at both of them, astonishment in her gaze.

Uncle Andre smiled at her, even as her mother glowered.

“But you don’t have to worry about having to overcome your… unlucky… tendencies. We are going to help you.”

__

That night, when so many of the personal belonging of Heiress Apparent Octavia of the Ars Goetia ended up in the trash behind the palace, an urgent message left in secret from an imp to another.

And if a van came zooming in the night, and hauled everything up in as much silence as an imp and a hellhound could go, well, nobody among the high and mighty noticed.

They very rarely noticed trash.

_

Looking back at the first two weeks in the flat, Stolas could not remember a time in which he had learnt so much, but aside from the horrible time when Blitzø was hurt, three moments came out shining:

1. The Laundry Flop
2. The Grocery Store Experience
3. The Paperwork Mountain Ascension

The laundry had ruined clothes. Luckily, only his. The idea of ruining Blitzø’s clothes was so mortifying, Stolas could not even begin to conceptualize it.

He had been low on clothes and had known that there was a laundry room in the basement. So, he had taken his clothes, brought them downstairs, put them in the washing machine with some detergent, and start a cycle.

He had been patting himself on the back, reading one his books until Blitzø came back and looked at him where Stolas has poured out his genius.

Loona had facepalmed.

It was the first hint he may have made a mistake.

Blitzø looked at him before asking. “Did you divide the colors?”

“Divide what?”

__

Keeping the bird alive was ending up being an almost full-time job.

Blitzø went down in the basement, and they opened the washers, but Blitzø already knew what they would find. Sure, nowadays most dyes were colorfast, but Stolas had the kind of finicky bullshit fabric that require dry-cleaning in any case.

As expected, it was a bloody mess.

The black of the capes and the red of the rompers had mingled to create some sort of holy third color that had ruined everything, rompers included. Blitzø cringed when he saw no less than two woolen sweaters hopelessly felted. Shit, they could fit him now.

Barely.

Stolas looked on, his beak half-open, at the destruction of a good half of his wardrobe.

Blitzø decided not to mention today was not their laundry day. He would scream at their neighbors later.

“Well, this is a fucking loss.” He said, briskly. “Those clothes don’t even go in washer, Stols.”

Stolas blinked at him, completely baffled.

“They… don’t?”

“No. They need dry-cleaning. Do you have normal-person clothes?”

Stolas was putting the rompers and sweaters and capes in a sad pile in the laundry basket. In the too-harsh light of the single bulb, his slow moments looked… sad.

Fuck.

Sad bird made Blitzø’s heart go crunch.

“Come on, Stols. It was better than my first attempt.” He lied, out of his teeth. Stolas looked at him, perking up a bit.

“Yeah. I shrunk everything up three sizes. Fizz laughed himself off the trapeze” He bluffed. He hadn’t. His mother had guided him through the process. Had he made such a mistake, his father would have him beaten so much, no amount of stage make-up would have hidden it.

“I see. Well, I should have asked for information. Silly of me, I suppose.”

Blitzø shrugged, but the owl looked less sad, so it was good. “Come on, Loona is going to get the pizzas.”

The only good thing was, Blitzø claimed the sweaters.

They were comfy.

__

The Grocery Store was… an experience.

To be precise, an overwhelming experience.

There were so many… things.

Stolas looked around, baffled. Thank Lucifer they had a list, or he would never have managed by himself. Of course, he wasn’t by himself. Blitzø was with him. For which he was pathetically grateful. They had a budget, and he knew enough by himself by now, after the whole Blitzø-starving-himself business and the Laundry Flop, to know he would have made a mess of this.

It was humbling, really. To realize how little he knew.

“So here are the cereals, which one do you want?”

Stolas stared at the wall of cereals, flabbergasted. He always got the same. Greed Seeds. He had since he was an owlet. He had known, vaguely, there were others. But… not so many!

“Uh… I usually get Greed Seeds?”

“Wanna change it up?”

Did he?

He looked around, and another mix caught his gaze. It seemed… interesting. He took it, and handed it to Blitzø, hesitantly.

Blitzø nodded and put it in their cart.

In the end, it took a surprisingly long amount of time to just… shop. More than two hours, and that was only the time in the actual grocery store, without the going there, and back, and putting everything away properly (he helped).

How did people without servants had time to do… anything?!

He liked it, he found. He enjoyed just… spending time with Blitzø. Blitzø explaining to him pricing (bitching to him more like, but it was informative). Showing him how to look out for scams, and to find out good products at a lower price. The difference between a chuck roast and a sirloin. To be careful about the price per pound.

They got a package of rats, too. Just for him. Blitzø had claimed he had “seen some recipes he wanted to try”. It warmed his heart.

Blitzø had been… incredibly patient with him. There had been no screaming, or yelling. No dressing him down, or insulting him for his inabilities, of which there were several. He had also learnt how to sweep and mop (they had to buy extension to the broom and mop). He did well at sweeping, but the first time mopping he had to do it again because he had used too much soap. Again, Blitzø had helped him, explaining what he had gone wrong, and helped him.

It was… incredible. A completely new side of him. Stella would have had a field day with his failures and incompetencies. Blitzø was… patient, and caring. And yes, sometimes, often, he did curse or bitch, but not at him.

Just in general.

Stolas hadn’t known it was possible to be wrong and not berated for it anymore than he had known how to mop the floor or do laundry.

And at night, Blitzø held him gently and sang to him.

Sometimes, it felt like he had Blitzø curled around his heart. He could image that how it would go, if he went to Sloth for a checkup.

Doctor: it seems like you have a red lizard in your chest.

Stolas: Yes, I am aware.

Doctor: do you want it removed? (Sloth’s doctors were famously unflappable)

Stolas: No, thank you. May I ask if he is comfortable?

Doctor, slightly flapped: Beg your pardon?

Stolas. The lizard. Is he comfortable? Happy?

Doctor: it is curled around your heart.

Stolas: Good for him. It is his. So, is he happy?

Doctor: it… appears so?

Stolas: Very good. Have a nice day.

This is to say, he loved Blitzø more than he could articulate. And he was starting to think his books were wrong about… a lot of stuff, really.

Incidentally, Stolas was also suffering of whatever the cloacal equivalent of blue balls was. He didn’t have balls that could get blue, but every fucking time Blitzø held him or caressed his head feathers, he was as wet as an open faucet, his cloaca pulsating with need to be filled, filled filled.

Other demons had had to actually go down on him to get him to this state. Blitzø managed by existing.

Considering they slept (platonically, fuck it) in the same bed, and he still was prone to waking up in tears with Blitzø strong, manly arms around him and Blitzø’s strong, manly body against him and Blitzø’s slightly rough voice in his ear singing, that was every night. It would be every fucking night, but much to Stolas endless annoyance, there was no fucking involved.

Blitzø was, in fact, a gentleman. Damn him. He was so proper, Stolas had trouble believing it was the same imp that had tied him up in 43 ways (he had counted) and fucked him in 36 positions (he wistfully dreamt of position 37) and who had an encyclopedic knowledge of sex toys and BDSM etiquette.

In the meantime, there was some sub-part of his brain that was busy churning sex material featuring him and Blitzø 100% of the time. In the laundry room after the Laundry Flop? What a bad boy Stolas had been, he deserved punishment. While cooking? Let’s see if he could keep up his concentration and peel potatoes. While mopping and sweeping? Then too. Stolas was slightly awed by his brain, really.

He wasn’t even worth mentioning the bed, because frankly, that was too easy.

Stolas would have thought Blitzø wasn’t… really interested in him, but he had a glaring hint it wasn’t that in the for of Loona, and her comments. Specifically, the fact that Blitzø not even once said he didn’t want Stolas in answer to one of them.

Stolas had started to get that Blitzø was not the subtler creature on the Seven Rings. If he didn’t want you, you would know.

He didn’t understand what was happening here, but a lot was happening in general, so he could wait, and masturbate a lot (like. A lot*), and postpone all of this… confusing sex part to later.

And he did.

*Unbeknown to him, Blitzø had also twice daily masturbation sessions for exactly the same reasons.

Loona had started burning incense, given to her by Tex, who lived surrounded by Succubi and understood. Oh, didn't he understood.

__

Blitzø had underestimated the bird.

He looked at what had once been a pile of fucking messy paper, and was not… several much neater piles of paper. Then at the specific paper in his hand.

It was his favorite kind of paper. Money-paper.

Stolas, sitting at what was usually Loony’s desk, was looking at him, looking hopeful and expectant and a little bit scared.

Blitzø hated the little scared part. He had started seeing it recently, when Stolas fucked something up which, to be honest, was often. It made the part of him who had been a child screamed at by his father go PING in recognition. Stolas had the same little bit scared part. And he thought back to the little fluffy cloud on stilt he had known as a child, and he thought “were you afraid too?” and he didn’t like it.

… had Stolas been punished for his stealing?

He hadn’t known. He hadn’t even thought about it. When he thought about it now, his intestines did some rather painful re-arranging in his guts.

“What kind of fuckery magic did you do, Stols?” He wouldn’t have been able to take out the awe in his voice if he tried, and Stolas’ puffed out pride was a sight.

“I, ah, organized the paperwork? And I noticed there were still some outstanding bills, so I… called them in.”

Well shit.

There was a lot of money in Blitzø’s hands. He always paid Loony and M&M’s salaries first, and the bills, and he got what was left.

So that was, technically, his. There was enough for… and then some…

“And I am starting on a sorting system! And I had taken up some accounting reading on the ‘net, this is so exciting, I love words.”

He looked at Stolas, who was at his most gushing and excited and adorable and then grinned.

“Hey, Stols, what do you think about getting a job?”

Stols blinked his eyes in that off-beat way of his. “I… beg your perdon?”

And so it was I.M.P. got a secretary.

___

Octavia was sitting in the cold bedroom.

It wasn’t her bedroom. Not anymore. Her mother and uncle Andre had gutted it, threw away everything she liked but the star decoration.

“Star decorations are very good for your role, dear niece. You can keep those.”

And she had thought “So magnanimous of you” but she hadn’t said.

She had been afraid too afraid to say it.

Now she looked at the star charts that she had in front of her without seeing them. Her stomach was sour. She had to complete them in the next two days, for the Full Moon. Dad always made it looks so easy when they did it together. And they had. She had been helping him, on and off, but she had never been very interested, and he had never pushed her, and now she looked at the calculations which were all wrong and she had to do them right…

She took up the grimoire and went on silent feet toward the sunroom, where Mother and Uncle Andre mostly resided those days. She had slippers on, she wasn’t trying to be sneaky.

It just happened.

“… and if she fails well, it will only be one more proof of your ex-husband incompetence.”

She froze. That was Uncle Andre.

Her mother hooted her laughter. “Such a useless waste of flesh. It is such a pity Octavia is so much like him. Some… correction by the Family will do her good, I think. Good thinking, Andrealphus, in searching her schoolbook to see if that pathetic cunt had left her the pre-made star charts for the next months.”

Octavia was as frozen as the rest of the palace, as her childhood home turned personal hell. Her tears didn’t fall. She hugged the grimoire tighter against her chest and tried to breath slowly.

“I was, wasn’t I?” Pleased. He was pleased. “Stolas was always too soft on the girl. Look at what she became, a disgrace. Leaving half-made star-charts with detailed instructions is so like him. He should have been working with his lawyers not to lose everything instead of pampering her. And look what it got him. The chit threw him on the curb like a used handkerchief.” A snicker.

A click of glasses. “She took that from me, at least. She is able to see when a man is useless.”

They both laughed.

Octavia padded away, stumbling against the icy wall, a memory of a lifetime the only way she could keep to the right path.

She sat back on her chair, and looked at the star chart.

Then she swallowed, and went to the double-end of her drawer. It was a secret of her desk, a gift from her father.

… as everything good in her life.

She took out the letter, and began to read.

Chapter Text

And so Stolas became, officially, a member of I.M.P.

This was good, because it allowed them to have two different teams of two people, since Loona could, enthusiastically, participate in the merry killing. It took some days of work, but they managed to get the basic: Blitzø would send the first team to do the murders, then portal himself and the other person. They kept phones on themselves to communicate on Earth if needed.

This gave them the ability to get TWICE as many clients, and Stolas proved such a good receptionist slash secretary slash accountant, that the organization went from good to better.

Couple of weeks after, they had extended their operations all over the globe, and they had done such stellar fucking jobs that even some of the Overlords started giving them hits.

Stolas was happier. Blitzø could tell. He wasn’t happy, but he was a royal throw in the gutter, of course he wasn’t happy. Besides, his daughter wasn’t here, so, again, of course. But he was better. He had started to talk with Moxxie, who had stopped shacking like a leaf every time he got close to Stolas (because let’s be real, it would have been a shit-ton of shacking, what with Stolas being in the office at 9 sharp in the morning*).

As a matter of fact, Blitzø was starting to think they were conspiring against him.

He squinted at the game on Moxxie’s table.

“Scabs? What kind of fuck up game is this, Mox?”

“Not Scabs, Blitzø. Scrabble. It is a word game!”

Summoned, Stolas’ head appeared from the doorway. Blitzø, who knew Stolas had to turn his head all around to do that, closed his eyes.

“A word game?” The owl hooted. Of course.

“Yes!” Mox grinned. Millie, who was grinding her weapons like the pro she was, smiled indulgently at her husband. “So here are the rules…”

Stolas, even more summoned, appeared in a purple haze by the side of Mox’s desk, listening with the kind of rapt attention only the owl could give to rules.

“Oh I understand, so this is how you would start a game…”

Blitzø went to his office.

 Moxx won the first game. And the second. But Stolas smashed him at the third. By the fourth, Millie was helping.

“Mills, that isn’t fair, now, two against one!” He complained, gravitating toward the game. Letters and words crossed on the table. He squinted. On the letters there were tiny numbers.

“Oh I don’t mind! This is such a good game!”

“And you can play with him, B!”

“That would be a handicap, Millie!”

Blitzø glared at Moxxie who grinned at him, until the moment when he noticed the way his tail was slashing.

Moxxie’s own tail lowered. “I am sorry, Blitzø. I didn’t mean to.”

Stolas looked from one to the other. Blitzø noticed, with the corner of his eyes, how Millie tugged at his sleeve and said something in his ear, very softly. It was impossible to realize where Stolas was looking what with him not having pupils usually, but he had always had a hunch and, right now, it felt like the bird was looking between him and Moxxie.

“I would be honored if you would play with me, Blitzø.”

He looked at Stolas, but his expression was earnest and true. Not a hint of mockery. Blitzø chewed on his lips, his shoulders tense and his spines bristling, torn between his desire to be with them and the old electric feeling of run run run run now.

He took a step forward. Then another. His mouth felt fucking parched and his heart was hammering like after a hit.

Stolas scooted to make space for him. He plopped himself on the desk and crossed his arms on his chest.

“So, what’s the rules?”

And so Friday Scrabble began.

__

My dearest Starfire,

(Oh for Lucifer’s sake, Octavia! You can’t even walk right. Put that book on your head and do the stairs again!)

I am sorry.

(No! Wrong! Again!)

I am sorry I treated you like a child, when you aren’t one anymore.

(Ugh, a toddler can do this. Are you a toddler? No, mom. Well you behave like one!)

I understand this hurt you. I wanted to protect you, but what I did was behaving like you were still a baby, when in reality you are growing into a strong young woman that make me proud every day.

(You are a disgrace! Like your father!)

It is true: your mother and my marriage was arranged with the scope of having a heir. I had no choice in the matter. And while I did try to work things out with your mother, we were never truly compatible. I am too awkward, and bookish, and I have come to discover I am exclusively attracted to men. I debated if it was a good idea, to add this information, but I believe you deserve to know it. It is part of your story, after all, not just mine. I was matched with her when we were both ten years old, so there was little chance for self discovery on both our sides and I don’t think she enjoyed the match more than I did. But it is just as true I loved you since before you hatched, my Starfire. And once you did, you became my starlight.

(Eighteen years of my life lost with that scrawny twig cunt and what I got? You.)

I am not sorry to have divorced your mother, even as it is going. It is a long time coming. I am sorry about how I went at it. I… should not have had cheated, not the way I did. Not for your mother, I won’t pretend I care about her, because that would be insulting your intelligence and you are so very clever, Via. But for you. I should have divorced her and closed that chapter before opening a new one. Instead, I made a mess of everything. Most of all, of you. And I understand you hate me for it. I deserve it, your hate. I would simply like you to know that, wherever and whenever you want to speak with me, or to write to me, I am here. Always.

(Via, dear. This really won’t do. You understand why your mother and I are doing this, right? It is for your own good. A proper Goetian Lady should not listen to this heavenly music. The player I gave you is full of a much better selection, don’t you think? Yes, uncle Andre)

For honesty’s sake, I’ll tell you I am living with Blitzø now. You deserve to know it, I think. I had no money, and nowhere to go, and he offered me a place to stay and now a job. There is nothing else happening right now between us. He is being a good friend. You told me I never loved your mother, or you, that I only loved him. While it is true I never loved your mother, I have always adored you. And yes, I do love him. But this takes nothing away to my love to you, Starfire. Blitzø himself is a father, and he would kick me in the cloaca if I would do wrong to you because of him.

(Your father is sucking imp dick for his lodging. Disgraceful. I bet all the people in that little flat can hear him screaming as that… creature fuck him for his food.)

If you ever need me, just write a letter and give it to Pringle. He’ll know how to find me.

With love,

Your father

Stolas

_

Two months after he had been thrown out of the only home he had ever known with only some clothes to his name, Stolas, High Prince of the Ars Goetia, stood in the new nursery on the roof the flat he shared with Blitzø and Loona. His eyes shone with pride, a gentle smile on his beak.

It was Saturday, and he had no work to do. Blitzø and Loona were out, but they had all throw some chicken in the slow cooker, and he was looking forward to dinner with Blitzø and an evening in, watching old Hell-a-novela with Blitzø (he got adorably invested, and a very good arc was coming in with Hector and the poisoning of the racehorse, he was so looking forward to it)

It had been… challenging.

It still was.

But it was dawning on him that he could do it.

Right now, he had just finished repotting the youngest offshoot of his prize-winning carnivorous roses. They were a bit of a challenge to grow, as the little seedlings require blood to mature, but the people at I.M.P. had come through with some… donation from the target, and two dozens of little plants were opening their blood-red petals to the air, eager for fresh meat.

Now, if only he could know where to put them…

A sound came from his back. He turned.

Reginald, the janitor, smiled at him. All the denizens of Hell’s teeth were pointy, but Cannibals’ teeth were needlelike, and very, very many. Stolas smiled back.

“Hullo Reginald.” He liked the Cannibals. They were all so polite and nice, if you knew how to take them.

“Hullo to you, Your Highness. I come with a business proposition from miss Rosie, if you would be interested?”

Stolas’ eyebrows shot up. “Why, certainly I wouldn’t say no without listening to the charming Miss Rosie.”

“Fantastic. Miss Rosie asks if tomorrow tea would be amenable for you?”

He would have to put on one of his remaining Princely Outfits**.

_

“More tea, Your Highness?”

“Thank you, Miss Rosie, that would be appreciated.” A sip. “This is lovely tea, I must say. May I inquire where you purchase it?”

“Oh, it is some of mine, I’ll make sure to send some to your abode.”

“You are too kind, ma’am.”

“Don’t mention it, Your Highness. Now, for the reason I so boldly asked for your presence. Reginald had been positively gushing about the wondrous hanging garden you have been fostering up on your roof, and I must admit I have enjoyed resting my eyes on its beauty even from afar. I was wondering if, perhaps, you could be persuaded to share some of its beauty with us lowly Cannibals, for a fee, of course.”

“… You know, Miss Rosie, now that you mention it, my prize-winning carnivorous roses…”

“The ones who won the Best In Show last year?”

“The very same. Well, they just budded, and I successfully managed to re-pot two dozens of them.”

“Two dozens! Oh my! You are indeed as an expert as they call you!”

“You are too kind by far. Alas, currently I have no space for properly caring for them. I would indeed be… amenable… to have them find proper home, where they could be appreciated as they deserve.”

“Indeed indeed. I know so many people who would simply kill*** for one of your carnivorous roses Prince Stolas! Please let me be the intermediary for this… transaction.”

“You are too kind, too kind.”

“Don’t mention it. More pastries?”

“Thank you, Miss Rosie”

And so it was Stolas began a profitable side-hustle.

___

Blitzø looked up from his drawing of ButterCookie as Stolas came into the house, turned, and closed the door very very gently, his expression calm and almost serene.

His eyebrow’s shot up.

Stolas was, in Blitzø’s opinion, a weird bitch. He had thought that he didn’t care because he was always so fucking calm and collected, but it was a load of shit. The calmer and collecter Stolas was, the more he was fucking seething inside.

Blitzø slid from the chair and walked toward the owl.

“That bad, uh?”

Stolas put his hat in the hat-box, took out his cape, then put both his hands on the table and breathed out.

“My lawyers say I have a… strong case. Especially after the information you fed them.” A tiny smile appear on his beak. “Thank you for that, Blitzø.”

Blitzø made a gesture with his hand, his tail swishing. Stolas had thanked him a lot. “But?”

“… but it will take many more months. And… Octavia will stay with her mother in the meantime.”

Blitzø hissed. He hadn’t mentioned to Stolas what had happened by now a month ago, and how he had scavenged all of Octavia’s possession from the trash. It would only worry him, and there was literally nothing they could do in the meantime, bar staging a kidnapping.

“And no way to make those asshole move their broken buttholes?”

Stolas shook his head. “Bar a direct intervention of Lucifer, none. And he doesn’t intervene, hasn’t for years. Even getting to him mean passing through one person: King Bael, and he is almost impossible to reach himself.”

Blitzø frowned. King Bael. He had heard the name before. Where to…

Then he remembered, and he felt like he had been plunged into a bucket of ice-cold water. His spines shoot up, his tail falling on the ground as he opened his mouth without a sound, his eyes growing huge, his hands clawing into fists.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Oh no.

Oh no no no.

Memories, in his mind.

“Who is that imp you always go with when we come to Pride, dad?”

“That one? Mahordomo Stock, he is King Bael’s right hand, Barbs. Childhood friend of mine, like you and Fizz, good pal. Remember that Goetian Blitzo stole from three, four years ago? He was the one who mentioned the circus to him. Always send good stuff my way and I… help… him, too.”

“Oh, you help each other!”

“That’s right, Barbs. That is what good friends do. Hey, Blitzo, stop that cleaning and come here.”

“Yes, dad?”

“As I was saying to your sister, good friends help each other. And I want you to go help my good friend Mahor. He said to me, you are growing into a strapping young lad. You go to him, and do whatever he wants you to do, ok?”

“… do I need to steal from h-“

“FUCK NO. He is a friend, not a goetian prick! And he has King Bael’s ear. He the reason we still have a circus. No. Go to him, do what he tells you. You get it?”

“Alright. When?”

“Tonight.”

“To… tonight?”

“Tonight, boy. Got a problem?”

“N… no, dad.”

“Good. Tell your momma you won’t eat here.”

He hadn’t eaten at the circus indeed.

And it hadn’t been the only time with Mahor. And the other… party guests.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Blitzø looked at the image of his owl bent over the table, his beak set in a grim line, his hands clenched, and felt twenty years falling from his shoulders as bile rose into his throat.

He needed to talk to his dad.

Fuck.

* 9 so sharp, in fact, that it had made him and Loona punctual.

“Stols, I am the boss it is fine.”

“My contract said I have to be in the office 9 to 18 with an hour lunch break. I signed it.”

“Christ on a stick, I am your boss we can be a bit late I won’t get angry at your cunt for that!”

“…”

“Oh for… Fine, fine! Look at me, I am getting the bloody van’s key, tune down your fucking puppy eyes, bitch.”

“:D”

** Stolas had used half of his first paycheck to buy “normal demon clothes” that could be laundered without a fuss. The other half he had thrust back into Blitzø’s hands for “room and board”, just to find the money into the pocket of one of his rompers three day after.

He gave the money back.

Thus began what Loona called “The most stupid fucking prank war EVER”.

Currently, Stolas was on top: he had put the money, having changed them in a higher currency, inside Blitzø’s prized Black Beuty’s DVD. Blitzø had been tearing up the flat searching for them to give them back, while Stolas looked increasingly smug every passing day.

*** Literally kill

Chapter Text

Belphagor’s Happy Pills were … an antidepressant.

Octavia stared at the answer on the computer. She had been able to get some ‘net access when she had begged it, as needed for the next month stars charts.

The first month had been a disaster. All her stars charts had been wrong. When she had gone to her grandfather to present the finding to him (afraid, half-hopeful, trembling for feelings she couldn’t even name) he had looked for a long time at the calculations that had taken her so long, then had turned and hit her on the back of the head.

Her beak had gone down, hitting the desk. That is what she remembered more, now. The feeling of her beak against the desk, the coppery taste of blood, the dull feeling spreading from her chest onward, like mold taking hold.

“I don’t understand how you can be so stupid. Even my useless son was good at this. And he had nobody to teach him at all! At your age, he had already been producing the stars charts for two years. Perfectly.”

King Paimon had sighed, shacking his head. She didn’t remember his study. It was grand, but then, everything was grand. She remembered his desk, of polished white wood, and her blood dripping from her beak, leaving spots on it.

It reminded her of the fairy tale.

“Ugh, we’ll have to tell that creature, your mother, what was her name, Luna.”

“Stella.”

“Stella, yes, that you have to work on this more, I really can’t present this to Bael. Well, a mistake is to be expected!”

And then he had smiled at her, radiantly, as if it was nothing, as if he expected her to smile at him too.

“Now off you go, do better next time, uhm? Bye, Septima!”

“… Octavia.”

“Yes yes. Bye!”

She turned and left, and she didn’t stumble only because there was nothing to stumble on.

… Was this her father’s father? How had his childhood been?

And now she looked at the pill she had threw in his face, and they were anti-depressant, and she would have to do the next stars charts and do them well, and there were three bloody parties her mother and uncle would drag her to.

Octavia put her face in her hand.

She didn’t weep.

Tears turned into ice in the palace, now.

___

Blitzø had been thirteen when he had realized what exactly the Imp Circus was.

The math didn’t add up.

Blitzø knew, even then, that he was stupid. None of them went to school, not really, but Barbs and Fizz had learnt to read and write well from his and Barb’s mom. He hadn’t. Words danced in front of his eyes, and he couldn’t for the life of him understand the difference between b and d. They moved around like snakes, never the same.

This is to say, Blitzø was considered safe by his father to help with the money, because, Cash believed, he was too stupid to understand.

Blitzø was aware of that too.

Except whatever problems Blitzø had with words didn’t extend to numbers. And he had a good sense for them. It didn’t take him very long to understand that nothing added up.

There were too many tickets being technically sold, for the people present. Too much money coming in, for what he saw happening.

Mama Tilla may have grown up an idiot, but not a fool, so Blitzø kept his mouth shut, but looked, keenly.

Imps are everywhere in the rings. Even Sinners employ them. Even Overlords. Even Sins and Goetians. They may come from Wrath, but they are resilient if nothing else, and they are now every-fucking-where.

But life is still hard if you are an imp. Getting a loan is fucking imp-ossible (ah! Got it? Imp-ossible?). Starting a business, even a Circus? A mirage. Fuck even selling stuff was harder, the bigger demons giving you smaller prices for your stuff, because, again, what could you do, you were a fucking imp.

Unless it is from other imps. Unless you go to Greed and get the mafiosos’ there to loan you something. Unless you can go directly to the people that manage the big palaces to sell your Wrathian’s goods, instead of using the lawful intermediaries.

And moving from a Ring to another Ring? You needed cash.

Or, as the case may be, Cash.

