Work Text:
Blitzø idly rubbed at a splotch of drying blood on his jacket cuff while he sat and spun in his chair, waiting out the clock in the privacy of his office. He could hear the others outside, M&M enthusiastically recounting the latest hit for Stolas’s enjoyment, while their plucky receptionist interjected with an indulgent, “Oh my!” here and a supportive, “How brave!” there. Part of Blitzø yearned to be out there with them, slurping up all that awe and praise for himself, the true star of the show, always—but a larger part of him right now would rather sit in the dark and brood his ass off.
He pulled the creased, blood-stained checklist out of his back pocket and unfolded it. With an angry flourish he ticked off SEXXXY CRYSTAL SHIT and silently fumed. He’d made sure to stand right next to Stolas’s desk when he opened the portal to Detroit or Delaware or Denmark or wherever they’d gone today—Blitzø wasn’t the details guy. He’d made sure to make eye contact as he lubed up the crystal with a healthy gob of spit and that firm, circular motion the little yellow slut liked so much. He’d raised an eyebrow at Stolas as his wrist quivered and shot out a portal, all teeth—this could be you, big bird. Lemme show you what I’ve been practicing. Stolas had watched, his eyes drifting down to follow the motion of Blitzø’s finger, before looking back up with a professional smile. “Good luck out there,” was all he’d said. “Happy murdering!”
With dismay, Blitzø saw that he had now checked off the last item on his list. It was there in black and white (and red)—a whole catalog of failures cascading down the page. He didn’t get it—all this shit was gold. OOPS FORGOT MY SHIRT was a classic. That had seen Blitzø oh-so-casually slamming his way out of the bathroom after a shower, only a teeny-tiny towel wrapped around his waist to protect his—well, modesty wasn’t exactly the right word. But Stolas had barely glanced away from the TV, sitting with his long legs drawn up on the couch as he watched his awful, overwrought stories. Under that, all ticked off with matching aggression, were the variants OOPS FORGOT MY PANTS and OOPS FORGOT MY TOWEL, all total losses.
CASUAL TOUCH had seemed like a surefire winner for a while there, but there were only so many million excuses Blitzø could find to squeeze his ass past Stolas in the kitchen, or brush his thigh when they passed in the office, or hook a hoof around one of his talons while they were eating breakfast. After orchestrating a truly genius string of misadventures that ended with Blitzø’s face buried in Stolas’s plumage after bringing the both of them tumbling to the floor, following which Stolas simply picked him up and deposited him back on his feet like a clumsy toddler, Blitzø had scratched that one out with furious defeat.
Things had felt so different just after Sinsmas. Melancholy, and weighted, and kind of fucked, yeah—but also full of possibility. There had been something there, Blitzø had felt it. But he hadn’t wanted to rush things, or push Stolas while he was in such a vulnerable place, or—yeah, okay, he was also scared of eating shit again; of putting himself out there and getting shot down. But while things weren’t really better now, they were a lot less raw, and the two of them were closer than they’d ever been before, in almost every way—Blitzø had plunged Stolas’s feathers out of the drain, for Satan’s sake! Stolas had caught him bawling his eyes out at the season finale of My Little Hell Pony and hadn’t called him a pussy-ass bitch or nothing! And yet…
There had been one time and one time only that Blitzø had attempted the smallest checkbox on his list, scribbled shyly in a corner: ASK HIM OUT (U PUSS). “Hey, Stols, you’ve been kinda cooped up in here for a while. Don’tcha wanna get out for a spell? C’mooon, Stoly-Poly, don’t you ever think about, y’know, putting yourself back out there?” All he’d got in return was a dry look, and then Stolas had taken himself off to the fire escape to get away from him.
“Ffffffffuck,” Blitzø groaned into his hands, spinning faster in his chair.
It felt like there’d been a window open at some point, but he’d been too chickenshit, or too rizzless, to jump through. And now it was closed. Shit, what if it was closed forever?
There came a knock at the door and Blitzø’s knee smashed into the corner of his desk, the centripetal force of the chair coming to a sudden end.
“Motherfucker—WHAT DO YOU WANT MOXXIE, YOU BABY CARROT DICK PAIN IN MY—”
But it was Stolas who peeked his head around the door. Blitzø shoved his irritation down and stamped on it for good measure, plastering a wide, strained grin on his face. “Ohhh, hey, gorgeous. What can I do ya for?”
As if to illustrate the point that Blitzø was firmly in blue balls territory, Stolas didn’t even react to the pet-name, or how Blitzø had oh-so-subtly and gracefully managed to throw the incriminating checklist over his shoulder and drape himself sexily in the chair at a moment’s notice. He didn’t even glance at the desk. They’d defiled this thing in every which way! They’d done things to it that probably counted as a crime in some Rings. Sometimes it was all Blitzø could do to sit on his hands to stop himself throwing them in his pants whenever he sat at this desk and remembered all the fun ways Stolas could be bent over it and the memories piled up and up inside him until it was almost impossible to breathe—
“Expenses?” Stolas asked, all business. “I need to bill the client.”
