my life don't even matter, I know it, I know it

by AjWriter

Summary:

Sometimes Blitzø played roulette. He’d go out to the bar without cash and see if he could steal 10 drinks before he got the shit kicked out of him. Or he’d spin the wheel on the night’s hookup and whether they’d be able to keep his mind from wandering.

And then there were times like tonight.

Notes:

TW: Suicide Attempt

Logic's song 1-800-273-8255

Chapter 1

Sometimes Blitzø played roulette. He’d go out to the bar without cash and see if he could steal 10 drinks before he got the shit kicked out of him. Or he’d spin the wheel on the night’s hookup and whether they’d be able to keep his mind from wandering. 

And then there were times like tonight. When Loona was gone. When the apartment was quiet. When the neighbors’ voices had turned to a hush and nothing was on TV to stop it all from climbing back in and dragging him down.

When he fucking hated everything about himself. 

When it seethed and writhed in him. When it settled into the pit of who he was. Because, when they cracked open his ribcage and pulled out his bones, they would see the word bad carved into him. It tainted his marrow. It was the core of who he was. 

A piece of shit. A disappointment. A fuck up.

Tonight, he sat on the cracked tile of the shower floor with his knees drawn to his chest and his tail wound around his legs. The showerhead dripped continuously and his pants were wet from a puddle Loona left behind.

He was gonna die alone anyway.

On nights like tonight, he would load his trusty revolver with a single bullet. He’d spin the wheel on his life and put the business end to his temple. He would pull the trigger.

It would either click.

Or it wouldn’t.

It was past midnight this time. At work, Millie had gotten pissy with him about something—a rare occurrence. Proof that he could push the best to their limit. 

Moxxie had tried to stop her, to remind her that Blitzø was sensitive because Stolas had canceled again. Again.

A second time.

Fuck.

He loaded a round with practiced ease. His hands didn’t even shake anymore. He sent the chamber spinning with the heel of his palm. He snapped it closed with a flick of his wrist.

He pressed the barrel to the right side of his head, the white side of his face, the fucked up side of him. He drew back the hammer and closed his eyes. 

His heart didn’t even pound anymore.

He pulled the trigger. 

This time—for the first time—it went off with a bang that set his ears ringing. His cheek stung and the acrid smell of gunpowder and burnt skin seared into his senses. It made his eyes water. 

Blitzø tried to wipe his face but his hand wouldn’t move, aching as though the bones were broken. He blinked, catching sight of blackness too close to his face. Had he fucked up and blinded himself in one eye? 

He turned his head slowly, afraid of the consequences, but saw instead a line of black that bled into gray-blue. The revolver was no longer pointing at himself, but the ceiling where the shitty light fixture used to be. Glass shards littered the tile and the linoleum. 

The gun shook under the strength of the grip. 

“What are you doing?” Stolas whispered harshly. He was bent almost double just to fit in Blitzø’s shower. 

Blitzø blinked again and shook his head in disbelief. “Why are you here?”

“What,” Stolas repeated and his voice cracked. His eyes glowed hot and red. And white. “What are you doing?”

Blitzø, still staring him in the face, answered, “You’re not supposed to be here.”

With gentle force, Stolas removed Blitzø’s hand from the gun, shaking. Then he squeezed until the metal groaned and bent, twisting until it was unusable. It clattered to the floor, echoing in the stillness. 

Blitzø flexed the fingers of his hand, popping the bones that Stolas had nearly crushed in his hurry. 

Stolas dropped to his knees, touching the side of Blitzø’s face, and whispered a healing spell under his breath. The burn from the muzzle eased but the smell of gunshot residue and blackened flesh hung in the air. 

The showerhead still dripped and a droplet fell onto Stolas’s shoulder, rolling off his feathers, disappearing underneath. 

Stolas still cradled his face. “Why?”

Blitzø dropped his gaze to stare at the fraying edges of Stolas’s robe and shrugged. He pinched his mouth shut. Why had Stolas even come? It certainly would’ve been easier for him if Blitzø were gone. He could have his book back. He didn’t have to find a way to tell Blitzø he had gotten bored or offended or realized this was all shit.

He was all shit. 

He bit his lip and closed his eyes. 

Above them, the broken light fixture hummed and sparked. Stolas glanced up at it before he spread his arms out and lifted Blitzø off the floor. 

“Come. Let us leave this place,” he said, ducking through the shower door that was comically too small for him.

His head feathers brushed the ceiling and Stolas ducked under the doorframe of the bathroom. Blitzø kept himself tight and still and small. 

Stolas slowed, walking into the living room. He looked right and left, and then halted with a jerk. “Where…”

Blitzø watched Stolas’s head turn nearly all the way around, and shame crept up on him. Too exhausted to force it back and too weary to put up a front, he shifted in Stolas’s grasp until he was set on his feet. 

He slunk to the couch and sat down, curled against the armrest. “I’m fine,” he said. “You can go.”

But Stolas continued to stand there, continued to look around the apartment. The worry that had wrinkled his face disappeared—or maybe deepened—into a frown. He started to say several things, swaying where he stood, but he kept closing his mouth. 

Blitzø couldn’t stand it. “I sleep here,” he said and lifted his tail slightly. “I like it. I’ve got a blanket and all that shit.”

“I don’t understand,” Stolas said and he was staring at the pictures on the wall. 

Blitzø pretended he didn’t see that. “It’s comfortable and I can watch TV. And Loona has her own room.” 

Stolas reached toward the pictures and, for a moment, Blitzø felt genuine fear for the first time in months. He held his breath. Because Stolas could lift them off the wall as easily as lifting a feather. He could probably remove the marker stains; reveal the problem, the imposter, the unbearable asshole behind the black marks. 

But Stolas lowered his hand. “I don’t understand,” he said again and Blitzø had never heard him sound so small. 

Stolas turned to him again, almost pleading. “You are everything, everything I have wanted to be. If you’re not…if you’re still—” 

When a few tears slipped loose from Stolas's eyes on nothing more than an exhale of breath, Blitzø pretended to adjust his pillow. He pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over his legs as Stolas composed himself.

After he wicked away the tears, Stolas straightened his posture. This time his head did touch the ceiling but his hands trembled as he fiddled with the ties on his robe.

“Blitzø, let me help. I can…I can give you a space of your own at least."

Blitzø clenched his jaw and dug his claws into the sofa as if Stolas may forcibly pull him off. “This whole fucking apartment is my space.”

“Yes, but your own room—”

“I’m not a fucking child,” he said.

Stolas’s eyes were still on those fucking photos. “I’m not—I only mean that I have so many empty rooms now and you would be more than welcome—”

Blitzø couldn’t help the choked scoff. “You trying to make another deal?”

“No! No, no, no,” Stolas said too fucking quickly. His expression seemed almost horrified. “Is the deal why you…” He shifted slightly, motioning to the bathroom behind him.

Blitzø sucked his teeth. “That was a fluke.”

“A fluke? Blitzø, you were clearly—”

“Clearly, none of your fucking business.” Blitzø snapped his tail, giving the cushion a whump.

Stolas approached cautiously like Blitzø would fucking bolt. “You should talk to someone.”

Joke’s on him. Blitzø talked all the fucking time, so much that his therapist quit. Or maybe it was because he shot her pet bird after it said he had “Daddy issues” like he didn’t know that shit. And anyway Blitzø was too fucking exhausted to bolt. “Are you offering or some shit?”

A blip of relief washed over his face and Stolas knelt down on his dirty floor in front of him. He didn’t touch him, but rested his hands on the cushion next to his knees. “If you find yourself alone like this again, you are more than welcome at the Palace. I can provide you a space for yourself—”

“The fucking room thing again?”

Stolas raised his hands. “Please, hear me out. I know you value your privacy. If you take one of the guest rooms on nights like these, you will at least know you are not alone even if you do not want to talk. If you desire company, we could watch one of those movies you like.”

With a huff, Blitzø folded his arms and said, “Kay, but this better not be an excuse to fuck you whenever you want.”

Stolas’s face flushed red and his words came out in a rush. “I no longer want you to fuck me.”

Blitzø flinched. He couldn't fucking help it. And Stolas looked so fucking sincere, not like the fucking tease that he should’ve been. No smirk. No “but please Blitzy.” 

Stolas kept talking. “I’m so sorry I ever put you in that position.”

Breath didn't fill his lungs. He had to be drowning. Stolas’s words faded and went muffled. Blitzø  had really messed everything up. Everything. And now Stolas had seen the real him, pitied him, and didn't find him attractive enough anymore to let himself get railed.

“I…” Blitzø wasn’t gonna fucking cry. He cleared his throat and got to his feet on the couch. Then he climbed over the back of it away from Stolas. “I don't need your bullshit charity.”

Stolas hurried after him, feathers fluttering with anxiety. “Please,” he asked and reached out, but hesitated. 

Probably too disgusted to even touch him.

“Please,” Stolas said again. “I have nothing else to offer.”

He literally had everything else to offer. Blitzø reached the front door and opened it. “Just go.”

Stolas set his mouth in a grim line. “I will not.”

Bitch, it was his fucking house even if it was shit. 

“Get out,” Blitzø said, pointing to the hallway. “Or portal your ass from right there.”

“No,” Stolas said stubbornly. “I’m not leaving you alone. I will wait for Loona—”

Blitzø flashed his teeth and slammed his door. “Don’t you fucking tell her shit about tonight.”

Stolas raised his eyebrows in his smartass way. “If you will not let me assist you, she needs to be made aware—”

“She’s my daughter. She can’t fucking—”

“Then take my help!” Stolas shouted at him. 

Blitzø growled and ground his teeth. He went back to the couch and dug under the cushions to find his phone. He swiped at the angry tears before they could fall and cursed Stolas and the book and his whole shitty fucking life. 

He stormed angrily to the closet and pulled a change of clothes off the hanger. He shoved that shit in his backpack and tucked his softest horse blanket under his arm. When he turned around, Stolas was watching him, not smiling but clearly relieved. 

“Fuck you,” Blitzø said to him.

Stolas nodded and opened a portal. “Thank you.”

Chapter 2

Notes:

Don't worry. It's not gonna be hurt/no comfort story

He pulled the trigger. 

This time—for the first time—it went off with a bang that set his ears ringing.

---

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

                                              Sylvia Plath

And then a portal opened in the bathroom. Blitzø winced when he heard Stolas scream. It echoed in the shower, over the sound of his ears ringing. Blitzø tried to tell him to quiet down, that the neighbors were gonna call in another noise complaint, but Stolas didn’t stop. 

A piercing shriek, it quickly turned more bird than demon. The shower door shattered. Blitzø stood up from the cracked tile floor, put his hands out to stop Stolas from entering, but Stolas’s image shook and flickered. Half-transformed, Stolas surged forward, all black and red—

And went right through him. 

The fuck kind of new power was that?

When Blitzø turned around, he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at. He was standing inside of Stolas’s black feathers, not just surrounded by them or underneath them. But, like inside them, one went right fucking through his stomach. 

Stolas was hunched over in the shower. Before Blitzø could say anything or even reach out to touch him, another portal opened up underneath them and Stolas plunged through, pulling Blitzø along with him. 

No matter how much he shouted or swore at Stolas, the fucker wouldn’t let him go and had him trapped in his tailfeathers. 

They landed in some sort of hospital—not in the fucking waiting room, but in the middle of the hospital with its white walls and white floors—right by a nurses’s station. So many voices were shouting and demons running back and forth. Blitzø’s head hurt and the room felt like it was spinning. 

Stolas’s voice, deep and full of crazy, shouted at them. “Help him!”

Fuck. Was Stolas gonna have him committed because of some dumb Russian Roulette game?

Nothing had even happened. 

Blitzø would be damned twice if he these fuckers locked him up in one of the units. His life was shit, objectively. Medication wasn’t going to change that. He  tried to shove at Stolas so he could get away, but he ended up toppling forward, falling straight through Stolas and onto his face.