Imps didn’t help each other for nothing. They were fucking demons. But there were some downright assholes that, for some money or things, would… help around. Give you a helping hand. Jerks with a finger on all the fucking pie.

By the time he was 14, Blitzø had understood his father was one of them.

You needed produce moved from Wrath without paying a shit-load of taxes to the other ring? Cash Buckzo would do it for half, and would help you pan it to some of the big houses for a little fee.

You needed to go to Greed and meet some nice mafioso that could give you a loan, and maybe you would be able to repay it without losing your kneecaps? Cash Buckzo would bring you there.

You wanted to invest some of the money you made, mostly legally, as an imp in one of the big houses? Cash Buckzo could connect you.

It involved a lot of booze, and hush-hush, and favors for favors. But it fucking worked.

Blitzø had to give it to his father. He was an abusive alcoholic asshole, but he was also fucking good at what he did.

He would have respected the old monster if, by the time he was 15, Blitzø would not have been one of his father’s goods.

__

When he was 15 and in his more self-hating moments, of which there had been a few during the years, Blitzø had justified his father. He was a fucking terrible clown. Nobody laughed at his joke (save Stolas, and fuck, he should have married the bird just for that not that the bird would have wanted to marry him* but still). He was, at best, mediocre at trapeze, not like Barbs. He could do tricks, but somebody in the Circus could do them better than him, really, even as if tried and tried and tried and poured blood and sweat and blisters and tears.

He was never good enough.

He was not good at customer service. Some of the carnies did that, and it was a good way to pull their weight. But he had a mouth to him, even when his dad slapped it every other day, and the customer didn’t like it. Fuck, even his momma, who was so ill half of the times, did her part, doing the accounting for the… lawful… part of the Circus.

Blitzø could do nothing. He was a dead weight, useless.

Until his father handed him to Mahor, and he learnt he could be a rather good whore**, at least when he was half-out of his mind with drugs and being passed from person to person like a joint.

In his more lucid moment, Blitzø would look ad Loona and understood he would have skinned alive*** anybody who would have even just come close to his Loony with the same intentions that Mahor had had toward him, so his dad was likely just a piece of shit.

Whom he now had to call.

He looked at the black phone on his desk as if hypnotized. His tail was swishing wildly. He didn’t feel… anything. It was like his mind had gone PING and then, gone elsewhere.

He was not calling his father from a cell phone. The old bastard wasn’t worth breaking one.

He knew the number, of course. People like Cash, they keep the same number for decades.

He extended his hand, and took up the receiver, and dialed it.

“Cash Buckzo. Who’s there?”

He almost threw it at the wall. Reflex. His spine rattled.

“Dad.”

“Oh, if it isn’t the useless one. What the fuck do you want, you piece of shit?”

Well, he hadn’t hung up on him. That was something. Blitzø’s teeth were on hedge. “I can pay you.”

“Good, because I am not doing a thing for you for free, you worthless murder.” A pang. It should have been in his chest, but it wasn’t, it was lower, between his chest and his guts, in the tender place that hurts like a motherfucker when you hit it.

“You won’t have to. I want to see Mahor.”

A beat of silence.

Then Cash laughed.

It was not a nice laugh.

Blitzø gritted his teeth as his stomach soured. For Stolas, he reminded himself.

For Stolas.

“Oh now what the pretty birdie has dumped you, you are searching for another cock to suckle so you can keep pretending your widdle piddle “business” is working?” For a second, Blitzø almost said Stolas didn’t have a cock, but clasped his lips shut. He wasn’t surprised his dad knew of Stolas.

His dad was one of those people that knew stuff.

“Not your fucking business. I pay you, can you hook me up to him?”

“Sure, sonny boy. He still asks to me about you, you were always his favorite” his father’s sing-song voice made him want to retch. Blitzø registered, vaguely, that he was cold, and sweating. It was like it was happening to somebody else, very far away.

“When?”

“Send me 1000 bucks, and then go to the Hellabucks on third street on Monday.” There was a smile on the phone. He could, almost, see it.**

Blitzø’s mouth was filled with saliva.

He hung up, turned his chair toward the trash basket, and vomited even the dinner of the night before.

*You sure about that? You really sure about that, Blitzø?

** Now, Blitzø had nothing against sex workers. It was a honest job and hurt no-one, and you do you. However, he had been fucking 15 and unwilling, so it wasn’t like. The exact same thing.

* This is not an exaggeration. This is a description.

** Now, if Blitzø had asked almost everything else, Cash wouldn’t have done it. But Cash knew how much his son hated Mahor, and how much Blitzø was going to hate what was going to happen, and he saw the possibility of making a grand out of something his son would loathe. So it was a double win for him.

__

Octavia looked at her mother.

“What… what have you said?”

She couldn’t have heard correctly.

Her mother couldn’t possibly mean…

Her mother sighed dramatically and looked up at her, squinting. Privately, Via thought her mother needed glasses, but she would die before accepting it.

They were both dressed into their warmest furs and cloaks. They had furs and cloaks now. They had to. Everything was fucking ice. The whole palace. Octavia slept under four down covers and still woke up with her beak chittering for the cold.

She didn’t even remember what being warm meant anymore.

“Knight Furcas had agreed on the possibility of a marriage with you.” She had puckered her beak. “I was hoping for someone of higher standard, but after your failure with the stars charts and your utter disgrace at the parties, your uncle had pointed out that it would be… unlikely and perhaps unwise to wait.”

Octavia stared at her mother.

None of those words made sense.

“I… I don’t understand.”

Stella sighed again. “It is time you do your duty as a member of the Goetia. A marriage is very proper. Your father and I had been betrothed by seven years at your age…”

“And you hate him!”

Stella’s hand moved quick as a snake, and hit her on her cheek. Pain filled her vision for a second, and the dull mold-feeling spread further.

She had never hit her before, but ever since the second time she had brought wrong stars charts to King Paimon, when she had seen him hitting her, it was like a switch had been turned into Stella.

Like she had been given permission.

And the hitting had started.

“Stop this insolence!” She hissed. “That was entirely your father’s fault, that cock-hungry whore!” Octavia looked at her hands. “Knight Furcas will do better. He is… older and more experienced. I am sure he will know how to take you in hand.”

Octavia swallowed. Even just a month ago, she would have tried storming off, or screaming. But she had grown wise to those tactic.

“Yes mother.” She murmured, even as dread took hold of her throat.

Oh stars, oh no, please no, everything but that.

That evening, she took out a piece of paper, and started writing, her hand shaking, shame blossoming in her chest, competing with the dull-mold feeling for space.

“Dear dad,

Please take me away from here.”

___

Stolas read the letter three times.

It was the first direct communication between him and his daughter.

He read it a fourth.

“Bad news?”

Stolas swallowed. The scent of syrup for the pancakes, that normally put him in such a good mood, seemed nauseating now.

He nodded, a jerking motion. Everything was swimming in front of him. What could he do? He put his head in his hands. Kidnap her? And where would they bring her? They would have to live on the run. He was fine with it. He didn’t care. He could probably strong-arm inside the palace, get her and get out before…

“Uh.”

Blitzø was reading the letter. He had a moment of fond exasperation. It was private. It was such a Blitzø thing to do.

“Well, good thing I have an in with that Bael fellow.”

Stolas’ brain took several seconds to switch gears from his earnest preparations for a life on the run to what Blitzø had just said.

Then his head shot up and he turned to Blitzø, who was going back to his seat. “You… what?!”

Who ever was this demon?!

Blitzø rolled his eyes. “Chill out, Stols. Christ on a stick like you don’t even know me. Yeah, his Chief of Staff is old pal with my dad. I see him tomorrow.”

Stolas swallowed convulsively, his talons making the wood of the table creak. “Could you, would it be possible to mention…”

Blitzø rolled his eyes. “Why the fuck do you think I am meeting him?” The imp scowled at the scratches left in the table. “You are getting us a new table, birdbrain. This was new.”

“Ah, yes, certainly. You will, you will try…”

“I can’t make promises, Stols. But yeah, I think I can have Octavia’s custody on the Big Boy table.”

Lucifer. Lucifer could give him custody of Octavia, and they could keep her safe. To Heaven with his title, his money, his duties, everything else, if he could keep Octavia safe.

He looked at the other side of the table where Blitzø was methodically demolishing his pancakes. Blitzø had taken him in when he had nothing, and given him everything, and oh stars maybe he could save his daughter too…

His heart was thundering in his chest.

He must not cry, he must not cry, he must not cry, it was unbecoming of a Goetia and he had cried too much lately, damnit.

“I… yes, alright. Thank you, Blitzø.”

He could either kiss the impossibly beautiful creature that was slightly smiling at him on the other side of the, admittedly ruined, table, or eat his pancakes.

He ate his pancakes.

“Always, pretty bird.”

__

You can see, here, that Stolas still had a lot to learn.

He didn’t even think about prices.

He should have.

__

Blitzø didn’t want to waste a perfectly good ice coffee to have it soured with that sucker. He was sitting at the Hellabucks, and thanks Satan Monday had been two days after, or he would have fucking killed even more people than his business did just to get to the day. His mouth was full rotten cotton candy, it stuck in his throat, between his teeth. It felt fucking rancid.

“Hello, Blitzy.”

He almost jumped out of his skin. He could image it, leaving a red cast-off behind on the couch.

Which the fucking pervert would fuck, of course.

He turned and looked at the imp.

Mahordomo Stocko was a medium-sized imp, the same height of Moxxie or Millie. He was dressed primly, in the way of the butlers of the great houses, though right now not in the fancy clothes he got when he was in King Bael’s mansion. He had short, prim white hair, and some of the tiniest horns a imp could have. They barely poked out of his hair. His yellow eyes looked at him from a slightly wrinkled face which looked on with a radiant smile.

Privately, Blitzø thought a lot of what was wrong with the fucker was compensation for the horns.

Or lack thereof.

“Your daddy” he could not puke now he could not puke now he could not… “told me you wanted to see me! I am delighted!” the creature thrilled, looking up and down on him.

Blitzø felt more naked than he had felt when he was actually without clothes.

“Well, yeah. I need a favor.” He spit out. No point on beating the bush.

Mahor slid in the other couch and waved at the waiter. Another imp, of course. He smiled at the young woman. “I’ll take your best tea, and my strapping companion will have… do you still like iced coffee, Blitzy?”

No from now on he didn’t. “Yes.”

“Then your best iced for him!” A charming smile, and fifty fucking hell bucks went to the waitress. Her eyes bugged out. “We would like to be left alone, there is a dear, thank you.”

She zoomed away, having just made what she did in more than a fucking day without tips.

Blitzø’s desire to vomit was growing. He could visualize it like a bar in his mind. “Dear Blitzy, you know I would adore nothing more than to help you! And I am sure you will… help me… in exchange, yes?”

Another, radiant, smile. Most imps teeth were yellow. It wasn’t lack of hygiene; it was natural. But Mahor must have done something to his teeth, because they were white. Sinner-white. They looked wrong, shark-like and predatory in an imp’s mouth.

They made his smile… not right.

Which is probably why he did it, Christ on a stick. He was so fucked.

“Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. How many… favors?”

“Well, that depends.” The creature hand was on his forearm, sliding under his cloak. His skin was crawling at the touch. “You always had such big hands and forearms.” Mahor cooed.

“I need King Bael to speak to Lucifer about the divorce business of a buddy of mine.” Don’t think about the touch, don’t tense, don’t think about it and don’t tense. “I want his daughter to go back to him. Full custody. His ex is a crazy bitch.”

And you would know about crazy bitches, you motherfucker.

He forced his muscles to relax. They did. Reluctantly.

Mahor’s (wrong, so wrong) smile was radiant. “Oh, it can be done. His Majesty does listen to me, because of course I never bother him with stupid thing and with how much the poor little chit fucked up the star charts last month, there is an easy angle. Will you come to, say… four… of my parties, Blitzy dear? One before, and three after” Puppy eyes. As if he could say no.

He could.

But Stolas had looked at him over their Sunday Pancakes yesterday morning when he said he could help… and he looked like Blitzø had hung the moon and all the fucking stars for him.

And then there was Octavia. Nobody deserved to be sold out by their parents.

“Alright. I will.” The words came out of his mouth, but he hadn’t spoken them. They were like air. That is all words are, after all. Air.

“Splendid!” Mahor clapped his hand. At least he had stopped touching his forearm. Blitzø found he could breathe. The vomit-bar decreased.

A little.

The waitress came with their thing.

Blitzø looked at the iced coffee. He stared. He liked iced coffee, didn’t he?

“Well I am a very busy imp and so I have been told are you. I am so glad to have you, Blitzy dear, the selfsame divorce proceeding has made you SO interesting to SO many people!”

Oh, fuck.

He was so fucked.

Figuratively now, and literally soon.

When Blitzø could see again, and looked up, Mahor had gone.

Blitzø stared at the iced coffee and called the waitress.

He couldn’t stomach the thought anymore.*

*And he wouldn’t, not ever again.

Chapter Text

Blitzø debated the pro and cons of drugs.

In the end, he decided against them because, if it was going as it had been in the past, he was gonna get drugged anyway, and only a rookie mixes drugs without knowing them. Blitzø couldn’t die before finishing his part of the bargain, and he would be double-damned if he was going to have that slippery bastard have him one night for free.

He looked at the place where he had been sent to. It was a rather nice establishment in the Lust ring. A black cube, with the kind of windows you can look out from, but people couldn’t look in. Shark demons and hellhounds patrolled outside with a sort of casual business attitude that meant people would definitely die if they tried anything.

Blitzø was not here. By which he meant, yes, he was, but also he was not. There was probably some kind of fancy-shmancy name for what he was feeling now* but he just knew he felt like he was out of his body.

He was dressed in a coat, pants, and a t-shirt. Simple. Easy to get in and out of even when out of his rookie. He had agreed with a taxi driver to come get him in the morning for a nice fee.

He was ready.

He closed his eyes, and thought of Stolas singing in the bathroom, and then opened them, and walked in.

They didn’t even ask to see his card. The door opened and then closed behind him.

He got out the day after.

That is the best thing that can be said about that night.

*Dissociation. The word is dissociation.

__

Loona has decided her father had fallen in love with a moron.

The word was important. Stolas was not stupid at all, nor unpleasant. But he was just… fuck, if she hadn’t seen the guy walk around avoiding obstacles, she would have thought he was blind.

Blitzø wasn’t well.

Blitzø was not the most stable person in general, but in the last… week, or so, it had been bad, since he had been out a couple day, and came directly to the office for a day of murdering. He was efficient at work as usual, but he was… off. Too bright, too chatty, too quick to anger or laughter.  Also, he had been spending a lot of time on his horse fanfic. Like. A lot-lot.

He moved like he was on a badly animated movie, in fast bursts spaced with utter stillness that scared her. And he had even more of a potty mouth than usual.

Which was saying something.

So when Stolas burst into the flat with a piece of official looking paper in his hand, flapping it excitedly and hooting in happiness, she didn’t exactly shared it.

She looked at her dad, as Stolas spoke.

“Lucifer! Lucifer spoke in my favor! Octavia… Octavia will be released in my custody next week!”

Her ears perked up. Everybody knew the big shot was a shut-in, had been for years. How had he been convinced…

Her father looked at Stolas, and the smile looked true enough, but his eyes were fixed, and he stopped moving around the horse figurines.

“That is great, Stols.” Blitzø sounded so sincere, and fuck, knowing him he WAS, the bloody adorable dork. He looked around the room. “Uh, I wonder if we can close off that angle there with some dry-wall, give her a room, she would have to share a bathroom with us but…”

“She can share the bathroom with me.” If what she had overheard while eavesdropping was true, she would need help. She didn’t mind sharing with Via.

Her dad gave her one of his usual sappy smiles. “Aww, thank you, Looney-tooney!”

Stolas was nodding his head over his fucking long neck up and down, bobbing like for apples, and for some reason it made her incredibly angry.

Christ on a stick, that fucker was bloody blind.

“So, what was the price?” She asked her dad.

The light left Blitzø’s eyes, and his smile became…

She had seen people dead, often, in the pound. Sometimes, they killed themselves because honestly, there wasn’t much reason not to. Some of the meds made all your muscles do weird shit. It was a painful death, but it was a quick one at least.

When you found them, they looked… like that. Not a smile. A death-contraction of muscles, brought in by more pain than their bodies could take.

“Ah, Looney it is not-“

“Don’t tell me it is nothing because I don’t fucking believe you, dad” she growled. Stolas was looking at both of them, without comprehending, and he wasn’t so happy anymore, which? Good. The fucking blind bastard could understand other people existed and had feelings outside of himself for once in his gilded fucking life. “You left to meet some person your dad knows, and you told me I was forbidden from ever, ever meeting your dad. That person pulls some string and now Lu-fucking-cifer himself move on the board? I don’t believe you. Do I have to ask Fizzarolli who in the fucking Hell Mahor is-“

“NO!”

Blitzø’s shout was so loud, she whined a little without meaning it, but she kept her gaze in his. He had jumped up, the chair clattering behind him, the horse figuring scattered around his feet. He looked…

He looked terrified.

Her lips curled over her teeth.

She didn’t know who this guy was. She wanted to bite him.

“… Blitzø?”

Stolas’ voice was unsure, and he was looking from her to her father, and then back. He didn’t look all happy and hyper.

Good.

Maybe he would fucking learn something.

Blitzø swallowed and looked at both of them. Then his shoulder dropped. Loona could see the moment the mask was back in place, the self-control reasserting itself. She respected the fuck out of that. She couldn’t DO it. She wish she could. It would make her life so much easier.

“Look, it is just a favor-for-favor kinda deal, alright? Nothing new here. Four times, total, at one of his parties.” He smiled. It was fake as shit, but it was a good attempt. She bet it would fool the prince. “Nothing I haven’t done before, alright? Now, time to get some drywall, we have walls to build!”

Blitzø bolted out of the room, sliding under Stolas’ arm and going down the corridor between the rooms and the bathrooms before leaving the flat.

Stolas stood in the living room-kitchen, looking around and blinking.

Loona sighed.

“Do you ever realize” she growled. “that other people have other feelings from yours? He is fucking falling apart at the seams.”

She stood up and followed her father.

___

By the time Blitzø was back, Stolas was in bed, pretending to sleep.

He could heart the imp, though, rustling in the darkness, undressing himself.

Stolas breathed slowly. It had all been so fast. Not even two weeks from the moment Via had answered his letter to… now. And he had been…

Completely wrapped up in himself.

At first, when Loona had snapped at him, he had been angry. His daughter was safe! Why did she have to, to rain on his parade like that, why did she…

Why did she have to care for Blitzø?

It had hit him all at once, like a punch. Via was safe. She would come here in a couple of days. They would make a room for her.

And it was true, now that he thought of it, that Blitzø was… not good.

Standing there, alone, in front of the scattered horse figurines and the upturned chair, Stolas had realized, for the first time, that it was true. He had been… different, than usual. He bowed down, taking up one of the little plastic horses. CookieKing, his mind supplied. He was of a similar colour of his own feathers, a deep grey- blue. He looked at the horse, without seeing it.

When had it started?

… When Blitzø had gone to see that person. Mahor.

A favor-for-favor kinda thing, Blitzø had called it.

In his mind, he could hear himself speaking, in his bathtub, his body still buzzing from the pleasure Blitzø had given it, craving it again, craving more.

At one of his parties.

Oh.

Oh stars.

Oh no.

Stolas’ beak flooded with bile, and only his long legs allowed him to reach the bathroom and vomit in the loo instead than all over the floor.

All the pieces collated themselves in his mind. Blitzø’s behavior in the last week or so. Blitzø leaving just before for a night and half a day. King Bael interceding for him with King Lucifer.

Favor for favor.

Parties.

Stolas vomited again, feeling his whole body trying to expel something that was noxious, poisonous, wrong, bad. It tried to disgorge it from him stomach, but the thing was knowledge, facts, truths he didn’t want to be true.

Because Blitzø had been at those… parties, and had had sex with the people there, and it wasn’t something he had liked or wanted

But he had done it.

For Stolas.

Who did not deserve it in the slightest.

Stolas turned only when Blitzø was in the bed, and his arms were around the imp in less than a second.

Physically, he was stronger than Blitzø. He was a Goetia, after all. Blitzø didn’t even try to run. Perhaps he knew it was futile.

“Well, fuck.”

It was quiet. Almost defeated.

Stolas didn’t know what to say. He had won more than half of the Friday Scrabbles*. He was good with words.

He had none now. None at all.

“… Look, Stols, it is nothing big, alright? Alright. And I don’t even know what the fuck happens half of the time I am drugged up to my horns.”

… This made it worse. He knew it made it worse, right?

“And anyhow, it is not a new thing. And three more, a month and half top, and I’ll be good. You don’t need to like, worry about me or any shit like that, I am fine.”

Sloth Doctor: The red lizard appears to be chewing on your heart.

Stolas: So it seems, yes.

Sloth Doctor: Does it bother you?

Stolas: He is… saving something more important to me than my life. He can swallow it whole, for all I care.

Sloth Doctor: Are you aware that would be excruciating?

Stolas: It is.  

Stolas breathed out. He didn’t know what to do. Blitzø was… he was doing such an enormous thing, for him, and he didn’t know what to do. He was just here, holding him, and it wasn’t like that in his books…

No. No, it was like this. The hero always got hurt saving the damsel, weren’t they? And he had wanted to be saved, so badly. And now he was, and his hero was hurt so fucking badly, worse than he thought, and all those strapping hussies in his books had never prepared him for…

For holding the loved of his life in his arms, being aware that he was wounded so deeply, in so much pain, because of him.

Stolas had had some rather unpleasant self-realizations moments in his life.

He realized, right now, that he had been an utter moron.

His fingers slotted between Blitzø’s back spikes, the feeling a tactile pleasure like no other, like touching the place where scar gave away to skin.

“And besides, we have to think about Octavia, she’ll need you, Stols.”

True.

But Blitzø needed him too.

“I can take care of myself.”

Stolas was starting to believe that it may be false.

“… Thank you” He said, because it needed to be said, didn’t it. For everything. Such paltry words. “It should be me. It is… she is my daught-“

“NO!”

Blitzø jumped, reptilian and strong, and Stolas found himself on his back, with Blitzø above him, his arms pinned on his side by Blitzø’s strong tights, Blitzø’s hand in his head-feathers, forcing his head back, forcing him to look up at shining, wild yellow eyes that looked into his.

His whole body went happily slack** as his traitorous feathers puffed up.

“Not you. Never you.” Blitzø’s vehemence caught him by surprise, and he swallowed, nodding minutely which was as much as he could nod. “He wants me, anyway.”

Then Blitzø looked at him more, and blinked, tilting his head on the shoulder. Like he was confused. He could see a tantalizing shoulder from the way his soft sleep t-shirt hung from him. He wanted to bit into it.

Blitzø brought up his free hand, like for an experiment, and passed his index talon under his chin, making him feel the sharp tip on his sensitive skin, under his feather.

His feathers puffed more, and he made a sound he had made only in Blitzø’s presence as his chest rose and fall more rapidly.

“If I were to put my tail spade on your slutty cloaca, would I found it as wet as the open sink?” Blitzø asked, conversationally, licking his lips.

“Yes.” Stolas looked into his eyes as he said it, immediately. He wasn’t ashamed of this, not of wanting Blitzø as bad as he did. Also the mention of Blitzø’s spade on his cloaca had done things to his anatomy, enuff said.

Something hard was pressing on his stomach.

Oh, stars.

“… but you didn’t want me anymore.” Blitzø sounded… perplexed.

Stolas looked at him, bewildered.

“Since when?” he asked, as he was interested in knowing when he hadn’t wanted Blitzø, as he could not, himself, remember such an occurrence.

For the first time, the imp looked away.

“… after, after the full moon. When I came… into your garden.” A pause. “Sorry for that, by the way.”

Stolas stared.

“I was… angry” It was hard now, to recall the feelings he had then. Three months and two lifetimes ago, it felt like. The anger he had then was like a soap bubble, popping as soon as he tried to touch it. “But I did… I did not… Blitzø I have always wanted you!”

Blitzø looked down at him, and the hand in his head feather turned into a caress.

“Yeah. Yeah, ok.”

And then Blitzø left him.

He was, suddenly, very cold, and very, very dark. It was the same as before, the heavy darkness of Pride, the kind of darkness that came on you like too-viscous ink and left you splattered and dirty. But before, he had had Blitzø’s eyes to light the way, and Blitzø’s warmth on his feathers.

“What, why… where are you going?”

He went up an elbow, looking as Blitzø’s silhouette, as beloved as the shapes between the stars, went to the door.

“Sleeping on the couch. I am not doing anything with you, Stols, not now. I am giving you a job, and I won’t have any, any favor-for-favor shit, or anything even a little bit like that, anything when you can’t, you can’t say no, not to you”  he turned to look at Stolas, and it was full of heath and longing and something so deep the ocean of Envy could only envy it in truth. “never to you.”

Then he was gone.

Stolas looked at the door clicking behind him, and then fell on the pillows, and screamed into them a little. Just because.

Blitzø wouldn’t do anything to him where he couldn’t say no.

No favor-for-favor.

Because Blitzø was so much better than him.

And he had been so angry, so disgusted at what that Mahor creature had done but in reality, could he complain?

When he had done the same, and was no better than him?

*Moxxie said he had won more than half. In Stolas’ opinion, that was a lie. Millie, Loona and Blitzø agreed they were tied, but clearly they weren’t counting right neither.

** This was completely on autopilot. He was, also, wet as a faucet immediately, his cloaca pulsating with need despite everything because the blasted organ knew no rhyme nor reason in the matter of one Blitzø Buckzo, it only knew it wanted him him him. Now. Well, yesterday preferably, but yesterday wasn’t available so now please. It didn’t help that the rest of him tended to agree.

Chapter Text

There was… material in the living room.

Stolas stared.

Blitzø was crouching on the floor, with a tape measure in hand, and Loona was on the other side.

“So, if we close off this side, from here to there.” He gestured to the places. “We should get a room big enough for Octavia. It will not be a square, but fuck it, right?”

Stolas blinked and looked better.

The flat took half of the upper side of a building and was an irregular trapeze. His and Blitzø’s room was on the right as you entered, with Loona’s room, which had a private entry, on the left. Their bathroom was just after their room, and after that, there was a kitchen, sharing a wall with the bathroom. Loona’s bathroom was on the other side of her room. Both bathroom were rather more long than wide. The part of the living room that was being put aside as a potential room for… Octavia… (Stolas swallowed around the lump in his throat) was beyond Loona’s bathroom, and took in an angle of the trapeze.

There were no 90° angles in all the room, but then they were in short supply in all of the flat.

“We need to check the pipes, but I think we can have a door that goes in the bathroom directly.” Loona was knocking on the bathroom was as she spoke.

Blitzø clapped his hands. “Perfect! So let’s see if…” He had his phone in his hands. “Hey Mills! Are you and the husband free today? Yeah we have a thing to do, we are getting a second royal and needs to put up a wall… OF COURSE I’ll throw in food what kind of fucking degenerate do you take me for? Booze too. What you saying? Uh hold on a second.” Blitzø put his hand on the phone. “Hey Loony, Stols, you two up for Thai today?”

Loona, who was putting tape on the floor for some reason, shrugged. “Make it a chicken curry soup and yes.” She was, Stolas noticed, wagging slightly.

They were looking at him.

Stolas blinked. “Uh… yes?”

“Good.” Blitzø went back to speak into the phone. “Yeah, we’ll make it Thai. Yes we’ll portal you in, alright? Alright then! See you in half!”

Blitzø turned toward Stolas. “You should get dressed, pretty bird, we gotta work. And we need to portal M&M in!”

Stolas went to get dressed, still baffled.