Blitzø rooted around in his pockets and produced a wadded-up ball of receipts.
“Good luck with that shit-spewing snatch. Cheapskate’ll fight you for every cent,” he said, handing them over. “You sure you got this? I could have Loonie call her up—she’s real good at this part.”
“I’ve got it,” Stolas answered, picking apart the paper with his long, slender, expert, sexy-ass fingers.
Blitzø managed to drag his eyes back up to Stolas’s face to say, “You know, you’re workin’ too hard. Lookin’ a little stressed out there, birdie. I could, uh, give you a massage? Eeease some of that tension? Mm?”
That was a totally normal thing for a boss to say to his secretary, right? Like, in Hell? Blitzø waggled his eyebrows and tried to channel that part of him that used to find this shit so easy.
“Oh, I’m not stressed,” Stolas brushed him off breezily. “If I quailed every time someone called me a ‘poncy twig-arsed cunt’ I’d never have survived my marriage.”
He shot Blitzø a wink then left with the receipts. The nicest shut-down a guy ever gave him. Blitzø’s head fell forward and smashed into the desk.
It was seven minutes past five and Blitzø could feel the big vein in his head throbbing as he held open the I.M.P. HQ door. Loona was first out—Blitzø’s goodest of girls, as always—barging past him on her way to Gluttony to meet up with her friends.
“Gigi said I can crash at her place tonight, so don’t wait up because I plan on getting waaaasted and making some terrible decisions,” she’d said on her way out.
“Daddy’s gonna pretend he didn’t hear that for his own sanity, Loonie-Toonie—have fun.” Blitzø’s eyes wandered over to Stolas, a smile tugging at his lips as he realized that they’d have the apartment to themselves tonight. He’d fumbled the ball today, but now they were going into overtime, baby!
But then you had little cockblockers like M&M, chatting away while they packed up their shit so leisurely it was like they were trying to give Blitzø an aneurysm. Worse, they kept pulling Stolas into their boring-ass married talk, and every time they said his name he’d pause his filing to look over and answer them, and—ffffuuuuuuck.
“Come on, guys. I wanna get home sometime before Doomsday.” Blitzø stood in the doorway, tapping his hoof. “Stolas, move that tight feathered ass and get in the van.”
“Oh.” Stolas finished filing the last of the paperwork and turned to blink at him. “Did I forget to mention? I won’t be back until late tonight.”
Back. It was always ‘back’ and never ‘home’, no matter how many times Blitzø insisted.
“Wha— why?” Blitzø’s mouth fell open. “You never go anywhere.”
Stolas’s beak pursed and he replied, a little snippily, “Yes, as you’ve mentioned before.”
Moxxie and Millie finally stopped flirting with each other and fell silent as they felt the mood in the room drop.
“Well, it just so happens tonight that I have dinner reservations,” Stolas continued, tilting up his chin.
“Dinner reser—” Had Blitzø accidentally made the crystal jizz him into Bizzaro-World? “Where?”
Stolas’s eyes slid away as he answered, a little awkwardly, “…Ozzie’s.”
A fuse blew in Blitzø’s brain and the whole thing shut down for a second or two. When the power finally came back online, he said, “Ozzie’s?”
“Yes,” Stolas said with strained smile, closing the last of the filing cabinets and brushing down his pants.
“You?” Blitzø clarified.
“Yes.” Stolas glared.
Millie’s eyes ping-ponged between the two of them while Moxxie started wringing his hands.
Blitzø was trying to make it make sense. “But… but you can’t get into that fuck bunker without a date.”
Stolas stared him down. Blitzø felt that vein in his head pop.
“WhAT BITCH— Uhhhh, I mean… wiiiiith whooo?” He squeezed out the rest from between his teeth. “Pray tell?”
Sidestepping the question, Stolas crossed his arms and said haughtily, “I thought you’d approve—you’ve been so keen for me to ‘get back on the horse’, as it were.”
YES, HELLO, HI, ME, IT’S ME, I’M THE HORSE, Blitzø didn’t say, but only because he was currently too apoplectically mad to speak at all.
Stolas took this as a victory. He gave a sniff, pulled on a dorky little cardigan, and swept out the door. If Blitzø could’ve pulled himself together in time, he’d have told Stolas not to be stupid, wait, and Blitzø’d give him a ride. But by the time he was able to spit out anything but splenetic sputters, the bird had long flown the coop.
“What the FUCK?!” Blitzø exploded, stomping around the room and yelling before kicking the corner of Stolas’s desk and immediately regretting it.