Before he could even get up, a gurney flew over his head. He only managed to roll over in time to see his own tail hanging from it. 

Shit.

Oh shit shit shit shit.

Blitzø got up as fast as he could and shot after the gurney. He tried to ignore several very concerning things like how he didn’t feel his boots hit the ground or hear his own footsteps or that no one gave a shit that an imp like him was going whereever the fuck he wanted in the hospital.

Then there was Stolas. With his long fucking legs, the prince raced right through him and Blitzø tried to grab hold of his tail and yank it. But the feathers slipped through his fingers. Stolas skidded to a halt and his head turned back, pupils searching, settling straight on him. 

For a moment—a moment, Blitzø was relieved because he was just being an idiot like usual. He couldn’t be dead, couldn’t be a ghost anyway. Demons didn’t have souls. When they died, they just died. 

“Your Highness!” a doctor called to Stolas. 

The owl turned around and hurried after the whitecoats, and Blitzø hurried after him. In a private room, a whole lot of hospital staff—more than there should’ve been for an imp—crowded around the gurney, doing shit to someone that looked too fucking similiar to himself. 

Stolas loomed over them, watching attentively, muttering under his breath. “Please. Please.”

“Does he have a next of kin?” the doctor asked Stolas.

Ah, shit. Shit.

“Her name is Loona,” Stolas told the doctor. “I-I don’t know if she was home at the time.”

Blitzø had to wake up. He had to fucking wake up. Because this was a fucking nightmare. He hadn’t meant to…well, he had. He just hadn’t expected it to actually work. 

He watched the doctors examine his body and set up an IV and take blood from him. His heart was still beating. He was still breathing. Besides the blood and the burn on the side of his face, he looked pretty normal. Just asleep. 

One of the doctors said it was a through and through, that he was lucky he hadn’t blown his head apart. They would have to check if he had any brain activity, but it could’ve been worse. Right now, he had just put himself in a coma. 

Which was probably why he was watching this shit. He wasn’t really dead yet. 

He’d fucked that up too.

Fuck. He was a piece of shit. 

Stolas left for a moment, opening a portal to Blitzø’s apartment—not the bathroom. The portal remained open as Stolas went through a few of his things until he uncovered his phone, which was locked. 

For a moment, Stolas stared at it and then pulled out his own phone. He watched the doctors in Blitzø’s room as he spoke to someone on the phone. A moment later, he hung up and came back through the portal. His phone dinged with a message and he opened it. 

The prince walked to the doorway of the room, clicking a few buttons, and put the phone to his ear.  

“Hello? Loona? Yes…No, Via gave me your number. I’m afraid there’s been an accident…Unfortunately, no, I—” He sucked in a breath. Someone, probably Loona, spoke on the other end. “As soon as you can please…St. An’s in Sloth. Before you go—”

Loona said something on the other end. Blitzø floated closer and heard the sound of music fading. 

“I apologize,” Stolas said to her. “But I believe it may be important. Do you know the passcode to his phone?”

Blitzø panicked and reached for Stolas as he pulled out Blitzø’s phone again. His hands passed right through the phone and Stolas. He could only watch in horror as Stolas unlocked his phone and started to go through it. 

First to his notes where thankfully he only had a bunch of bullshit like horse names and their lore. Notes on M&M’s dates, new sex toys to buy, phone numbers of demon’s whose names he didn’t remember and never got around to putting in his phone.

Stolas went through his emails and his messages even to the drafts folders. Blitzø hardly remembered to return those messages. There wasn’t really anything there besides old clients, new clients, prospective clients, angry clients. Maybe texts from some hookups that he made the mistake of giving his number to. 

The prince leaned against the wall by the door and rubbed his forehead. He opened Sinstagram and went through the photos, but paused when he started to scroll through the comments. Blitzø found himself floating next to Stolas, reading the shitheads that would trash his outfits or his scars.

“They’re just assholes,” he said, forgetting Stolas couldn’t hear him.

But Stolas didn’t seem like he would’ve listened anyway. His eyebrows lowered as his expression went from worried to pissed. Stolas wrote down the username of each of the commenters on his own phone and texted it to a name Blitzø didn’t recognize. 

Stolas had just hit send when Blitzø’s phone started ringing. Blitzø recognized the barking ringtone right away. 

“Answer it!” he shouted at Stolas when the prince hesitated. He tried to take the phone from Stolas again, but his hands just went through it. 

“Fuck!” he shouted. He tried to stomp around and got irritated when he remembered he couldn’t actually do that. 

“Loona?” Stolas asked. He’d actually answered the phone call. 

The voice on the other end spoke softly. 

“Of course. Of course,” Stolas said quickly. “I should have offered. Where are you exactly?”

With a backward glance at the hospital bed, Stolas hurried out of the door and a little down the hallway where he opened a portal. 

Loona stepped through, her makeup slightly smeared. Before the portal could close, two others came through: that bodyguard for Verosika and the Sin of Gluttony. Music boomed in the hive behind them.

Stolas hesitated and then gave a slight bow. “Beelzebub. I did not realize you would be accompanying her.”

The Sin nodded, fluttering on her wings. Her ears turned toward the hall as Loona rushed past them. “I have to return to my guests soon, but I’m not a complete asshole. I had to make sure that one was good.”

Stolas half-turned to watch her go. 

Blitzø was already following Loona when he heard Bee ask, “How is the little bastard?”

“Excuse me?” Stolas asked, turning sharply to her. 

The bodyguard interrupted, “She means her dad guy. How is he?”

Stolas’s irritation faded. “I don’t know why he would do this. I have not been able to find a note.”

Bee and the bodyguard—Texas or something—traded looks, like those fucking looks that said they knew some shit. 

“He was at one of my parties a few months back,” Bee said. “His vibe was all off, you know what I mean? Just like a mess.”

Fuck her. Blitzø didn’t want to hear this shit. He followed after Loona and found her barely in the door, arguing with a doctor. Because Sloth was full of racist pieces of shit. Blitzø tried waving his hands in front of Loona, telling her to just get Stolas to explain. He tried shouting at the doctor. He tried dragging Loona backwards.

Security was called—a bunch of fellow hellhounds—and Loona was told she had to leave. When they put their hands on his baby, Blitzø snapped. He shouted at the guards, screamed as loud as he could, furious and frustrated.

He curled his tail around a metal tray full of needles and flung it into the opposite wall. And it actually went. It crashed into the wall with a loud bang and several of the needles shattered, sending glass everywhere.

Everyone froze; the doctors, the nurses, the guards, Loona. 

Everyone except Stolas, who came flying into the room. “What? What is it?”

His eyes turned to Loona and the guards, who were still holding her by the arms. 

“Unhand her,” he demanded. 

The guards dropped their grip right away. 

A doctor stepped forward. “Your Highness, she was causing a disturbance and—”

“She is his daughter,” Stolas said, using his height and poise to his advantage to tower above the doctor. “If you try to remove her again, I will have you removed permanently.”

As the doctors talked about Blitzø’s prognosis with Stolas and Loona, Blitzø was trying to get their attention. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t pick anything up again or even touch it. Meanwhile, the doctor was spouting some bullshit about how he might wake up or he might not, and only time would tell. 

Bullshit. 

A few hours after the doctors left for the evening, Stolas did as well, saying he needed to check on Via. 

Blitzø was pretty sure he wasn’t gonna come back. Who would? It was a surprise he had even stayed that long, or taken him to the hospital in the first place. Stolas was fond of his dick but it wasn’t like he couldn’t find another one. The horny bird had canceled the last two full moons so he’d probably already found someone else. 

Hell knew that perverted ass couldn’t last that long without good dick.

Maybe he’d even been fucking him before this whole shitshow went down. 

Stolas offered to open a portal home for Loona, or for her to stay the night at the palace. 

To Blitzø’s surprise, Loona refused. After Stolas left, she pulled up a chair beside the bed and reached for his hand. “I told you I’d be here,” she said. “But you better wake up, you dumb motherfucker.”

Floating behind her, he corrected, “Daddyfucker.”

Notes:

Don't worry.

Chapter Three returns to the Blitz from Chapter One.

Chapter 3

Notes:

Chapter One Blitz is back baby

Blitzø woke up in an unfamiliar room, which wasn’t super odd. He didn’t usually fall asleep after dicking down strangers but it had happened before. This place was unusually fancy. The ceilings were at least three stories high and Blitzø was pretty sure he could see a bathroom from where he was laying. 

He rolled over to see who his bed partner was, only it was empty. What kind of demon left a fucking stranger in their bedroom?

Slowly, Blitzø pushed himself up and found he was still more clothed than he usually was after sex. His body ached, but not in the good post-sex way. More like he drank too much or cried himself to sleep, or both. 

As the memory of the night before trickled in, Blitzø wanted to lay back down but he probably needed to text Loona. He at least needed to let her know not to shower until they fixed the light fixture. He leaned over the too-tall bed to look for his phone and saw Stolas on the floor, asleep.

“The fuck?” he asked.

Stolas snapped awake, rushing to his feet. He swayed, eyes darting across Blitzø’s body. “What? What is it?” he asked. 

“What are you stressed for? You got the mob after you or something?” Blitzø asked. He hopped off the bed and headed for the bathroom. “And why were you on the floor?”

He could hear Stolas follow behind him, but stop at the doorway so he could have some semblance of privacy while pissed. 

“I—” The prince yawned. “I didn’t want to leave you alone.” 

Blitzø snorted as he gave his dick the appropriate number of shakes. “Thought the reason for giving me my own room meant I got some privacy.” 

Stolas frowned at him when he came out without washing his hands. “After last night, I thought it would be prudent—”

“Yeah, whatever.” Blitzø waved a hand at him. “Where’s my phone?” 

“It’s not whatever.” 

Blitzø walked past him, back toward the bed. He’d dumped his bag on the floor last night before he put on the clothes he wore to bed. He went through the pockets of his pants, turning them inside out. 

Stolas was still talking. “…need help.”

“I need my phone. I gotta text Loona,” he said and crouched down to go through the rest of his clothes

Opening a drawer on the nightstand beside the bed, Stolas retrieved his phone and handed it to him. “I’ve already been in contact with her.”

Blitzø snatched it from him and hurried to put in his passcode. “The fuck do you mean you talked to her?! You said you wouldn’t!”

Stolas folded his arms and half-glared at him. “Give me more credit. I merely told her you were staying at the Palace and that I would be sending someone to fix the light in the shower.” 

Blitzø returned the glare threefold. Not finding any messages to Loona in his phone, he shook the device at Stolas. “How did you get her number? Did you hack my phone or something? And what kind of shit makes it your business to make repairs in my home?” 

Stolas groaned and rubbed his face. “I am glad to see you’re feeling better. Would you like breakfast or would you prefer to continue screeching at me?”

Fine. Blitzø bent down, shoving the rest of his clothes back into the bag. “Just open a portal. I’m late for work anyway.” 

“No.”

He swung around to face Stolas. “The fuck did you say to me?”

Stolas was still watching him with a look that was half-exhaustion and half-frustration. “You tried to kill yourself yesterday. You shouldn’t be going to work.” 

“I don’t care. Open the portal.”

“No.”

“Are you telling me I’m your fucking prisoner right now?”

Stolas hesitated and picked at his talons. “Well, no.” 

“Then I’m going to work,” Blitzø said and finished putting his clothes in the bag. He zipped the bag and slung it over his shoulder. 

“It’s not the best course of action,” Stolas said. “You should at least take a day to—”

“I don’t want to ‘take a day.’ I want to work.”

“Blitzø.”

“Stolas,” he said back sarcastically. 

Stolas sighed. “Will you at least return here this evening?”

Blitzø rolled his eyes. “Loona will probably be home tonight.”