The day became… far more hectic, but not less bemusing after that. Mildred and Blitzø had clearly done this before, and Stolas’ role was, mostly, to Be Tall and do Tall Person stuff. At a certain point, he had Blitzø on his shoulders, drilling holes in the ceiling (they had given him stuff to put in his ears, a mask for his beak and a head covering because “drywall’s dust gets everywhere, Stols, you will never get the fucker out of your feathers no matter how much you preen the bitches”). There was Thai food, which was very good, and booze which, in his opinion, was not (booze meant “low quality alcoholic beverage” apparently”). In the afternoon Fizzarolli, whom he had believed to be a busy person, appeared and started arguing with Blitzø about dry-wall studs. Mildred and Blitzø argued about who would get to use the chainsaw to open the bathroom door. Blitzø was ruled out by Loona because “if you do it you will get the pipes.” Mildred laughed gleefully the whole time, even over the roaring of the saw. Blitzø pouted. Moxxie and Fizzarolli argued about the background music. Moxxie was voted down on having the background music be the soundtrack from Rent, though he voted in favor.

There was a lot of arguing. He was starting to think it was normal when many imps were all in the same place.

Stolas must have sat sometime in the day, but he couldn’t remember it. He fetched, stood, learnt how to use a drill (the first time he turned one on, the vibrations startled him so much, he let it fall on the ground. Nobody mentioned or seemed to notice it, so he picked it up and went at it again).

By a little after 3 pm there was a room. It was… not big. Perhaps a bit less than half of Via’s room at the palace, but it had an independent access to the bathroom she would share with Loona, and a door, and big windows.

Stolas was ready to collapse, and happy it was d-

“Okay! Now time for some furniture bitches, alright? Alright!”

Wait, what?

Blitzø, who was clearly made of some kind of endlessly energetic… thing, jumped out of the room, followed by the other imps and Loona, who had taken photos and videos of all the proceeding. Stolas stared. He had never realized his beloved stamina’s could be used for something different from sex.

“Come on Stols! We have fucking furnitures to find!”

… to find…?

You can find furniture?

Stolas marched downstairs.

It turns out, you can find a lot of stuff around the more affluent part of Pride. Moxxie nodded, sagely, looking up at Stolas’ surprise.

“People just throw away stuff.” He explained, as they all jumped down to examine a wardrobe. “But you ought to check there aren’t any kind of bugs or stuff like that.”

Blitzø was already clambering up and down the thing, sniffing around, and so was Loona. Well. The sniffing at least.

“This one seems good.” Loona decided. Stolas looked. It was a big one, with carvings of bats and fanged creatures. They had found, and discarded, two others, one for being possibly contaminated and one because, in Loona’s words, it was “too basic.”

They put the ornate one in the van, and went searching for a bed and a desk with chair.

By the end of the day, they had found both* and Stolas felt rather like after his meeting with Striker, sans the stabbing.

He collapsed on the couch, wondering how Blitzø, Mildred and Moxxie had the strength to speak, let alone devour slice after slice of pizza and laugh like maniacs. Stolas contemplated his own slice, debating the pro and cons of actually finding the strength to eat it.

Somebody got the slice of pizza from his hands and sliced off a piece, which appeared in front of his beak in the matter of, perhaps, two seconds flat.

Startled, but with some kind of residual avian instinct, Stolas opened his beak.

The pizza was plopped inside.

It tasted heavenly. Greasy and filling and good after a hard day.

He stretched his neck to the back of the sofa, looking upside down at the group of imps, Loona having retreated to her room.

Blitzø was slicing another piece of the pizza and moving it toward his beak just as Stolas moved. “Yeah and do you remember how we got the fucking meeting table? Christ on a stick, to get that shit up the stair I swear I popped my whole back.”

Stolas opened his beak.

Blitzø popped the second piece of pizza in.

Uh.

Stolas swallowed as Moxxie laughed. “Yes! And do you remember how we had to shoot the rats for the chairs?”

Stolas decided it was time for some experiment. Feeling foolish and also… pampered, he opened his beak, like a chick asking for food.

“What the fuck do rats even need chair for?” Another piece of pizza fell in. Neither Moxxie nor Mildred seemed to think this strange in the slightest, so he relaxed in the old, faded couch (found on the curb too, probably) and opened his beak again, closing his eyes as he did so.

Blitzø kept feeding him pizza.

And if he started to peep softly, like a nestling, somewhere in the process, nobody mentioned.

*To Stolas’ relief, they had bought the mattress because “You don’t sleep on fucking stranger mattress unless you really can’t avoid it, Stols. Trust me on that.”

__

Octavia kept fearing something would go wrong.

Ever since Stella had run in the room (not her room, not anymore) screeching that she was HER daughter and she would do what SHE wanted, followed by Andrealphus.

Octavia thought of a sheep and her sheepdog, and tried not to smile. Stella wouldn’t like that.

“Well she IS!”

“Yes, but King Lucifer IS the king of Hell, my dear.” Andrealphus’ voice was soothing. Octavia pretended not to hear, bounced down on the desk over the star charts. She was wearing so many coats and sweaters and scarfs, perhaps they couldn’t really see her. “And he has said that Octavia is to be given back to her father’s custody.” Andrealphus turned toward her, and his cold gaze went even colder. Octavia’s heart, which had jumped in joy at the words, stilled like a rabbit caught in highlights. “Alas, your betrothal will have to be put on hold.”

The relief was so sharp, it made her nauseous. Knight Furcas was old, even for the Goetia, and he looked the part, with a long beard and wrinkled skin. He leered. The shelves that had once held her beloved taxidermy were now full of his gifts: puzzles and logical toys. She couldn’t even look at them.

“However” Andrealphus steepled his fingers and smiled at Stella, who was fuming so clearly, Octavia expected to see actual smoke from her ears. “there was no mention of the palace, or his assets. Those stays… beyond his touch and in some case, in ours.”

Octavia watched Andrealphus (her uncle) tell Stella (her mother) that they would keep the money and palace and lose Octavia, and saw her Stella (her mother) slow realization, and the smile on her beak.

She had suspected why they had wanted her. It wasn’t even really because her dad was the degenerate they painted him as. She had an inkling it was because his money and title and legion went with her.

And now she knew.

It shouldn’t feel like this, not after everything. She lowered her gaze to the star charts, and found them blurry with unshed tears.

__

It had been three months since she had last seen her dad.

And their parting had been… not in the best situation.

Octavia of the Ars Goetia stood petrified on the curb in front of the Palace, and looked at her father.

He looked… well and strange at once.

She had never seen him in such casual clothes, for one. Jeans and a shirt, nice one that it was, didn’t fit the image she had of him with his favourite rompers or fancier outfits. He moved differently, too. He completely ignored Andrealphus and Stella, signing up the documents some kind of bureaucrat had given her.

She felt rather like a package, signed and given away.

He kept glancing at her, furtive glances with his big red eyes, wide and worried. She grinded her beak, her hand on her truck’s handle slimy with sweat.

“And done. And now, gentlemen, Andrealphus and Stella” she snorted. “I have to go to my daughter.”

“Enjoy living in poverty with him!” Stella’s last parting words.

Octavia didn’t turn. Stella had spoken at length and with relish about the situation where she would certainly end up. A one-room house, sleeping on the floor with rats scampering around you in the night, with no servants and no food in her opinion.

It still beat marriage with Knight Furcas, Octavia believed. But she didn’t say.

Her father as he came toward her didn’t look like somebody who had been living in squalor. His clothes may have been simple, but they were fresh and neat. He looked clean and well-fed.

And worried.

“Via! My Starfire!”

Her father’s arms were around her, and suddenly Octavia was warm again.

She started crying. She wanted to hug him back, but she couldn’t, she just couldn’t, she couldn’t move, she could just press her face in his neck and let herself be held, like she was a child, a small baby, and feel warm, warm, warm.

__

Her father brought her to a WackDonald. Octavia looked around, curiously. She had seldom been in those places, her mother being strongly against how plebian they were. In spite of everything, a tiny spark lightened in her chest.

“So. I thought we should… talk a little before we go to the flat.”

She had shed most of her outer layers already, but she tried to melt into her remaining clothes. Talk, now? Really? She looked at her dad, a bit reproachfully.

Then she winced. No. She shouldn’t do that.

Her father lifted his hands. “No, no. You only need to listen as I explain, alright Via?”

She could do that. She nodded and took a fry, eating it. Salty. Good. Bit greasy. The lights were sharp, and gave to everything (shapes and colours and shadows) an edge like a blade.

She liked it.

“I…. know you probably won’t like it, but I am living with Blitzø right now.” She had known it. Stella had expounded about that, at great length, and it was in the letters too. A squeeze in her heart. He had said he lived there, would it mean she wouldn’t…? “And we have prepared a new room here for you! Put on the drywall and everything!” the fear in her heart had no time to rise that it left her feeling a little damper inside, a little weaker. She breathed out, and nodded. Her own room: “You will have to share a bathroom with Loona, but the room is all yours, Starfire. We are waiting for you to choose the colours and decorations so it is a bit bare, but it is just for now.”

Tears filled her eyes. Fuck. She could decorate her room. Of course she could, this was her dad. And she could share a bathroom. She never had, but she could do it. They wouldn’t need to use it in the exact same moment, right?

“I am currently working with Blitzø in his business, and he pays me. I am an accountant and a secretary.” Her father, working. For an imp.

Scratch that. A goetian working for an imp.

She stared. Only her dad would do it, and speak of it so carelessly. She almost giggled.

“I am also selling some of the bulbs and offshoots from my plants. Blitzø… he went to the palace and…” he coughed. “absconded with many plants the night after, well. The night after.”

The plant.

Fuck. Her father’s plants.

She couldn’t remember a time without them. Her father and his plants. Green and sweet smelling and sometimes pointy. She had played hide-and-seek among them when she could barely walk, feed them the pieces of fat she didn’t like from her dinner when she was older.

Octavia had stopped seeing them, noticing them. When? When had it happened?

How could she haven’t realized Andrealphus had killed them all? How could she had not cared?

The cold inched inside her, spreading from the opening of her stomach outward, like tendrils. No. Not all. The imp had saved some of them.

She swallowed. “That is good.” Her voice felt rusty. They were, she realized, the first words she had said to her dad. She bit into the burger. Triple bacon. It was… good.

Her father smiled. “It was. I know it is going to be an… adjustment, Starfire. It was for me. It still is. But nobody will force you to… do anything. And we can do the star charts together.”

Her eyes filled up again. She sniffled, and nodded, and then took off her last sweater.

It was very hot in the Wackdonald.

__

Stolas looked as his daughter went in the flat. It was clean, but he was acutely aware how all of it could fit in his study at the palace.

He missed his study. He missed some parts of his past life.

Not all of them.

Octavia looked around, owlishly, as he pointed at the rooms. “That is Loona’s room, and that is the bathroom you and her will share, and that is uhm, the other bathroom and the other room.” He puffed up, nervously.

Via nodded. “And that’s my room?” They had painted the outside blue, to match the rest of the living room-kitchen.

Stolas nodded. “Y-yes.”

Via opened the door, and then both of them freeze.

Inside the room, on the floor, carefully arranged, were what Stolas recognized as many of Via’s belonging. Taxidermies and beloved books, clothes and old plushies.

The trunk fell on the ground as Octavia’s hand went slack and then she went on her knees, touching her things, and she was sobbing his beloved owlets, holding some of the most precious things to her chest and he did not understand…

There was a note.

Gt the stuf from teh bin wehn tey trew it avey. Stahsed it. Its hesr.

Blitz

He read it again and again, realizing so much at once. He almost crumpled it, a flare of anger toward his ex-wife smoldering in his chest.

Via looked up, and saw the note. He handed it to her. He said nothing.

She read it several time, frowning.

Well, Blitzø’s spelling could… take time to get used to.

“He… he did this? Got… got my stuff?” Her voice was wavering. He knelt by her, and put an arm around her shoulder. She went to him willingly, and warmth blossomed in his chest. “Pringles must have told him.” He said, simply.

Via sniffled, and looked at the taxidermy in her hand. “I thought… I thought I had lost everything.” Her beak was trembling.

Stolas was filled with hatred and love at once. Hatred, for Stella and Andrealphus. For what they had done, what they had dared.

Love, for Blitzø.

He preened Via’s head-feather and she moved subtly to allow him better access as she hadn’t in year. When had she stopped?

“I think… I think I’ll want the room in a nice dark blue. I can… paint the constellation on the walls.”

Via was looking around, her big eyes interested and keen and Stolas, for a wild second, let himself believe everything would be alright.

Chapter Text

Blitzø grins at Octavia, nodding at the princess.

“Hi, I am Blitzø the o is silent.” He stuck out his hand, too.

Stolas looks on as his daughter blinks, surprised. “What o?” she asks, taking in Blitzø ‘s hand. The imp laughs.

“I like you already, princess. Alright, alright! Stols, are you making pasta? Your dad makes a mean Bolognese, Octavia, you’ll see.” He is prattling on a mile a minute, setting on the plates and tablecloth for dinner. Via is blinking, bewildered.

Stolas can empathize. Blitzø often has that effect on people.

“Dad, you can cook?”

He can’t avoid fluffing up with pride at the surprised question as he tastes the sauce. “I, ah… I am learning, a bit. I had to learn a lot of new skill.” He admits, with a small smile. “How to cook, how to do my own laundry, how to clean…”

“You cheat at that”

“Using magic is not cheating, dear.”

“The heaven it isn’t. I can’t just bullshit away the fucking mess.” Blitzø ‘s eyes slit, and he turns to Octavia. “I think he is sending it somewhere. Like I am about 90% sure there is some poor bitch or fucker out there who is getting all of our bloody dirt.”

Stolas smiled, in the serene knowledge of the Truth. “I don’t know what you are talking about.” He said, primly.

Octavia was pondering. “You know, dad, if you are using the spell I think you are using, Mr Blitzø  s right.”

“Ah-ah! Gotcha Stols!” Blitzø makes finger guns at him as he pretends to gasp.

“My own daughter” He said, dramatically, turning with the pan full of spaghetti Bolognese. “here it is, dinner is ready. Can you call Loona in, dear?” As both Blitzø and Via moved, he ratifies. “Via dear.”

Loona comes in, and sniffs the air, her tail wagging in appreciation. “Fuck yeah, a Bolognese that is not 80% salt.”

“I am wounded, Loony, wounded.”

“Truths have sharp hedges. Thanks, Stols.” She nods at Stolas as he portions out the food. There is more than enough for seconds and leftovers. They have no more food problems, thanks the stars.

Octavia tries the pasta, and he fluffs even more as her eyes widen and she gets another forkful with decidedly more enthusiasm.

It is a bit tense, a person more in their usual night-time routine, and he is about to open his beak to say something, probably something stupid when Via speaks again.

“Thank you for… for my stuff, Mr Blitzø.”

Blitzø turns and blinks, looking at Via, and then he extends one hand to pat hers. “Ehy it is nothing, kiddo. They had no right to throw away your things, honestly, kinda shitty of them.” He grins. “And it is just Blitzø, no Mr here.”

“Yeah, Via, don’t give him ideas or he’ll become even more a big head.”

Blitzø wiggles his eyebrows over the girls’ heads at him, and he almost choke on his water, then his face crunches up in pain.

“Owww! Loony what was that for?!”

“Stop being gross!”

“How did you kn-“

“You were looking at Stolas, you are always gross when you look at Stolas.”

Via looks at all of them, and then all at once, starts to laugh.

It sounds strange, like his owlet hasn’t laughed in a long time, and something in his chest squeeze, but she is laughing now and that is something, that is everything in fact.

It is tense, yes.

But it will be alright.

__

Via has always thought that the phrase “like an old married couple” was one of those fake tropes that never really happened. Her parents were an old married couple but didn’t behave like… well. That.

Then she spent an evening with her dad and Blitzø, and, suddenly, she understood.

_

Blitzø Buckzo was an imp on a mission.

Stolas and his daughter were both at the I.M.P. new&improved headquarters. Stolas came everyday, of course, a temptation brought to Heaven to fuck him up specifically*, but he had to use some bullshit to convince the owl leaving Via all alone the first day would be like very bad and whatever. Which it would be but it was like, the second reasons they were both here.

Specifically, in the room, the big table moved to the side, Mox testing the ropes with the businesslike knowledge only professional subs and kidnappers had* while Millie swaggered toward Octavia and grinned at her, looking down at her feet. Loona was measuring small knives and also glancing at them.

Via and Stolas looked perplexed, but before they could open their beaks, he clapped his hands.

“Alright alright! Here we are for I.M.P. yearly “Bad Bitch Don’t Get Kidnapped” course!” He cheered, grinning at them. Stolas’ eyes widened. Via blinked, but looked with renewed interest at the ropes.

Clever kiddo.

“So we are going to do a presentation on “What To Do If Some Arsehole Gets Idea”. Mills, you’ll be the arsehole. Mox, please be the damnsel in distress.” Mox nodded enthusiastically. They probably roleplayed this in bed, dirty&lucky bitches***. “Now, Mox is minding his business, going around buying new toys to please his wife…”

“Hey!”

“Oh shut up, Mox, get into the part, Christ on a stick as if you don’t. Ok, exactly like that, when an Arsehole Gets Idea. Exactly, now the Arsehole ties our Mox up! And not in the fun way neither!” Mills mimed stalking Mox and then, with the professional air of the cowgirl from which the position was named after, jumped at him, tying him up like a pretty hog. Like a pretty hog, Mox squealed.

“Now, has everyone been paying attention?” Blitzø looked at Stolas and Via and Loona. Loona, for which this wasn’t a first rodeo, was nonetheless not on her phone, so it counted, and Via was looking intensely. Stolas, was looking at him. And frowning.

“Stolas I know I am the hottest thing in this room and several other but you need to pay attention to the scene now.”

The owl flushed a little and turned to the scene.

“So, can you tell me what Mox, who is a good bitch boy, has not done? Via?”

“He hasn’t struggled” Via mentioned it immediately, and he looked at her with surprise and pride.

“Whoa, you are an attentive one!” She puffed up like Stols when he got praised. On him, it was hot. On her, it was cute. “Correct! Because if you do that when you are tied with a rope, any rope, it will tightened the bond and we don’t want it. It is hard because shit, you want to give the bastards who are having the audacity the time of their bloody soon to be short life, but! You have to master yourself. So you don’t struggle. Next, look well at Mox, what else can you see, Stols?”

Stols planted his red eyes on Moxxie, all four of them, and frowned. He was attentive now, lying on toward the scene.

“… he seems to be making himself… bigger?”

“I do like them smart!” He cheered. “Yes. When Mills started tying him up, Mox puffed up his chest and widened his shoulders as much as possible, turned his wrists like this” He demonstrated “now, the specific on how you make yourself bigger change a bit demon to demon, but the general idea is the same. This because… Mox, deflate!”

Mox, who had been getting an interesting color as he tried to keep the air in, breathed out and then started to wiggle out of the rope. In a few seconds, he was free. He stood up, patted his clothes, and bowed to the audience.

Via, Stolas and even Loona clapped. The traitors.

“Yes yes. Good job, Moxxie.”

Mox grinned “Thanks, Blitzø”

“Now, who is the first to try?”

Two things happened in the same moment.

Stolas squawked “Try?” and Via raised her hand.

“Via first! Those are normal ropes, not blessed, so you can probably just, incinerate them or whatever, but that is against the exercise so do not.”

The smaller owl nodded enthusiastically. Uh. They should start teaching the kid some weapons…

“Mox, Mills! Help the new entry with the thing won’t ya?” He glanced at Stolas as they started, and then spoke, softly. “You ok, pretty bird?”

Shit shit shit. Bad memories? He should have killed Striker when he could, why hadn’t he…

Stolas looked at him and fidgeted with his trousers. “They are… normal ropes. I should be fine, and I admit it is… useful. It isn’t because of that.” He looked at Via who was, under Mox and Mills’ instruction, trying to puff up. Stolas couldn’t help but smile. Neither could he. “… Thank you, Blitzø.”

Blitzø shrugged. “We do this every year. It is important stuff. Ok Via” He said, louder now. “Wriggle time now! See if you can get out without damaging the rope!”

After Via did, it was Stolas’ turn, then Loony’s. All of them did well with some coaching. Then it was ziplock time, and manacles, with a stop for lunch during which Mox started to explain to the younger Goetia the finer point of lockpicking.

Octavia was clearly interested.

“Alright, alright! Now, it is time for hidden weapon check. Mox?”

Mox grinned and tapped his right off just in the right way on the ground, and a knife slid over the off itself from his pants. He could feel Stolas’ eyes widening.

“Good job. Mills?”

Millie winked and tapped her left foot, and the same kind of knife appeared. She did a rather badass kick-slash on the air, just to prove what a fucking gem of an assassin she was. Blitzø grinned happily. He loved his people.

“Loony?”

Loona rolled her eyes, and then she moved her head sharply. A knife flew from her hair, and she bit into it. It was hell-hound approved, made to be used with both hands and teeth. She preferred to hide stuff in her hair, for some reasons.

Blitzø couldn’t understand at all.

“Aww good job Loony-toony.” He dodged the half-hearted slash and grinned. “Ok! Now for our newest member and whatever, here it is… hey Stols, come here and try… this.”

It had been hard to find something to fit Stolas. He didn’t use long pants like Mox or Mills, nor boots. He didn’t exactly go around barefoot, though (or bare-taloned, or whatever it was that birds did). He wore thigh-high adherent… things that fit over his singular talons, kinda like the foot-shoes he had seen some humans wore****. He had absconded***** with a pair, and… experimented.

Not that kind of experiment you fucking perv.

Anyway, he gave the pair to Stolas, who looked at him and squinted. “Is this the pair of boots I couldn’t f-“

“Not important! Try them on.”

Stolas did. He shrugged. “They fit. Since they were mine to begin with” he said, with unnecessary pointedness in Blitzø’s opinion. “I don’t see what is the poin-”

“Ah! But here is the fact. Contract your feet.” Stolas looked at him. Blitzø rolled his eyes. “Just do it, Stols.”

Stolas did.

The sheaths over the angelic-steel blades contracted, leaving Stolas’ already sharp talons even more deadly.

Blitzø bowed to inspect them critically. “Good, they seem to fit well… How do you feel them, Stolas?” No answer. “Stols?” He looked up.

Stolas was looking at his feet like he hadn’t seen them before.

“Is that angelic steel?!” He squeaked. Via had wandered close and was looking, wide-eyed.

“Yeah? You can’t know, what with your shit family. Ok, it will be good. Now, Via! We have one for you too!”

“Really?”

The girl was adorably excited. Blitzø wondered if Mills would be down to teach her something. “Really! Here, we good the dimension from one of your pair of boots your shit family threw out. Try them on.”

She was already taking the ones she had on, off.

Stolas was still staring at the blades.

Uh.

“Ok, Via, put them on like this… yes. Now, slide them backward… exactly!”

“Ohhhh”

She looked down, all fluffed up and adorable. “Look dad! Mine is angelic steel too!” She looked up at the three imps and one hellhound.

“Thank you! Thank you all!”

Mills and Mox were grinning, and Loona was looking at her with the fond indulgence of the older sister. “We’ll teach you how to use it.” Said Mills, curse her little heart.

“Really?” Were there hearts in the bird’s pupils…

Stolas, who had stopped looking at his own talons and was putting the sheaths back, looked up. “Well, if she wants to… it could be useful.” He smiled. “Thank you, Moxxie, Mildred.”

“Ah, don’t mention it, Stolas. Come on, B. We have a hit today!”

* Blitzø had been debating with Mills whatever to institute a dress code for the office, the code being “the slutties thing you can image”. But then Mills had pointed out it would apply to Loona to and no, just no.

**Mox was both Mills’ husband and from a Mafia’s family, so Blitzø would peg him at “both” (ah. Peg him. Got it? Eh? Eh?)

*** Blitzø would also roleplay it in bed because he too was a proud Dirty Bitch member, but he had nobody to do it with -looking longingly at a certainly owl-, hence the lucky

**** Blitzø was 90% sure those were kink-related, and they creeped him out. Christ on a stick but humans’ extremities were fugly. They couldn’t have honest hooves or talons or pads like dis-honest demons, no, they had to have squishy… wriggly… things. They were disgusting. He killed people wearing the horrid shoes on principle.

***** Blitzø’s vocabulary of crime was excellent.

_

__

Stolas’ mind was reeling.

Blitzø often had this effect on him.

He was sitting in what had up until the week before be Blitzø’s office. Blitzø had moved all his stuff just before Via arrived and gave it to him and Via.

“The girl will want to stay with you, Stols. And you need a quiet space to do your math stuff more than I need an office anyway.”

He had thanked Blitzø, of course. He spent a long time doing it, lately.

Not nearly enough.

Seeing Octavia put all her books around, and adjust the taxidermy she had brought to her desk, he realized it once more. Not nearly enough.

She stared at her feet once more, grinning. The lesson had been… enlightening. He hadn’t even known there were ways to get out once you were tied.

And the weapons. The angelic steel weapons. They must have cost Blitzø a fortune, how had he…

Coldness spread under his feathers. He was a demon, and demon didn’t pray but he wished, oh so fervently, that the price had not been too high.

… If he had had something like that when, when Striker got him…

He glanced at Via, who was starting on the star charts. She would tell him if she needed his help. But she already seemed… different. More vibrant, more alive than the frozen statue that had met him the day before.

He understood. Blitzø had had that effect on him too.

Stolas lowered his head and started his work for the day.

__

Octavia of the Ars Goetia loved this place.

It was messy and strange and filled with décor Stella and Andrealphus would have a fit at and people they would have a fit to, but she loved it. It was the opposite of the cold, pale palace she had lived since… well.

Since.

She bit into the burrito one of the imp employers, Millie, had given her “Ye look scrawny, kid, eat”* and went on to do her star charts.

And for some reasons, here, with her father on the other desk and nice people close by, it seemed so much easier.

*It was delicious, spicy and filling and good. Via would, one day, learnt how to make them, taught by Mills herself, but it was still to come. For now, she was learning to enjoy them.

 __

That evening, while Loona explained Via how to wash dishes and put them away and clean the kitchen, Stolas sat on their bed and looked at Blitzø .

He had something to do.

Something he had been thinking about for some time.

Blitzø had been back to sleep in their bed, though he had started to put pillows between them. The pillows were for emotional support, Stolas supposed, because they still ended up tangled somehow in the night, Blitzø’s tails on his arm or legs, his talon around Blitzø’s ankle.

Blitzø was sitting on his side, filing down his hooves. He did it every week or so and got them professionally checked once every month or two. He was looking at them critically, and it was such a simple moment, the opposite of sexual really, that filled Stolas’ chest with warmth.

He walked to Blitzø’s side on the bed and knelt there. The bed was tall, not an imp-bed, though not as tall as he would have it. Probably gotten from the curb. This way, Blitzø was taller than him, his feet dangling over nothing.

Blitzø tilted his head, looking at him. He was in his night ensemble, shorts and comfortable shirt that showed off his clavicle, and so dear his heart squeezed in his chest.

“Everything alright, Stols?”

Stolas put his hands on Blitzø’s knees, palms up. He wasn’t trying to touch him.

It was an offering.

“I know I have said it already, Blitzø, but… thank you.” He breathed out and lowered his head. “Not only you have… taken me in, when I had nowhere to go, and nobody to call on. You have saved my plants. And not only have you… made sure my daughter was safe, you have recovered her own belongings.” His eyes stung. He didn’t cry. He was a Goetia. “And you are doing all this at a… great cost to yourself, asking nothing of me.” He looked up. Blitzø looked stunned, his eyes huge. Stolas went on, quietly. “And in spite of the fact I never apologized to you for how I… behaved. During… during the beginning of our… acquaintance. You were right.” He felt like he was taking a pound of flesh out of his chest. But he had to. It wasn’t painful, not exactly. But it was heavy, and true, and Blitzø deserved it.