While he hopped on his good hoof and blew futilely on the throbbing one, he multitasked by coming up with a plan. It was a brilliant plan. A foolproof plan. The kind of plan that only a hot-ass genius like Blitzø could come up with. Putting the injured hoof gingerly back on the ground, he tugged decisively on his jacket and headed back to the door.
“Dooooon’t,” Moxxie warned from behind him.
“What?” Blitzø turned, indignant. “I gotta vet this mystery whore! Make sure Stolas is safe.”
Gently, Millie said, “Blitzø…”
Moxxie crossed his arms in a big X. “Sir, no!”
But Blitzø had already stopped listening. “Fuck you, Moxxie—I’m a do-er, not a don’t-er!”
And with that, he picked up each of them by the scruff of their necks and tossed them out the door. He locked up behind himself, then hightailed it down to the van.
Rule number one if you don’t wanna get stalked, birdbrain. Don’t tell the stalker where you’re gonna be tonight.
The line was around the block as usual, but Blitzø shoved his way through and tried to tailgate in with the couple in front. Unfortunately, the bouncer not only noticed him but recognized him.
“Fuuuck me,” Blitzø griped as he got yanked back by his tail.
“You again?” The bouncer frowned at him. “Come on, pal. How many times do we gotta go through this? No date, no reservation—no entry.”
“Soooo…” Blitzø tried and failed to think fast. “How’d you like the gift basket?”
He ended up getting drop-kicked into the same exact dumpster as last time.
“Fuckin’ ingrate!” he yelled as he clambered out.
Wiping the grime off his jacket, Blitzø was almost beginning to regret coming here. The whole thing was starting to feel a little too uncomfortably familiar to one of the most humiliating—and that was saying something—nights of his life.
Just as he was considering slinking home with his tail between his legs, the universe decided not to piss on him for fucking once.
“Fizz!” Blitzø cried out in relief, startling the imp who was walking past the alley.
“Gah!” Fizzarolli said, then: “The fuck?”
“Your boyfriend’s staff need some serious fuckin’ customer service training,” Blitzø griped as his old friend came closer.
“Why do you smell like garbage?” Fizz sniffed him. “Why are you here?”
Last time Blitzø had showed up unannounced it had been to raid his best bud’s stash of sex toys for what turned out to be a horrendous fucking evening. Satan, this place was cursed. He should really stop coming here.
“How about we chat inside?” Blitzø suggested, with a smile so innocent it could only be fake. “Have a good ol’ catch-up? Eh? Pal? Bestie?”
“You’re full of shit and you smell like it too,” Fizz told him, but gestured for him to follow anyway.
They passed right by the bouncer, who inclined his head respectfully to Fizzarolli and went pale when he saw Blitzø again. Blitzø gave him two smug dancing fingers until he was all the way in, then turned his attention to more important things.
Fizzarolli led him across the main floor of the club, already filling up with diners and drinkers, and Blitzø followed quietly, his head on a swivel. His eyes flitted from table to table but before he could find Stolas—
“You here to peruse our anal beads or just park at the bar and get wasted?” Fizz asked, throwing a nonchalant look over his shoulder.
“Uh, neither,” Blitzø answered, distracted.
“Oh. So, you’re looking for the prince.”
Blitzø froze. He turned his head slowly to his old friend, who’d come to a stop with his arms crossed and a knowing smirk on his face.
“How did you know Stolas is here?” Blitzø asked.
Fizz stared at him for a while, mentally weighing something before answering vaguely, “Might’ve seen his name on the guest list.”
“Who’s he here with?” Blitzø made a pathetic attempt at casual curiosity. “Anyone I know?”
Fizz stared at him again, eyes narrowed, before finally not-answering, “So, you’re here to crash his date?”
“Hey, I ain’t crashing shit!” Blitzø’s nostrils flared. “I’m— I’m observing.”
Rolling his eyes and taking pity on his dumbass friend, Fizz started walking again. As they passed through a door that led them out of the main room and into the bowels of Ozzie’s, he asked, “So, you’ve really got no idea who the lucky guy is, huh?”
“Oh, I dunno—some kinda pervert.” Blitzø glanced wistfully back. How was he supposed to find his bird from here? “One of your rooster’s incu-whores, maybe. Or some gold-digging fish fucker from Greed.” The possibilities were heinous, and endless.
They walked up a long staircase and along another corridor, until Fizzarolli finally opened a door into what must’ve been Oz’s private box; the hot pink tower from which the King of Lust surveilled his kingdom. Blitzø eagerly made his way inside. This would make the perfect vantage point.
“You ever think maybe there’s a better way to connect with a person than stalking their ass halfway across Hell?” Fizz asked, taking a seat.