“And if she isn’t?”

It was really fucking uncomfortable the way Stolas wouldn’t look away from him. “Fine. Maybe,” he answered. “But no sleeping on my floor. This is my room.”

The smallest smile curved on Stolas’s face. “Of course. Thank you.”

Fuck him. “The portal.”

Stolas opened the portal to his apartment. Loona was already awake and she glared at him as he stepped through. As soon as the portal closed, she snapped, “Why’d you have your revolver in the bathroom?”

Blitzø dropped his bag and went to the closet to grab his suit. “Did Stolas tell you that?” he asked, putting his arms through the sleeves of his turtleneck and doing up the buttons.

“No. The smell of gunpowder does.”

Ah. Well. Shit. “Just an accident. You ready for work?” he asked her, taking extra time to find his pants so he didn’t have to look at the way she was probably judging him. 

“Unlike you, I actually like to brush my teeth,” she said and pulled her phone out. She tapped away on it. “Oh and I need to take a leak and brush my hair.”

Blitzø huffed and stripped off his shorts before he pulled his pants on. When he finished, he opened the door to the bathroom and looked in. A puddle had formed on the floor underneath the broken light, and glass from the bulb glinted in it. An occasional spark still hopped from the frayed wire in the ceiling. He flipped off the light switch. 

It was probably safe…

But, when he looked back at Loona, he already knew he wasn’t gonna risk something happening to her. 

Fucking dammit. 

“Stolas said we could stay at the Palace until it's fixed.”

Loona looked up from her phone, surprised. “What’s the catch?”

Blitzø shrugged. “Nothing? You’d still get to have your own room.”

There was a beat where Loona gave him a once over, complete with a sniff. Then she went back to her phone. “You guys talking again?”

He didn’t exactly have an answer to that so he just went to the couch and pulled on his boots. “You want to stop and get coffee?” he asked her, already knowing the answer. 

***

After work, Blitzø begrudgingly drove to the Palace. Once there, he realized he had no fucking clue which room he had stayed in but he wasn’t gonna say that. 

He opened the front door and walked in with an air of arrogance and please-say-shit-so-I-can-fight- shit face. The butler didn’t say anything but he did offer to take their bags. He was a small but sturdy piece of shit. Blitzø had once seen him get squished by Stella as he held the phone and she held him. 

Fuck yeah. He dropped his into the waiting arms. Loona dropped hers on his head. The butler trembled under the weight but kept a straight face. He walked them down a hallway opposite of Stolas’s, near the kitchen. He knew where the fucking kitchen was. 

The imp butler opened one of the doors besides Octavia and motioned for them to walk in. Blitzø was pretty sure this wasn’t the room he’d been in before. There weren’t any feathers on the floor from where Stolas had slept. The beds were made. The bathroom light was off, and Blitzø knew damn well Stolas gave 0 shits about the electric bill.

The butler set Loona’s suitcase down and went to step out of the room with Blitzø’s bag. “Enjoy your stay, Miss,” he said with a little bow.

Blitzø heard Loona mumble, “Place is fucking huge” as he said, “You need anything else? No?”

She waved at him dismissively. 

He stepped back out with the butler and followed him down the hall. It was only once they were halfway there, when the other doors stopped and there were really only paintings, Blitzø said, “Are you shitting me? Are you taking me to Stolas’s room?”

The butler faltered and paused, “You-You always stay there.”

“I don’t always fucking stay there,” Blitzø snapped with his arms folded. This was such fucking bullshit. If Stolas had actually given him a room, the other staff would’ve known about it by now.

The butler looked at him wide-eyed and then tried to backtrack, “You…You are correct, I suppose. You haven’t stayed here in quite a-a while.”

If that wasn’t the most embarrasing fucking thing…His fucking fuckbuddy hadn’t wanted to be fucked by him in the longest time and everyone knew it and now he was here again, and everyone thought he was there to fuck Stolas to pay good on his debt. 

“Yeah, well, newsflash, he said we could stay here while our apartment is repaired.” Which wasn’t all technically a lie. Blitzø was pretty sure Stolas would’ve said yes if he had actually asked. 

The butler nodded and pointed at the door. “And you do not wish to stay with His Highness?” 

Blitzø glared at him.

The butler put his finger down. “In that case let me show you the rooms available.”

Blitzø chose one at the end of the hallway by the kitchen. He was going to choose the one right next to Loona but he heard her growl as he approached.

The little room he chose was nice. It looked almost exactly like Loona’s room and whatever room he’d stayed in. This one had the same gaudy wallpaper as Stolas’s bedroom but it also had a sofa and a TV. 

Blitzø dropped his bag by the door and laid out on the sofa. The remote lay on an oblong coffee table made of a literal tree trunk—some expensive looking shit too—and Blitzø swiped the clicker up with his tail.

The TV was bitchin’ and had hundreds of channels and all the subscription apps, even ones he hadn’t heard of. He was scrolling through it—how was there still nothing good on?—when he received a text from Stolas.

Stols: I have been told you and Loona arrived a few moments ago. Make yourself at home. 

Blitzø didn’t text back. Instead, he fell asleep with his boots on on the couch like he would’ve at home. Which wasn’t a waste of a perfectly good room at all. 

Notes:

Alternate timelines if you haven't guessed already

Chapter 4

Being a ghost fucking sucked. He couldn’t get anyone’s attention. He couldn’t eat anything or drink himself stupid or fuck anyone—or anything.

He couldn’t even sleep. 

Blitzø spent the night watching Loona sit next to him and play on her phone. He watched the way her eyes flickered to his body every five minutes, the way her ears tuned in to the monitors. Every time he had to get blood drawn from his IV, she held his hand and told him to be brave. 

Like he said he would at her upcoming Hellbies shot. Aw fuck. He was such a fucking asshole. He couldn't have just waited like two more months? He had to be that much of an asshole to her? 

After the ward got quiet, she played videos that he would’ve liked; clips of horses, Pirates of the Caribbean, a few videos she had secretly taken of the two of them together. She played Spirit. She texted Bee and Tex. She laid her head on his palm. She didn’t call Moxxie ‘fatty’ in their group messages. She watched the rise and fall of his chest.

He tried to figure out how to get back in there, tried laying down on his own body, diving head first into his own head. 

Nothing. 

Early in the morning, a portal opened and Stolas returned. Loona was still awake. Her eyes turned to him only for a moment. Stolas nodded and checked in with doctors and nurses. 

The owl looked like shit. Dark rings surrounded each eye and he wore loose clothes, sweatpants and a t-shirt, looking the opposite of royalty with his feathers poking up at strange angles. He leaned against the nurse’s station as he put Blitzø under the Ars Goetia account, which was fucking crazy. 

Crazy that the Ars Goetia had an account when they were literally never sick. And because he was paying for Blitzø, the messy motherfucker that Stolas hadn’t wanted to see for two months. 

Stolas returned to the room briefly, asking if he could get anything for Loona from the cafeteria. She shrugged, remaining rooted to his bedside so Blitzø followed Stolas’s ass.

The cafeteria was bright with fluorescent lights and fake plants. It was two floors down in the basement of the hospital. Stolas ordered two coffees. He grabbed a handful of creams and sugars, sticking them in his pockets. 

For a long time, he stood by a refrigerator with pre-made sandwiches, staring into it. His pupils moved back and forth but there was a glazed look in his eye like he was seeing something that wasn’t there. 

“Hey,” Blitzø said, trying to get his attention. 

Stolas’s blank expression fell into a frown that only got deeper. “I don’t understand why the fuck…” Stolas murmured. 

Blitzø floated next to him, pretty sure he wasn’t talking about the sandwiches. “It was a lot of shit. And I’m just…just tired of being in the way.”

Stolas blinked and reached out, flinging open the refrigerator door, and Blitzø flinched as it went through him. Stolas took a plastic-wrapped sandwich out without looking at what it was and brought it over to the register. 

When he got back to the hospital room, he handed Loona the sandwich. She unwrapped it, took a bite, and set it down. Stolas took a seat opposite her. 

Fuck. This was some boring shit. 

---

M&M had arrived and fussed over him. And Moxxie…

Blitzø had expected Moxxie to talk shit at him or scold him even though he was in a coma. Instead, Moxxie had turned on Stolas, blaming him and shouting at him. Loona had tried to stop him with a few half-hearted threats. 

But even she had let Moxxie berate Stolas on playing with Blitzø’s feelings, on his behavior at Ozzie’s. 

“Yes, he is a stubborn jackass with poor social skills and nonexistent boundaries. He stalked us—when I explicitly, explicitly told him not to. But he also stood up for us in his own uncultured, misguided way,” Moxxie had said in that little room. 

Fixing his bowtie, Moxxie had stepped closer to Stolas as haughty as only Moxxie could be. “And we saw you, Your Highness. We saw King Asmodeus confront you and you didn't even try to defend him.”

Stolas had opened his mouth, had clenched his hands into fists. After a moment of tense silence, Stolas had said, “I’m sorry.”

The Prince of Hell had risen from his seat and bowed deeply to the imps. “I regret much from that night,” he'd said, which probably meant he regretted even accepting the invite. 

Fuck, Blitzø regretted asking him. 

Stolas had left the room for a long time after that. Millie and Moxxie had fussed over Blitzø with Millie trying to get some plants and fresh air in the room. Moxxie had questioned every nurse and doctor about any piece of information on him. 

There had been no change to his condition.

The couple had attempted to keep Loona company, had left and returned with food for Loona, had gone again to get plushies from the office. 

They finally left late into the evening to sleep, saying they were going to do what missions they could if Loona could still handle the portals from here. 

Only after they left had Stolas returned, looking like more shit than ever.

Stolas had taken a seat and leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs. He spoke earnestly to Loona. “I have only recently realized that our deal was narrow-minded. I had not wished to continue to inconvenience him,” he said.

Well, that explained why Stolas had been canceling their meetups. The owl had realized he wasn’t getting enough from Blitzø and apparently couldn’t get enough. Sounded like Stolas had been on the verge of canceling the whole shebang but Blitzø had beat him to the punch.

Stolas kept speaking even though Loona just tapped away on her phone. “I…I was trying to minimize the pressure I was putting on him. I wasn’t ashamed—”

Loona sucked her teeth suddenly. “What a way to show it,” she said under her breath.

“Pardon?”

Loona rolled her eyes. Blitzø tried waving his hands in front of her face to get her attention. Weren’t dogs supposed to sense ghosts? 

When the waving didn’t work, he tried to cover her mouth to keep the words from coming out but they did anyway. 

“I don’t really know what happened between you guys,” Loona was saying, her ears turned in Stolas's direction. “But I know he’s been fucked up about it. He keeps looking at his phone like he’s waiting for it to explode every time it rings. And then it doesn’t and he just…"

She waved a hand in front of her mouth. "He makes this fucking face like he's trying to be happy, but he's trying way too fucking hard."

Stolas massaged his eyes as if he had a headache. “Perhaps thinking I would hold what he said against him.” 

“Well didn’t you?” Loona still held her phone but it was loose in her hands, almost resting on the bed. 

Blitzø floated close to Loona, trying to tether himself to her, not wanting to hear the answer—if Stolas even answered honestly. 

The owl sat up straighter. “While what he said was jarring, it was not untrue.”

Oh yeah. That fucking stung. 

“Though it is not how I wish our arrangement was, it is how he sees it. He made that incredibly clear.”

Loona set the phone down completely. “Blitzø told you how he feels?”

Fuck. 

Fuck. 

Fuck.

Blitzø tried everything, tried pulling the plug on his wires and shaking the IV pole, yanking Loona’s tail. He tried running back and forth through Stolas and pressing all the buttons on his fancy bed-remote.

Stolas had a brow raised; an oncoming train wreck. “Well…he told me his impressions of my feelings. But I took some time to reflect and I…I didn’t realize how miserable my company actually made him.”