Stars he deserved so much more.

“I… demeaned you. I didn’t respect your, your boundaries. I acted like” a pompous, rich prick. “any other Goetia would.” He had seen them. Not Goetian, no, but sinner and other demons, coming in the office, shit-talking all the imps. Little creatures. He had called Mildred and Moxxie like that himself. The memory filled him with nothing but shame. “I… fetishized you. And for this, all of this, I am more sorry that I can say.” He was. It was a physical thing, a weight in the middle of his torso, a sharp and dull pain when he looked at this bright, wonderful men he loved so much and realized how the world treated him. How he had treated him. “You would have all had the rights to laugh at me and kick me in the curb. You didn’t. Thank you.”

He put his head between Blitzø’s knees. Just a touch. Nothing sexual. An offering, as well.

And waited.

You needed to wait, with Blitzø. He had learned as much.

He could do that, he thought, as he breathed slowly, feeling his blood trickle in his vein, his heart, the heart belonging to this creature in front of him, pumping it in his chest.

He could do that, and more.

Chapter Text

Blitzø didn’t know what the fuck to do.

This wasn’t a new feeling for him. It was, in fact, a common one, especially when Feelings were concerned.

Like right now, when a certain owl was kneeling in front of him, his pretty head on Blitzø’s knees, his eyes closed. Waiting.

After he had apologized to him.

Blitzø didn’t know what to do, because people generally didn’t apologize to him. HE was the asshole. HE was the one who should apologize (usually, he didn’t, though he had been trying with the people who mattered lately*).

But now, Stolas was apologizing to him and all that his brain could say was: “uh. This is new.”

Thanks, brain. Real helpful.

“Shit, Stols, that was a long time ago.” Awkward awkward awkward. “it is ok, you were an asshole, I was an asshole. Shit happens. We are fine.”

The lines around Stolas’ beak deepened, and he frowned, his eyes still closed. “We may be… fine, but what I did to you was not. My behaviour was reprehensible” that was a hundred-point word right there**. Blitzø had no idea what it meant, though he could image it. “And then I… went on, like I had never behaved that way. Like your experience didn’t matter, only my impression of it.” Stolas swallowed. “You deserve better than… than this, than how I treated you. I am sorry.”

Blitzø stared.

Now, Blitzø sometimes didn’t understand Stolas. Stolas tended to use fancy rich-people talk filled with words that he had never heard in his life. It used to piss him off more. In this case, however, all the words were ones he knew, it was just that, put all together, they made no *sense*.

“No wait. You are the one who deserve better” The words escaped his lips, confusion tinting his tone. He put down the hooves-file he had been using on the bed. Shit. This was the bloody opposite of a romantic moment, wasn’t it?

“You should not have screamed at me.” Stolas agreed, easily. “And… whatever happened at Ozzie” Blitzø flinched. “And… I would have liked if you had come to visit me at the hospital.” Blitzø flinched again, but he was nodding. See? He was the asshole, the motherfucker, the wrong on-

“But that doesn’t mean I should have treated you how I did.”

Stolas’ head was between his knees. This had not, once, been an uncommon occurrence***. But now? Fuck, it had been so long. Stolas’ breath, the weight of him, the way his feathers tickled the inside of his knees…

His cock stirred.

Oh no, absolutely not.

Little Blitzø laughed in his face.

“Stols, look I… I didn’t mind.” A red eye opened and looked up at him. “Alright, I minded some part of it.” The nickname, and the constant sexual stuff hadn’t been… nice. “The actual fucking part was great, ok? You are an amazing lay.” Stolas was flushing. His cock had ideas. His cock could stop having ideas, because he was not doing anything at all. Blitzø tried to rearrange his, thankfully big, t-shirt to make his erection less prominent.

“… I shouldn’t have asked a… favour for favour… thing… with you.” Stolas sounded like he had just tasted spoiled rat. Blitzø looked at him, without understanding.

“Why not? Shit, Stols, it isn’t like it is the first time I…” Stolas whole body went rigid. His talons, from where he could see them, curled on themselves.

Blitzø was not stupid, in spite of what he, himself, thought.

Bile flooded his mouth, and he swallowed the acrid taste. The acid burnt his throat.

“Oh.”

Oh no.

Fuck.

(On the good side, his cock shriveled up. So, there was that).

He had had another meeting with Mahor. Another party. He stayed holed up in some shit motel for a whole day afterward, sweating drugs and puking cum and feeling about as he deserved to. Stolas’ eyes had followed him when he was back, but he hadn’t said anything. He had been grateful, then.

Well.

Shit.

“Look, Stols, you are not… it is not the same, ok?”

Stolas said nothing. He just. Stayed there, kneeling in that weird bird-way of his that he shouldn’t find endearing and yet here he was, his beak set and his body tense as a trap-wire.

Oh shit.

“Look. It just isn’t. And I didn’t mind it.” He hadn’t.

“You should have.” Stolas’ voice was quiet. “I did. That I was… trapping you, in a… making you stay.” Stolas took a deep breath. Why where they having this conversation? What the fuck? Why? “That I was… using you. Even if I didn’t realize.”

Blitzø was getting angry.

He gritted his teeth. The bird still didn’t understand. Why didn’t the bird understand? He was so fucking smart. Why?

“I told you I didn’t mind! Leave it!” He hadn’t spoken like this with Stolas in months and shit, why was he like this, why was Blitzø so broken he snarled at the man he loved instead of just, he didn’t know, fucking tell him? Like, alright, Stolas deserved better, everybody could see that it was visible from Heaven probably but shit, that didn’t stop him from feeling stuff. It just made the stuff stupid and worthless, like him. But he couldn’t say it, even if it was so bloody true.

He could only snarl, because the fucking bird didn’t get it.

Stolas was fluffing up, getting angry too and his heart squeezed. Shit shit shit he didn’t want this why was this happening. The owl sat back up, looking at him straight in the eyes, all beautiful feathers and that stupid heart-shaped face and shit, Blitzø was down bad.

“I can ‘t leave it! I used you like, like a plaything and how can you say it doesn’t m-“

“Because being your plaything still meant being yours!”

Stolas stilled, white pupils like stars in Pride’s red sky.

But Blitzø couldn’t stop now, he had started, shit, the bird had wanted it, and now he was getting it, he had started and couldn’t stop if he wanted to and fuck he wanted to this was going at full speed no-brakes toward Wrath’s canyon and his head was spinning but his mouth was running, running, running away from him “You still don’t get it! Yeah, we can… we can play at this, at being together” he almost spat the word, and his hand clenched, and his talons prickled his palms, and blood would drip soon and he didn’t care. “Because you are out of your princely stuff. For now. But you are getting everything back, as you should because it is fucking yours and you fucking deserve it, you and Via both, and then what? What, Stolas? I am a fucking imp. I am not Fizz, I am not a, a celebrity famous in all of the Rings. I am just a fucking imp, and I c… I can’t…” He closed his eyes, squeezed them, and spoke to the darkness. “If I was your plaything, I was yours. And then you threw me away.”

Blitzø opened his eyes. He was breathing hard, tears in his eyes, and then they fell, and he didn’t care. He jumped out of the bed, not looking at the statue of a prince**** and went to the bathroom, where he hid between the john and the corner, curled his tail around himself and wept until he had no more tears for the moment, and then drank some water from the sink and wept some more.

* In no particular order: Loona, Fizz, Stolas, Moxx, Mills.

** Friday Scrabble.

*** A monthly one, in fact.

**** That was false. Blitzø did look. Stolas looked stricken, his beak half-open, his eyes huge, white pupils in his eyes, but he wasn’t crying, and he didn’t seem in pain. So, he could go.

____

Stolas stood by the bed, Blitzø’s words playing on loop in his mind.

It was hard to breathe.

There was too much to think about, too much to realize. He wished, suddenly and fiercely, for absinthe and the possibility of losing himself in the alcohol. But there was none in the flat, and Via was too close, and he couldn’t. He wished, also, for his palace.

He had always thought it was too big, too empty. But there was space there, space to go to, to get lost into, to put between yourself and others. He had put so much space between himself and Stella, increasingly so as the years progressed. He needed space.

But the flat had no such space. For a terrible second, the place that had been cozy and warm felt cramped, suffocating. Stolas chocked, hating himself for the feelings, because they meant Blitzø was right, wasn’t he?

He stood and went out.

His feet brought him to the roof, to the hanging garden he had created with what his love had salvaged from the ruin of his old life. For a second, as he looked at it, it felt pitiful. He wanted his gardens with the waterfalls and the hedges full of flowers and teeth. He wanted the perfumed scents in the air, not the acrid smell of Pride.

Stolas put his back to one of his plants, and curled on himself like he was still in the egg, and sobbed, once.

Blitzø was right.

He was a Prince of Hell. Blitzø was an imp. That was true. And he… he was just starting to scratch what that meant.

But Blitzø was also wrong.

Stolas of the Ars Goetia hugged himself tighter, flame dancing in his eyes as darkness dripped from his feathers, red eldritch light contouring them. He wouldn’t let that be the end of them. He didn’t know how.

But he wouldn’t.

___

Now we need to go back to some months before, to the period when penguins screeched slurs and lucky monsterfuckers got what they wanted in life -and beyond-, and to a specific hit.

The person was a Sinner, but, differently from the usual clients I.M.P. got, she wasn’t a newcomer. She had been dead for some time already and was a respected member of the cannibals.

She had smiled with the cannibal-white sharp teeth at the I.M.P. people, who had fidgeted. Even Mills. “Thank you for the tea, dearie. As I mentioned, I would like those… three people dead.”

“Three people, uh? That’ll cost you extra.” Even Blitzø was a bit subdued.

“Oh it doesn’t matter, I’ll be so happy to see them.” She had thrilled, and smiled wider, and Moxx and Blitzø had looked at each other over her head and agreed that yep, these people wouldn’t like the meeting. At. All. “I am sure they’ll come here.”

Blitzø had balanced on the back legs of the chair, looking critically at the lady. Elspeth. Who the fuck was called Elspeth? Nobody that is who. He would bet a buck that her name was Elisabeth and she changed it once she was among the cannibals.

Fucking cannibals, man.

“Alright, we want to know why you want them dead, Elspeth dear” he drawled the name in a way that completely missed the Sinner. “Nothing personal, we always ask you know?”

She nodded. “Of course. You see, I am a therapist, and those three people are responsible for fourteen suicides among my clients.” She pursued her lips. “I think it will be very therapeutic for my clients to be able to face them in a… controlled… setting.”

By the way she smiled, Blitzø though the controlled setting probably involved a dungeon of some kind. And not the fun type. Still, no skin off his tail.

“Alright, will do. Half money up front, Els, and half after the fact.”

Elspeth smiled again, making all of the I.M.P. collectively wince, and took out cash from her dainty purse. She was like. Dressed all in pink, but her gown had suspicious red splatters on the hem which Blitzø knew to be blood.

Perhaps it was a cannibal fashion statement.

They did the killing, it was fun and shit, and then Elspeth (!) came back to pay cash, because the cannibal lived like it was the beginning of last century and didn’t do cards. And that would have been it, but with the money, she left a card.

“In case you ever need to do some therapy, dear. I’ll give you a discount.”

Blitzø, who knew he needed therapy, looked at the card, and then, instead of throwing it away, put it in his drawer.

And here it would have likely stayed, together with the toy horses and restaurants menu, if a certain owl hadn’t come crashing back in his life.

The day after the botched hooves-filing, Blitzø went to the drawer, skulking around like he was in a spy movie, and dialed a number, and said the hardest words he had ever spoken, gripping the phone so hard it almost cracked.

“Hello, Elspeth? Yeah, I wondered if you would still give me that discount on the therapy thing.”

Chapter Text

Things were Awkward.

Blitzø was not surprised by that, as much as well. Resigned. He had Fucked Up again. Now, when they went home at night, Stolas would seem like the usual, sure, he did his work in the same perfect way as before, ok (which was great, Blitzø had never realized how having a real accountant and secretary could make a difference, but man didn’t it).

But when they were alone in their room, he would say goodnight quietly and curl up and stay on his side of the bed.

It was was horrible. He hated it.

As said, he wasn’t surprised. Stolas had tried to apologize, and what had Blitzø done? Basically went “No, don’t apologize what I really wanted was a big golden chain and a fucking collar”? OF COURSE the guy had spooked. He was Blitzø Buckzo. He was too imp too simp!

Ah.

Joke on him, as usual.

Blitzø sighed and put the last sandwich in the wicker basket. It was an actual-to-Satan wicker basket, the kind you use in pic-nic and it was a loan from the Terrifying Therapist. Elspeth. She had given it to him after he mentioned, well, what was happening.

He turned, just in time to see Via getting out of her room with a load of Loona’s clothes, clean and folded. The girls had some sort of arrangement of laundry-per-dishwashing happening, Blitzø didn’t know the specific, but it ended with his Loony doing a lot of dishes quite happily and Via doing the laundry for both of them.

He grinned at the little owl (who was taller than him).

“Here it is sweetie, I prepared some sandwiches for you and your dad stargazing’s night!” He thrusted the (wicker) basket at her.

Via blinked, and looked at the basket and at him before smiling a bit, shyly.

“Thank you, Blitzø.” She put Loona’s clothes by her door and opened the basket, her feather puffing up like Stolas. “Oh! You made rat-au-gele!”

Blitzø, who had spent time putting fucking rats into special made jello, grinned. “I sure fucking did. Aren’t they your favourite?”

“They are. Thank you!” She lowered herself and hugged him, fast and clumsy, but true.

Blitzø flushed and hugged her back. Shit, she was too young to have shit parents. A shit mother of all things.

She was, in fact, very close in age to his Loony when he had adopted her…

___

Octavia swallowed the rat-au-gele, and licked her fingers as her dad pointed at the constellations.

“And that, my starfire, is the Ophiucus. Now, pay attention, for most people still don’t know it but recently it had became a true part of the Zodiac, and you have to consider it in your calculations.” He took a bite of the sandwich, and fluffed up. She hid a smile. Clearly Blitzø had packed some of his favorites as well.

“I did add it on my latest chart” She was proud of it. Her dad had done most of it, yes, but she had done a good part and King Paimon had smiled at her when she had brought them in, and said nothing else, which was a vast improvement.

She looked at her dad, smiling and excited, his feathers slightly askew and his red eyes shining, the darkness of the night blending with his grey plumage.

Stella had called him drab*, but she couldn’t see it. Blitzø had showed her one of his horse figurine, and said it was “blue roan, like you and your dad”, and he was much more right.

She smiled and pointed up her astrolabe, to take some more measurement.

“Do you think the tilt of the astral plane compared to the zodiac constellation and the moon’s directional is relevant this month, dad?”

He beamed at her with pride. “Most certainly! Now, pay attention, see here…”

The night went on, and the stars shifted and danced overhead. Octavia of the Ars Goetia concentrated on her studies, as strange new seeds, planted by scarred red hands started to grow in her heart.

*And called her, Via, the same, because she had inherited his colours, not her shining white.

__

Stolas didn’t know what to do.

Blitzø had said he wanted to be his. By itself, that alone would be a revelation of ginormous proportions.

But also… Blitzø didn’t think he deserved Stolas?

Stolas was not stupid. He was aware of his many shortcomings, but he wasn’t stupid. He lacked Blitzø lightening quick wit perhaps, but still. Not stupid.

And what Blitzø had been saying, was that he didn’t think he deserved Stolas.

Which was ridiculous.

He had been at the Blitzo Sucks Party. Blitzø would just have to snap his fingers, and he could have tens of possible partners, happy to be his boyfriend-slash-girlfriend-slash-whatever.

Stolas knew himself. He was painfully awkward, and bookish, and boring. Blitzø seemed to still like him even with all of that, which was incredible, but not many people would*. And even if they would, he had tried some of the dating scene and it had had him molt from the stress. Stars, people were weird**.

Blitzø had no such problems.

But when he thought back now, with this insight, to what had happened after their last full moon… at Blitzø insisting they had sex, and dismissing another kind of relationship… if he didn’t believe he could have that due to their different stations… was it anything but a last, desperate attempt from Blitzø to, to be still his, in any way he could be?***

A very badly designed attempt, but he was starting to get how Blitzø was. You needed a dictionary sometimes. Blitzø-English, English- Blitzø.

But the point was, now he was there, and he didn’t know what to do.

Blitzø was going to therapy. He had gone four time in a month, which was a lot. He had also prepared some really nice wicker pic-nic baskets for him and Via when they went to stargaze. He loved those moments with his owlets, and Via was thriving. She did miss the servants, as he did, but she had become a pro at laundry, and her friendship with Loona had blossomed. Blitzø’s tone had started to take the same intonation with Octavia as with Loona, which made his daughter rolls her eyes and smile at the same time.

She was also becoming friend with Mildred, and getting some… interesting… slang.

He pretended not to notice.

Happiness was a surprise, sometimes. It snuck on him, while they were all watching tv together, he and Blitzø on the couch and Loona and Via on the ground, passing a huge bowl of pop-corn and commenting on the movie of the week****, with Blitzø pressed against his side and vibrating softly as he purred, one of his arms around the imp’s shoulders. Or while he bid his daughter to have a good night as she left with Loona to one of Bee’s parties (he thrusted Loona, and Via was making friends!) and Via smiled at him and Blitzø cooed on both of them before the door closed softly.

Now, if he could just talk with the imp, and explain to him that he wanted a relationship in which Blitzø was not… inferior to him in any way, that would be perfect.

Also, of course, if he could explain to his bloody cloaca why there was no fucking, because the blasted organ only knew Blitzø was at an arm’s length for the majority of time, and it was not getting pounded into smithereens, and it was a grievous injustice.

Blitzø was getting therapy.

Perhaps he should speak to somebody too… Somebody who, for good or ill, knew Blitzø and could help him.

*I would like to point out that is the Trauma Talking here. A lot of people would, but Stolas doesn’t know that.

** This is more true, let’s be real.

*** That is exactly what it was. Well done realizing it Stolas.

**** They rotated the choice, which means it went something like: Horror – Horror with occasional high level stuff – horse movie – romance, repeat

___

Verosika Mayday looked at the owl-guy in front of her.

The owl-guy fidgeted.

Verosika Mayday kept staring. She plopped down on her sofa, swinging some Beetlejuice as the guy kept fidgeting.

He had… changed in the last what had it been, six months? Eight? Since the Blitzo Sucks Party. He was not dressed like a high end snob for once. The jeans fit him nicely, and the button down as well. The corset was a whole look, to be honest. She made a mental note to get herself some of that, and then gestured the other couch to him.

“Once again. From the beginning. With feelings.”

Stolas took a deep breath.

“I… you may not know I was temporarily frozen from my assets and goetian holdings due to my divorce.”

Ver nodded. She had heard it, and at the time she had thought something like ‘’damn them goetians are asshole’’ which was not a particularly novel though in Hell. But she had her own shit, like most of the people in Hell and…

“And Blitzø… he offered me a place to live, and then a job.”

Ver stared.

She must have heard wrong.

“Blitzø.”

“Yes.”

“Blitzø Buckzo. The guy we made the party about.”

Stolas winced and she lifted one eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“He offered you a place to stay and a job, for nothing in exchange.”

“Yes.”

She squinted. It didn’t check. She stood up and then went to sit by him. They were in what she ironically called “her apartment”: namely, the recording studio. She had finished her recording for the day, and it was time for Jazz and Raff to do their magic with it, so she could take time off. The room was dimly lit, and the sofa were comfortable, which she knew because she bloody slept here most of the bloody times.

She took Stolas’ hands in hers and looked up at him. He was fucking tall. He tilted his head. Fucking adorable, man, pity he didn’t swing her way.

“Stolas, if he is having sex with you and you feel like you…”

“We aren’t having sex.”

Verosika Mayday blinked. “What.”

Stolas closed all his four red eyes and almost crumpled. “We aren’t having sex. We haven’t even kissed once.” There was definitively a vail somewhere there.

She could only stare and blink.

“Sooo… wait. Are you telling me Blitzo… Blitzø Buckzo had been doing all of it out of the goodness of his heart?” she couldn’t help the incredulity dripping from her voice. Such things didn’t happen. Sure, you may do a solid to a friend, and then said friend would do you one back, later on. But Blitzø and Stolas, they had been through. He had been to her party singing to everyone how through they were. “You had not heard from each other since when?”

“Since the party.” At least three months. “And there is more.”

“More?” This was going into shock territory.

“… He saved my plants. My Brother in laws, Andrealphus” he spat that name. Yeah, no love lost here. He was still looking down at their hand. “he is… his magic is connected to ice, and he had won custody of, of my daughter.” A wince. That must have hurt. Who knew he was a good dad? “and all of my plants… they were dying. Blitzø went that night, and with some of the gardeners saved the plants, brought them on the roof of the building we live in. And then, and then he…” his voice died. He had a very pretty voice, and he sang very well.

Perhaps…

Focus, Ver, not the time to be thinking shop.

“What did he do?” For some reasons, she didn’t think it was another of Blitzø’s litany of horrors*.

“… he made it so I could get my daughter’s custody back. At… at very very great… personal pain.**”

Ver let his hands fall.

“Oh shit. He loves you.”

Because that was it, wasn’t it? Blitzø Buckzo had finally met his match. And his match was this tall, lanky owl with his heart-shaped face and red eyes, who looked at her with hope and heartbreak both. Like he hadn’t realized, the idiot.

… Not her. And Verosika Mayday didn’t even want Blitzø Buckzo anymore, but some part of her, petty and vindictive and angry and sour like the kind of candy that puckered your mouth looked at Stolas and thought What do you have that I don’t? Why does he love you and couldn’t love me when I wanted it so much?

Then she took a deep breath, and let go of it and the feeling both.

As much as she could, anyway.

“I love him too.” Stolas’ words were soft, like a secret, like a confession.  

Ver snorted. “Congratulation. I will sing at your wedding.” It was a promise and a threat both. It would be delightful.

Stolas looked at her with his red eyes completely round, all four of them and then.

POOFED.

There was no better word to describe it. All his feathers stood up, making him look about twice as big as he usually was. Several took flight, and she found one in her mouth. She coughed, spitting it out and found the owl on his feet frantically scrambling to recover them.

“Oh, oh my apologies I, I don’t know what took me, I just, I never, I…”

Shit she could understand Blitzø. He was cute when he was babbling.

“Stolas, chill, it is fine. So what is the problem?” She thought for a second, searching her mouth for pieces of feather. “is it because you are a prince?”

Stolas fell again on the sofa, several small feathers in his hands and sighed. “He… seems to think so. I understand it would… complicate matters.”

She nodded. “it would. You would both need to be on board for it to work. And, Stolas, your peer would not like it.”

Stolas snorted. “They don’t like me in any case, and I don’t care. But… yes. It, it needs working on.” He looked down. “and… other things. More… private things.”

She hummed.

There was a beat of silence.

“Are you two really not going at it?”

Stolas threw his hands up the air. Feathers gently flew around them again. “I know!” He wailed. “And we sleep in the same bed and…”

“Wait. You sleep IN THE SAME BED. And he isn’t railing you?”

“No!”

“… but he wants to.”

“He… yes! He told me and ah… has shown me. Arhm. Indirectly.” He was bloody blushing. Fucking adorable. “But he is being a perfect gentleman!”

“And you would like him to be… less… gentlemanly?”

Stolas threw himself backward on the sofa, groaning and closing his eyes, one arm on his eyes.

“Girl, you have no idea.”

Verosika couldn’t help herself.

She laughed so long and so hard, she almost pissed herself.

__

Two days later, when a cheque arrived in the mail from Blitzø for her, with the exact amount to cover the credit card debt and what she had to spend on her car that one time (and how the fuck did he know that…) she was amused, but unsurprised.

The note only said. “Sorry. You deserved better.”

“Damn right I did” she said out loud, and then she put the cheque in another envelope and send it back, with a returning note written on the back of Blitzø’s own.

“Save it for your wedding.

Ver”

She added to her lipstick, and kissed it for good measure, then grinned and put it among the stuff to be posted.

Oh, to be a fly on that wall…

(When Blitzø opened the mail two days later, he was eating eggs and toast as he read the note. Toast was very soon everywhere, including down Blitzø’s pipe. Loona had to practice the Heimlich maneuver. When that didn’t work, a flustered, terrified, squeaking Stolas held him upside down as Loona and Via took turn hitting him in the back. That worked, and Blitzø could breathe again.

The first thing he did was pouncing on the table and eating the bloody note.

The whole time he was suffocating and even after, he thought Verosika would have loved the scene, that bitch -affectionate-. And he was bloody right, she would have.)

*Ver was both wrong and right here.

** Blitzø had gone to another of those… parties. Stolas had watched, and never felt more powerless in his life.

Chapter Text

Blitzø never wondered why Sinners were in Hell.

Other Hellborns did. There was even a fairly popular VoxShow in which the whole catch was trying to guess why the bastard had come to join them in Hell. Blitzø has never watched it. It didn’t matter to him why they had managed to get themselves sent here. They had a chance he never had, and squandered it like idiots.

Welcome to Hell, everyone is shitty here!

But he was making an exception for Elspeth, the Terrifying Therapist.

Cannibals are creepy by definition what with the black eyes, too white teeth, bad culinary habits and worse aesthetic*. So when he was sitting in the too plush chair in Elspeth’s office, a chair which he was about 90% sure was actively trying to swallow him** and not in the fun way, he didn’t even think about not answering her questions with absolute sincerity. It was something in those bottomless pits of eyes that made the sweat drip down his spine just as the awareness than anything BUT absolute sincerity may mean he would never leave the pink chinz-decorated room.

It was a bit like those soldiers that ran into no-man lands because the idea of facing their officers was frankly scarier than the bullets. Blitzø wouldn’t have spoken of his trauma with a gun to his head, but in front of Elspeth sharp smile, he found himself capitulating more often than he would have liked.

Which is why when, perhaps six weeks after the beginning of their first weekly, then biweekly sessions, when Elspeth asked him in a voice dripping with saccharine, what was his relationship with his parents he just blurted it out.

“My dad always thought I was a waste of space because I am a shit performer. He decided I would make a good whore when I was fifteen. I killed my mother.”

Elspeth just nodded and wrote with her fancy-ass antique pen in a notebook*.

“And how did that make you feel?”

Blitzø couldn’t stop, he burst out laughing.

He laughed because the alternative was crying, and then he did cry, into Elspeth’s rose-perfumed and rose-embroidered handkerchief, and then vomited in Elspeth’s wicker basket and shit, he would have had to buy a new one, wouldn’t he.

And this was how Blitzø Buckzo told somebody of the Circus fire that had killed maimed his best friend, killed three performers, his mother, and Blitzo Buckzo.

It fucking sucked.

*Though Blitzø had to admit they did commit to the bit.

**it was a cannibal’s chair after all.

*** Blitzø still had a sense of self-preservation because, in spite of wanting to know what she was writing, he never actually tried to steal it. Even if he wanted to. Like, a lot.

___

Stolas didn’t fit in his old clothes.

Not physically. He could still enter in all the red rompers, at least the ones who had survived the First Laundry. But they didn’t fit him anymore.

He had to go to Vassago, to talk about his divorce proceedings and… other similar topics. Hence, the clothes.

Stolas looked at the demon in the mirror. The top hat-crown made him too tall. The too slick material made his feathers itch, and the cloak closing around his neck was like a noose.

He stared for a couple of seconds more, then he stripped down to his feathers. He put on his favourite pair of trousers, dark blue, a light blue button-down shirt, and a corset/gilet in green and silver*.

The demon in the mirror stared back, and it was Stolas once more.

Stolas nodded, and portaled to Vassago’s mansion.

*So he was dressed like the gay men flag. Sue him.

__

Stolas looked stunning.