Blitzø, who was already hanging half off the balcony with his binoculars out, didn’t dignify that with an answer. He was busy, bitch.
From behind his shoulder, Fizz gave a sigh. “Look, Blitzø—”
“A-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh!” Blitzø shushed him with one urgent, swiping arm. “Target acquired!”
He’d finally found Stolas among the crowd down there. Alone at a table for two, he sat with one of his legs restlessly bouncing while he waited for… who?
“Fucker’s late,” Blitzø seethed. “Can you believe that shit?”
Kicking his legs up on the balcony and looking up at the ceiling, Fizz said in a bored tone, “Maybe the guy stood him up.”
Blitzø snarled, “I’ll kill that ungrateful piss stain! Who the fuck does he think he is?!”
“I thought you didn’t want the date to happen?” Fizz asked airily, inspecting his robotic fingertips.
Aware he was being baited, Blitzø bit anyway. He lowered the binoculars to turn and give the clown a scowl. “I never said that. Stolas is his own owl. He can stuff his cloaca with whatever micro-dicked loser his heart desires.”
“Uh huh.” Fizz rolled his eyes and sat up straight to give him the stare-down. “C’mon, Blitzø. We’ve known each other since we were little implings. Be real with me for a fuckin’ sec.”
Blitzø opened his mouth to tell Fizz to shove his psychoanalysis up his clown car asshole but instead found himself saying, “…S’not like I have the right.”
“What?” Fizz tilted his head.
Sighing, Blitzø swiveled to face him properly, the binoculars falling onto his lap. “I don’t have the right to give a shit who Stolas dates or fucks or falls in love with. Maybe I did once, but I threw that whole thing in the trash and set it on fire, so…”
He ended on a helpless shrug. Fizz’s face twisted in sympathy and some kind of long-suffering exasperation.
“Princey agree with that?” he asked.
Blitzø shrugged again, mouth curving down into a deep frown. “I dunno. Probably. We haven’t talked about it.”
“So…”
“So?”
“Don’t you think maybe you should…?”
Fizz gave him a long, pointed look. Blitzø blinked back, blockheaded and uncomprehending.
“What?” he asked.
“Motherfucker, you are such a dumb piece of—” Fizz’s hands were flexing like they wanted to wrap themselves around Blitzø’s neck. “You should talk—”
The lights dimmed. Blitzø didn’t hear the rest of that, his neck twisting so hard it nearly broke in two as he raised the binoculars and turned his attention back to the club below. Something was happening up on-stage, multicolored spotlights spinning around some mostly naked group of succubi doing… eh… something to some poles up there—Blitzø wasn’t here for the show.
Because at Stolas’s table, now plunged into murky darkness, he could just about make out a tall figure approaching from behind. He touched Stolas on the shoulder, and Stolas turned up his face to greet him as he took his seat. Blitzø squinted through the binoculars, tail swishing.
“Son of a…” A growl rose up from his throat as he watched the two of them lean across to speak way too intimately for a first date. They were practically fucking on the tabletop already!
“You see the guy?” Fizz asked. “Is he sexy?”
“I dunno—it’s too dark,” Blitzø grumped, still watching. “He’s tall as shit and wearing a hat indoors, so you know he’s an asshole.”
“Mm,” Fizz said lightly. “Sounds sexy.”
Blitzø turned to snarl at him. “Fuckhead, you’re supposed to be here to help!”
“I’m supposed to be here to work,” Fizz reminded him. “Now I’m just here to enjoy the show.”
Blitzø flicked his tail and turned back. Stolas and his date were closer than ever, heads angled toward each other as they probably exchanged sweet nothings and spicy promises. Then the guy reached over and put his hand over Stolas’s and the last of Blitzø’s reason snapped.
“Oh, this won’t stand!” He leapt up onto the edge of the balcony and prepared to dive off before Fizz yoinked him back by his collar. “Yrrrrk!”
“Do not make a scene in my boyfriend’s club,” Fizz lectured him in a hissed voice, then gave a conceding sigh. “Let me handle it.”
“What does that mean? How the fuck are you gonna—”
But Fizzarolli ignored him, standing up and straightening his gay little bowtie. Then he stretched out his long robo-limbs and slingshotted himself down to the ground floor.
Blitzø watched, butt out of the chair and wriggling with anticipation as Fizz approached the table, but to his disappointment there was no dramatic confrontation. He didn’t kick the guy out of the club. He didn’t even pick up a glass of wine from the table and throw it in his ugly, bird-stealing face. He just put himself between the two of them and leaned in first to say something in the guy’s ear and then Stolas’s. After a few seconds he left them and swung back up into the box.
“Hey, yeah, wow.” Blitzø greeted him with an unimpressed look. “You really showed him.”