What?

Sure Stolas was a pain in the ass sometimes like when he called at the worst times, but Blitzø was hardly miserable when they were together. 

Loona leaned forward in her chair and flicked her tail. "But did he tell you that?"

Stolas met her gaze. "Not in so many words. No. But every photo I have with him…he's clearly so unhappy to be there." 

Loona frowned and looked at Blitzø's body. "Give me his fucking phone," she said.

"What?" Stolas asked. Despite that, he was already taking it out of his pocket. 

Which was kinda okay. It was better that Loona have his phone than Stolas. 

Except when Stolas handed it over, Loona unlocked it and clicked on the pictures app. Blitzø fell through her lap trying to yank it away. 

She threw the phone back at Stolas and he—unfortunately—caught it.

“I found him passed out after a shitty night a few months back,” she said and touched the back of his hand. “He had that still on his screen.”

Oh Satan. Oh fuck no. 

Please.

Please let him die. 

Horrified. He was horrified. He couldn't face Stolas. Instead, he shouted at Looney even though he knew she couldn't hear him. How could she do this to him? 

“I…I don't understand,” Stolas said. 

Of course he didn't fucking understand. Blitzø was a glorified sex toy. A sex toy wasn't supposed to have romantic feelings. 

Loona shrugged. “Via said you've been kind of a mess lately.”

Blitzø finally worked up the nerve to turn to look at Stolas. His white pupils shone, focused on the phone he had cradled in his large hands. 

He didn't look angry. Just maybe confused and a little sad. 

“But,” Stolas said. “It always seems like such a hassle for him.”

Loona belted a laugh. “That fucking shithead. He's a little bitch. He plays hard to get.”

No, I don't! Blitzø wanted to shout at her. At both of their asses.

“Trust me,” Loona said. “He does what he wants to. If he kept going over there, it was because he wanted to.”

Stolas continued to stare at the phone and Blitzø could see from the movements of his fingers that he was zooming in on something. 

“I don’t understand,” Stolas said again. “If that was true, why didn’t he respond to my messages? Why didn’t come over last night?”

Loona blinked and her tail bristled. “Why would he? You canceled.”

“I didn’t cancel!” Stolas exclaimed.

Which was fucking false. 

“Yes, you did,” Loona said. “He said you said you didn’t need the book and that he didn’t need to come over.”

Stolas flexed the talons on his hands and clenched his jaw in a frustrated motion. “Well, yes. But only because I didn’t want to pressure him.”

“Gonna get to the bottom of your shit right now.” Abruptly, Loona stood, knocking her chair over. She stomped over to him and ripped Blitzø’s phone out of his hands. Blitzø watched as she went to the messages and read through them. 

“Fucking idiots, both of you assholes,” she mumbled and turned the phone around to Stolas. “He doesn’t think you’re being considerate. He thinks you’re trying to tell him, nicely, to fuck off.”

“But I’m not!” Stolas’s feathers raised and his face turned slightly red. “I even said right here—”

“That doesn’t fucking matter. You’ve never said that shit before. Don’t give me that face. I’ve heard your phone calls,” she growled at him. 

Stolas snapped his beak shut. 

Loona shoved Blitzø’s phone back in his hands—which fuck him, he couldn’t catch a break. Had he really read those texts wrong? It would’ve been just his luck and now he fucked things up between them worse.

“Be him for second for fuck’s sake,” she said. “You get in some fucking fight with your guy—who used to call you all the fucking time, who used to be so far up your ass that you couldn’t breathe without him knowing—suddenly that guy isn’t calling you anymore. Then, the night you’re supposed to come over to see him, your guy goes ‘oh, you don’t have to come if you don’t want’. Like what the fuck was that supposed to mean?”

“Not how he took it!” 

“Obviously!” Loona shouted, motioning back to his body. “Fuck!” She kicked over the rolling table next to the bed and stomped out of the room. 

Blitzø started to follow her, to keep her company, when Stolas called his name. He half-turned, expecting to see Stolas just standing over his body. 

And he was, standing there. He was holding Blitzø’s hand, running his thumb over the scarred back of his hand. But Stolas was looking in his fucking direction. 

“Can you actually fucking see me?!” Blitzø shouted, excited, wanting to scream. Even though that meant that Stolas had probably seen every expression during that embarrassing conversation. 

Stolas’s mouth was set in a thin line. He didn’t acknowledge what Blitzø had said or the fact that he’d waved. Instead Stolas looked back down at Blitzø’s body and squeezed his hand. “I…I thought I saw you earlier. I don’t know if…That probably sounds insane.”

“No,” Blitzø said. 

Stolas made no moves, no idea that he’d heard him. Maybe he couldn’t? How the fuck had Stolas seen him the first time?

Blitzø drew closer his tail feathers and tried to yank on them again. The feathers slipped through his fingers without even the smallest grip. 

Stolas continued, “I…wanted to ask you not to stray too far from your body…if you are here. Unlike sinners, there is nothing after death. Once you are gone, you are gone.” He lifted his head to look at the heart monitor as it beeped steadily. 

Well that was ominous.

Blitzø floated over to the monitor, to the wires attached to his arms and his head. He’d already tried changing that shit before. What worked in those fucking movies? Opening cabinets and doors? Turning random lights on?

He floated up examining the fluorescent lights that burned into even his dead eyes. Maybe turning them off worked? He was about to start trying to unscrew them or just break them in half. 

Stolas’s voice trembled. “I also wanted to tell you how sorry I am for that night and…and the mess that this has become.”

Shit. It sounded like Stolas was gonna cry. 

Blitzø flung his hands through the light fixture to the bulb inside. He didn’t touch the wire, he couldn’t, but the glass around it fogged and chilled. Suddenly, it cracked and a spark flew on the wire, shattering the tube. 

Stolas flinched, half-shifting into his eldritch form, spreading his wings over Blitzø’s prone form. He lifted his head toward the falling sparks and cried out—a half-deep screech, a mixture of Stolas and bird. His eyes widened and his maw hung open.

The owl shrank back to himself on the opposite side of the bed. His pupils darted about for a few seconds before they winked out. “Blitzø?”

Stolas stepped forward, raising a hand. Blitzø dropped down around it, frantically attempting to grasp his outstretched palm. His fingers slipped through. 

For the first fucking time since the gunshot, he actually felt like crying. He didn’t just feel like a piece of shit because he’d fucked up. He wasn’t just sorry for himself. 

No. 

As he tried again and again to touch Stolas, he felt a hollowness fill his chest. Just as soon as the idea had come—that he wasn’t alone in this strange between place—it had also gone.

Stolas had seen him, somehow and so very briefly. And Blitzø desperately wanted to be known again. His fingers continued to ghost through Stolas’s hand and the other made no signs of sensing him. What was worse, Blitzø couldn’t feel the roughness of his palm or the slide of his feathers. 

There was nothing but air. No heat. No body warmth. No pressure. 

Stolas lowered his hand. 

Even as his chest cracked and broke open with a sob, Blitzø noticed there were no tears. Not even wetness on his cheeks.

Chapter 5

Notes:

For those only following this story, my health is trash.

Got a blood got (ooh it's special and rare) and then found out the blood is also special and needs a different anticoagulant.

This chapter is short because I want to keep the switches between POVs separate chapters. Good news is next chap should be up soon.

Blitzø woke up to the smell of Stolas’s lilac perfume and the feel of him slipping off his boots. With his face still pressed into the couch cushions, Blitzø grumbled, “Fuck are you doing?”

“Getting you ready for bed,” Stolas answered. The second boot made a noise as the buckle of it knocked against the first. 

Blitzø yawned and turned his head to the side , staring at the black screen of the TV. Either Stolas had turned it off or it was one of those smart things that realized you stopped watching after some time. 

“Can do it myself,” he said belatedly, wiggling his legs over the edge of the couch.

Obviously Stolas disagreed and lifted him from up under his arms as if he were a cat. He turned him over and cradled him as he carried him to the bed. 

“You should rest properly,” Stolas said, flicking back the bedsheets with a magic hand. He set Blitzø in the center of the bed, and started talking about dinner and how if he’d like some it can be brought up or he can come down to the kitchen. 

Belatedly, Blitzø kicked his hooves under the sheets and then rubbed them together in a little comfy ritual not quite awake. He was tempted to tell Stolas to just bring the food, but then the ass started in on “if you ever need someone to talk to—”

Blitzø sat up in bed, tail whipping the sheet nearly off of himself in agitation. “Gonna stop ya right there. You made it pretty clear the last couple of months that you don’t want to talk to me.”

The bitch had the nerve to look surprised with his hand over his heart. “What? I-I don’t understand.”

Sure, like those texts hadn’t been obvious enough. Like freezing him out. Like dropping the Blitzy.

“So don’t fucking worry about having to talk to me. As soon as the bathroom is fixed we’ll get out of your feathers,” Blitzø said, shoving the feelings down that were stuffed up inside him. How dare he? How fucking…

Blitzø laid back down in a huff and rolled away from Stolas. There was a quiet release of air, just the smallest sigh. The door shut and he was alone. 

He awoke in the middle of the night hungry and thirsty, and uncomfortable in his day clothes. He rose without stiffness and tugged off his work clothes, tossing them on the floor. Clad only in his boxers, he made his way in the dark to the bag he left by the couch and pulled out a t-shirt.

Once dressed, Blitzø made an effort to quietly turn the knob on the door and open it, half-ready to see Stolas waiting there, but the hallway was empty. Thank fuck he chose a room close to the kitchen so he didn’t get lost between in the labyrinth that was the Palace, especially at night. 

Shit, if that happened, he would’ve just given up and found the comfiest place in whatever room until it was light out. 

Blitzø yanked the fridge open—Stolas’s fridge opened smoother than his but it also wasn’t meant to be opened at the very bottom of the handle. He was ready to have to rummage around and find something to eat, but there, on the lowest shelf, was a plate covered in plastic wrap with what looked like dinner: meat and vegetable medley, some brown lumpy stuff and a roll.

Whatever. 

Taking the plastic cling off and balling it in his fist, he balanced the plate on one hand and set it up on the counter. He walked around the kitchen for a minute, pulling open cabinets until he found the one with the trash and dropped the ball of plastic wrap in it. Even though it was larger than their kitchen back at the apartment, Blitzø could tell it probably wasn’t the main kitchen. It didn’t have enough pots and pans for actual cooking, or things like cooking spray. 

Blitzø had only ever seen breakfast food or coffee in the pantry so the dinner plate was…unexpected to say the least. The kitchen even had a little table with a classic breakfast nook. He tugged a chair over to where the microwave was—where all rich people kept their microwaves—above the stove. 

He had to climb on the counter to get it done but he got the plate in there without anything falling off and pushed start. 

“So.”

Loona’s voice nearly startled him into falling off the counter. Luckily, his tail darted out and grabbed a handle of a kitchen cabinet so he only flailed like an idiot for a few seconds.

“Sweetie,” he said when he’d righted himself. “A little warning.” 

“Uh huh.” She stepped out of the hallway and fully into the kitchen in her long sweat pants and an old band sweater he’d given her years ago. It was worn at the sleeves, no longer black but gray and frayed. Loona took a seat on the bench side of the nook. 

He turned back to the microwave and caught it before it hit zero, opening it so it wouldn’t beep over and over in the quiet night. On claw tips, he took his plate out and jumped down to the chair and then down to the floor. He brought both back over to the table and got up ready to eat only to realize he didn’t have silverware so down he went again to search for it. 

It took some time, opening and closing drawer after drawer until he found a knife and a fork. The knife looked too small and the fork too large, but whatever. He got back up, already knowing he had to stand to eat because of the height difference. 

After cutting into the first piece, he took a bite and found it had cooled. Well, maybe he should just reheat the whole thing. He started to set his silverware aside so he could get down and heat up his plate again. 