Vassago couldn’t help but stare. He liked colours. His office was all slick angles and transparent coloured glasses, with cut crystals like diamond stars showing more hues than most people saw in their whole lives taking the place of lamps. He had never associated colour to Stolas. Stolas was grey and white and black, demure and shy at the hedge of Goetian’s life until… now.

Now, the new Stolas looked… dashing.

“If I understand correctly, you don’t think my ex-wife has much of a chance.”

Vassago blinked. Yes. Focus. Less thinking about how beautiful the demon in front of him was, and more business. Stolas was looking at him with four red, clever eyes, and, despite his older age, the parrot felt like he was the one on trial.

“Correct.” He managed, fast enough not to show his lapse in judgment. He thought. “To be honest, she was not very clever. Which is… common, for her, if I understand correctly.”

Stolas nodded. “Stella is not very clever, and Andrealphus is more cunning than anything else.”

“Uhm. It shows. To be honest, Stolas, you aren’t the first to have… dalliances, outside of the bound of matrimony. After all, we usually marry for duty. You aren’t even the first to fall in love with demons of lower stations. Several of us have had relationships with Sinners, succubi, baphonets… and even imps and hellhounds. It is not uncommon. After a heir has been provided, the expected behaviour is a discreet acceptance. Princess Gaap, Stella and Andrealphus’ mother, has two half-hellhounds children from a long term companion, and your father… well I am not even sure who his wife is, if he has one. I don’t think he knows!” A pause. “Stella herself has not been… faithful, to you, from the information your im-“

Vassago saw the mistake immediately. Stolas tensed, “He is not my imp. His name is Blitzø.”

“from the information Mr Blitzø has given us. I hope it doesn’t come as a… shock, to you.”

Stolas’ shrug was indeed very eloquent. “I couldn’t care less.”

“And that is the behaviour expected of a Goetia. Frankly, if we were to punish your behaviour, there would be such a can of worm opened that even the Kings wouldn’t be able to manage it. No, your divorce is going to go on, and Stella will soon have less than what she would have had had she decided to take your initial offer and leave.”

Stolas nodded. “And Octavia?”

Ah. Vassago looked down. “This… tie with the other… little problem.” A pause. “Stolas, my friend. You did misuse the grimoire.”

Stolas surprised him. He simply nodded, once more. Heartened, Vassago went on. “of course, the easiest course would be to have the imp shoulder the bl-“

“No.” in spite of the calmness of the word, white pupils shone in brilliant red. “I would like to be added that it was entirely my idea, and I held the grimoire over Blitzø’s head on pain of losing his livelihood. This has nothing, nothing, to do with him.”

Vassago stared.

Stolas stared back.

Where had this steel been? He wondered, because there was not a hint of the quiet and sometime blabbering Stolas he remembered from parties and soirees.

“Very well.” There was no other choice. This Stolas would have walked to the Kings and tell them the same. Vassago was… impressed.

He wasn’t impressed often.

“Here is the problem. The usual punishment would be a confiscation of your title and assets, and your duties would fall on your heir.”

Stolas nodded. “it makes sense. I was… remiss, in them.”

Vassago made a noise of frustration. “Stolas, try not to be like this at the actual trial, please. But there are three points about the usual punishment. The first is that Octavia is not ready to take your duties, as it had been shown. The second is that, as a matter of fact, you were not remiss in any of your real duties. Your star charts and predictions have been impeccable and helped the cause of Hell up until you were ousted. Your legions were among the best managed. Your accounts and assets show nothing but acumen. In short, you may have gotten a bit… driven… by something other than your brain.” A cough. Stolas’ white face reddened. It was… surprisingly cute. “But we can prove no harm whatsoever has come to Hell, and it would harm our cause if Octavia took over your title.”

Stolas tilted his, still blushing, head on his shoulder. “You mentioned three points but those are two.”

“Ah. The third point.” A pause. “Stolas, would you consider yourself being… grievously punished, right now?”

Stolas blinked, one eye after the other. “… no?”

“Exactly. You see, historically every time a goetia has been ousted from their position and asset, even if temporarily, they have… fallen very fast and very far. The lucky one managed with forced sex work or unsustainable loans from loan sharks. For the unlucky ones… Well, once the family’s name doesn’r protect you anymore, many enemies may come to roost.” A pause.

Stolas stared. Then, he nodded. “I see. This was Andrealphus’ plan. That I would be unable to… manage, and as such, it would compound to my shame and ensure my ousting.”

“Very likely, yes. But, you are… well. Different. But well. And while many of our kind would consider working for an imp shameful”

“- wrongly so”

“Wrongly so, certainly, they cannot claim you are unable to perform your duties as a result of it. Even more so once the star charts came back to be impeccable once you were in Octavia’s orbit.”

“This doesn’t explain why the family would not punish me, however.”

“Then let me be blunt, my friend. Being disowned wouldn’t punish you. It would set you free.”

Stolas looked at nothing, his eyes blinking one by one, slowly. Then, he nodded.

“I see. My magic is slightly diminished by the lack of the grimoire, but not greatly so. At least, not in Hell. But if they disown me…”

“… you can use it however you wish. That, plus your knowledge, and some connections you have been making lately makes the higher levels not very… keen… to see you go, Stolas. They don’t care what to do with your cloaca, as long as you keep giving them reliable prophecies. You made many of the higher level richer and more powerful, and they don’t want to see you using those abilities… elsewhere, while being left with a half-trained girl.”

Stolas’ beak tensed at his description of Octavia, but he nodded.

“I… see.”

“So the most likely solution is a slap on the wrist, and you’ll be able to go your way.” A pause. “With… Blitzø, I assume.”

Stolas became even redder. It was, indeed, very cute. “I… certainly hope so. Thank you, Vassago. You have been… very kind”

“Don’t mention it. And come for tea sometimes, it gets lonely here”

Stolas’ smile was quiet and radiant.

“Oh, I will.”

Vassago sighed. A pity that Stolas was so much younger and, apparently, taken.

A pity indeed.

___

“So we are going to go back to the palace soon?”

“Some more months, but yes. Careful with the shears, Via darling.”

Octavia frowned, looking at the rose he was, carefully, pruning. The sky was red and the pentagram shone in the sky, and the plants smelled like green and flowers and rich earth. She liked the smell. Her dad often smelled like this.

“… I like this place.” She spoke quietly, not looking at her dad. He went on adding trellises to the snapping rampicants.

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I miss the servants, and all the money but… this is good too. Like, a nest. I have just started volunteering at the imp library, and Loona and I have joined their book club and… I like Millie and Moxxie and Loona.”

“I… heard you had a little row with Loona a couple of days ago.”

Via flushed. Of course, her dad would know. She groaned, lowering the shears. “Dad, have you ever realize how much of a fucking bougie idiot you were?” She revised her phrase, her eyes widening as she darted them toward her father, who had turned to look at her and oh, shit. “Not that you are one!” she yelped. Oh, Christ on a stick, she was an id-

Her dad started to laugh his hooting laughter, and Via’s shoulders relaxed. She bent to pick the shears that had fallen down as her father dried his tears on his gardening’s glove.

“Don’t worry my Starfire. I am one, and in answer to your question: yes I have. I assume it happened to you and Loona as well?”

“Yeah. She was in a hellhound pound, did you know that? They are… fucking horrid places. Some hellhounds pups are given the shot she told me. Like… just killed off. I think she was close a couple of times” she shivered. “I put my big talon in my mouth about the topic, and… well. Loona is not one to chew words. Only people.” She sighed. “I was angry, but… then I got it. I apologized to her. She told me I have all rights to be in pain too, even if … I was so much luckier than her.” She grinned. “Then she put me in a headlock.”

Her dad’s laughed again. “I can see it was resolved. You are better at this than me, Starfire. I am glad. But… I like this place, too.” Her dad looked around at the plants, then down, toward their feet. Under them, beyond the concrete and metal roof, Blitzø was cooking for the evening. It was Thursday, so there would be a good meal, and then they would see a movie together, so popcorn were going to be popped on the stove*

Via smiled. It was Loona’s turn to choose, and her heart warmed up, thinking about what horror would be unlashed upon them.

“I like this… Thursday movie and Friday Scrabbles and Saturday out.” She said, out loud, looking up and smiling a little to her dad. “… I want… I want it, dad.” She did. She had thought her dad being with Blitzø would mean he would no longer be… hers. She hadn’t thought about gaining more people. She hadn’t even known it was possible.

Sometimes, she wondered if her father had.

Her dad nodded. “I want it too, my owlet. I want it too.”

* Blitzø said microwave popcorns were an abomination unto Satan, and no self-respecting carny would eat them (only serve them to dupes). And to be honest, his popcorns were insanely good.

__

Blitzø thought he had his business deal with Mahor down pat. It was a fucking nightmare, and he hated it and Christ, he hated the slimy creature, but he could do it. It was just one more time, and it was for the kid. Stolas didn’t know the specific, which was essential.

He must not know. Because it was Blitzø’s bullshit, and Stolas must not be infected by it.

Yes, Blitzø could have done it and be done, and Stolas would have been almost none the wiser, if some fucking bitch hadn’t brought in fire-play during the last “party”.

Blitzø normally had no problems with fire. Fizz did, but not Blitzø. But he was not in a good space what with the drugs and having had more cocks in him that should have been physically possible and having eaten pussy until his jaw literally cramped.

And the drugs, of course.

So when they brough in the fire, he did what he had learnt not to do with Mahor when he was fucking sixteen.

He screamed.

Mahor appeared among the masks of the party, and it was not a masked ball but Blitzø couldn’t see if they were real or not, he could only see the fire all around, and Mahor’s face contorted in his vision and maybe it was the drug or maybe the fucker was just like that, because he caressed Blitzø’s forehead with the tip of a taloned finger, and said in that soft, sing-song, hated voice of his. “Blitzy, come on. You know you can’t say no darling.”

The fucking monster lowered himself and kissed his lips, and then whispered. “Sing for me, my pretty boy.”

And there was more fire, all around, and it was biting his limbs, and people were laughing and Blitzø did sing.

Chapter Text

Blitzø did not want to call Stolas.

He didn’t know very much, right now. His mind was reeling, swimming between the nausea and acrid sensation of the drugs and the scent of his own flesh, burning. He had gotten himself in the cab, and then into the shitty motel he had used the other three times, and maybe somebody among the staff the monster employed had helped, and maybe not.

But now he was sprawled on the cold carpet of the floor, cum still seeping from his little hole, more cum encrusting in places he didn’t even want to think about, and he couldn’t move. He wanted to vomit, but his body had run out of adrenaline and couldn’t even manage to puke out drugs and seed. He had his coat on, and nothing else, and he knew he did not want to call Stolas, because this filth* should not taint him.

He did not want to call Stolas, but he needed from somewhere deep in the marrow of his bones, deeper than skin and flesh and organs, to be safe.

And it turns out, they were the same thing.

*Him. He was the filth.

__

Stolas knew where Blitzø had gone. He had every time. Blitzø would always tell them not to expect him back the next day, and then come home almost the same, but… slightly to the left, too sharp, too quick in his movements, almost twitchy. He would take three showers a day for a week, and brush his teeth at every opportunity, chewing mint gum when he wasn’t brushing.

At night, he slept, but sometimes Stolas had woke up to see Blitzø in the dark living room, yellow shiny eyes staring at nothing.

Yes, Stolas knew, and he didn’t know what to do.

Blitzø had know what to do, when he had been at his lowest. Blitzø had took him in, give him a place and food and a job and took his plants and held him while he cried.

Stolas had several secrets, but the deepest, darkest one was: Stella was right about him.

Not on everything. He was starting to think he could be attractive to the right people, and Blitzø was vocal in his praise of Stolas’ performance in bed, so there were parts where she was wrong, or they were simply incompatible.

But she was right when she called him a pathetic coward and a ridiculous excuse of a partner.

Because if he hadn’t been one, he would have known what to do. Not with her, maybe, he could admit to that, but with Blitzø. He would have known what to say to him, how to touch him, how to hold him close. He wanted to do it. He wanted to tell Blitzø how much he appreciated him. He wanted to offer as much comfort as he had been given.

And he didn’t fucking know how.

When he had seen Blitzø awake in the night, hugging his knees to his chest, utterly silent in the living room, his tail curled around himself, he had not known what to do, and in the end he had done nothing. He had gone back to bed, to stare at the wall until dawn had broken in the sky.

He had never felt so useless.

He had never felt so much of an utter coward.

(One day, Blitzø would realize it, his fears whispered in his ears. Blitzø would realize it, and realize he had a whole party of people who would kill to have him, and ditch Stolas for some of those, certainly better, demons. Stolas tried not to listen to his fears, but they could be very loud indeed)

So he was in their room, knowing what had happened, was happening, and he wasn’t jealous, but it hurt Blitzø and he would do a lot not to have Blitzø hurt and he probably should stop trying to read, because he had been trying to understand the same sentence for the last then minute, when his phone rang.

Stolas stared at Blitzø’s name on the screen, then lounged at the vibrating phone. It slipped. He fumbled in the air, magic and hands trying to grapple the suddenly slippery object, before he managed to take the call.

“Hello? Hello Blitzø?”

“… Stols…”

All his feathers stood on end. Blitzø sounded slurred and rough, and like he had cried or wanted to cry or something around that line.

“I am here, Blitzø. Where are you?” He gripped the phone so hard he heard it crack, then he almost let it go completely at the jolt of what-if-I-break-the-only-connection-with- Blitzø’s terror.

“… Motel, Pride Ring, Beyond Chance… Please… Please Stolas…”

Oh shit, Blitzø was crying. He had never seen Blitzø cry. This was bad. “Of course, I am coming, stay where you are darling.” He jumped from the bed, no time to find clean pants, the one he had used today would work. He jumped on one foot as he spoke and put the trouser leg on in the same moment.

“… Please Stols… need you.”

Oh, oh shit, oh fuck.

Stolas portaled close to where Blitzø was bare-chested, barefoot and still buttoning his trousers up.

Then he ran.

__

The door of the room open.

The lump of imp on the carpet made no sign of recognition. He was trying to puke, but the pathetic, retching cough that managed to get up from his lungs and stomach wasn’t cutting it.

“Blitzø!”

And then there were strong, soft arms around him. It smelled nice and it was so soft and Blitzø was too tired and too beyond everything to think clearly, so he looked up with tear-rimmed eyes into four ruby-red ones who gazed at him with horror.

Blitzø closed his eyes. He was horrifying. Disgusting. He knew that.

“Darling, dearest, I am here now”

Stolas was here.

Blitzø had hated himself for all of his adult life and a good chunk of his teenager years. The sensation was nothing new, but rarely had the hatred been so powerful, so complete as then.

He had brought Stolas into this… this filth, his filth.

He would have died before tainting him so much. He withered, whimpering. “Sorry, I am so sorry Stolas.”

Blitzø was rising in the air. Stolas was carrying him, keeping him close. Blitzø should move away, he was dirty with cum and fluids and he should not dirt Stolas too, but Stolas was strong, as strong as he was beautiful, and he couldn’t.

“Here, here darling no reason to be sorry. I’ll run you a bath, and help you get clean what do you think?” Stolas’ voice was so soothing. Blitzø nodded. He would have nodded if Stolas had suggested dismembering him and feeding him to Fizz’s queives, and a bath was an improvement, so.

The sound of water, and still the nicely smelling softness, and then some time later he was in the bath, and Stolas was cleaning him gently, and Blitzø looked up at Stolas with pure misery in his gaze as he handled with such care.

“I am sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t want to taint you, I am filth, I am sorry.” He blabbered, and his words cut into Stolas’ soft stream of nonsense. Stolas’ white pupils shone, and then he closed all his four eyes and swallowed, stopping his ministration.

“… You aren’t filth my darling, and there is no need to be sorry. Here, you are cleaned up, let’s get you out and in the bed.” Stolas has cleaned him everywhere, and it made Blitzø marveling, how could Stolas be so perfect?

He was again in the air, and there was a towel all around him, and then he was being carried in the room, and put in the bed, and he should let go of Stolas, but he couldn’t, and Stolas laid down with him on the motel’s bed and held him close in the softness and good smell and Blitzø closed his eyes, and he was asleep.

__

Stolas was not easy to anger.

He was a rather mellow creature, for a demon. He was known to be a pacifist, to like stars and plants and gems. He disliked fighting.

He was, also, currently re-evaluating that.

He had never even knew that such rage was possible.

He was holding Blitzø’s close. The imp was asleep, curled around him, his tail around Stolas’ waist, his arms like a vice, his face mushed up in Stolas’ chest feather.

Stolas breathed in and out and tried to ride his anger.

He had seen what they had done to Blitzø. He had seen the drying cum, and the way his ass and mouth were bruised and chapped. He had seen the dried blood, and washed everything away from the men he loved, and felt like crying until he was nothing but a puddle of tears.

And then it got worse.

Stolas was no specialized in healing magic, but he knew a thing or two about it. There were signs, when it had been applied to a body. Signs in the way the skin felt and looked. They disappeared in a day or so, but when fresh, they were unmistakable.

He had felt the signs when he had passed a gentle cloth between Blitzø’s cheeks. He had seen them, healed burns, on his limbs.

This was not sex, not even the kinky sex he admittedly enjoyed.

This was simple torture.

And Stolas wanted to kill. He wanted to take the people who had done this to Blitzø and tear them apart.

The motel was not particularly dingy. A middle-grade business venture: the furniture was simple and impersonal, all greys and browns, and showed some sign of wear but everything was sparkling clean. Stolas held Blitzø close, his face between the imp’s horns, and listened to Blitzø’s breath.

… He was starting to think he should really… stop asking anything to the universe. He had wanted somebody to love him with the grand gestures of his books, and now that Blitzø had, he would have done anything to undo it. He had wanted to have Blitzø naked in his arms again, and once more it happened in the worst possible way.

Stolas should really, really stop.

He couldn’t even start to think about Blitzø’s words, because it was too much, and it made him feel sensation too big for his body. He wondered if this is how a star felt at the end of their long life, when the fuel was gone and the mass imploded in a black hole or a neutron star. This sensation of being too big for yourself, feeling too much, being too much.

(He couldn’t think about how this, all this, was for Octavia neither, because what could he ever do, what could he give to this demon that would even just start repaying him? He couldn’t even give himself, Stolas had no illusion about to whom he belonged, and he already was Blitzø’s after all. He had nothing, nothing, that even approached this worth and he loved Blitzø so much, it felt like talons in his chest and throat*).

Stolas could do nothing but holding the man he loved, and breathe, and feel like a dying star.

*

Doctor: the red lizard is chewing on your heart again.

Stolas: he is hungry. I am here to be devoured.

__

Blitzø woke up feeling inexplicably… almost good.

He was surrounded by soft, sweet-smelling warmth. He sighed, rubbing his face against the soft feathers…

Wait, feathers?

Shit.

Stolas.

He had called Stolas. He had begged for him to come.

And, of course, Stolas had.

The imp breathed out, debating the pro and cons of just dying right now, thank you, when Stolas’ warm hand on the back of his skull, just under his horns, moved a little.

“Blitzø?”

Fuck.

He was so, so fucked.

Chapter Text

Blitzø knew when he was Fucked. This was due to repeat experience, and not any kind of inborn wisdom. If you are in a Fucked situation enough time in your life, you start to recognize them.

Like, right now. He was naked in Stolas’ arms, by itself a not new thought not anymore common situation. And he had just had the worst fucking sexual experience in a long, long time.

And he had called the owl.

So, now Blitzø could do several things. Old Blitzø would have tried to push Stolas away. Be aggressive, and rude, and a jerk. He was good at it. But he had had enough therapy to know that if he did, he would have to talk to Elspeth about it, and no.

Just no.

So he breathed in and out, smelling Stolas’ slightly dusty natural scent, and the oils he used for preening, and something in him unknotted without his conscious thought.

Fuuuuck he was so whipped, he could give tips to Mox.

“Hi, Stolas.”

“Hello, Blitzø. Are you feeling better?” Stolas’ voice was soft, and his hands were warm and also soft. Blitzø assessed himself. Slightly groggy still from the bloody drugs. Thirsty.

Clean.

He cringed. Fuck. Stolas cleaned him up.

Fuuuuuck.

“… Thirsty.” This was a safer topic.

“Of course. Here, let me.”

A glass of water materialized in from of them. Blitzø moved enough to allow for drinking, and stole a peep at Stolas

Stolas looked… sad.

There was a time when Stolas had been happy to look at him. When his eyes had light up with admiration. When he had… thought highly of Blitzø.

Well, he had been fucking wrong and now he was apparently realizing what sad sack of shit Blitzø was. Blitzø felt his gut sour, and his lips thinned as his spines bristled. He tried to extricate himself but he was in some sort of tight bundle, smushed against Stolas’ bare, fluffy chest.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Well, at least this was good to cure you of the last error of your way, uh?” He tried to laugh, and it came out as rusty as the sound of metal on wood. He almost winced.

 “I beg your pardon?” Trust Stols to sound like a fucking dictionary. But he knew that one, Via had explained it to him. It didn’t make sense that to say “I don’t understand” you beg people anything, but rich fucks were a weird lot.

“The whole shtick you though I had, with me being your ‘Knight in Shining Armor’?” Blitzø laughed again, his eyes closed, because it is easier not to cry when your eyes are closed. “What am I, the ‘Knight in Crusty Cum’?” He spat it out. It was a good one, though. Knight in Crusty Cum. Ah.

Ah. Ah.

“If you believe this has made me respect you any less, I can assure you it isn’t true. Quite the opposite.” Stolas’ voice was calm, if strained. Blitzø took some time to understand, then he pecked up. He could see the tension in them. He could also notice that Stolas was half-naked, and barefoot. Blitzø frowned. Had he be like, mugged or something? But no, Stols was still very powerful, it wouldn’t happen…

Stolas was looking at him, white pupils shining, his shoulders tense.

What…

“Oh come on, Stols, you had a first seat on me being fucked like a two cents whore, this is hardly –“

“You saved my daughter.”

Stolas’ voice was still quiet, but so is a blade, and both could cut a fella.

Blitzø’s tails, which had been trying to swish, not succeeding, and turning him increasingly frantic, quieted. He looked up, eyes wide.

Stolas was looking at him, calm and steady and true as the sky in the Earth’s world. The Star Prince, Blitzø’s fucking useless heart unhelpfully told him.*

Stolas’ hand caressed Blitzø’s cheek, and the prince exhaled. “You saved my daughter. That was… that was the price of it, and I cannot…” Stolas shock his head. “I-“ He grinded his beak, closing his eyes. “I have no words. None, for how much that mattered to me. For how I can never, ever-“ Stolas went silent and his arms were around Blitzø, and he was holding Blitzø close, and his tail, the second traitorous part of him after his heart, snuck and coiled around Stolas’ waist.

It felt so physically, viscerally good.

“Ah, Stols, the other times it wasn’t this bad” Blitzø’s caressed the feathers on Stolas’ back. Soft, so soft. Word hard and cold, Stolas soft and warm. It was true. Marginally. “This time the bastards brought out fire and…

“FIRE?”

Stolas’ was tense, thin strong muscles like steel under the deceptive softness of feather. Also, he was hissing like a cat, his beak chittering.

Blitzø sighed.

“It is how it is, Stols. And it isn’t as I could say no.”

The owl deflated, a puff of air leaving his beak, which started nibbling between his horns. Stolas couldn’t give kisses. He lacked the lips for it. He gave the tiniest of nibbles, instead, his beak and the tip of his tongue barely touching skin.

Blitzø loved it.

“Spit it out, Stols.”

He knew the bird. The way his body shifted, the dark eyes not looking at him. Stolas wanted to ask something.

Stolas’ chest, under Blitzø’s hands, inflated and deflated.

There was too little light to see anything but them. The bed could have been the only place in the whole universe. Well, if the universe was reduced to a dingy, brown-white motel’s room, he couldn’t think of anybody better to share it than Stolas.

“… Blitzø, did I ever… did you ever want to say no, when it was… us? The arrangement?”

Stolas’ words sounded like every one of them was painful going through his throat, like they had barbs. It took a moment for Blitzø to understand, and then looked up at the bird, shocked.

“Why the fuck are you asking that now?!” he kicked at the blankets and sheets, the cocoon giving away. It didn’t hurt. It never did, Mahor was as good as his fucking word, and Blitzø hated him even more because of that.

Stolas was looking at him, his throat swallowing up and down in his long neck, his beak pinched. “… Did you?” He whispered.

“No! What the Heaven, Stols? We never did anything I didn’t want during sex!” He burst out, and felt the bird deflate, pure relief washing over Stolas’ features. “How long have you thought… you fucking idiot! Of course not! You are nothing, nothing like them!”

Stolas was looking away. You could always tell, even without pupils. Well you could if you knew him. And Blitzø did.

“I… wondered.” Then Stolas frowned, and turned to look at him. Stolas was on his back now, Blitzø kneeling by his side. “You said, not during sex. What about, outside of it?”

Oh, shit.

Shit shit shit.

Blitzø almost lied in time, before Stolas could even doubt his words but the shadow of Elspeth was looming over him and she made him hesitate for a second too long, and he saw the light leave Stolas’ eyes.

Shiiiit.

“Stols, look, it isn’t anyt-“

“What was it?” Stolas’ voice was quiet and cold as ice, soft as snow. Blitzø’s hand was on Stolas’ cheek, and he should have lied, he should have…

“Blitzø. You aren’t in any trouble. Please, tell me, so I can know.”

“… my horn.” He whispered, looking at Stolas’ closed eyes. Stolas frowned. Blitzø took one of his hands, and put it on the horn, on the place where a cig had left a round, rough patch on the smooth surface.

Stolas frowned as his fingers caressed the slight scar, and Blitzø’s heart was pounding, and his mouth was dry, and where the fuck was that water he needed more of it…

Then a horrid light dawned on Stolas’ face, and Blitzø knew he had understood.

“Oh.” He said, softly. The corner of his beak were deep hollows, and the voice was as soundless as Via had told him the space between the star was. “Oh.”

A second of silence, stretching an eternity. Stolas’ hand on his horn, holding it gently, so gently.

“… I am so sorry, Blitzø. I… have treated you monstrously.”

“No, no look, Stols.”

“You should have let Andrealphus take care of me.”

Oh no, this fucking couldn’t stand.

“No, listen here, Stols, you did a mistake, or two, and so did I but you were just being a pompous idiot you weren’t like, actively evil.” His hands were on Stolas’ shoulders and he shook the bird but Stolas’ eyes were still closed, and Stolas didn’t believe him, and…

“Look, no, just not the same I am the one who get to decide it, right, and I am deciding it now, Stolas, love, don’t…”

Stolas’ eyes flew open, Blitzø revised what he had just said, but it was true, and if the bird didn’t like it then fuck it. He braced his shoulders and looked down at the bird, who was looking at him in shock.

“Stolas. Love. You are not like them. I could never love them.” He laid down on the owl, his naked skin on the soft feather and rough jeans, and waited.

*It actually tried to say “his Star Prince” but Blitzø curb stomped the stupid organ before it could get too many ideas.

__

Stolas.exe had stopped working.

_

Blitzø looked up at Stolas’ beak. Stolas was not throwing him out, or screaming at him, or laughing, and had stopped spiraling downward. The tip of his tail, where it wasn’t curled around Stolas’ waist, wiggled happily.*

His stomach grumbled.

“Shit, I am hungry. You coming, Stols?” He lifted himself up and smiled down at the prince. Stolas was going to let Blitzø love him. That was so fucking great. He nuzzled the owls’ head feathers, and purred, before jumping down and finding his clean clothes.

“There is a real good ramen place just out, come on, my threat.”

Blitzø turned and looked at Stolas.

Stolas sat on the bed, his eyes still wide and bewildered. He nodded, a jerking gesture*.