Fizz rolled his eyes and said nothing, thrusting something wordlessly into Blitzø’s hand. Blitzø uncurled his claws and looked down at the tiny earpiece nestled in his palm. He looked at it for so long that Fizz gave a frustrated groan and snatched it back.
“Here, dumbass,” he said, shoving it in Blitzø’s ear.
There was nothing at first—just an unpleasant swishing noise like a butt dial—but then he started to make out a voice underneath.
“—appreciate you inviting me out tonight.” That was Stolas—a little muffled, but definitely him.
Blitzø’s jaw dropped as Fizz crossed his arms and gave him a proud smirk. That crazy little clown and his slippery fingers had hot mic’d the bird! Pretended to schmooze and slid it right into a pocket.
“Truthfully, it came at just the right time,” Stolas continued, voice low as he leaned in to speak in his date’s ear, to be heard over the show. “It’s been a… trying few months.”
“Mm,” replied Mystery Dickbag, the mic barely picking him up, and that just wasn’t enough to identify his voice.
Fizz pressed the side of his face against Blitzø’s, not wanting to be left out of the eavesdropping. He was such a messy bitch. The kind of guy who said he didn’t want drama. The kind of guy that loved the drama. Blitzø shoved him with an elbow, but let him crowd in.
“It’s very kind of Blitzø to open his home to me, to give me a job, something to fill my days,” Stolas said, and Blitzø pressed the earpiece as deep as it would go into his ear so he wouldn’t miss a thing. “I’d hate to seem ungrateful so I can’t say anything, but—oh, honestly, it’s bordering on unbearable now.”
“What’d he say?” Fizz asked, straining to hear.
Blitzø shushed him and hunkered down, an awful feeling stirring in his gut. Unbearable? Him?
“He just doesn’t understand,” Stolas lamented, then there was a long gulp as he took a break to drain his wine glass. “He doesn’t understand how crazy he drives me. I know Asmodean crystals require some, ehm, seduction in order to function—but the things he does to that rock are simply not-safe-for-work! Why, just today, it was all I could do to wait until the portal was closed to throw my hands in my pants!”
Blitzø’s brain jumped the tracks and crashed into a ditch.
“Uh huh,” was all Stolas’s date offered in response, and Blitzø came back to himself with a burning urge to curb stomp the motherfucker, like—at least pretend not to be bored out of your mind while his bird was dropping this primo grade A spank bank material, you rude, ungrateful bitch!
“I didn’t!” Stolas suddenly squawked defensively. “I simply… adjusted myself. But with every assassination it gets harder and harder to handle. He’ll be deepthroating the thing by next week, I swear to Lucifer.”
Ooh, that was a good idea. Why hadn’t Blitzø been doing that already?
“I’m sorry, I’m oversharing.” Now Stolas was blushing—Blitzø could hear it. “You don’t want to hear any of this.”
If there was any response, it was non-verbal. Maybe a shrug, because Stolas gave a relieved sigh and said, “Thank you. It does help to talk about it. Everyone at I.M.P. is lovely, but I don’t… I don’t really have anyone I can speak to about these things. I can’t very well walk up to Moxxie at the water cooler and say, ‘Good morning, my good fellow! Did you catch the finale of The Voice (Hell) yesterday? No, I don’t think Grungella deserved to win, either. Anyway, had another dream about your boss railing me into the floor last night. So, how are things with you?”
“What are they talking about now?” Fizz hissed. His eyes drifted down and he punched Blitzø in the side. “Ew! Why are you popping a boner right now?!”
Blitzø slapped him away and refused to feel ashamed. This shit was better than porn. It was so good, in fact, he’d gotten so distracted imagining said railing that he was missing what Stolas was saying now.
“—around half-naked all the time and, Lords, all the touching. Sometimes I want to pick him up by the tail, toss him onto the couch, and really just— have my way with him, you know?”
Oh, Blitzø knew. He knew, and he thought it was an inspired idea. Why the fuck hadn’t they been doing this already? They could be doing it right now if only this dumb, stubborn bird had—
But then Stolas sighed, the mic barely catching the next part, subdued as it was. “But it’s too late.”
“What was that?” Fizz pressed in close again.
“Shut up, you loud, jingle-jangling bitch!” This time Blitzø shoved him all the way off, then turned away to hunker down and listen, stomach suddenly churning with unease. “I’m trying— I need— I need to hear.”
“It’s as if there was this… brief window of opportunity, where maybe we might have been able to make it work. But I was too much of a coward, or maybe just too hopelessly inept, and I let it close. And now…” Stolas sighed again, and the next part was muffled as if spoken through his hands. “I’ve ruined it.”
Blitzø’s heart twisted.