A hand suddenly pinned his down to the wood. His eyes snapped up to Loona, who glared at him from across the table. She growled low, “Stop fucking fidgeting and eat.”

“It’s cold,” he said back.

She huffed, slipping out of her seat, and snatched his plate. She shoved it on the microwave and pressed it on high. As she stared at the plate turning in the appliance, he stared at her. Her tail was tucked around her and, even though her arms were folded, she sagged against the refrigerator. 

Loona let the microwave beep and he could see the plate steaming when she brought it back to him. She sat across from him again and waited, watching him.

Fine. He watched her back.

Her lips curled, showing her teeth. “What now?” 

“You tell me,” he shot back.

Loona’s eyes narrowed before she leaned back. “What were you doing with your gun in the shower?”

Aw. Fuck.

He picked up his silverware, which was probably real and he could probably steal for good money, and focused on cutting his food. “Told you it was an accident.”

“What kind of accident?” she asked. 

“The gun kind,” he said and shoved a piece of meat in his mouth. Pork. Not surprisingly it was good. Melt-in-your-mouth good. Suck-a-dick-every-day-for-a-week good. He slumped a bit in his chair and stabbed two more cuts onto his overly large fork. 

“Why did your Dick-ness invite us here?”

Blitzø shoved the pork in his mouth and chewed it, mumbling incoherently, knowing it gave him time. 

Loona scowled at him and both her ears turned forward. “What?”

He took his time chewing. “Cause he likes to wave his privilege around,” he said, twirling his fork. Pointing at the brown stuff, he asked, “What is that?”

“Applesauce,” she answered, but didn’t take the bait. “So you told him about the gun accident in the shower?” 

Blitzø hummed and tasted it. He would’ve thought it was gravy, but nope, applesauce. It was chunky and had cinnamon, and was actually pretty fucking good. He should’ve gotten a spoon though. It was hard to get it in his mouth with the fork. 

He moved to the vegetables, stabbing them and swallowing without much thought. Loona was still waiting, watching his reactions. He was taking too long. He either had to say something plausible or double down and say nothing. 

Without his permission, his fork screeched across his plate and he winced. Ugh. “He…uh…He came over. He was worried about it.”

Loona laid her ears back and looked past him to the hallway. “Octavia said the same thing.”

“That’s some fucking shit.”

“Blitzø…” she chastised.

“No,” he complained. “Stolas doesn’t need to be running his mouth, especially to his fucking kid.”

Loona’s long claws drummed on the table as she considered that hallway. “I don’t think he meant to or really even did. She said she saw the light on in one of the guest rooms in this wing last night when she got up to get water, and then this afternoon she said he just seemed…off.”

That wasn’t his business. Blitzø finished his vegetables and went back to his applesauce. He lifted the plate and opened his mouth wide, letting the brown sludge slide in. It was warm in his throat and the sweetness burned. 

“She found him crying in his room.”

Blitzø choked on his food, almost dropping the plate back onto the table. He hacked and coughed, and felt the weight of Loona’s eyes on him as his own watered. He was left to pound on his own chest. 

His daughter placed her hands on the table and leaned forward. Blitzø never shrank back from her. Never. So he let her get close and tried to muffle his coughing behind his arms until she was inches away from him. 

She examined his face, her eyes lingering too long on his cheek. 

“You wanna tell me what really happened?” she asked.

He studied her face. Even in just five years, she’d changed so much. “No,” he answered quietly. “Sorry, sweetie, but no.”

Getting down from the chair, Blitzø headed from his room, stopping only to ask her to put his dishes in the sink. 

Chapter 6

Notes:

Another short chapter.

Celebrate the latest gif. As you can see writing has actually slowed, health is not good.

I like writing though.

The glass had been cleaned and the lightbulb replaced within the hour, no doubt because Stolas was there. 

When Loona came back, she stalked into the room, glared at Stolas, and sat vigil next to Blitzø’s body as she had been for the last 48 hours. 

It wasn’t long after that that she laid her on her hands and fell asleep. Blitzø floated around her, trying to stroke her hair and be next to her. 

And just…

Fuck.

He was sorry. 

He wasn’t supposed to…like he should’ve at least thought it out better. What if she had come home and been the one to find him? 

Across the room, Stolas sat in a chair bent over the rolling desk that was supposed to be used as a patient table to eat on. He had several books stacked on one side and pages of notes on the other. 

Before Loona had come in, before the custodian had come to fix the bulb, Stolas had said to his body, “I’ve seen you. I don’t know if anything can be done, but I’ll do what I can.” 

Blitzø had tried to read the notes he wrote but very little of it made sense. There was some stuff about some asshole Dante and his inferno, and parallel universes crap but there were also some cool, creepy stories like this one lady who said she saw herself get her heart jumped back to life with paddles as she floated over her own body. 

Stolas looked fucking beat to shit though. His eyes had deep circles under them and he rested his head on the palm of hand like it was the only thing holding him up. The reds of his eyes had dimmed as he read over the next thing. 

Every so often, when his eyelids dropped, he would prop himself back up and tap on his phone screen. At first Blitzø thought he was just checking the time or the day or if Octavia had sent any messages. 

But, one time, when he floated over to read over Stolas’s shoulder, the owl had fallen asleep again. His head had slipped off his palm, barely missing the table before he pulled himself up and tapped the screen.

And Blitzø saw that his picture, the one he’d secretly taken of the two of them, had become Stolas’s lockscreen.

Because, of course.

What the fuck was he supposed to do with that information?

Blitzø hovered reading more fucking ghost stories as fast as he could, catching only parts, as Stolas turned page after page like it was a speed reading competition. He could try the electric shit with the lights again, but that wouldn’t get him back in his body. 

From what he could read, other demons just seemed to “wake up” after a doctor fixed whatever the fuck was wrong with them, or some random amount of time went by. 

Eventually, the exhaustion won out and Stolas laid his head on the desk, and didn’t pick it up again for hours. 

Loona woke up first and Blitzø found himself curling around her. She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips, up and over her brows, down to her gums. Then she opened her eyes and stared at his form on the bed for a long time and exhaled a long sigh, breathing out a quiet whine. 

She picked up her phone and started typing, frowning as she went, going through page after page. Fuck, she scrolled nearly as fast as Stolas. Something about helping coma patients wake up. Now see. His Looney was on the right path. 

“Hey,” she said suddenly.

At the other end of the room, Stolas’s head shot up, a paper stuck to it. “Yes?”

“Need a portal home,” she grumbled. “Leave it open.”

Stolas blinked, sitting up straighter. The paper fluttered to the floor. “Of course. Anything you need. Stay clear of the construction please.”

Construction? What in the fuck did Stolas think he was…

A portal rippled open, purple and beautiful. Their apartment lay on the other side. Some fuckos were in there bumbling around probably touching and stealing their shit, and sitting on his couch. There was the sound of a drill and too much knocking coming from the bathroom. 

No way had Stolas fucked up that much shit. 

Loona rose, cracking her back and stretching her legs before she stepped through. She went straight to his couch, pulling up his cushions and shit, which was totally unnecessary because he had stuff in there. 

Blitzø started to follow after her, had just touched the portal, when Stolas shouted. 

“Don’t!” His pupils flitted the length of it. “I don’t—I know you’re there. Please just wait…I have some leads and—”

Loona stepped back through the portal, through Blitzø. Her arms were full of shit like his horse blanket and his Spirit plushie! Blitzø tried making a dive for it, wanting it, forgetting he wasn’t anything anymore, and went through Loona again as she crossed the room to the hospital bed. He tumbled past his own body and almost through the wall. 

She totally felt nothing and narrowed her eyes at Stolas. “Who are you talking to?”

A squeaking noise came from the owl’s mouth as he stared at her in half-panic. Blitzø circled Loona and came back around, studying the objects in her hands as she shifted them to the chair. 

“I was speaking to Blitzø,” he said hesitantly and motioned to the bed. “It is supposed to be good for patients like this.” 

Loona’s frown softened and she turned back to the bed. “So are smells,” she said, pulling the shitty hospital blanket off his body and putting his horse blanket on. 

Stolas hummed and turned back to the notes on his desk. Loona put the Spirit plushie next to his head. He’d hugged that little shit so many times, cried into it, drank with it, spilled coffee on it, and just slept on it. Next Loona uncorked his emergency bottle of his favorite whiskey that he kept stashed under the couch and dipped her individual claws in, flicking the liquid on Blitzø’s face.

Even across the room, Stolas recoiled from the smell. “Aren’t you going a little overboard?”

But something in Blitzø’s mind trembled, some weird buzzing like a cellphone on vibrate had been implanted in his head. Suddenly, he felt more untethered than before like he was dissolving, like he was circling a fucking drain and getting sucked away. 

And, as quick as the gunshot had been, he suddenly found himself staring at the blur of a white paneled ceiling. 

“Dad!”

A glass bottle shattered, echoed, crunched. 

The smell of whisky grew in the air, overpowering, heavy, too much. Burned. Stung his eyes. 

Something fell over with a bang. “Blitzø?!”

He squeezed his eyes shut and turned away. Coughed. 

“Water. We should—Water!”

Rough hands hoisted him up to sit. 

And then Blitzø was back, floating, watching Loona hold him under his arms, shake him, shout at him. Stolas had come back with water in time to see the heart monitor spike and Blitzø pass out, in time to lose his absolute shit and abuse his royal power to get a neurosurgeon in the room within five minutes. 

What happened wasn’t uncommon for coma patients. It was good news actually that he had regained any sort of consciousness for any length of time. They had probably moved him too fast, caused his blood pressure to drop and he lost consciousness before slipping back into the coma. 

Despite Loona trying again with more whiskey, Blitzø wasn’t pulled back into his body again. When she tried to light a cigarette in the room, the senior nurse on staff shouted at her and not even Stolas could interfere with that so Loona set the open package near his face. After nothing again, she had Stolas open another portal and—much to his horror—brought back one of his pistols.

“No!” Stolas stood up and his feathers rose. “I do not care if—”

Loona rolled his eyes. “It is literally his job. You’re not gonna let him do his job when he wakes up?”

Stolas opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and said decisively, “Yes.”

Loona tipped back her head and laughed long and hard. When she was done, she wiped a tear from her eye. “Not bad, old man,” she said and started to disassemble the piece, which she was never very good at. 

She pulled up a seat and set each piece next to him. Stolas hovered by her anxiously and Blitzø tried to point out how she needed to push down on safety before she just removed the firing pin. Ugh. She was gonna break it. It was only like his fifth favorite. 

But Loona managed to get it out and started to properly clean the pieces with his favorite gun oil and the raggedy gun cloth they used at the house. 

And, fuck, if that didn’t smell good. He leaned toward it, burned inside himself, placed his hands over hers, and pretended to go through the motion until it was clean and reassembled. 

It didn’t do what Loona probably wanted it to do, but it made Blitzø feel like part of his fucking life again. 

Millie and Moxxie called in early the next morning and asked Loona to open a portal to the human world. Blitzø watched as she stretched, having slept with her upper body hanging over his hospital bed. She mumbled something about her ass hurting and rolled her eyes over Stolas who looked worse than the day before, just a mass of feathers. He hadn’t even woken up to the phone call, his face was pressed into the desk. 

“Birdass,” she called. 

Stolas groaned into his pile of papers, but didn’t lift his head. 

Loona cracked her neck and put the phone on speaker. “The couple to asshat’s throuple need me to get the book so Dad keeps his company.”

All four of his eyes were closed, but Stolas waved a hand and opened a portal to the office and Loona retrieved the Grimoire. Hours turned by slowly. Nurses came to record his vitals and do embarrassing shit like change the piss bag from the catheter shoved up his dick. 