“Good, come on. I am fucking starving.”

*Stolas.exe rebooting.

___

Stolas assumed they had eaten. He remembered something, vaguely. Everything after Blitzø had called him, after Blitzø said, everything after that was a blur. They were back home at a certain point, and there were the girls, Loona worried, Via blissfully unaware, and he must have spoke to them and probably even to Blitzø, but he didn’t remember.

It took him until the day after to realize he hadn’t confessed his own feelings.

By then, it was too late to just… blurt them back. How did one do it? Well, one didn’t fumbled when he was confessed to, obviously, but if one did?

… Blitzø loved him.

Stolas loved him from the depth of his heart, from the space between his heart and back, and he didn’t know how to say it.

The books had not prepared him for this.

Fuck the books very much indeed.

Chapter Text

Being allowed to love the bird openly was, in Blitzø Buckzo’s opinion, the best.

Stolas knew Blitzø loved him, and nothing had imploded, nothing was on fire, nobody had died at all! And the bird was fine with it!

This was, hands down, the best possible outcome of the situation.*

It also allowed Blitzø to spoil the owl rotten. Stolas had clearly not been spoiled enough. How can a guy live in a fucking palace with actual to-Satan servants and not be spoiled it was beyond him, but Stolas was not spoiled. He was pompous on occasion, and he used to be rather blind to his own racism and shit, though he was improving, but he wasn’t spoiled.

So Blitzø went out of his way to spoil him.

He had studied the topic. He had stalked looked after M&M enough, and then observed Fizz and his Giant Cock, and he Knew What To Do.

So he made Stolas the food he preferred, and praised him lavishly when he did well (which always made him blush and it shouldn’t make him hard as it did, but here he was. Hard.) which was always shut up Mox, and cuddled him, and he brawled with some fishy bitch who wanted the last copy of Succubus In The Ship (A Captain/Captive Romance), AND had it signed by the author, because Stolas had wistfully mentioned he wanted it.

He got the book. Of course. He gave it to Stolas, proudly, grinning holding it with both hands.

Stolas had poofed up, and looked bewildered, and stammered his thanks.

Via had pretended to gag. Loona, from a book which was the book of the week of the Book Club she and Via had started, had looked up at him and said, deadpan: “if you wag some more, your tail is gonna dislocate.”

Which may be true, but still.

Best part? Stolas allowed for all of it, AND for being climbed upon when Blitzø wanted to rub their face together.

This was the best.

* Blitzø still has a lot of therapy to do. Like. A lot.

__

Stolas was utterly bewildered.

It was currently less an emotion and more a state of being. It started the day Blitzø had confessed his feeling and was ongoing.

There was no ending in sight.

Blitzø, he was starting to understand, was a… complex demon. When he had met him again as an adult, he had believed him to be a suave seductor. And that was true… but not the whole truth. Later, after Ozzie, he understood Blitzø had his own feelings on their arrangements, and that he had made a mistake in thinking his own were automatically reciprocated. Which was true… but not the whole truth.  After their last, disastrous Full Moon, he had seen a vicious side of his love, which he had not like and it was a part of Blitzø… but not the whole of him. When he had had need of help, in the worst moment of his life, Blitzø had saved him, showing a caring patience he had not thought the imp could have.

And now Stolas found himself living with the biggest marshmallow in existence.

This was not, in any way, shape or form, a complain. It was rather embarrassing how much he loved it, in fact. Blitzø would… pamper him. Oh, he was still rude and foul-mounted and occasionally crass. Blitzø still made his cloaca and the rest of his body want him to an embarrassing degree*.

But he also made sure he always had his favourite food, including the expensive one he knew meant Blitzø had to cut the coffee to get, and complimented him on his job, on his look, on everything and it was all so sincere. Blitzø hugged him on the couch, and climbed up on him to rub their face together, and the purring. It almost feel like Blitzø was purring constantly now. When Blitzø had brought him a very rare copy of a book he had thought he wouldn’t be able to read, it had just been the last of a long list of… pampering.

To which he didn’t know what to respond.

What do you do when you are pampered?!

Stolas had no idea. In the books (fuck the books) you gracefully accepted it, which had even then felt a bit unfair to Stolas, but he wasn’t even doing that. At best, he was awkwardly… standing here.

If Blitzø was behaving the opposite of Stella, Stolas’ own behaviour reminded him uncomfortably of her description of their… marital obligations. Stolas could now admit that he had been no good at sex with her and would likely be no good at sex with women in general. But… was he being bad at love, now?

With Blitzø, toward whom he felt so much that his beak felt too little to express it?

Because yes. It had been a week, and he hadn’t been able to say it back to Blitzø.

* Stolas was not going to admit he had moved the desk in the private room they had so he could see Blitzø come back from the missions, often laughing and jumping, occasionally covered in other people’s blood and the hottest thing in existence. He tried to keep a modicum of dignity in front of his daughter, who shared the room with him. When she was at her part-time job at the library, though…

Let’s just say, dignity is overrated and he was going to jump that imp one day, he just knew it.

(He wouldn’t but an owl can dream)

(And he did. Oh, he did)

__

“Grossness aside, you and my dad are rather cute.”

Via looked down at Blitzø, who was passing her the clothes to fold. She had a folding “machine” of sort, you put the garment on the slab, fold the slab and ta-da! Folded clothes.

Via loved it. It made her brain go brrrr in a good way.

Blitzø looked at her with surprise and then he blushed. Blushed, the dork! He was dressed in a simple horse T-Shirt and boxers, and you could see how scarred he was. She had wondered what had happened to him, to scar him that way. But she hadn’t asked. It wasn’t polite.

“Thanks, Via! It matters a lot. Your dad is great, to allow me to, well.” He made a gesture with his hand, blushing ever more, before passing her another set of clothes.

Via’s eyes narrowed. Hold on. “Allow?”

“Ah. Well, I am an imp, and… you know, you dad and you… you’ll go back to you life, and…” his voice went down, and sadness went on his eyes like shutters over windows. Via knew that.

She wasn’t looking forward to it as much as one may supposed. She liked it here. She loved Loona, her best friend. She liked her job at the library. Who would manage the library system and do the Stargazing Evenings without her?! They were very popular!

“Yeah, I know you are an imp, a lot of Goetias are cloacas about that too. But not dad.” She glanced at him, fishing. Blitzø nodded.

“He allows me to take care of him. That is swell of him.”  Via looked at Blitzø, and then changed the subject.

“Did you know we got a new horse movie at the library?” She said, innocently.

Blitzø’s tail shot up. “No way!”

“Yeah, a rare one, bet you haven’t watched it” She said, but she glanced at the roof. Her father was tending her plants.

And he had Questions to answer.

__

“Via, darling! Just in time to help me with repotting!”

“Why does Blitzø think you are allowing him to take care of you?”

Her father spluttered and she saw him blush. He stopped mid-bend, the plant in his hand, his eyes as round as a deer in highlight. She slit her eyes.

“Dad, you aren’t taking advantage of him are you, because that would be –“

“No! No I… I don’t think I am, I… Via, this is not…” Her father was spluttering some more. And blushing. She frowned and crossed her arms.

He groaned and sat on the bench, putting the plant carefully down. “I am your father, Octavia. I… my problems aren’t your own, darling.”

“Yeah, maybe, but I like Blitzø” it was true, she had discovered. He was a funky little dude, and crude, and an asshole sometime, but… she liked him. “Shit are you two going badly or something, maybe I should call on Loona and Moxxie and Mildred, stage an intervention or som-“

“NO!”

She had seen a look of such terror in her father’s face just once: after the fight with… well. After that.*

“No interventions needed! I just need to tell him!”

“Tell him what?”

Her father looked down at his hands in his laps, his feathers slicking down, making him appear smaller. The light of the pentagram was doing down, and it gave his slate feathers reddish tinges.

He didn’t answer. Via thought about it. She was not stupid, by any means. Young, perhaps. But not stupid.

What could her dad possibly not have told Blitzø…

Wait.

“… you did tell him you love him, right?”

Stolas groaned. “Via. You are. My. Daughter”.

“Never mind that. You did, right?”

Silence on the roof of Imp City.

“… but you do.” It wasn’t exactly a question because, come on. It was painfully obvious.

He sighed, his shoulders raising and falling. “More than anyone bar you, my Starfire.”

“And he does, and he has told you.” Again, not a question.

Her father’s blush rivaled the sky over Pride Ring on its best day. “Via, this conv-“

“Daa-aad!” Really, her father! “You must tell him!” A pause. “I could tell him for you?”

“NO! No, nonono. Please Starfire. I’ll... manage. I promise. I… I know, alright? Just…” He looked up at her, sitting on the bench as she stood by his side, and smiled, and it was rueful. “When did you become so big, uhm?”

“I grew into it.” She replied, deadpan. He hooted a laugh. He had always had the weirded sense of humor.

He stood up and sighed. “Come on, I think there is pizza for dinner. Let’s go.”

They did go.

Later, she would almost wish she had called that intervention.

Perhaps the sudden appearance of Cash Buckzo would have gone better if she had.

*In Stolas’ defense, he had just seen in vivid detail the intervention in question, with Loona, his daughter, Mildred and Moxxie. Death would actually be a preferable alternative.

Chapter Text

If Stolas had known, he would not have let the imp inside the office.

The… creature, had the biggest horns he had ever seen. They were bigger than the imp himself. He was dressed in patched but clean clothing. Stolas had frowned. Most of their business was with Sinners, not Hellborn, but still. Potential customer.

“Hello sir. Do you have an appointment?” The imp pinged something in his brain. He had seen him before, a long time ago. When…

The creature looked up and down at him, and snorted.

“I don’t think I need an appointment to see my son, now, do I.” Stolas blinked. His son… The memory jogged in his mind. “He is here, isn’t he?”

Oh.

Oh!

This was Blitzø’s father. He remembered him now, from the circus.

“Not currently, no. He is on a mission. I could tell him you came?” Strange, Blitzø never mentioned him. He had thought, vaguely, that the man must be dead.

The imp shook his head. How did he manage with those horns, it was a wonder.

“No need. I have time, can wait here” He flashed a smile. It was probably meant to be ingratiating, but Stolas felt his feathers shiver. “Thank you very kindly.”

The imp plopped himself on a chair, took a beer bottle from the backpack he was carrying, and opened it against the edge of the desk with the ease of the true alcoholic. The cap clinked where it fell on the ground.

Stolas tried not to frown. He was feeling… strange.

He went back to the second room, and saw that Via was glaring at the guy, who was dunking beer like there was no tomorrow.

“That guy Blitzø’s dad?” She whispered, glancing up at Stolas. He nodded. The imp didn’t stir. That didn’t surprise him. They were owl-demons. Their earing was many time better than imps. He probably hasn’t heard a breath.

His daughter’s beak chittered. “I don’t like him.”

Neither did he.

__

Octavia looked up from her star charts she was analyzing when the strange not-sound of the asmodean crystal pinged her ears. She looked up. The first team, composed today of Moxxie and Blitzø, was back. Millie and Loona were in a longer mission, with more stalking, and Blitzø would check with them in a couple of hours.

Or that was the plan anyway.

Blitzø turned to Moxxie, who was patting leaves away from his trousers. “Great job with that trick shot, Mox” as usual, the smaller imp beamed, grinning. “and now while we wait for our awesome ladies to finish what about a c-“

“Hello son.”

Her dad had brought her to see eclipses. They were different, he said, through demon’s eyes compared to humans’ ones. She could see not only the physical darkness that came from the absence of light as the moon obscured the sun, but the gloom that came upon creation as the dusk of the soul descended upon the world. There was a reason, her father had told her, that Solar Eclipses were an omen. A very good one.

She didn’t like them.

She watched Blitzø now and saw the eclipse in his soul as his father’s words percolate into it. She saw the way Blitzø’s muscles first tense, then relaxed, and alarm bells started ringing in her head.

Blitzø smiled, forced like a car hijacking, and turned to the enormously-horned imp who was at his third bottle of beer. Bottles and caps were strewn around him.

“Hello dad.”

Her own father was standing up, and coming closer to Blitzø who moved away, subtly. She didn’t need to look up to see the hurt in her dad’s face, because her dad was, sometimes, an idiot and didn’t understand.

Octavia understood. Or she thought she did. She stayed behind, and watched.

“My old pal told me you did go to him!” Blitzø’s muscles contracted, again. Octavia frowned. “And such a nice officer you have now. I think your old dad deserves something to have put you in contact with his friend, uhm?” Another swing from the bottle, a practice swallow, but he was still looking at Blitzø. Octavia didn’t like that. “After all, without me, you wouldn’t be able t-“

“That’s enough.” Blitzø’s voice was flat, and the feathers on her back lifted. She didn’t glance at him, because she didn’t want to see his expression. “How much do you want.”

“Oh, Blitzo!” Her father’s beak chittered. “We are family! You are getting so cozy with the prince… Oh, Your Highness!” He made a show to turn toward her dad and bowed. The bow was, technically, perfect. Via had to physically restrain herself from hissing.

She met Mox’s eyes above the imp’s back, and her eyes twitched toward the weapon’s cabinet. Mox’s face, who had been frowning, nodded and he slipped away. Good.

“I don’t believe we have been introduced.” Her dad was talking, and Via wanted to facepalm. Her father had many, many good qualities. He was loving, and gentle, and kind, and bubbling and hilarious. He also had the ability to read the room of a rock, and took refuges in the platitudes they had been taught.

Right now, that was the worst possible thing to say.

Blitzø cleared his throat. “Stolas, this is, ah, my father, Cash Buckzo.”

Her father, curse* the occasional idiot, extended his hand. Because he had been trying to be better with imps, and this was an imp, only he shouldn’t have been doing it with this particular imp.

Via wanted to facepalm.

She looked at Blitzø instead, as that Cash creature kept talking. “I remember you when you came to our Circus! You were so much smaller then, and your esteemed father of course, and we had a Circus, before that… terrible… fire.”  Blitzø’s face didn’t change, but it was like a mask of ice had lowered itself all over his body. She could see the sweat on him. He was… was he trembling? “Such a horrid happening, you wouldn’t want to know. So many deaths.” Blitzø was panting, shivering, so much that even her father’s eyes, white pupils shining, were looking between him and the other imp. “My livelihood, lost.” A heavy sigh. “My children, now, are all I have l-“

Octavia slid her boots on the floor.

The twin sounds of the blades getting out of the soles was so very, very welcome.

And then she pounced.

Via had a secret, that she sometimes felt rather guilty about.

She wasn’t only her father’s daughter.

She was her mother’s too.

She lifted the imp by the neck. He squealed like the hellpigs of the Harvest Moon Festival, and then she kicked him with heavenly steel blades, her right boot opening the side of his thigh from knee to hip.

His scream took an even more pleasing quality as his blood splattered on the floor. She looked down.

Damn, she would offer to clean it up later.

“Via!”

“Octavia!”

She threw the imp against the door just as Mox came back in, guns ready in hands, her eldritch form dripping darkness on the floor, mixing with the blood. “Let me be clear, you disgusting fucking creature. If you try to come back here and blackmail him, I, Princess Octavia of the Ars Goetia, will end you.” She hissed.

“Blackmail?” That was her dad. Squealing. Curse* his soft soul.

“Via, th-…that’s…” That was Blitzø.

“What is happening?” Mox.

The creature had crawled to the door and was frantically pawing at the doorknob. The door fell open, and he fell on the corridor outside the office. When he turned to look at Blitzø, surrounded by her, and her dad, and Mox with his guns, the expression on his face was pure hatred. Gone all the fake pleasantry and obsequiousness. Via hissed once more, but the creature had eyes only for Blitzø.

“I bless you, stupid fucking cunt. You killed your mother and didn’t even have the decency to die as well.” He screamed.

Blitzø recoiled as if struck, his eyes, when Via turned to look at him in worry, huge and terrified, and then her dad closed the door on the creature’s face with a gesture of his hand.

Then, everything was quiet. Too quiet, for a second.

Via turned to Mox.

“Could you show me where the extra-big bottles of hydrogen peroxide are kept?”

*in the demonic’s sense of “bless”

__

Stolas was utterly bewildered.

His daughter had attacked Blitzø’s father because, apparently, he had been trying to blackmail Blitzø? So Via had said, and he believed her but how had she gotten that impression? And then Mox had somehow taken the Asmodean Crystal from Blitzø, who was irresponsive (bad) and in his arms (good) and then both had told him to bring Blitzø home.

Also, the imp creature that had fathered his beloved had said something about Blitzø killing his mother.

So now they were home, in the nest, where Stolas had portaled them, and he was still trying to understand how the day had gone from normal to… this.

Blitzø was a chunk of wood in his arms. He had, actually, held wood with more give than his beloved’s muscles right now. He was hyperventilating.

Stolas did not know what to do.

They were on the bed. Should he take off his boots, or Blitzø’s? Or weren’t they important? Maybe Blitzø was uncomfortable with them on? But then he would have had to stop hugging Blitzø and he was disinclined to do so. He could use magic, but maybe it would startle him…

When in doubt, communicate.

“Blitzø, do you want your boots off?”

Blitzø stopped hyperventilating and his eyes, previously blown wide, focused on him. “… what?”

“Maybe you are uncomfortable with your boots on while we are on the bed. But maybe you don’t care. Do you prefer me to take them off? I could use magic if you prefer.”

Blitzø was looking at him, expression blank which was still a step up from the utter, horrorific terror of before.

Then, he started to laugh. Little puffs, and then more, and his arms were actually around Stolas, which was better, but still, Stolas frowned. He had been serious!

“Only you… Christ on a stick, leave them on…” A pause. “No, it’ll dirty the sheet, take them off with magic, will you?”

Blitzø was undoing his coat’s buttons as well. Soon, they were bootless and, in Blitzø’s case, coatless. Stolas held Blitzø back to himself, caressing the space between his spines in the way he knew comforted him, and felt the imp in his arms shudder. But instead of relaxing, Blitzø was becoming increasingly tense.

Stolas frowned.

“Blitzø, dearest, what is it?”

“… fuck it… no… fuck. No questions, Stols?” There was something harsh in Blitzø’s voice that reminded him of their screaming matches after their break up at the last Full Moon. “No questions about how I killed my mom, about, about any of that? Did you hear what kind of fucking, fucking disgusting…” He felt it before he heard it, the spasm in Blitzø’s middle.

He hastily portaled a bucket.

It was a good idea. Blitzø scrambled to kneel, and vomited, holding the floating bucket and making soft, panting, hitching breaths. His shoulders trembled. Stolas put his hand on the back of his beloved’s head, just behind his horns. It was cold, and clammy. Blitzø tended to run hot.

“Your father is an arsehole.”  He replied, simply. “I am inclined to think whatever he said was, at best, a very edited version of the truth.”

Blitzø laughed, harsh and horrid and his tail was tight around his own waist. Not good. Not good at all. “Nnnnooo. Not this time. I did, I fucking did, and I didn’t have the dec- the decency to die, to just fucking…” more spasm, more bile in the bucket.

When Stolas had believed that Octavia had abandoned him, and everything had been lost from his title to his money to his daughter and he had been left kneeling in the icy waste of what had once been his beloved garden, Blitzø had put his own cloak on his shoulders and his forehead on his back, and that spot of warmth had been everything that had stopped him imploding into despair.

Now, Stolas curled behind the imp he loved, and put his forehead between his shoulders blade, and pressed gently, as Blitzø had done to him.

“I am glad you are here.” He said, because there weren’t many Truths in his life, but that was one of them. “And if you want to tell me, I’ll listen, and if you don’t, I am here for you, darling.” He promised softly.

He felt the beloved body contracting, and more was spat in the bucket. Stolas wondered if Blitzø had anything left to puke.

And then he realized Blitzø was crying.

He snuck his arms around the imp’s middle, without squeezing, without holding. Gently. Just being here. He wished he could have Blitzø inside his chest in truth, hold him around his heart and have him save and happy always. He ached for it.

He wondered if Blitzø felt the same, sometimes.

“Ther-… It was Fizz’s birthday.” Blitzø was speaking into the basket, still held aloft by his magic. Stolas listened. “I… Fuck, I lo… I loved him b-back then, and I had… I had written like, a letter to hi-him.” A laugh. Harsh. Ugly. Stolas rubbed his forehead in the space between Blitzø’s wing bones. “B… But everyone was there, adoring him. And… my dad, he gave Fizz a, a card. ‘Wish you were my son’” Another laugh. “And who fucking wouldn’t? Fizz is… better. Just… better.” Stolas disagreed but didn’t say anything. He listened. “I k- knew. Then. And Luke, an-another performer, he was coming with, with the cake with the lit candles and I pushed him and… and the cake fell on the ground and… the tent caught fire and shit, there were… fucking fireworks, and they went off, and Fizz was fucking melting and my mom’s tent…” Blitzø was crying, crying, crying. Stolas did hold him now, against himself, and let him cry. “And she died. And Fizz lost… fuck, he lost his arms, and his legs, and his horns, and three other dies and… and I just got some fucking scars…”

Stolas didn’t say anything. He listened, and rocked Blitzø slightly, and Blitzø allowed it, and Blitzø cried in the basket half filled with puke until his throat was raw, and then some more, and then Stolas pried it from his hands, and put it on the ground.

Blitzø was still hiccupping.

Stolas put a hand on the back of his still cold and clammy head, and held Blitzø against his heart. And Blitzø cried again, and this time the tears fell on his feathers, and some fell down the feathers on his very skin, and Stolas thought he could fell them like acid almost, branding him even more. He nibble-kissed Blitzø’s forehead and around his horns, and everywhere he could reach until Blitzø was done crying, and then floated a glass of water to him, and his imp drank it all down in three gulps.

Stolas lifted the blanket over both of them. Blitzø still felt cold.

“So you see I don’t… fuck. I don’t deserve anything Stols, not I.M.P. or Loony or, or you or…”

“I think it is our choice.” This needed to be stopped. Blitzø looked up at him, and he saw how little his beloved believed him. “I also think it was a… terrible incident, and I am sorry it happened.” Blitzø’s lips thinned and his eyes misted once more. He took the tears away with one talon, gently. “But, darling, none of the people who really know and care about you are going to think you are a monster because of it. You are not a monster, or a villain, or unlovable.”

Blitzø snorted.

“How do you know?”

“Because I love you.” And in the end, they were the simplest words in the world. In all the worlds, maybe. He watched Blitzø’s pupils dilate as he took the words in, and felt his heart expand* three sizes in his chest, until it felt too big for his, admittedly scrawny, frame.

“I love you” He repeated, relishing it, relishing the look of bewildered joy in his beloved face. “and Loona loves you, and Via also love you, and Moxxie and Mildred love you, and we aren’t going to leave your side, ever.”

Blitzø frowned. “Fizz, too.” He added, and smiled, the smallest, shyest, truest smile and it was the first light in creation: tentative and good and purer than anything that would come or had come before. Stolas smiled back.

“Fizz too.” He agreed. Blitzø was on his lap, and he was holding him against his chest. This felt very, very good. He nibbled around his face, wishing wistfully, not for the first time, that Blitzø had some feathers for him to preen**.

“We love you. I love you.” He repeated, and held him even closer, and then cleared his throat, and started to sing.

He sang the song Blitzø had sung to him so many times, when he had been crying in the night those first few weeks, the song that, with Blitzø’s strong arms around him, had kept him upright when everything had laid in ruins around his feet***.

You are ok

You are alright

I am never going to leave your side.

_

Blitzø let himself be held, and listened to Stolas’ beautiful voice, and for the first time in his life, he let himself believe.

*Doctor: it looks like the red lizard had completely incorporated with your heart

Stolas: What a felicitous resolution.

** That was, probably, the only complain about his beloved body Stolas had. He wanted to preen him, but Blitzø was not preen-able. It was a disgrace, that is what it was.

*** Stolas had learnt where the song came from, because he had by now an encyclopedic knowledge of what he personally referred to as “Horse Media”. Blitzø himself had proudly showed him the cartoon which, to be honest, was a very good one though the Suicide Whale had creeped him out not a little. The songs were catchy though.

Chapter Text

Blitzø fidgeted, looking at the phone.

He was in the office, alone. It was late Thursday. Stolas was again to his lawyers. M&M had gone. Loona was… somewhere, and Via had one with Stolas.

He should go home, and make food, and prepare for when the others would be back, but he fucking couldn’t.

He could barely breath.

He had no reason to. Stolas… Stolas fucking loved him. Despite everything. Via was a fucking badass and had literally kicked his POS father out of the office like a pro, for which his wonderful daughter had put her in a loving headlock and then kidnapped her for an ice cream.

And… it was good. Stolas still allowed himself to be pampered. And the bird kept telling him he loved Blitzø. He had gifted him a fantastic horse hoodie. He loved it!

Then why was he breathless with terror? He wanted to throw himself down the fucking window, under a train, he wanted to put the gun to his head and…

He took the phone and called Elspeth.

“Yes, Blitzø?”

“Elspeth I… fuck it, I am not…” He chocked, and then.

“I’ll be there in ten, dear, stay put.”

__

“So everything is very good with Stolas?”

The crumpled, miserable, vaguely imp-like form on the couch nodded. “He… fuck. Fuck. He says he… he says he loves me.” Blitzø opened one yellow and red eye and looked at his therapist, miserable. “and he does. Look at this kick-ass horse hoodie he gave me” He unfurled a little, to show the yellow piece of clothing.

“Very nice, dear.”

“So why am I so fucking… I just… I can’t, I just want to…” He balled his fingers into fists and curled into a miserable little ball.

“You told me before you were afraid to, I am quoting, ‘fuck it up’, are you still afraid of that, maybe?”

Again, the imp-ball nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, fuck. I always fuck up, Elspeth. Always. I am like, the king of fucks ups. And he is a bloody prince. And he is beautiful and kind and smart and…” his tail was swishing. “and I hurt him, and I know, I know I’ll hurt him again.”

He was panting, his lips set into his face. He held himself closer, his tail curled around himself.

“I would strongly suggest a two-sides approach: first of all, some medication for your current anxiety if you are fine with the possibility.”

 Blitzø shrugged. “Yeah. Meds are whatever.”

“You can’t mix them with other meds, or alcohol.”

“Well shit. Alright.”

“And then, an urgent session with him”

Blitzø’s tail shot up, and he turned to look at Elspet, who was cannibal-smiling at him.

Sometimes, he wondered if she saw him on a plate, with an apple on each extremity. He never asked, because not knowing is sometimes smarter.

“… when?”

“Even now, if we can wait for him.”

Blitzø groaned and curled around himself. “… why would we threeway it, Elsp?”

“Because you need to communicate clearly to him, and I can help.” A pause. “Unless you think he would prefer to find you with your brain painted all over the office?”

“… I don’t think he would prefer that” He could admit that much. Stolas, with his shining ruby eyes when he looked at him. Stolas, singing some ballad, swaying his hips as he cooked on the stove. Stolas, warm and soft when he fell asleep, his fingers moving around the spines on his back until he could only melt in a puddle of purr*. Stolas sheepishly picking feathers from the drain…

No. Stolas would not have preferred that.

So they waited.

Blitzø watched the darkness drench the office, the heavy, oily darkness of Pride, and felt the cold seep into his bones. He curled into himself, spikes down, and waited.

*Save for Little Red Riding Hard, which was not melting. In fact, the opposite.

__

Stolas smiled as Via went to the Nest, as their home had been unofficially named. She mentioned cooking something if there was nothing ready, and then he portaled to the office. Blitzø had said he would stay to sign some documents. They could portal home together and…

Somebody was in the office.

The cannibal woman turned toward him. She was dressed in the pleasant fashion of her ilk, with their black eyes, and black hair fashionably lifted up on her neck in a very proper bun. She was al sitting on the chair.