“You know, I almost called to cancel tonight, but then I was standing in his office, right in front of the desk where we— ahem, well, in front of his desk, and he was being so effortlessly charming and sexy and wonderful and—ugh.” There came a clatter, like an effeminate fist bouncing off the table and making the cutlery rattle. “Do you know he didn’t even believe me at first, when I told him I had plans for dinner? My company is just that unappealing in his eyes, I suppose.”
Blitzø gaped. What the fuck kind of batshit filter did stuff go through in this bird’s brain to get twisted into that?
“He’s been pushing me to date for a while now. ‘Put myself back out there’, as he phrased it. I tried to ignore the hints, but… oh, I’m just falling back into bad habits, aren’t I? It’s as clear a signal as any that all my foolish fantasies just aren’t going to happen. Maybe it’s his way of telling me that my feelings are obvious, and unwelcome? And I should find somebody new to bother?” Stolas’s voice dipped in misery, and Blitzø didn’t need to be watching him to know he’d just wrapped his arms around himself that way he’d do when he was trying to cocoon himself against something painful. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it is time to try and… draw a line under this whole mess between us. Finally… move on.”
Blitzø couldn’t listen to one more second of this. In one swift motion that Fizz tried and failed to interrupt, he’d leapt over the edge of the balcony, tumbled from the box, and landed in the middle of the floor with a loud, painful splat.
He hobbled over to the table—“Ow, ow, ow, fucking ow...”—and just as Stolas laid wide eyes on his approach, he was already word vomiting all over him.
“Don’t draw a line under our mess, Stolas,” he said in a panic. “It’s our mess and I love it. Bless this mess!”
He was rambling, and possibly bleeding from one nostril, but this shit was too important to waste time thinking about. It was so important Blitzø hadn’t even spared a glance at the mystery date he had mere minutes ago been on a mission to identify.
“Uhhh, what the fuck?” the guy said, and Blitzø rounded on him with growl.
“Butt out, cockblocker—” He didn’t finish the rest, blinking as the house lights came on around him.
The first thing Blitzø belatedly realized was that his super romantic, totally not overstepping gesture had drawn an audience—everyone in the club had stopped to watch, even the performers up onstage. The second thing—
“You?!” He gaped at Asmodeus, all dressed down in his covert fit, big coat and hat and everything.
His attempt at being lowkey foiled, the Sin of Lust threw off his disguise and a wave of excited murmurs rippled through the crowd. They’d been brushing shoulders with demon royalty and hadn’t even known it.
Blitzø blinked, the dusty mechanism of his brain slowly starting to turn. “Oh, I get it now,” he said.
Fizz joined him down there with a, “Uh, Blitzø—”
“Ohhh-ho-ho, yeah, I see what this is.” It was all so clear to him now. He flicked a glare between Asmodeus and his supposedly best friend. “You greedy perverts trying to make my bird your third?”
Fizz gaped. Asmodeus gaped. Stolas tried to say something, but Blitzø didn’t give him the chance, rounding back on him with a look in his eye so manic it was making it twitch.
“What’s this horny rooster been whispering in your ear, huh, Stolas? ‘Hey, my clown saw you from across the club and we really dig your vibe’?!” He craned his neck back to the perverts in question to yell, “I DON’T FUCKING THINK SO, FUCKOS!”
Stolas was sitting ramrod straight in his chair, all four eyes flicking awkwardly around at the many, many faces turned to them right now. He raised his hands in a placating gesture and said, “Blitzø, this isn’t what—”
But Blitzø had already jumped up on the table. He grabbed Stolas by the shoulders and shook him. “What’s this turkey been telling you about his kaiju cock? It’s probably not even that big!”
Fizz muttered from behind, “Incorrect,” while Asmodeus grumbled, “Slander.”
Stolas escaped Blitzø’s grasp by rising to his feet, slamming his hands palm down on the table. “For Lucifer’s sake, it isn’t like that! This… this was never a date.”
“Oh, yeah?!” Blitzø’s engines cooled not one fucking bit. “And what would you call this cozy little pre-nut sesh?!”
“Dinner with a friend,” Stolas insisted.
“Oh, come ON—everyone knows a friend is just someone you wanna fuck who hasn’t come ‘round to the idea yet!” Blitzø waved his arms. “WAKE UP, Stolas!”
Stolas snorted derisively. “Oh, that’s absurd. Aren’t we friends?”
“Yeah?!” Blitzø yelled.
Stolas crossed his arms. “And do you want to fuck me?”
“Uh, YEAH?!”
Stolas’s arms fell to his sides. He blinked, first the big eyes, then the smaller ones. He looked incapable of speech. Blitzø’s insides twisted again. He looked lost.
“Ahem,” Asmodeus finally interjected, stepping up to them. “Might I suggest you take this little gay melodrama outside—away from my clientele?”