Blitzø hovered. Loona took a shower in the hospital room and finally got clean clothes from their apartment. Stolas ordered a single meal to the room for both of them and hardly ate any of it. 

M&M called again to be returned to the office. Stolas asked to borrow his own fucking book from Loona when she was done. 

Blitzø wanted to shove his head through a fucking wall. 

As Loona brushed out her tail, she let it lay across his hand atop of the horse blanket like she sometimes did when they watched movies together. She’d scrubbed deep with her favorite shampoo this time because the smell of cigarettes had faded, leaving almost a wet puppy scent. 

And, oddly, he could feel her. Not from where he floated next to her, but like a weird third appendage. The silky hairs moved over the palm of the hand of the body on the bed. Her fur was warm and damp. 

He tried not to startle her—didn’t want the sensation to leave—so he moved through the room, floating around her, until he was sitting almost atop his own body.

Very gently, he focused on closing his real hand as much as he could, holding on to her. 

At first, Loona stilled, her fingers twitching as she squeezed her brush. Underneath the brush, her tail moved minutely as if testing to see whether it had only gotten stuck or if it would be released. Blitzø kept a hold on it. 

When she realized he’d caught her, she set the brush aside with more care than he’d even ever seen her set aside her phone. 

“Hey, Dad,” she whispered, placing her other hand over his, cocooning her tail between their hands.

He squeezed as hard as he could. Which didn’t translate to much in the end, just more of a curl of his claws for a few seconds, but she got the hint apparently. 

“Yeah, don’t get used to it ass face. I’m real pissed at you.” 

Of course she was. She deserved to be. He tried to give her a bunch of short squeezes like Morse code except he forgot a lot of how it went because he only learned things like DTF to annoy Moxxie. 

Loona tilted her head. She cast a sideways glance at Stolas who was deep in the Grimoire across the room before she said to him, “I’m not going anywhere if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He wasn’t really.

Like she should probably go rest at home and he knew she wasn’t moving out at the moment—she got free room and board. But she didn’t need him or want him. So eventually she would leave.

Loona squeezed his hand tighter. “If you needed me to stay home that night, you should’ve said something.”

How in the fuck had she reached that conclusion?

Stolas’s pen had stopped moving across the page of whatever he was writing but he kept his head down, eyes turned to the desk.

Loona kneaded the muscle of his hand, tracing over where the scar tissue met his fingers. “Thought you wanted me to go…”

She paused and growled, grinding the heel of her palm into the bridge of her nose. “That’s not even fucking true. I just didn’t know what to do and I didn’t want to think about it and I thought…I thought you’d be fine. Maybe I would come home to you smelling like skank-ass shark and regret again, but not this shit.”

The whole time she never let his hand go though. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault at all. It had never been her fault. And if it hadn’t been that time, then it would’ve been the next time another night when she’d gone out and his thoughts got to him and he’d lost the game of Roulette.

It was him.

It was never her. 

He was the toxic one. 

He was the problem. 

Blitzø wanted to hold her, to drive out the worries she had. He tried to squeeze her hand, but the effort was starting to fail him. He clung to her smell, driving it deep into his lungs, and made the biggest motion he could. 

He squeezed her tail and yanked it. In the bed, his wrist only flickered upward, barely moving, not even completing the desired movement, but Loona figured it out. 

She sniffed and rubbed her snout. “Really?” she asked him with a smirk, ignoring the glassiness of her eyes. “You don’t wanna quit while you’re ahead?” 

Blitzø wanted to say yes or to squeeze her again, but the feeling of her fur on his hand was already fading.

“Ugh,” Loona groaned, pretending to be offended. “But make some space.” 

Gingerly, she climbed onto the bed and laid beside him, letting him continue to hold her tail. The smell of her close, of her shampoo and deodorant and their cheap laundry detergent, flooded him. He laid into his own body, settling awkwardly and finally felt her heat against his whole side. 

He couldn’t move his limbs, couldn’t open his eyes, but he could feel her next to him. 

“Go to sleep,” she said to him, the vibration of her chest against his. “You gotta get better so I can kick your ass.” 

Chapter 7

Blitzø woke up face down on the fancy bed in his fancy new room at the Palace. His alarm screamed at him from the nearby nightstand. He groaned in that blissful half-awake space where the only next thing was shutting that fucking thing off and trying to catch whatever wisp of a dream was there before. 

Something about Loona kicking his ass. 

Fuck, that’s right. She’d confronted him in the kitchen last night and, what was that shit about Stolas crying?

Because his favorite sex toy was almost broken? 

Stumbling out of bed—cause fuck all that morning thinking before coffee, Blitzø stripped and got into the working shower. The water didn’t even need fifteen minutes to heat up and the water pressure was excellent, striking him in the chest. Wasn’t even that hard shit, felt like rain in the human world, soft and rolling down him in waves. 

He stared up at the showerhead. This one looked a lot different than the one in his shitty apartment. Clean. Silver. Huge with a hose and fourteen thousand settings. There was no rust or hard water stains or questionable mold in the corner. 

Methodically, he reached up to the shelf that was too high for him to see—built for a Goetia—and he fumbled around until he felt a bar of soap, still wrapped in some fancy package. He peeled it open, getting hit in the face with the scent of citrus. 

In the shape of an owl,  the white soap had real flecks of orange peel and lemon zest in it. It was probably organic. Blitzø took a bite.

Gross.

He took another and used it to scrub the inside of his mouth. Probably needed it anyway. With the rest, he actually cleaned his body.

And did not think about the last time he was in the shower. 

Once Blitzø was dry and dressed, he stood by the door and rested his head against it. Outside he could hear Loona and Octavia chatting in the breakfast kitchen, which meant Stolas was probably there too. 

He rocked his head from side-to-side a few times, letting his horns tip him. He just had to go out there and get Loona and go to work. 

With a deep breath, he flung the door open and strode the remainder of the hallway into the kitchen, already calling out, “Good morning, Looney-tooney! Good morning, Octavia!”

The girls sat side-by-side at the table on the bench of the breakfast nook. Loona had her legs stretched out, kicked up on the seat across from her, as she sipped coffee from a mug. Sitting in the corner with her knees drawn up, Octavia ate dumb fucking Greed Seed by the handful and scrolled on her phone. 

Loona’s ear flicked at his greeting and she grunted. Octavia actually looked his way, but her expression didn’t really say “Good morning” as much as it said, “The fuck is your plan here?” 

She continued to stare at him, regarding him with unwavering silence before her phone vibrated and she went back to it. 

Stolas was not in the kitchen. 

Blitzø exhaled a breath. “Time to go,” he said to Loona. “Traffic is gonna be a bitch and a half from here.”

With a grunt, she stood up and tossed back the rest of her coffee in one shot like the crazy woman he knew she was. She stuck out her fist toward Octavia, who bumped it, and then she slid out around the edge of the table. 

All of a sudden, he could hear Stolas’s talons tap tap up the hall. A half-step pause before the walking resumed.

Fuck. 

He’d been spotted before he could even step around the corner. Blitzø spun his car keys on his finger and tried to relax his shoulders. 

All he did was bitch at Stolas last night, nothing new in the grand scheme of things. Hardly the worst shit he’d said to the Prince. 

Blitzø just needed to relax. Confident. Get this shit back on track and keep his dignity. 

“Good morning, all,” Stolas said, entering the kitchen. He brushed past Blitzø without acknowledging him directly, which kind of felt like a bitch move. 

“Morning, Dad,” Octavia responded. 

“Hey,” Loona said to him without looking up as she passed him, heading back to her room. 

The Prince went right to the stove and took the kettle off the warmer as he prepared himself a cup of tea. 

With his back still turned to Blitzø, Stolas said, “Before you two leave, I spoke with the foreman on the crew—”

“The fuck did you hire a whole crew for?” he asked irritably even though he meant to fuck off head after Loona.

Stolas ignored him and the spoon clinked against the tea cup as he stirred. “It’ll take a little longer than expected to finish the repairs. They found mold in the wall of the—”

Going over to the bird, Blitzø yanked his tail feathers, cutting Stolas off. “Tell them to put the wall back on then! It’s fine the way it was.” He jumped up on the counter, almost headbutting the cabinets in front of him, and flailing a bit.

A palm on his lower back, steadying him. 

He ignored it and Stolas dropped his hand. 

Blitzø itched to curl his tail around Stolas’s wrist, to pull him closer. Instead, he grabbed a coffee cup out of the top cupboard. Might as well get something to-go. 

With a sigh, Stolas lifted his tea and brought it over to the table. “Once the ceiling was opened—”

“Why was the ceiling fucking opened?” Blitzø asked as he poured a cup of Hell’s best bean water.

Stolas sat at the table across from Octavia. “To fix the wiring, which the electrician found was not up-to-code.”

Of course it wasn’t. Place was fucking run by a slumlord in Imp City. Blitzø rifled through the cabinets until he found creamer and sugar and honey and every other fucking sweet thing he could stir into his coffee, listening to how the electrical issue led to them opening the wall to fix the outlet and seeing black mold. The mold needed to be inspected and removed. Before the wall could be patched up, wherever the damp was coming from would have to be taken care of so it didn’t grow back. 

“The vents should be cleaned out as well,” Stolas said, rubbing his face. The bags under his eyes were darker than before. 

Blitzø sat on the countertop, letting his legs swing, and took a sip of the coffee. Not half bad. “Don’t waste your money,” he said. “The thing is connected to the whole place. We’ll get clean air for a second and then be breathing in Zuckfuck’s shitty backed up toilet again.”

Stolas groaned, putting his head in both hands.

And then he started to stomp his feet under the table like a child throwing a tantrum. 

“Dad!” Octavia exclaimed, jerking her legs up in horror as if she’d seen a mouse or something. 

“No!” Stolas whined into his hands. “It’s not fair! It’s not!” 

The feathers around the crown of his head flared, rippling out down his body in a shiver until they all stood on end and Stolas curled his talons into fists. 

“Why won’t things just work out the way they should?” Stolas complained. “I don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense.”

Unholy shit, the prince was throwing an honest-to-Satan tantrum. 

Octavia pulled her beanie over her eyes and sunk lower in her seat. 

“I wanted one thing to go right. I have tried so hard. Why is the universe so universally against my getting my way?” 

Blitzø drank from his coffee and caught sight of Loona exiting her room down the hall. Setting his coffee to the side, he hopped down from the counter. 

“It should not be this hard!” Stolas was still going on, bellyaching about the construction project. “I have rarely asked for a single thing and yet…”

Reaching up, Blitzø grabbed his mug and swallowed the rest before he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

Stolas went still and silent, folding his arms on the table and burying his head in them. 

Quietly, timidly, Octavia lifted her beanie. “Dad…” She reached out hesitantly, but did not touch him, settling her palm on the table in front of him instead, worry and confusion plain on her face. 

Stolas sniffed—and it sounded watery as fuck—without lifting his head. “My apologies, Starfire. Just…I will be fine. Please give me a moment.” 

Shit. 

Blitzø took two steps toward the hall and then doubled back. Going over to Stolas, Blitzø patted him on the back a few times. “It’s never fair,” he said. “So just put the wall back up and forget about it. We’ll be out of here faster that way.”

Stolas didn’t respond, not that Blitzø really gave him the chance. He headed straight up the hall, nodded at Loona, and went out the front door.

---

Blitzø fucked up at work. He was distracted and frustrated because why the fuck was Stolas crying over some stupid mold in the wall. Every place Blitzø had ever lived had mold in it, and Stolas didn’t even have to use his money to fix this shit. He was the one who had offered in the first place.

Or maybe it wasn’t the cost, but the fact that Blitzø was gonna stay in the Palace longer. A big construction project could take months. Maybe Stolas was just being polite when said to stay in the guest room and didn’t actually want him.

Maybe Blitzø was just a painful reminder of a shitty date and broken family. Clearly, the royal couple was actually getting divorced and it wasn’t just the tabloids saying that.