Blitzø was…

Blitzø was curled up on himself, on the sofa.

The woman had a notebook and a fountain pen. She stood up and extended a hand toward him with the cannibal fixed smile on her face. Blitzø looked at him with pure misery on his expression. He could feel his pupils flare up. He didn’t portal to his side, but was there so fast, he could as well. His darling was tense, his body as rigid as stone.

What was happening?

“Hello, Your Highness. I am Elspeth DeBleda, Mr Blitzø Buckzo’s therapist.” She had lowered her hand. Stolas realized, belatedly, that he hadn’t reacted to her. Unpolite of him. He didn’t care. “Blitzø called me for a…sudden necessity.” She paused.

“I am sorry Stolas.” Blitzø’s voice was dripping with misery. He wasn’t looking at Stolas.

“No, not at all darling. Tell me, is there a… reason? Do I need to, to leave, to leave you with Ms DeBlada?”

“You are very kind, but no. It would be best if you stayed, if you are available. Blitzø agreed that a… joint session would be beneficial.”

“Of course. Whatever Blitzø needed.” Blitzø shook in his arms. Was he crying? Why? Stolas looked with terror at his beloved, then at the therapist. What was happening? Stolas was confused. Everything had been going so well!

“So, from what Blitzø told me, he is… afraid, of losing you, or hurting you. Is this correct, Blitzø?”

Blitzø, in his arms, nodded minutely. “It is all too good. Too good to be true.” The words were a whisper, and perhaps a demon with less good hearing wouldn’t have caught them.

Stolas did.

His arms contracted around his beloved.

“I… understand. Can I do something for you, Blitzø?”

Blitzø looked up at him, his yellow and red eyes huge. “… I’ll fuck this up, Stols. I’ll, I’ll hurt you, I’ll hurt Loony or, or Via, and and you’ll hate me.” The body in his arms seemed to convulse. “… I can’t lose you too. Fuck. I am a failure, I, I fail at everything and, and I have hurt you and…”

“Well, I have hurt you too, haven’t I?”

Blitzø’s eyes blinked, out of sinc, but he had stopped his tirade. Stolas took a deep breath and went on. “I have hurt you. You have, yes, hurt me in the past. We can… make mistakes. It could happen. If it does… if you hurt me, I’ll believe it wasn’t intentional, because it wouldn’t be, right?”

Blitzø nodded furiously, then paused, then shook his head just as furious. “No, shit, never on purpose, Stols.”

“And we’ll… talk about it, maybe with Ms DaBleda help if she is available. And work through it. And go on. And… I hope if I hurt you, you’ll do the same. I would never hurt you on purpose, darling, but I know I could… do it without meaning to.” He closed his own eyes, then looked down again at Blitzø.

Blitzø was smiling and the tail painfully tight around his middle* relaxed a fraction. “Eh you are getting better! You haven’t called any imp ‘little’ or ‘itty-bitty’ in what, two weeks now?”

Stolas flushed. “Exactly. People… makes mistake. Even with people who are… important. But I believe if we work together, we can… go through it.”

Blitzø was looking at Stolas.

Stolas had seen the same gaze in his beloved’s eyes when looking at a particularly fine example of horse’s flesh.

His own eyes fell on Blitzø’s lips. Fuck. He wanted to kiss the imp so bad. It was like he was physically thirsty for it, his tongue parched for the feel of Blitzø’s own moving against it. His darling’s gaze moved from his primary eyes to his beak, and his lips opened slightly…

Ms DeBleda cleared her throat, and Stolas jerked away.

“Way to cockblock a guy, Els” The part of Blitzø’s tail that was not around his waist swished.

The therapist chuckled and closed her notebook. “I think this is time for the question we practiced, Blitzø.”

“What quest-… oh shit. The Question.” There were capitals. Stolas looked between the therapist and the imp whose tail was swishing madly, and who was looking between the two of them, his eyes wide.

Stolas frowned.

“Question?”

“You can do it, Blitzø.”

“Shut the fuck up, Els… ok. Ok. Here I go. Fuuuck. Here I go. So.” Blitzø turned toward Stolas, his knees on either side of Stolas’ hips.** Blitzø took a deep breath and put his hands on Stolas’ shoulders.

Stolas tilted his head on his shoulders, looking at him with confusion.

“Stols… Stolas would you… That is, you can totally say no you probably fucking should, and it won’t change anything if you do…” Blitzø’s expression was serious, and he was sweating. He had seen Blitzø in life-and-death situation, and he had been far, far less nervous. Confusion levels increased inside the owl’s mind. “Absolutely nothing! We can like, continue as we did! But if you would like, that is…” He took a deep breath, and then, his cheeks aflame, went on. “Wouldyouliketobemyboyfriend”

Stolas stared.

His brain parsed the single words into its component. A second ticked by. Then two.

He saw Blitzø’s shoulders drop, and so his eyes, and then he sprung up, holding the imp to his chest and shouting. “YES! YESOFCOURSE!”

Blitzø looked at him, round eyes and sweating and the most beautiful thing in the Seven Rings bar his Via, and then he laughed and fist pumped the air.

“Yes! Fuck yeah, I am the luckiest motherfucker alive! Whooopeee!”

Neither of them noticed Elspeth DeBleda leaving the room, quietly.

*Stolas was not complaining. The opposite of it in fact.

** Incidentally, Stolas liked this. A lot, in fact. Cursed are cloacas, and their ability to hide any… interest.

__

They, of course, had to talk about it. Blitzø hated talking, but he was getting that the only way to avoid complicated what going through it and so he was doing it, impfully*.

The most difficult part had been the one about monogamy.

Because he, Blitzø Buckzo, stallion extraordinarie (sic), fucker of more people that could be counted in all the way that counted, who had teased M&M mercilessly about their boring-as-fuck monogamy and wholesomeness…

…

Wanted the owl exclusively.

Also wanted to be exclusively of the owl.

Now, no shade against people who wanted more than one guy/gal/whateves in their life, but this shit was exhausting, and the idea of doing al this talk more than once was like.

A big fat no.**

So they went back to the couch, and Blitzø remembered the List Elspeth had browbeaten him into compiling.

“So I would… like… you and me and… fuck… nobody else?” His tail was swishing. Stolas had lit a light, with magic. “Though if you want to have other people, I can totally understand, ahah, of course you w-“He lied, lying, and mercilessly squeezing the part of him whimpering that it was not ok, that he didn’t understand at all…

But Stolas, the perfect fucking creature, just smiled. “I would vastly prefer to be… exclusive, if that would please you.”

Blitzø wagged.

“I… yeah.” He pretended like his heart was not hammering in his chest. “That would be good” Lame, Blitzø. “… just… you know… I, s-sometimes…” he looked down. He was worrying his coat. He imped* on. “it is the job you see. So-sometimes, fucking is the way to… get info, and, and avoid getting hurt, or shot, or…” Lame lame lame. He thought about that weird shark. Chad. Chaf. Whatever. He looked up at Stolas who was, curse him, still smiling.

“I wouldn’t count against you what you need to do to stay safe, dearest. Just… maybe tell me, after?” Tentative, his arms, so strong in spite of how twiggy they looked, held Blitzø tight. “I would prefer… anything over you getting hurt, or worse.”

Blitzø stared at Stolas.

How the fuck was the bird this bloody perfect?!

Stolas, of course, was still talking. “And, and I would never cheat on you, of course! I know I did with Stella but the situation was entirely-“

“Chill, Stols. I know you wouldn’t.” He took a deep breath. The office smelled like, well, any office. Vaguely of stationery and carpet. And of Stolas, now. Dusty and softly floral from his preening oil. He loved the scent. He put his nose in the owl’s neck, smelling him.

His boyfriend.

… fuck he was down so bad.

Save his cock, which was very up.

He licked his lips, and look, the bird’s neck was right there, and so his tongue caressed Stolas’ feathers and Stolas…

Shivered.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

Literally.

… To Heaven with it.

“Stols I don’t want you to… to feel like, like you are forced or, or you c-“

“If I wanted, I could probably find another job as an accountant, or a secretary.”

A bucket of icy water fell on Blitzø’s head, and his spines rattled. He looked up, trying not to puke, at Stolas. His lips were parched, and his stomach had fallen somewhere in the vicinity of his guts.

Did Stolas…

But the bird was smiling, gently, his red eyes shining like rubies. “I am here, darling, because I want to be.”  Stolas’ thumbs caressed his hips.

With intent.

Blitzø shivered, and not for the cold. “There is nowhere else I want to be.” Stolas repeated, looking into Blitzø’s eyes, and Stolas’ eyes were closer and closer, and then his own eyes were close, and his lips met a hard, hot beak, and they were kissing, and fuck.

It was so good his hooves curled and he made embarrassing sounds in his throat and well.

When their tongue met, Blitzø Buckzo understood why people mentioned “fireworks”.

He curled his fingers in the owl’s head feathers and pressed himself more against Stolas.

You know. Just to be sure.

*like manfully, but without the misogyny.

** Author is happily poly (hi my love! They read this fic :* ) but Blitzø and Stolas are monogamous little critters, and that is that.

__

Via looked at the clock on her phone, and frowned. “They are never this late, should we be worried?”

Loona looked up from her own phone and snorted. “The only ones who need to be worried are you, Millie and Moxx, who all owe me five bucks.”

Via blinked then looked at the calendar app.

“Oh fuck. They couldn’t wait like, a week?” She complained, while Loona grinned up at her exactly like a wolf.

“Pay up, sis.”

Via stuck her tongue at her, and went to get the money she owed her sister. But really. Her father couldn’t wait one week, one, to make sure his own daughter would win THAT bet?!

Chapter Text

Thus began one of the best times of Stolas’ life.

He sometimes wondered if he was in a dream. He had everything he could think about. In no particular order: the stars, his plants, his beloved daughter, Blitzø, very good and frequent sex, love, a challenging but interesting job and even some tentative friendships.

He had even started a little vegetable garden. He couldn’t wait until he could feed his family what he had grown himself.

And he was loved.

He knew it in the way Blitzø held him in the night, in the soft preening and laughter and gentle touches as well as the rough ones*. Granted, the more complicated scenes were reserved for the week end, when they had more time, but Stolas discovered, to his astonishment, that daily sex was very much a possibility.

He had to etch a permanent silence spell in their room.

Yes, Stolas was happy. Blitzø too, he thought, was happy. And Octavia as well. He asked, often. He knew he wasn’t good at gauging how other people felt sometimes, so he went to them.

“Uh, yes dad. I am happy.” A roll of her eyes, and a little smile. “Now shut up, I am going to a concert of The Carmeline Web with Loona and Yue.”

“Uh?” Blitzø stretched in the bed and curled around him. “Yeah no shit, bird. I… fuck. I didn’t even know it was possible. To be this happy.” Blitzø’s eyes were wide and soft, and Stolas chittered happily, his body heavy and satisfied (and a little sticky), nibbling at the base of his beloved’s horn.

Yes. Stolas had been happy for the last month.

Which is when, of course, when his own father had to come bother him.

*Because he liked the rough ones a lot. Like, a lot lot.

__

It started with a convocation.

Stolas stared at the letter and squinted.

His father wanted to see him in what had been, up until some months ago, his own palace.

The owl opened the bottle of water, a gift from Blitzø* and drank a little, waiting to feel… something.

He did not.

His father had always brought up… feelings. Emotions. Hope and excitement as a nestling, and then disappointment. An increasing sourness as he grew up, a sense of heavy, rotten hopelessness that left his beak filled with a bad taste like a spoiled mouse, the kind that seems good outside but whose guts were gone putrid. Then, as an adult, a dull nervousness has spread, the awareness that whatever he did and didn’t it wouldn’t matter for anything but maybe passing, cheerful contempt.

Stolas sat, drank from his beloved bottle, and waited for any feeling to emerge.

He felt nothing.

Well, that was new.

He glanced at the amount of work left to do for the day at I.M.P.. He had time to think about this, and still finish with time to spare. He closed his eyes and thought.

Stolas had not, unlike his darling, started therapy, but he HAD started reading good books, suggested by Ms DeBleda, about relationship and mindfulness and how to asses situations from several points of views. Ms DeBleda said it wouldn’t be ethic for her to be his therapist as well, but she could tell those were a bit his weaknesses, and the books would help.

They had. Tremendously.

So, like the books said, he divided the page in two, and in one half he put “What They Could Do” and in the other half “What To Do About It”.

By Vassago’s words, they couldn’t do him anything worse than what they had. Strip him of his title, of some of his magic, and his riches. To paraphrase his beloved: been there, done that, was the happiest he had ever been.

So, first line.

What they could do: “Do not give me back my title, my grimoire, and money”

What to do: “Laugh, preferably in their face. (Fuck darling Blitzø later).”**

Second line: “Take Octavia?”

He frowned at that, grinding his beak, but shook his head. They couldn’t take Octavia from him, not with Lucifer himself having decided the custody. He crossed the second line with a sigh of satisfaction.

Third line: “They could try something… untoward.” Stolas sighed. He doubted this one, but as the Striker’s business had taught him, better be… through.

What to do: “Tell everyone where he was going and drop hints during the meal people like Beelzebub and Asmodeus know my whereabouts.  Make sure my new boots work well.”

He doubted his father would try it. King Paimon wasn’t subtle. He never had need to be. He was a King of the Ars Goetia, With only eight creatures in all of Hell above him. Stella, who was not one of the seventy two, had tried to kiKing Paimon would threaten him not with murder, but with what for him was worse: the loss of his title and privilege.  

Well, he would also try to scare Stolas, maybe.

But King Paimon didn’t care. This was one of his distinguishing features. As long as the star charts and prophecies were done well and on time, he wouldn’t care whatever it was Stolas or Octavia doing them.

He looked up at the page, stretched, nodded, and went into the other room.

“Blitzø” He didn’t add anything like ‘darling’ or ‘dear’ because this was an office and he strived to be professional***. “I have had a communication from my father.”

* It was metal and Blitzø had decorated it himself, with stars and plants and, of course, horses in his inimitable style, and the words “Hy-drate or Die-drate, bitch!” written on it. Stolas loved it unconditionally.

** This was, to be clear, a “To Do List”.

*** Whatever he succeeded depended largely to whom did you ask (Octavia and Loona? No. Blitzø? Far too much why weren’t they fucking right now)

__

In the end, Blitzø had wanted to make a whole production of the meeting. Stolas knew his darling was very good at what he did, so he acquiesced.

Who knew. Blitzø may even be right.

Like with Vassago, he went with his jeans and button down and a corset. He felt no desire to dress up for his father. When he portaled in front of the palace where he had lived since he was a nestling until months ago, he lifted his eyebrows in surprise.

It wasn’t iced.

There was, in fact, no ice at all.

He looked at the wall, as the gate opened. No icicles, or snow.

No sign of Andrealphus at all.

Uhm.

He took a deep breath, and walked in.

There was only one thing he dreaded today, and it was seeing the gardens.

Oh, he was endlessly grateful to Blitzø for what he could save, and he loved his dear survivors so much. But most of his beloved had died. He knew that. Plants he had cared for since they were tiny seedlings or precious bulbs. Loving grafts and long-planned hybrids. Beautiful creatures, all of them. And all of them dead, in a second of petty revenge.

He looked around. He owed his plants this much at least.

Gardeners were at work, restoring the grounds. He recognized Alistair, one of Dominic’s sons, and others. But for his practice eye, it was glaring what they were doing: simply putting in pretty plants, in a pretty pattern. Nothing more, and nothing less. King Paimon had probably waved his hand and give the gardener order to make it look decent as soon as possible.

The gardens were pretty, but not important. That was why he had been allowed such a free reign on them.

Anger bubbled inside his chest like a potion on a cauldron.

He didn’t use to be angry. What use was there for anger, in a life pre-built? An owl in a cage would only hurt its wings.

Blitzø had taught him anger. Anger at Stella. Anger at his life. Yes, even anger against Blitzø himself, when he deserved it. Imps were angry creatures, and they were fucking right.

Stolas steeled himself and followed Pringles inside the palace.

__

The palace was huge, cold, and everything was too big.

Stolas looked around. He had been living in the Nest for months now, and in the office, and both were made with the sort of “one-size-doesn’t-quite-fit-all” architecture which was meant to work for most but the biggest and smallest denizens of Hell… more or less.

Which is to say, it was a bit too small for him, and a bit too big for Blitzø, but they made do. Blitzø used ladders and steps, and he stooped on occasions.

Stolas frowned as he walked toward the dining room. How had it been, for Blitzø? Everything here was ginormous for him!

… If he got the palace back, he would have to make a lot of changes.

There wasn’t even one horse statue!*

Then Pringles reached the, ginormous, doors of the dining room and cleared his throat.

“King Paimon of the Ars Goetia, Prince Stolas of the Ars Goetia!”

Stolas squared his shoulders, and walked in.

Stolas had, once, asked Moxxie how he had met Blitzø.

And then Moxxie had smiled, and told him about a prison meeting, and being abandoned at his lowest, and the bombastic, larger-than-life imp who had gotten him out of it all, and of his father, who had tried to get him back with a marriage he didn’t want.

Stolas had wondered what was within Blitzø, that gave people the strength to fight.

Stolas stared at the amount of food on the table.

Yes, his father was there, yadda yadda. But that was less important than how much fucking food was also there.

Everything looked, and he knew it would be, delicious. But it was too much for two people. For a wild moment, he wondered if he could bring leftover home. Then he lifted his head, and looked at his father.

King Paimon had, of course, not change a bit since he was an owlet. Stolas looked at his father who was clapping and saying “My boy! My… Stolas!”** and waited for any feeling to appear.

They did not.

“Father.” He said, politely, sitting at the too tall table. “At what do I owe the honor?”

“Can’t a father want to eat a meal with his son?”

Historically speaking, if that father is Paimon, no.

Stolas looked at the food, decided to enjoy himself, and started eating.

Now, Stolas was, always historically speaking, bad at reading a room. Somebody else, somebody like, say, Andrealphus, would have been sweating buckets. Stolas answered his father’s questions, and made some small questions himself, and enjoyed the food.

And didn’t realize the way his father’s eyes racked on the “strange” clothes, or how Paimon himself grew tenser and tenser.

It was during the dessert, when Stolas though they could have served Stuffed Owl next, that his father came to talk about what really interested him.

“So, son, I think it is time we resolve this little misunderstanding.”

Stolas looked at his father over the parfait and blinked. “Beg your pardon, Father?”

Paimon nodded emphatically. “Stella had been a little, ah… harsh, in her behavior toward your little peccadillos. As your lawyers have rightfully pointed out, it isn’t like she doesn’t have any herself!” He chuckled. “And who doesn’t, after all? We are in Hell. What is some lust with the lower classes?”

Stolas could feel himself start to bristle. Ah. Here it was.

At least he got a full meal out of this. He tilted his head on the side, and waited.

Paimon, who was the reason his son was not good at reading a room, waggled his finger at Stolas playfully.

“Now, you could have chosen a better affair partner, Stolas. That imp really! Stealing your grimoire every month! Without your realization!”

Stolas stared.

Ah. So that is where they wanted to go.

Stolas was not good at reading a room, or at, at people. But he was not stupid.

His mind flashed to Blitzø. Beloved Blitzø. Blitzø purring in his arms after a Hell-a-novela episodes, rambling about the dire lack of horses. Blitzø, gun blazing, coming back after a fight. Blitzø, climbing him to rub their face together. Blitzø training with Mildred, his lithe body fluid, his grin feral.

Blitzø who had saved his plants, and his daughter, and himself.

Blitzø who loved him.

Blitzø whom he loved.

His Father, bless him was still talking. “Here, it is all in writing. Just sign it, and you’ll can have everything back.”

A piece of paper was in front of him.

Stolas loved words. He always read whatever was in front of him.

He put his hand on the paper and set it on fire, and didn’t see a single word written.

“STOLAS!”

He looked up at his father, calm and collected as Paimon wasn’t. “I’ll see you at the trial, Father. Thank you for the meal.” He said, standing up.

“You will lose everything, you wretched idiot! Everything!” Paimon’s form was twisting as he screeched, but Stolas had turned his back to his father and didn’t see it, and wouldn’t have cared if he had.

He shrugged, looking around as his father’s scream vaguely registered in a crescendo of “where do you think you are going?!” and “Stop this instant!”

Stolas walked out of the door of the dining room, and looked around at the place, and in his heart gave it his goodbye. It had seen Stolas himself grow up, and his dearest daughter’s childhood, and he would always in some way be fond of it.

Pringles appeared, looking for only a second at the door, before Stolas smiled at him.

“Could I see the study, Pringles?”

They went, and Stolas opened the door, and looked at the magnificent (horseless, really he should have added more horse when he could***) place, with a heavy heart, his hand passing over the heavy wood library.

He would miss this. Perhaps always.

It was alright. It was worth missing things, sometimes.

He turned toward Pringles, and smiled. “Could I have a doggie bag?”

Pringles blinked. “A… what?”

*After a while living around Blitzø, horse décor becomes sort of a natural state of being.

** It was clearly written on the back of his hand.

*** It is contagious

__

Stolas had come out of the palace all in one piece, which had made Blitzø relax a lot, but in a strange mod. He wasn’t sad, not exactly. Like, sad and thinking.

“Melancholy.” Octavia, who was his dictionary, had said. “Yeah, a bit. Grandfather is a dick.”

But he had also bought a shit ton of good grub. They feasted that evening, and he saw Stolas sadness evaporated the more they ate and laughed and bitched at each other, and at the end, while Blitzø was sucking the fancy chicken (pheasant, dear) bone, he had put an arm around his shoulder and nuzzled the side of his face.

Blitzø had stopped eating to smile at him.

And then, that night, after they had been frisky, Stolas had hold him and sighed in such a deep, bone-full satisfaction that Blitzø had felt really good with himself, and his bird had smiled up at him.

“Are you alright, Stols?” He had asked because, shit, he was worried ok? He tried not to be a shit boyfriend.

Stolas had sighed like he couldn’t have gotten air in his lugs before, and nodded against his chest, feathers caressing skin. “Yes, darling. I am alright. Some thing are just… so very worth it, my love.”

And then Stolas had fallen asleep, while Blitzø purred deeply, and it had been good.

So very good.

Chapter Text

Octavia of the Ars Goetia was, like her father, not stupid. She was in fact, like him, very intelligent.

She was also, like her mother, shrewd. And had gotten shrewder in the last months living in the Nest, guided by her Sister and Blitzø and Millie and Moxxie.

She knew she needed a plan.

So she had spoken with Loona. Of course.

The Hellhound listened, lounging on the office’s sofa, and cocked an eyebrow, her ears tilting back in what Octavia knew to be anger. At her behalf. It warmed her.

“Damn, sis. Your family is fucking brutal.”

“Tell me about that.” She answered, with feelings. “But I need to be proactive or they will fuck me over.” And Via, who was coming to term with her ace-ness, didn’t want to be fucked. Literally or figuratively.

Loona nodded. “Well, what are you planning then?” She paused. Then her eyes grew darker, and her ears flattened. Loona’s tail was between her legs and Via knew her sister enough to know she was thinking about the Pound.

She had learnt something of it.

“… you know, some of the Pound’s pup were from breeders. Like. The rut and cull of the litters. Some breeders didn’t have the heart to cull them themselves, so they let the Pound do it.” Via nodded, and scolded her features to calmness, to hide the rage and grief and pain. Her sister, she had learnt, didn’t want them. Not overtly, not then. She just listened. “Which frankly, this whole breeding bullshit sounds the same as what happens to some Hellhounds, uh?” Loona’s smile was all fangs.

Via still felt a pit of acid somewhere in her stomach, that Hellhounds, people, could be breed like animals. But then, hadn’t it be like that for her dad and mom? She sighed. “Yeah, you are right. It is just shit all the way through.”

Loona nodded. “Yeah, but they told me that some of the ones that were chosen for breeding… like, too good to be sold, you know? Well, the smart ones would sneak around and decide by themselves someone they wanted to be mated with. So long at that one was ‘’suitable’’ “ Via could hear the quote marks in Loona spat out words. “The breeders generally allowed it.”

Via looked at Loona, and blinked, one eye after the other.

And started thinking.

--

Finding a suitable candidate was going to be the first hurdle. Approaching them, the second.

Via started with making a list. Her dad had been in a list-mania lately, and it seemed to be helping him. So. List it was.

• Must be a goetia. Well, that was a given. They wouldn’t consider him acceptable otherwise.
• Capable of theoretically bearing children with me. She wasn’t sure about the whole children business. Maybe one day. But if the Candidate was unable to, then they would still not accept her choice.
• Must be ok with the Deception. As said, Via was not stupid. She was aware she was probably not the only one in the same breeding related problem. So, the Candidate must be ok with it and aware it was a deception. Via had no intention of having sex for now.
• Must not be too much higher than me in rank. Technically, she still wasn’t one of the seventy-two. Who also were, generally, much older than her. But she would be more vulnerable to a full-fledged Goetia. She could be honest and admit that, her feelings of safety aside, the Candidate would also probably want her to be around the same rank. So, she must search among the second-borns, or like her the Heir Preventives.
• Must be around my age. She could go from seventeen to, say, nineteen. Not younger, yuck. Or older. Double yuck.
• Must be tolerable to be around. She was relatively certain that if the Candidate proved to be an abusive arsehole, she could say two words to Not-Dad Blitzø and they would Mysteriously Disappear but still. It would reset the process, and that was annoying.

She looked at the list and nibbled the pencil, before adding.

• Must be very cool with imps and hellhounds.

Then she nodded and started researching.

_

There were a lot of possible candidates. Most Goetian families that didn’t hate each other quite as much as her parents did* generally had a couple of children.

She made another list of all the possible Candidates around her age, and then stared at it.

How to find the right one?

Then she grinned.

She had gotten better at stars charting after all…

*The thought used to hurt. It didn’t anymore. It just was.

__

So this is how Octavia of the Ars Goetia found herself in Gluttony, stalking Quintus.

Quintus was the son of Earl Raum. Like his father, he was a black crow.

And like his father, he had what the Lesser Key called “A Great Dislike of Dignitaries”.

Right now, he was discussing furiously with a Pound lady who had the face of somebody who had Never Gave a Shit about anything, pointing at two hellhounds siblings. Twins, by the look of them.

In the end, the lady shrugged, nodded, and the raven turned to little hellhounds and smiled.

This is when Via went yep. That is the one.

__

“So you propose a… betrothal of convenience?” The raven, Quintus “Call me Quin”, nodded thoughtfully. “I understand your point. I am eighteen, and frankly I don’t know how long my father will be able to stave off polite requests. Duke Eligos, his direct superior, is becoming… tiresome about that.”

Octavia nodded. He understood the problem, and at 18 he was at prime marriageable age for Goetias. Which, gag. They were in a private room in a tea house… just kidding. They were at WackDonald, chewing greasy fries. Loona was pretending not to know her in another boot, but sneaking glances over her phone.

She loved her sister.

“Your father is the one who went with the imp, right? He may lose his title to you. And then they will become even more unbearable.” Quin grinned, and Via shrugged.

“Correct. And the imp’s name is Blitzø. I am living with him and his daughter, my sister Loona, now.” She looked keenly at Quin. He didn’t even flinch, just nodded.

He didn’t look bad. His feathers were black as ink, and his eyes keen and clever. He was however dressed in the most gaudy outfit she had ever seen. There were paillettes on his tank top. Of two different colours. He had either gems or something like that sewn in his short trousers. And he had rollerblades on. Who used roller-blades nowadays? Quintus, son and heir of Earl Raum that’s who.

The rollerblades had gems on them.

He sparkled.

Crows.

“So I already have a boyfriend. Would that be a problem?”

She shook her head. “I am not my mother. And this is merely for our convenience, you can have whoever you want. I don’t plan to do like… anything with you anyway.”