Stolas slipped out from the table, bumping his knees against it in his hurry and knocking over his empty wine glass. “Yes. Yes, I’m— I’m terribly sorry for the— I didn’t mean to make a—”
Blitzø felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see Fizz giving him a big, encouraging smile. “Talk to him, dumbass.”
Blushing, Blitzø shrugged off Fizz’s touch and held out his hand to Stolas. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “Let me take you home.”
Whispers rippled all around the club. There were so many eyes on them, watching, judging. Stolas hesitated and, for a suffocating instant, it was like being back here on that awful night when Stolas had buried his face in a menu; when Blitzø had pulled his hand away.
But then there were warm, slender fingers slipping into his palm and Blitzø’s claws closed around them like a bear trap. Legs weak with relief, he tugged Stolas along after him as he got them the fuck out of the spotlight.
The drive home was done mostly in silence—again, so asshole-puckeringly similar to the last time he’d fled Ozzie’s with Stolas in tow.
“‘Little gay melodrama’. Hah!” Blitzø tried once and once only to break the tension by airing his grievances. “He knows he’s dating the little gay melodrama, right?”
But Stolas didn’t even chuckle at that. Just gave a quarter-hearted, “Mm,” without ever looking away from his lap. So, Blitzø stopped trying to pretend everything was normal.
Once they made it back, Blitzø parked the van out front of the apartment block and turned off the ignition. Neither he nor Stolas made a move to get out. It was getting dark now, and for Imp City it was eerily quiet—or maybe it was just that Blitzø couldn’t hear much over the pounding pulse in his ears as he sat facing forward, hands still stiff on the wheel.
Doing a countdown in his head, Blitzø took a deep breath, 3, 2, 1… and blurted out, “I’m sorry!” at the exact moment that Stolas exclaimed, “I really must apologize!”
They blinked at each other.
“Wait, why are you sorry?” Blitzø asked, pivoting in his seat.
“I should’ve been clear with you that it wasn’t a date. It wasn’t that I set out to deceive you, exactly, but your incredulity that I could possibly have some kind of social engagement, it… well…” Stolas gave Blitzø a pained, embarrassed look, his fingers tangling anxiously in his lap. “It was petty of me.”
Blitzø let him off the hook with an unbothered wave. “Eh, I literally couldn’t give a quieve’s fart about that.”
“Ah.” Stolas clenched his fingers together to still them. “So… what are you apologizing for?”
Blitzø barked out a disbelieving laugh. “Satan’s strap—how long’ve you got?”
They both lapsed into silence, neither making a move to speak or leave. The moment stretched, the dark quiet in the van intimate and excruciating.
“Well, okay, top of the list right now,” Blitzø eventually forced out of his mouth. “Sorry I crashed your not-date night. It was crazy guy behavior, I know. I guess I just— I thought about you going to dinner with some ripped twunk hung like a shire horse—that’s one of the tall, tall ones—and I got so… fuckin’ jealous. Stupid, huh?”
Stolas didn’t agree with him, or disagree, or really respond much at all. His eyes fell away, like he couldn’t quite meet Blitzø’s gaze anymore.
Then, quiet as a whisper, he asked, “Did you mean what you said?”
“Mm?” Blitzø tilted his head.
Stolas’s hands were fidgeting again. “About… about wanting to… to…”
…Ah. Blitzø pinched between his brows, annoyed at himself all over again for what he’d said earlier; for how he’d said it.
Trying to untangle the mess he’d made, he said with a sigh, “Look, Stolas, I don’t want to fuck you.”
“Oh.”
That single exhalation made Blitzø’s head snap up. He looked over at Stolas, who had turned back to face out the windshield, his fingers now trembling in his lap, quiet devastation plain in the slope of his profile.
“I’m not fucking you tonight,” Blitzø heard echoing in his memory, and knew that he wasn’t the only one hearing it.
Scrabbling for damage control, he stammered out a desperate, “No, shit, that’s not what I— I mean, that’s not— I don’t just want to fuck you. I want… I want…”
“Yes?” Stolas still wouldn’t look at him, too afraid, too humiliated, too worn thin by hope and despair.
Giving up on some kind of eloquent explanation of something so big, and so complicated, and so important, Blitzø threw himself back in his seat, shrugged, and simply admitted, “Everything, I guess.”
He winced, and chanced a glance at the passenger seat out of the corner of an eye. Stolas was very still, no longer trembling, and his head slowly turned until those white-hot pupils were burning into Blitzø from the side.
“Really?” He was too confused to sound pleased. “But… but I thought… I’d gotten the impression that…”
“Okay, first off.” Blitzø raised a single claw. “I’m not letting you hog the couch or slut it up at I.M.P. because I’m such a niiiice guy, okay? It’s not charity, it’s— it’s— I want you here, with us. With me. Okay?”
“…Okay,” Stolas said, not sounding particularly like he understood.