From what he’d seen of the kitchen last night, half the pots and pans and decor had been removed. Stella also hadn’t come in screeching about him and Loona at breakfast.

So, yeah. Blitzø had basically fucked up a family and embarrassed Stolas and then a few months later is costing him out out the ass for renovation while crashing for free. 

Because he was too pitiful to even have sex with anymore. 

A useless piece of shit. 

If the construction was too much of a hassle—like Blitzø—he should just leave it alone. 

Anyway, the point was he was distracted when he shouldn’t have been and didn’t cover Moxxie’s ass properly. 

Moxxie had asked for suppressive fire against their target, a wealthy old guy who lived in a mansion with a billion guns and thought he was James Bond. Millie was pinned down behind a flimsy piece of plywood, getting shot to shit with splinters. He and Moxxie were laid low, crouching behind a marble sculpture in the middle of a library and the books were getting shot to shit.

Stolas would’ve had a cow.

Blitzø had been in his fucking head and barely heard Moxxie before the little fucker had darted out from behind the sculpture to get closer. Apparently, even though he heard Moxxie, his brain didn’t get the memo the whole way. 

Instead of putting his arm out and shooting at Double-O Suck, he stepped out right behind Moxxie before his dumbass caught up. He paused, turned and started shooting—suppressive fire and all.

He did not step back behind the statue. 

Like the wide-open disaster he was, Blitzø was promptly shot through the stomach. The good news was it shocked him into better action and he at least kept his ass moving forward, following Moxxie who was already behind better cover. 

Blitzø managed to not get shot again until right before he shot that shithead in his shitty head. That time it carved a deep graze across the base of his tail, cauterizing as it went, fucking up the muscle there.

His tail dropped to the cold tile floor and he wasn’t able to pick it back up, which was a motherfucker on his balance but he got the fucker between the eyes. 

By the time he called Loona, he was more pissed about his tail than he was about the hole in his stomach. Sure, he was a little dizzy from blood loss even after it stopped bleeding. He knew enough to put pressure on it. Millie held pressure on the back until Moxxie could get the first aid kit. 

Loona made an irritated sound and very pointedly held her breath as she left the conference room. With disinterest, Blitzø laid on the table on his side so Moxxie could start at his back. 

“Looks bad, B,” she said, lifting his tail for him and putting it on the table. She had the whole heel of her palm against his back again and, fuck, it hurt like a bitch. He groaned and ground his teeth, resisting the urge to scoot away from her. 

Moxxie returned quickly enough with a bottle of gin and the sewing kit. Blitzø got half the bottle of gin down before Moxxie had finished the first stitch in his stomach, and he was pleasantly drunk by the time Moxxie started on his back. He easily tuned out Moxxie’s chattering about how he should’ve been a better listener.

He’d just started to doze when the weird sort of magic—Stolas’s magic—rattled in the air like a strange vibration he felt in his horns. He tipped his head sideways as Stolas materialized in a melodramatic way, all hand over his mouth and furious in his regal little romper. 

Hot. 

Everything he did was hot.

Even when he was shouting. 

Blitzø furrowed his brow, trying to concentrate on all of the words Stolas was saying. He tended to get screechy and demonic when he got excited like that. Made him hard to understand.

“…trying to do!”

Was this shit still about the construction?

Blitzø lifted his hands to rub at his eyes. “Just put the wall back up,” he said. “It’s just mold.”

“Blitzø! What in Hell are you going on about?”

“He’s drunk, Your Highness,” Millie said as Moxxie finished the final stitches on his stomach, tying the knot off. Blitzø could feel the tugging in his abdomen as the last parts of himself came together. 

“Why isn’t he in a hospital?” Stolas demanded. 

Blitzø tried to sit up only to give that shit up as soon as he flexed his stomach muscles. He hissed at the burning pain and turned his head so he could properly point at Stolas. 

“Fuck off,” he said. “Don’t yell at them! Moxxie’s as good as any…” 

Shit. What time was it? He closed his eyes for a minute, trying to swim through the fog of pain that was buried under layers of intoxication. He was fucking exhausted.

Moxxie helped him to sit up, slipping arms underneath his back and pushing his body upward, bracing him when his body threatened to fall back down. 

As he did, Moxxie said, “A hospital is an expense we simply cannot fit into the budget right now.”

“Oh for—I can afford it,” Stolas said like it was the most obvious thing. 

Blitzø shoved Moxxie’s hands away and tried to hop off the conference room table, but his tail fucked all that shit up and he basically face-planted. 

He barely had time to feel the pain before Stolas was lifting him up. “Absolutely not,” he said. 

Was he talking to him or to Moxxie?

“No offense,” Millie said with her arms crossed, glaring at Stolas. “But you ain’t really been around lately and it don’t seem like you—”

Blitzø put both his hands up and rested them over Stolas’s lower eyes. “Shh. Don’t listen to her. Everything’s fine.” 

Stolas shook his head, removing Blitzø’s hands. “It most certainly is not. This is the second time in less than a week you’ve done this.”

“Fucking is not,” Blitzø mumbled. “Technicality.”

From the other room, Loona shouted, “Are you fucking serious?!”

Shit. 

Loona stomped in the conference all wild-eyed. “So the bathroom wasn’t an accident?!” 

Stolas turned his body slightly to look at her. “He told you it was an accident?” he asked incredulously. 

“What happened in the bathroom?” Millie asked, wiping the blood from her hands with a bunch of leftover napkins Blitzø had swiped during the lunch run. 

Blitzø wasn’t drunk enough for this…or he was too drunk. He squirmed trying to get out of Stolas’s grasp despite the pain that lanced through his abdomen in sharp slices, but Stolas’s talons held onto him firmly. 

“I had to stop him—” Stolas started.

“Shut the fuck up!” Blitzø shouted, digging his own claws into Stolas’s arms, trying to get him to let go. “You said—You said you wouldn’t tell her.”

“Sir, you’re going to open your stitches,” Moxxie pointed out so helpfully. 

Stolas was unrelenting. “When you are running headlong into danger with no regard for your own wellbeing—”

He had to get out of here. His tail wouldn’t cooperate, hanging limply toward the ground. Blitzø bared his teeth and bit into Stolas’s shoulder, yanking out several feathers. The owl hooted in surprise, flinching, relaxing his grip enough that Blitzø managed to drop to the floor. 

But he was scooped right back up by the back of his jacket and found a finger very close to his face. “The fuck, Blitzø!” Loona snarled at him, holding him close to her face. “I thought you didn’t want to die alone.”

He flailed, kicking the air, hearing Fizz’s words thrown back at him. Shit, he didn’t even remember telling her that. 

They were all fucking looking at him, all of them. The heat of shame burned the back of his neck like a spotlight on the failing joke that was his life. His breath came in rapid, shallow inhales. 

“Let me go,” he said to her and his voice cracked. 

For the briefest of moments, her expression softened and anger gave way to fear and worry. Then it was gone and she shook the shit out of him. 

“You were going to leave me, you asshole!”

“His stitches!” Moxxie shouted in the background and thank fuck for him. 

Blitzø was pried from Loona’s hands and he knew by the grip that Stolas had him again, but this time he curled as best he could and buried his face in feathers. 

Stolas took a deep breath and Blitzø heard the air fill his lungs and come back out in a long sigh. He blocked out all the other noise, listening to Stolas’s heart slow to a steady beat. He felt the shimmer of a portal, the reverberation of words that Stolas exchanged with the others, the hum of alcohol in his blood. 

And then he was laid in a familiar bed with wine-colored sheets and gray-blue feathers. Stolas laid beside him, stroking his forehead. “Rest for now,” he said. 

Blitzø closed his eyes and leaned into Stolas’s touch.  

Chapter 8

Blitzø was floating again. He’d come unstuck from his body everywhere except the spade of his tail so he bobbed like a fucking balloon. 

Meanwhile, Stolas had passed out at his makeshift desk. He hadn’t slept since arriving with the exception of the few times he had dozed at the desk. It was actually his head hitting the table, knocking several cups of coffee off, that had roused him and Loona, and set him floating again. 

“Aw, fuck,” Loona mumbled. She got up from the bed, stretching her legs, and checked the steady pulsing monitor at Blitzø’s side. Then, she went over to Stolas and picked up the cups. 

“Hey,” she said to him. “You made a big mess.”

When he didn’t respond, she huffed under her breath and shoved the paper cups in the trashcan. “Hey, you featherhead.” She got up and put a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. 

Stolas didn’t wake up, but he snored loudly. 

“Fucking idiot,” she mumbled as she went into the bathroom. When she came back out, she had a bunch of paper towels. She’d just stooped down to start wiping up the coffee when the room door banged open.

“Dad!” Octavia rushed in wide-eyed. “I came as soon as Mom would…”

Her voice died out as she first caught sight of Loona, crouching on the floor with her ears back. Her eyes flickered around the room past Blitzø on the bed to the desk where Stolas slept. 

She inhaled sharply and Loona straightened up rigidly. “He’s okay,” she said, hauling up the wet paper towels with her. As she pushed them in the trash, she said, “Just tired.”

Octavia was already at his side with her hand on the back of his head. “He told me he was going to be away for a bit and sent me to my mom’s but…then the news said he was here. Even when I called, he wouldn’t tell me what was going on.”

Loona flicked the remaining coffee off her paws. “Yeah, well, he’s fine.”

With a grimace, Octavia nodded and finally looked back at Blitzø. “What happened to him?”

Despite herself, Loona shrunk back. “You wanna…I dunno…Get some coffee?” Loona asked.

Octavia hesitated and the tips of her talons wove through her dad’s feathers. “What about…”

“Look,” Loona sighed and the bags under her eyes became more prominent. “I could use a drink, probably some food, if I’m gonna tell you what happened. I doubt your dad is gonna if he hasn’t already.”

“O-Okay,” she responded. 

She moved, letting Loona out the door first, and then followed. And Blitzø was alone again. 

Sometimes, when it got quiet like this, he would hear whispers, too indistinct to understand, but they sounded like a memory. 

But Stolas or Loona or a nurse would come in or say something or get up. But, not this time.

The whispers were soft and warm and comfortable like nights spent with his mom and Barb before they were old enough to perform, huddled in a nest of blankets in their tent. In the background, horns blared from the Big Top and crowds’ voices lifted like a choir, giggling and gasping. The smell of kettle corn and caramel mingling with cigarettes and hooch. 

A memory in the stillness, calling to him. He loved memories like this. If he listened—stopped listening actually, just felt it, relaxed into it—now it was almost as if could become part of the memory. 

Lights would play on the tent’s canvas, shadows of people walking past, of fires from the jugglers. 

His mom would hold him and Barbie close, the sound of her heartbeat soothing him, the heat of her skin warming his. 

He sank into it as if he could sit inside his photographs. Almost as if he ceased to be in this moment, then he could exist in all moments. 

And then Stolas was there. “Breathe. Please.”

Stolas’s feathers against his face, a cold beak. A rapid beeping of an alarm. 

He was no longer floating, but he wasn’t all there either. 

“Breathe, Blitzø. Don’t give up, my darling.”

The scent of tea leaves and lilac. 

Weightlessness. Calm. 

“Come on. Breathe.” A pause. “LOONA!” 

Serene. 

“Blitzø, please.”

A door slamming open. 

“Dad!” Loona’s voice. 

“Dad?” Octavia, quieter.

“Via, get a doctor!”

Cigarettes. Coffee. Fur.

“Wake the fuck up!”

 Loona. 

Her name rolled through him as slow as his heart beat. She was here. 

“Breathe, you asshole!”

He always thought he would be alone. 

“Use your freaky powers, you fucking—Do something!”

The sting of electricity. The smell of death and heat. 