Quin kept looking at her. “He is an incubus.”

“Good for him.”

For the first time, the crow smiled.

“Well, I have to speak with Teo of course… Teo is my boyfriend. And with my father. But I think we can write a good contract, maybe.” He extended one hand.

He had rings.

She did the same, and they shook.

Now, she just had to speak with her dad.

__

“WHAT?!”

Well, that was more or less what she had been expecting.

Her father’s eyes were wide, shocked. White pupils danced in them. “Via, darling no, please, that is, we can find a way I promise you don’t have t-“

“Dad. I have found a way. I am a Goetian. They are going to saddle me with somebody to control me unless I choose for myself.”

Her dad was hyperventilating, and she put an arm around his shoulder, squeezing him. He had seemed so big to her once, an all-powerful giant. She knew better now. He was a person. A demon who loved her desperately, but not the mythical creature of her childhood.

She thought that was a good development.

And she loved him so much too.

Blitzø was on the couch, hidden by the back, but she knew he was listening. That was fine. She counted on his help to make her dad see the light. Loona was in her room, but the door was, uncharacteristically, open.

She felt good. Strong. Powerful. In-herself, somehow.

“… Via, my Starfire you don’t know how, if…” Her dad put his face in his hands. “Who is this boy anyway?”

“Quintus, the son and heir of Earl Reum.”

Her father perked up a little. “I… have heard of Earl Reum.” All Goetians had. He had skirted being banished more than once, only avoiding it because, after all, going against dignitaries was in his portfolio.

“And it isn’t going to be like… like you and mother. He has a boyfriend who is ok with that. I met him, Teo is very nice.” He was: a mischievous muse-type incubus who was as pretty as he was fey. They had exchanged books, and gossiped. She liked him.

She thought he liked her too.

“Also, we are going to write a contract and have it ratified by Asmodeus and Beelzebub both. Betrothal only for now, no marriage until I am 25 when we’ll see if we want to go on with it.” Maybe. Heirs would be required, after all.

Noblesse obliges and all that shit.

“And no sex.”

“Via!” it was a squawk. She sighed.

“Dad, I am seventeen.”

Her father was looking at her, and swallowing. Or trying to. She caressed his head-feathers, and suddenly he smiled a little, a thin smile.

“That you are, my darling. You have grown up… so fast.” She rolled her eyes. “But… I see your point. If I lose my title and money… after you are eighteen, my protection…” His voice dwindled and his shoulders hunched. “I am sorry, Starfire. I am sorry I can’t do more, protect you better.”

She shook her head. “Hey, this is growing up. I gotta start protecting myself, right!” And you, too, one day. She promised herself. You and Loona and Blitzø and Moxxie and Millie. All of you. She struck a pose, putting her arms out wide like a box around herself. *

Her dad looked at her and then, for some reason, started to laugh. “You… you are right. I am so proud of you, dear. You are doing so well.”

She smiled, and if she puffed up a little, that was her own business.

* Yes, it was the Blitzø’s pose.

__

“It is a good idea, Stols.”

“… maybe.”

Blitzø caressed the owl’s head feathers and held him close, purring softly. It was night, and they were together, and it was enough to make some small spark of warmth and love bloom in the corners of his mind.

He hoped it was the same for Stolas.

Stolas looked… good in the half-darkness. Ok, he looked good always, but in half-darkness he looked softer and more at home, his blue-roan feathers blending in. Light could blind and destroy, darkness can hide horrors, but this child of theirs was where true freedom lied.

Like Stolas.

The bird sighed. “I am just… it is probably just me. I know why I reacted like that. But… I am scared, Blitzø. For her.”

“Well if this Quintus guy ends up being a jerk, we can make him disappear, pronto.”

Stolas hooted. “True. Ah. She suggested I met him and his father both. I will.” He sighed. “Has Ms DaBleda gave you the number of that therapist friend of hers…?”

Blitzø nodded. “Yeah, just this afternoon. Was about to give it to you when Via dropped the bomb. She is such a cool kid.” He added, with true admiration.

“That she is. Very well. I could try… speaking about all of this with this new therapist, and then… see Earl Reum and his son.”

Blitzø held Stolas close, and kissed him between his two upper eyes. “I am so damn proud of you, baby.” He said, because his own therapy was working well*

Stolas smiled and if it was thin, it was also true.

Then he tugged Blitzø’s close, his eyes closing, and once their lips touched they thought of nothing at all anymore.

*Mainly through veiled threats, but let’s not stop at trifles.

Chapter Text

You would think one would get used to being kidnapped.

In fact, one does not.

Stolas looked at himself, and at the angelic rope that bound him. His heart was hammering in his chest. His beak was full of bile. The soft glow of the rope was the only light in the dimness.

The dimness was because of the sack that had been put on his head.

He wiggled a little. The rope was loose. The lessons with his darling and the other I.M.P. employers had stuck. He had puffed up when bound, trying to make himself as big as possible. He hadn’t been lassoed this time. Likely not Striker then.

He didn’t know who. He had been about to go speak with Vassago about the trial, which was to happen in three days, to finagle the last of their defense and, if he knew Vassago, to gossip about Octavia and Quintus betrothal, which had been signed in front of Asmodeus and Beelzebub*. He had been thinking about the new weapon supplies he was vetting, and had been not paying enough attention.

So now he was bound and with a sack on his head. In a car, if the sounds and bumping were to be believed. Not Striker, definitively.

If you can’t see where they are bringing you, wait. It isn’t worth it to get yourself free if you are surrounded by goons that will re-bind you, tighter this time. And in a not-fun way.

He remembered his Blitzø’s words and waited, moving just a little to loosen the binding. Nobody had wanted to come close enough to his talons to bind his hands.

Or his feet.

Under the sack’s cover, Stolas smiled.

*He had met Earl Reum and Quintus for tea. Also Teo, who was a very nice boy. He had left their mansion as reassured as he could be. Earl Reum had seemed very relieved about his son betrothal, confiding in him, out of the younger generation earshot, he had been fielding their family for years about a betrothal for Quintus, but he knew his son to be gay and didn’t want to impose. Stolas had, briefly, wondered about it, about how it would have been if… but then shook his head. Quintus was a rather sparkly young fella, which made him smile a little thinking of his darling, gothic Starfire. Everyone had been very complimentary about how clever and proactive Octavia was. Which was right and correct, of course.

_____

What is the word contrary to surprise?

“You can leave it here. Collect your wage on the way out.”

See, unsurprising seems to be too simple an answer. Stolas disliked the un- words as a matter of principle, he had even had them banned from Friday Scrabble. They didn’t have enough creativity, and they didn’t give you enough information…

The sack was, dramatically, yanked from his head. Together with a couple of his head-feathers. Stolas bit back a yelp, and looked up at his Soon-To-Be-Ex Brother in Law, and lifted one eyebrow.

Ah! Predictable! Here it was.

“Andrealphus. How predictable.” He said, mildly, wriggling a little more and glancing around casually. Stella was here, seething. Stolas almost sighed. The Predictable Siblings. He didn’t recognize the place. Not the palace, then. A room, with a couple of chairs, a door. A window, high up.

Nobody else.

He tried not to smile.

Andrealphus yanked his head back, and he went with the gesture. He looked at the peacock, nonplussed and before the creature could speak, he added.

“It doesn’t matter how prettily you bed, darling, I won’t suck you off. It is not you, it is me. I have standards.”

Andrealphus let go of his head like he had been burnt and stood up straight, but… was that desire in the peacock’s eyes…?

Ew.

Stella was shrieking. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that, in part because it had been the background of so much of his life that he had learnt to tune it out, and in part because Andrealphus had kicked him on the side.

Rather hard.

He went with the gesture, and rolled away, ignoring the pain, taking the opportunity to wiggle away some more. He was almost out. Now, he just needed the right moment…

“YOU FUCKING FILTHY DEGENERATE! YOU IMP COCKSUCKER!” Well, points on her to get one of two right*.

Stolas turned toward them and grinned. “But dear Stella, hasn’t your brother told you?”

“TOLD ME WHAT?!” More screeching. Stolas stayed on the ground.

“He is lying dear, he is a filthy degenerate l-“

“He tried to get into my pants so. Many. Times.” He sighed. “Really, it was rather bothersome.”

“WHAT?!” That was Stella.

“WHAT?!” That was Andrealphus.

“Oh don’t play coy now. Like at the Dark Moon Festival five years ago? Remember how I was so determined not to see him anymore, Stella?” Stolas sighed. He hadn’t wanted to see Andrealphus because Andrealphus was a prick.

But Blitzø had taught him a trick or two.

Stella was looking at her brother, shocked. Andrealphus lifted her hands. “You can’t POSSIBLY believe his words!” He walked toward Stolas and lifted one leg to stomp on him. “He is the worst possible-“

“Please desist. I have no desire to see under your robe.”

It stopped Andrealphus for just long enough.

Enough for his feet to contract and for him to kick up.

Hard.

He caught Andrealphus’ tight and Stolas felt a visceral pleasure in hearing the peacock scream taking a different note, in seeing the pale robe blossom with black blood.

Stolas wriggled out of the blessed rope and stood up, his angelic steel talons dripping blood and his hand full of angelic rope.

He smiled softly at Stella and Andrealphus.

“So, I assume I should be asking what this is about, but I really don’t care.” He purred, taking up his phone, and dialing a number as the peacock kept screeching, now rolling on the ground, clutching the wound in his tight.

Stolas rolled his eyes. “Really, Andrealphus. For such a trifle.”

*Stolas was a proud imp cocksucker, at least of a particular imp (no other needs to apply, they were exclusive, apology to the imp population really).

____

“You did well in calling me.” Vassago looked at the two Goetian being carted away, and sighed, passing one hand in his headfeathers and then glancing at Stolas. They were in a warehouse in Pride, the kind of seedy place that looked like their whole business model was “kidnapping and illegal smuggling”.

Likely it was.

Stolas shrugged. “I thought about calling Blitzø first, but then they would be dead and really, it would be bad for Via.”

Vassago nodded. He was feeling slightly light-headed. The lack of sound once people had portaled Stella out had been deafening.

“Stars above, what an harpy!”

Stolas’ hooting laugh surprised him, as well as his grin. The owl’s red eyes were rather charming, and there were four of them so four time the charm…

“Oh, tell me. So, could you say why they tried” a gesture “this? I am about to lose the trial, they had no need to…”

Vassago blinked.

“Stolas, you aren’t about to lose the trial.”

Stolas stilled.

Vassago looked at him, and he felt like he was, perhaps, not giving the good news he had thought he was.

__

“STOLAS! WHERE THE FUCK ARE THOSE BITCHES I’LL END THEM FUCK well maybe not Via’s mom but THE PEACOCK IS DONE FOR”

Stolas smiled, opening his arms to an armful of worried imp. Blitzø wriggled up and down, looking at him from all angles*.

“Shit shit shit I am sorry are you hurt please tell me are you h-“

The owl hooted a little, putting a finger on Blitzø’s lips. The imp stilled. “I am perfectly fine, dearest. Your lessons have been incredibly informative. I was able to free myself and to give a good kick to my soon to be ex brother in law.” Stolas smiled some more. “with angelic steel.”

“in his cloaca?”

“Almost. I tried. The angle was… awkward.”

Blitzø held him closer, breathing like he wanted to inhale Stolas. It made sense, he supposed. If he had Blitzø around his heart, Blitzø could have Stolas in his lungs. He held his beloved in his arms and felt the imp’s tail coil tight around both of them.

Blitzø was trembling.

He caressed his beloved’s shoulders and back, and there was only one thought wandering his mind, like a solitary star lighting the sky.

I cannot lose this.

I cannot.

*Including upside down.

__

“So… you are going to have back your stuff, uh.”

“It seems… very likely. Yes. Octavia’s betrothal has chinked it.”

Blitzø nodded and lowered his eyes to the coverlet, worrying at it with his fingers. It was what he had wanted, after all.

Why did it feel so much like something was carving out his heart out of his chest, carefully, taking its bloody time, cherishing every slice and every little jolt of pain from him?

He looked up. Their room was… their room. There were horses drawings, some of which had been drawn by Stolas himself. Plants, carefully curated by Stolas “those are good for a bedroom, not all of them are, Blitzø”, hung from the ceiling in macrame rope work. A wall had been charmed to show the earth constellation of Pegasus*.

The coverlet itself had a pattern of stars and constellations. By now, Blitzø knew many of them. Ursula major and minor. Andromeda. The Zodiac.

It was their room.

… How could he live here without Stolas?

He swallowed and looked up, he could hear and feel his tail swishing being him. He didn’t even try to stop it.

“S-So… Do you want me to, to come and see you once in a while?” He ventured, and could feel his teeth chittering. Fuck he couldn’t cry, he couldn’t, he could not… it was good, he wasn’t about to be a little bitch, Stolas deserved his stuff, Stolas deserved everything he would not ruin it for Stolas. “We could, we could go back at our Full Moon meeting?” He could be a good sex toy, he could, he really could, he loved Stolas so much he…

Stolas shock his head, and Blitzø’s heart was made of glass and shattering.

“I want to live with you, Blitzø.”

Blitzø blinked.

Stolas took his hands and a deep breath. “I spoke with my therapist about how to, how to have this conversation. Can you listen to me, darling?”

Blitzø opened his mouth to answer, then thought about it.

“Yes. I… think so.” His tail swished. “Please don’t portal me out. I promise not to scream.”

Stolas smiled and squeezed his fingers. Blitzø squeezed back.

“Alright. So. I love you. This is the most important part of the conversation. I love you, always, Blitzø.” Blitzø blinked. Stolas loved him. He should… remember that. It was hard. Perhaps he should write it down somewhere. “And I want to live with you. I have never… been this happy, in my whole life, as in the last time together.”

Blitzø looked at him, and he knew his eyes were huge, and that he was blushing. “R-Really?”

“Really. You made, make, me so happy, dearest. Living here, with you and Via and Loona had been… more than I ever thought possible. I love working with you, and our routine. This matter to me much more than a silly palace. I don’t have to live there. I don’t want to, if it means losing you.”

Blitzø thought about it.

It was a big thought.

“Can I… have a bit of time to think about it? I love you too, Stolas, you… you know that. I love you so much.” He whispered, looking down at their clasped hands. His scarred white and red ones, and Stolas’ black. “I just, I need…”

“Time. It is alright. I know you love me. And… I know it would be hard, being an imp and a goetian Prince. But I… want to do it. I want to try. With you.”

Blitzø nodded jerkily. And then he surrendered and crawled into Stolas’ lap, lopping his tail around the both of them. Stolas’ arms were around him, Stolas scent surrounding him, and he swallowed.

“Fuck, bird. You got me bad.” He whispered, and smiled a little at hearing Stolas’ chuckle.

*A very badass horse, that one.

Chapter Text

Blitzø decided he needed to Think.

So he did it in the right way.

“Moxxie, you get the Crystal. Millie, keep your husband safe. Loony, you do you.” Loona groaned at the finger guns, but said nothing. “I have to go in my Thinking Place”

“Blitzø, isn’t that the broom closet, where are all the broom-“

“Shhh. Thinking. Place.”

He closed the door firmly in their faces, sat down, and started to think.

Stolas wanted to stay with him. But Stolas was getting back his stuff. Which was good! Great! It was Stolas’ stuff. It should be Stolas’. It was in the name. Stolas’. Stuff.

He hugged his knees to himself and thought very hard on Stolas’ words. Not his fears. Not his insecurities*. Stolas’ words.

Stolas wanted to live with him.

Stolas wanted to… keep working at I.M.P.? Keep the routine? Stolas was a routine guy, and his job as a Goetia didn’t take a lot of time apparently. He enjoyed what he did at I.M.P.. Blitzø worried his lips with his teeth, thinking.

Stolas... loved him. That was hard, because of the insecurities*. But Stolas had said so, and he was trying very hard to believe people**. So. Stolas loved him.

The palace and money, though. Like. A shit-ton of money.

He thought some more, then sighed, deflating entirely, and took out his phone.

“Hey, Els? Yeah, can we move our appointment? Yeah, today when you want would be great. Thank you.”

*”I don’t have insecurities Els!”

“Are you sure of Millie and Moxxie and Loona’s love of you, Blitzø?”

“… No.”

“Then you are in-secure about your loved one reciprocating.”

“… Oh fuck you”

** Because if he didn’t, Els smiled at him.

__

“So, you don’t want Stolas’ money?”

“No. I don’t care about his money, Els.”

“Uhm. Interesting.”

“Why?”

“Well, many people would care, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well I am not many people, bitch. I have never taken a cent from Stolas. I don’t want to feel like… I am leeching from him. More power to the sugar babies of this and other Worlds, but I want to, to do my job, to contribute you know? And he has everything. What can I give him that he does not have? And don’t say crap like love and feelings, I know that. I am not talking about that.”

“That makes sense. You want to feel like your contribution matters.”

“Exactly! And… How could it, with him having like. Fucking everything?”

“Do you think he has everything, though?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe there are things you can still contribute. Maybe you can find a way to give him something that is, if not monetarily equal, spiritually equal of what he gives you. I don’t think he would finagle on money, do you agree?”

“If finagle means what I think it means, then… No. Not Stolas. I mean, he fucking should but… No. He already hinted some mad crap about giving me half of everything, or giving me access to all his stuff and can you image?!”

“So the point is that the money is… between you?”

“The money, his fucking title, everything. Like… he is a Goetia. I am an imp. Other Goetias are going to give him fucking Heaven for it.”

“Wouldn’t you say this Is his choice to decide?”

“… I guess so. Just… what if it gets too much?”

“You could talk to him.”

“… Why is the answer to every fucking thing more talking I swear to fucking Satan.”

“Going back, would other imp give you Heaven for being with a Goetia, Blitzø?”

“… Some, yeah. Probably.”

“And what do you think about it?”

“Bitch, if they can’t see how amazing my boyfriend is they can stuff it so deep up their assorted holes they can taste it or incubate it in a fuck-you baby. I love Stolas. Fuck them.”

“Perhaps this is how Stolas also feel. If in a less… colourful, way.”

“… Maybe.”

“And is there nothing else?”

“…”

“…”

“Els?”

“Yes, Blitzø?”

“I don’t... like the fucking palace.”

__

It was their turn to wash the dishes. Stolas had been forbidden from magicking them when some of the magic he had used to make them dance in the air with soap and water like some old-time Disney bullshit had spilled into Via’s room and half of her taxidermy had started dancing.

Blitzø had almost pissed himself laughing, the video Loona had made had gone viral and had netted his Loony a nice wad of cash in royalties and the two birds had squawked themselves hoarse.

So, no more dancing dishes.

Blitzø was drying the dishes, and Stolas was washing them. The day had been… intense. He had met Elspeth yesterday. The trial was the day after tomorrow.

He glanced at Stolas. He was so fucking relaxed, humming a tune under his breath as he washes the dishes and passed them to him, his shirt rolled to his elbows and a soft smile on his beak.

How could an imp not want to kiss him silly?!

Not now. Later.

“Stols?” He said, hesitantly. Stolas turned his eyes toward him, and blinked. “I… talked about what I would like to do with Els. My therapist. About, you know. If and when you get all your stuff and title back.”

Stolas nodded. “It sounds very clever of you. Do you want to talk with me about it?”

Shit shit shit, no kissing, no matter how kissable that beak was. How could a beak be kissable? Well, Stolas’ beak could.

Blitzø took a deep breath, sat on the counter, and started drying the big pot they had used for roast. “We talked about how the decision whatever being with an imp is… worth it is yours, and you can decide if what the other Goetians think is more important than, you know” a gesture with his tail “us.” He glanced at him, the Insecurities rearing their ugly head.

Stolas nodded. “I have thought about it.” His voice was calm, steady. So was his gaze in Blitzø’s eyes. “It isn’t.”

Blitzø’s spine, which he hadn’t even realized were high in tension, relaxed. “Yeah. Yeah. So. The other two problems were…. I want to contribute you know? And you have everything, and I can’t add anything. Not in the feelings department.” Stolas had already been trying to speak. “Like, with money. Or stuff like that. I want to… do something.”

Stolas thought for a second, closing the water and drying his hands on the rag. Blitzø started on the glasses. “I can see why it would be important for you.” Warmth bloomed in his chest. Shit, his bird had improved so much in the last months. “Do you have any idea?”

“Yeah… I have been thinking I could take care of the security for the place. Improve it, run it, that sort of thing. You may make more… important enemies now, what with me being a lowly imp and everything. So, it makes sense I do it, uh?” He glanced at Stolas.

Stolas nodded and smiled. Shit. No kissing during important conversations. “That sounds very clever actually. I had been thinking about security. Andrealphus has been shipped out to Wrath for his role in my latest kidnapping” Blitzø’s gut twisted. He didn’t want to think about it. “with Stella. But they could still be a problem, as could the others in their same faction. I would feel… better if you manage the security, Blitzø.”

Stolas’ soft trust made something in him swell, and not just his cock.

“Yeah well. You know I don’t disappoint.” He wriggled his eyebrows and Stolas hooted a laugh. Blitzø looked down at the, now very dry, glass. He put It down and took a deep breath. “there is another thing.”

“What is it, dearest?”

No kissing that beak, no kissing that beak…

“Stolas, I don’t like the palace.” Blitzø blurted, looking down, his tail twitching under him. “It is too cold and everything is too fucking big.” It was ginormous*, and everything was too big for an imp, shit even going to take a dump meant doing acrobatics on the porcelain throne. He could do the acrobatics, but that was not the point.

Stolas just nodded.

“Yes. Neither do I.” Blitzø looked up at Stolas, shocked. Stolas ‘ smile was sad now, and he extended a hands to grab his bird. Stolas squeezed his hands. “I inherited the palace from my father as soon as I came of age. The only changes I made was his sigil in mine, and then adding new portraits on the walls. I had been thinking, darling. I want to… restructure it completely. I want to make it so it is easier for you and Mildred and Moxxie, who I hope will come to visit us often as they do now. And… I want to add more horse décor.”

Blitzø blinked.

“Say again?”

“I want to restruct-“

“No, not that part, the other one.”

“I want to add more horse décor?”

Blitzø stared. “... really?”

“Yes. Do you believe love, there is not even one horse statue in the entire palace?!” Stolas shook his head. “It is a tragedy, that is what it is**”

Blitzø kept staring.

Stolas squirmed. “Dearest are you alrig-“

He stopped speaking when he found himself with an armful of imp, because his, very kissable, beak was otherwise occupied.

Well, what else can a poor perverted imp do with such an amazing boyfriend?!

*”That is not a word.”

Via had grinned. “It sure fucking is. Means ‘very very big’. Aaand Loona and I get 12 points plus other 50 for using all the tiles.”

His Loony had extended one paw. “Pay up, Dad.”

** It is contagious.

___

The first thing Stolas did once the trial was done was hugging his daughter, who was sobbing in relief about now having to do the fucking charts anymore. He held her for a long time, before giving her to Loona, Quin, Teo and Yue, who had been helping her so much after her mother later… faux pas*

The second thing he did was portaling right into their room.

Blitzø was here. He was dressed in his pajamas, the boxers and horse t-shirt, soft for so many washing. He was sitting in the dark, on their bed, the same bed he had made that morning**, with his favourite stars coverlet. Barehooved and with his tail curled around himself, Blitzø looked…

Scared.

That wouldn’t do.

Blitzø looked at him, and his eyes took in the hat-crown on his head, and Stolas saw his beloved swallow, saw the widening of his pupils. He knelt by the bed then, looking up softly.

“It is just a silly hat.” There had been such an ado. Speeches and accusations and defenses. All for nothing. It was well known that the end was decided before he had ever set food in the room.

Because of this demon, who now sat in front of him, looking small and scared and hopeful. This demon Stolas loved so much, it hurt to look at him, like his heart had barbs inside.

Blitzø, his brave Blitzø, smiled a little then, and extended one hand to touch the hat. He never had, not once. Stolas had always taken it off when it was necessary to do so. He had never realized it, until now.

He inclined his head, making it easier. Gently, delicately, Blitzø took the hat off and passed his fingers between his head-feathers, preening them where they had been skewed.

Stolas chittered in pleasure.

Blitzø smiled.

“I should fuck you with that silly hat on one day.”

“You should.” He agreed, leaning into the touch. Blitzø chuckled and scooted closer, tugging with his free hand at Stolas’ clothes. Stolas went on their bed, willingly, oh so very willingly.

“For now, I’ll fuck you without it”

“Also that.”

Blitzø laughed now, and his tail uncoiled from himself to coil around Stolas’ waist, and it was so much better. Stolas lifted his head, opening his beak like a nestling begging for food, and Blitzø, generous Blitzø, gave it to him, his lips closing over his beak in a searing kiss.

Stolas had to do the bed again, later.

He was not complaining.

*The kidnapping. Via had taken it very well, actually. She hadn’t even been surprised, just happy he was fine. When Stella had been exiled to the Wrathian domains of the family, Stolas had told her she was welcomed to go and met her anytime, of course.

Via had looked at him and shook her head. “I don’t think I will, dad.”

And that was that.

** He liked making the bed every morning, he had discovered. It relaxed him.

Chapter Text

Blitzø stared.

He blinked.

He stared again.

Nope. Still there.

He rubbed his eyes.

Still there.

This… couldn’t be happening.

“Darling? Are you alright?”

 “… Cookie Cutter” Blitzø almost didn’t recognize his voice.  “Stolas… how…”

The stable had been Stolas’ idea. Blitzø would have never even dared to dream it, but Stolas had surprised him one morning, when he had showed him the plans for the garden as they ate their Sunday Pancakes in the Nest.

“… and here I was thinking of putting the stables.”

Blitzø had stared at him. Stolas had gone on. “It is the best place, see this part can become” check words on a piece of paper “paddocks, for a couple of horses, and there is a place for a tack room here…”

“… stables?”

“Yes? I had assumed you would want them.”

Blitzø had looked at him. “Stols you don’t… you don’t have to, I mean, it is ok, you don’t…”

“But I want to.”

And then Stolas had smiled at him, and Blitzø’s heart had expanded five time and lodged somewhere in the vicinity of his throat, and somehow he was in the stupidly beautiful bird’s lap and they were kissing.

And now they were here. The palace was… different. Inside it was not the cold, cavernous* palace anymore. The ceilings had been lowered, with mezzanines that made nice nooks and crannies for imps, and there were drawings and photos aside from the stately paintings.

Oh and horse décor.

Of course.

It looked… it looked like a house that Blitzø could consider a home.

Just a very big one.

(He would get used to it)

They had been touring the garden, and Stolas had been showing Blitzø how the survivors of the first garden were being re-integrated with the second, and then they reached the stable, and Blitzø….

Blitzø couldn’t believe his eyes.

“… That is… That is Cookie Cutter.”

The last time he has seen her, she had been running from the explosion and the flame that heralded the destruction of the Imp Circus, together with the other horses. But it was her. Older, but her. She had been the youngest of the circus horse though, barely three, so she wasn’t so terribly old now, for a hellhorse. He could see the little scar from where an accident with a gate door when she was a filly.

“Took me some time to find her, but I did, I thought you may like finding

Blitzø turned toward Stolas and jumped in his arms, holding him close, close, his throat too tight to speak, his tail coiled around the silly bird’s waist, and he loved Stolas, he loved Stolas so much…

He was saying it.

“I love you I love you Stolas fuck thank you, thank you so much I didn’t even know I thank you”

Stolas smiled, holding him close and kissing him softly, his nibble-kisses.

“Of course, darling love. Of course.

They stood in the new stable where a sign of Blitzø’s oldest life stood, placidly eating her hay and the light from the pentagram shone from the tall window, and Blitzø had all the lights of the earth’s sun in himself.

He hoped Stolas had too.

(He did)

*Another Friday Scrabble word