“The crystal’s actually a pretty cheap date. You really think all that extra special attention is for its sake? You think I need to pop out a portal at your desk every time? Come on, birdy.” Blitzø put up another claw and another as he checked off everything one by one. “I haven’t got a brain injury—who the fuck actually forgets to put on clothes all the fuckin’ time? Christ on a stick, don’t tell me you really believe I keep tripping and falling into your chest feathers? You know how hard it is to fall up? And when I said you should date, I meant you should date me.”
By now, Blitzø was just holding up his hand in a starfish spread. Stolas listened to it all, his shoulders slowly loosening, a tiny, fearful smile emerging at the edges of his mouth.
“The window’s still open,” Blitzø finished earnestly, taking Stolas’s hand once more in his. “I mean, if you want it to be. I never closed it. I’m… I’m not gonna close it. Tomorrow, next week, months from now, a year, whatever—it’ll be open. Okay?”
Slender black fingers slid between large claws and met in a sweet squeeze. They both sat and let that settle. It wasn’t like everything could be fixed with just one honest conversation. The specter of their unresolved issues, their shared transgressions and grievances, the trials ahead to face, the Octavia-shaped hole in Stolas’s heart—they filled the van with a suffocating weight.
Stolas’s fragile almost-smile wavered and faded, and he said, solemn again, “There’s still so much that needs to be said.”
“Yeah,” Blitzø agreed. “Wanna do that shit later and just make out instead?”
Stolas huffed, pinching between his eyes. Cursing his crushing inability to let a vulnerable moment play out, Blitzø was halfway to an apology for that too when Stolas said, “Yes, alright.”
“Yeah?” Blitzø blinked in disbelief.
Finally breaking into a real smile, Stolas reached across the seats to cup his jaw. “Kiss me, Blitzø.”
Blitzø didn’t need to be asked twice. He launched himself across the van, throttled himself with his seatbelt before unbuckling it, then went in again to bring their mouths together with a feeling so good, so nostalgic, so missed, it was like a choir was rising in the background. Stolas laughed giddily against his lips and opened for him, fingers curling around the back of Blitzø’s head like he was something incredibly dear.
“No more silly misunderstandings,” Stolas said in the brief gap when they both separated for air, and it was both promise and ultimatum. Between a quick succession of hard, fast kisses, he continued to insist: “No secrets—mwah!—or lies—mwah!—or shenanigans.”
Blitzø snickered against Stolas’s beak and looked up through hooded eyes dancing with mirth. “Shenanigans?”
Stolas chittered in offended bird-speak and straightened up, crossing his arms in stern rebuke. Still grinning, Blitzø pulled his arms loose and brought him back in close.
“Unclench, beautiful—you got it. No more shenanigans.”
Quickly, the heat in the van built up and up. Hot, panted breaths left condensation on the windows, just like in that boat movie, and before long Stolas had been yanked onto Blitzø’s lap while their tongues tangled halfway down each other’s throats. Blitzø, whose blood supply was currently being redirected away from his big head, wasn’t giving much thought to how his eight feet of sexy owl was contorting himself to make the logistics work, until—
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
They both jolted, Stolas hitting his head on the ceiling, one of his long, awkward, backwards legs somehow stuck on the horn. It took a while, and a lot of elbow grease, for Blitzø to work him loose. They sat in the sudden silence, ears ringing, as outside the van windows here and there lit up as annoyed neighbors looked out at the ruckus.
Stolas, flushed in both excitement and embarrassment, giggled and hid his face in the crook of Blitzø’s neck, the sharp tip of his beak finding some tempting flesh there and giving it a nibble.
“Maybe we should take this upstairs,” Blitzø suggested, his pants painfully tight now. “We’ve got the apartment to ourselves for a while. No need to be quiet. Eh? Eh?”
Stolas tittered again, pulling back to flash him a dazzling, breathless smile. “Too late for that, darling—half the neighborhood’s heard us already.”
Blitzø’s eyes widened. That reminded him. He reached down into Stolas’s cardigan pocket and pulled out the little mic, still hot, still transmitting.
“Free show’s over, pervs,” he growled into it.
And then the mic was nothing more than a pile of sparking electrical parts crushed in Blitzø’s fist. As he wiped the debris on the seat, Stolas stared at him with keen, narrowed eyes as he slowly put everything together.
Blitzø gave him a grin-wince and said, “No shenanigans, starting from now.”
Stolas eyed him for a moment more, then rolled his eyes.
“I’m in love with an idiot,” he said with chagrin, and pulled Blitzø into another kiss.
Riding high on that shit, Blitzø leapt out the van first and rolled across the hood so he could beat his sexy-ass maybe-boyfriend to opening the passenger door. He escorted Stolas out, grabbed him by the hand, and then he took him home.