Work Text:
"Stolas," Blitz says. "Do you regret loving me?"
Stolas looks up from his novel and turns his head to stare at Blitz. "What?"
Blitz shifts where he's laid out across the couch. His head lolls and he somehow looks more flushed than usual despite his skin being red. Stolas, sitting on the floor, is leaning his back against the armrest further from Blitz with a book in his lap.
"Well." Blitz makes a vaguely strangled noise and waves a hand. His eyes are a little glassy and unfocused. He'd downed an entire bottle of clear alcohol while Moxxie stitched up his side at the office. Blitz was nearly incomprehensible for about an hour and Stolas had thought that he was sobering up, but now he isn't sure.
"Well?" Stolas prompts. He closes his book and turns.
Blitz squirms under the attention. He looks at Stolas, searches his face, then fixes his gaze somewhere past Stolas's head. "I just... Fuck, I shouldn't have said anything."
"Well, you did." Stolas hesitantly reaches out a hand and rests it on Blitz's hoof. Blitz flinches a little like he wasn't prepared to be touched, then relaxes and looks at Stolas's face again.
"Yeah. I did." Blitz sighs and tips his head back, stares up at the stained ceiling of the apartment. He stews there for a moment and Stolas resists the urge to say he can forget about it. He can't. Neither can Blitz. They both know it. "I just... Loving me has just gotten you hurt over and over again, Stols." Once he starts he gains pace and keeps talking, waving his hands around like he's directing an orchestra. "Either by me or other people or your daughter, or losing your entire--"
"Blitz," Stolas interrupts, voice quiet. Blitz's mouth snap shuts. He doesn't look at Stolas, eyes still fixed on a spot on the ceiling. "No," he answers after a moment. "I don't think I can."
Blitz tries to sit up and then snarls Fuck, grabbing at his side. Stolas squeezes his calf. Blitz looks at him now, squinting and a little pissed-looking and a younger Stolas--even by a few weeks--probably would have flinched in fear. But no one is more afraid of Blitz's anger than Blitz is. That gives Stolas some courage. "Stolas," Blitz says, all raw feelings and confusion and hurt.
Stolas smiles. He's not sure where it comes from.
"If I could still use magic," Stolas says, "I would show you what I mean." He settles back against the couch's armrest again and flicks his gaze out the window. He thinks of all the words he's written in his journal, all the stories he's told himself, had Moxxie pore over, all the love stories he's read. "Think of my life like a garden." He imagines his garden at the palace, all his greenhouse planets and the ones scattered about the halls. "It would be lovely, except that it's dark and nothing can grow without light." Stolas traces the spine of his book with a talon. "Loving Via brought starlight--enough to light the way." Stolas stops and steadies himself. "Loving you brought the sun."
Blitz's ragged inhale draws Stolas's attention away from himself. He turns his head. Blitz looks--stricken and broken and raw. Stunned. Disbelieving.
Blitz's unusual silence drives Stolas forward. "Yes, you... you can burn me. You have. You can blind me with shouting or insults. You could burn the whole garden down and leave my little world behind, but I..." Stolas finds himself drawn to Blitz's gaze, his wide eyes, the way his mouth hangs a little ajar. "I can't forget what it was like to see flowers grow in a place that has always been bathed in darkness. I haven't. Not when I thought you hated me, not when..." Stolas has to bow his head and swallow a lump in his throat.
Not when... The silence afterwards fills the missing words. Every shouted word. Every icy silence.
"Besides," Stolas says. "I grew the flowers."
"I'm not gonna lie," Blitz says, voice hoarse, "I'm losing track of your metaphor, Stols."
Stolas huffs a half-sigh, half-laugh. "You could ruin me. Everything we've ever had. But the love I have for you--that's mine. No one can take that from me. Not even you."
Blitz chokes and Stolas looks up to see Blitz pressing a bandaged hand to his mouth. His eyes tear up.
Stolas's chest aches. "Oh, love, don't cry." He scoots closer to Blitz's side and rests his head carefully on Blitz's chest. "I just..." Stolas huffs, turns to prop his chin on Blitz's chest. His head bobs with every shaky inhale and exhale. He's hunched uncomfortably to match the shortness of the couch. He doesn't want to be anywhere else. "No one is making me love you," he says. "No one can. That's not a power that exists in the world, in Hell or Heaven or Earth or otherwise." Stolas trills a little when Blitz's hand clumsy brushes through his head feathers.
Blitz sniffles. "But isn't loving me... hard?"
"I don't think it would be love if it wasn't hard."
Blitz squeezes his eyes shut. "I really want to make a dick joke right now."
Stolas giggles and lifts his head. "Anything but acknowledge that I care about you."
"I haven't tried to run away from the conversation yet," Blitz defends. "Give me some credit here."
"I am, darling." Stolas's mouth curves. "I see you're trying."
Blitz sniffles and wipes at his nose with the hand that's not tangled in Stolas's feathers. "I don't understand how you can still love me after everything I've done to you."
"How can you love me after everything I've done to you?" Stolas counters.
Blitz blinks. "What?"
"You heard me."
"Uh..." Blitz's throat bobs. "Well. It's you."
Stolas lets him stew in the silence. Blitz's tail twitches against the couch cushions, nervous and frantic.
Blitz's gaze softens as it clears. "Oh."
Stolas smiles again. "Because it's you." He tilts his head. "Love isn't forgiveness. You've earned that yourself."
"What if I fuck it up again?" Blitz blurts. "Blow up, run away, ruin everything--"
"And what if you don't?"
"Huh?"
Stolas lifts a shoulder. "We're going to make mistakes and fight and hurt each other again and again. And maybe some will be worse than others. But you're..." Stolas searches Blitz's face for words he can't gather in his mind. "And maybe it--maybe we--won't work." His heart twinges with pain in sync with Blitz's brows twitching like he's resisting a flinch. "But maybe we will. Maybe we can." Stolas sighs. "I can't promise I'd forgive you for anything and everything. But I can promise you that I'm always going to want to."
Blitz's eyes fill with tears again. Stolas wipes them away. They stare at each other in silence for a few moments: Blitz's hand in Stolas's feathers, Stolas's hands cupping Blitz's cheeks, his body twisted awkwardly over the side of the couch. Then Stolas pulls away and leans against the arm rest closer to Blitz.
He's read two more chapter when Blitz finally speaks.
"I can't promise I'm not gonna run away," he says, voice gravelly. Stolas tamps down the instinct to treat it as something sexual. "But I can promise I'm always going to want to come back to you."
Stolas blindly holds a hand out. There's a beat where he resists the urge to withdraw the proffered hand. Blitz takes it, his fingers trembling and warm. Stolas squeezes them. "I'm always going to want you to come home," Stolas says.
Blitz inhales, sharp and small. "You... you've never called the apartment home."
"Home isn't a place where we sleep, Blitz." Stolas turns the page of his book. "It's you and me. That's home."
Blitz starts snoring before Stolas finishes the chapter. When Stolas turns to look, he has a little smile on his face while he sleeps.
Stolas smiles and returns to his book.