A sharp pain digging into his hand, a flicker of light. He hadn’t realized he couldn’t see—that he wasn’t seeing—not until the image was suddenly in front of him. Stolas, the eldritch horror, gauging a hole in his hand with his teeth. 

Blitz gasped, yanking his hand back. “The fuck, Stolas!” he shouted at him, his voice raw and scratchy. 

The darkness shrunk back and Stolas—small and thin and tired—trembled, clutching his hands to his chest in the hospital room. 

“Dad?”

Blitzø turned his head to see Loona, who simultaneously looked horrified and relieved. “Yeah?” he asked her before remembering, “Oh…Hey, I’m real sorry. I should’ve waited ‘til—”

She struck him across the face hard, and then collapsed on the bed in his lap in tears. 

Notes:

Coming up on the end

Chapter 9

Blitzø was being rocked gently as he woke up, a hand stroking over the spines on his back down to the base of his tail. His head swam and he ached all over as if he were sick. He tried to pull his tail in, but it laid limp behind him. 

Fuck. 

He whimpered.

Stolas shushed him. “I’ve got you.”

Blitzø ground his teeth, keeping his eyes closed. “Why?”

“Why what?” Stolas’s hands stopped stroking at the top of his shoulders and rubbed at the base of his skull.

“Why are you doing this shit?” he asked, leaning into the massage, tucking his head under Stolas’s chin. “Cause I…I don’t have money to pay you—”

“Absolutely not.” Stolas’s thumbs pressed into the base of his skull. “I do not want payment. I do not want anything except to care for you.”

There was a bubbling, burning in his chest. “If you wanna…” He ignored how his voice trembled because he hoped Stolas wouldn’t say no but he probably would. And, fuck, that was gonna sting. “If you wanna,” he started again, “when I get my shit together, I can add a few extra nights to the schedule and fuck your brains out. Cause, you know, the full moon—”

Stolas’s hands had left the back of his head, settling back on his shoulders. “Blitzø, no.”

Fuck. 

He dug his claws into Stolas’s chest because he wasn’t going to cry. “Please.”

Stolas didn’t say anything. 

Even with his eyes squeezed closed, a few tears slipped out. He released Stolas’s feathers with one hand and brushed them away with the heel of his palm. Fine. It was going to be fine. 

His stomach ached from the gunshot and the way his muscles were flexed tight, fighting against the urge to full out sob. He was such a fucking failure, a used up piece of shit that shouldn’t even be alive. He had nothing to offer anyone, not that anyone could want anything from someone like him.

Stolas’s soft strokes against his back began again. “I do not ever want to force you into a position like that again.”

Blitzø huffed. “I wasn’t—you didn’t force me. I agreed to it.”

When Stolas pulled back and attempted to look him in the face, Blitzø clung tighter, keeping his head down. They struggled even as he dug his claws into Stolas’s skin, feeling the small snapping give of it and the blood well underneath his nail.

“Let me see you,” Stolas said firmly, pulling him back, dragging cuts in his own flesh from Blitzø’s claws. 

He let go. Kept his eyes down as Stolas looked at his face. 

“Listen to me,” Stolas said sternly. “I thought—I thought the arrangement we made…that I put forth was something we both wanted.”

“It was,” Blitzø mumbled, staring at the mass of gray-blue feathers of Stolas’s neck.

“Not…no, darling. It wasn’t.” Stolas didn’t seem to notice the word slipped off his tongue and Blitzø shivered at the endearment.

He wrapped his arms around Stolas’s back and pulled himself in close again, and Stolas didn’t stop him. 

“I foolishly believed the deal to be more…” Stolas paused before starting again. “I pretended you desired me in the way I desired you, that all this nonsense over the book was a facade, that we had developed something real, but I…I was wrong. I let myself get carried away. For that, I am sorry.”

The fuck was Stolas talking about. If he had control of his tail, he probably would’ve slapped him with it. “I agreed to it,” he said again because maybe Stolas didn’t hear him right the first time. 

Stolas’s thumb stroked over the top of his head. “Because you had to in order to run your business. I should have seen that and not let play into this fantasy of—”

“Stolas, what the fuck?” Blitzø pushed himself away, this time looking up at the prince, trying to figure out what was going on in his head. “I wouldn’t have come over if I didn’t want to.”

Stolas’s blank red eyes studied him, his mouth turned down. “And you stopped coming over two months ago.”

Now he was being ridiculous. “Fucking—You told me not to come!”

“No. I told you that you did not have to come,” Stolas said adamantly, glaring at him now. 

“Same fucking difference.”

“It is not. If you need, I will show you the—”

“Bitch,” Blitzø said, trying to get up to leave but he couldn’t without pain like fire. Shit. 

Stolas’s hand steadied him. He assisted in moving his tail so Blitzø could sit up properly. 

As soon as he could, Blitzø pushed Stolas’s hands off him. “I know what the messages said.” 

He’d only read them and agonized over them a thousand times. He only knew them by heart now. And he’d been rejected enough times to know when someone was blowing him off. 

“It’s fine,” he continued, shifting, trying to figure out how to get off the bed without falling on his face. 

“Wait.” Stolas grabbed his wrist and Blitzø realized his little pupils were flickering about, thinking over something as they studied the blanket like it had words on it.

He let Stolas hold his wrist instead of yanking it away. “What?”

Stolas glanced up at him, unsure, before looking back down to the bed. “Did you truly think I did not want you here?”

For someone with so many books, it was crazy how sometimes Stolas didn’t know anything. “Yeah,” he said, not wanting to rehash it. 

Stolas shook his head rapidly. “I wanted you. I wanted you here. I want you here every day. I want you here now.”

That…

That was fucking…

No. That couldn’t be right. “To fuck you?” he asked.

Stolas’s eyes filled with tears, white pupils huge. “No,” he whined breathily. He released Blitzø’s wrist to wipe the tears away. “No,” he said again. “I care about you. I…I have feelings for you and I selfishly—”

“Stop.” Blitzø held up a hand, breathing hard with the way his heart was pounding, trying to make sense of what Stolas meant because he couldn’t possibly mean what he said.

“I’m not trying to burden you with this,” Stolas said, ignoring the fact that Blitzø was basically in a spin-out, in a freefall in his own mind. “I merely wanted to explain. I do not wish for us to part with this misunderstanding.”

Blitzø held his head. He was still misunderstanding. He had to be. 

“Do not worry about reciprocating my feelings,” Stolas said, moving off the bed to stand, reaching out his hand. “We can be friends if that is all you desire or…or nothing.” It looked as if it pained him to say that. 

Staring at the hand Stolas offered, Blitzø closed his mouth and shook his head. 

Stolas withdrew, drawing his hand close to his chest. He nodded in a sharp motion. 

Before Stolas could get the wrong idea and twist up his thoughts again, Blitzø said, “I’m a piece of shit, Stolas. I ruin everything. I hurt people. I hurt you. I embarrassed you at the club.”

“You didn’t embarrass me.” Stolas’s voice was thick as if he were swallowing a rock.

Or trying not to cry. 

Blitzø resisted rolling his eyes. “Fine. Me being an imp embarrassed you.”

“It does not!” Stolas protested, which was ridiculous. 

Blitzø jabbed a finger at him. “You hid your fucking face when Asmodeus—”

“I was ashamed!” Stolas rubbed the feathers up his arms, ruffling them in a distressing way.

“Yeah, of me.”

“No! Of myself!” He choked on a sob. “Of what I did to my daughter, exposing her to ridicule and being so consumed in this that I did not even stop to think how she might…”

Blitzø wasn’t listening anymore. He tried, but he was distracted, running the gauntlet of ‘what the fuckness’ so that he could put this in an order that made sense. “So,” he said carefully when Stolas had stopped speaking. “You…you still want me around?”

“I do,” Stolas said, clutching his hands together. “In whatever capacity is comfortable to you.”

Trying to get to his feet, Blitzø stumbled as his tail dragged and the bed sunk. “Fuck. Come over here.”

With long arms, Stolas didn’t even need to take a step. He just leaned forward and scooped him up. “What do you need?” he asked, peering at him with a cocked head as if they hadn’t just bared his soul. He rested a knee on the bed, ready to lay Blitzø back down if he asked while his other stayed firmly on the ground

Blitzø placed a hand on Stolas’s cheek and pushed against it good-naturedly. “I…I want to be here.”

Stolas nodded. “Okay.”

He bit his lip and his heart rammed in his chest. He just had to say it. Just say it. Just say it.

Shit. 

Stolas placed a hand over his heart, eyes widening a bit at what he felt. 

“Shut up,” Blitzø said preemptively. “I’m fine. Fuck, just…I don’t not feel the way you feel, okay?”

“You don’t not feel the same way,” Stolas repeated slowly like it was a fucking puzzle and, motherfucker, he didn’t want to say more than that. Already, it felt like he was going to throw up.

“Don’t not,” Stolas mumbled to himself, still cradling Blitzø with one arm.

Blitzø took hold of the hand resting on his chest. He weaved his fingers in between Stolas’s and squeezed. “Yeah. So can we just, like, watch a movie and cuddle or some shit?”

The white of Stolas’s face turned pink. “Are you sure?”

He nodded because it was yes to both questions anyway. 

Stolas’s feathers lifted slowly, making him look double in size. The grip on him got a little tighter as Stolas’s smile cracked wide open. “You have feelings for me,” he cooed softly, little hearts in his eyes.

“Ugh. Don’t make it a whole thing,” Blitzø said as he was carried to the parlor with the TV.

“Oh, but it is, darling.” Stolas set him on the couch against a pillow. 

As they settled together with a blanket, Blitzø leaning into Stolas, he ignored the hissing whisper that he didn’t deserve any of it.

But apparently Stolas didn’t because, before they started the movie, Stolas asked, “Will you let me arrange proper help for you now?”

Blitzø groaned. “Do I have to?”

Stolas’s expression wasn’t quite stern or disapproving, but the worry seemed harder than before. “Loona has been very upset.”

Fuck.

“Okay, but can we watch Spirit first?” He needed to recharge before she tore him a new asshole.

Stolas hit play on the remote. “We can, but after that we are all sitting down—”

Blitzø patted Stolas’s arm. “Yeah, okay. Now shush. We’re missing the beginning.” 

Stolas pressed a kiss to the top of his head and Blitzø angled his face upward, grasping Stolas’s in his own. He pulled on him until Stolas got the memo to kiss him properly; their first kiss in over two months. 

It wasn’t hot or sexy or provocative. 

Especially with the way Stolas cried. 

But it was soft and intimate, and that was okay too. 

Notes:

The End (for this Blitz)

Chapter 10

“We’re doing this because we care for you,” Stolas said from next to him on the couch. 

Blitzø had his knees tucked up to his chest, watching as Loona and Moxxie and Millie emptied his apartment of the guns and swords and grenades and Emergen-C go-bag. It was fucking weird that Stolas kept saying that shit. Everything he and Loona did was because they cared for him. 

Blitzø wasn’t stupid. He knew what that meant. 

Probably. 

“Still don’t know why you can’t just lock them in Loona’s room,” Blitzø grumbled. 

Stolas’s hand patted his thigh, but not in a sexy way. “We both know you are more than capable of breaking in if you wanted to.”

Which was true. 

Blitzø scratched at the bandage wrapped around his head and Stolas grabbed his hand, pulling it away. 

“You must stop that,” Stolas said and continued to hold his hand. He’d been doing that a lot. He stroked across Blitzø’s scars gently. 

Fuck, Blitzø wasn’t even wearing his gloves or his suit was dressed in his comfiest clothes, baggy sweatpants and a zip up hoodie. The horse throw was draped over his shoulders. 

The apartment looked different too. Like, he still had his shitty couch, but the bathroom showerhead no longer leaked. There was no mildew anywhere and the draft that he sometimes felt had disappeared. 

The walls had a fresh coat of paint…or, shit, were they new fucking walls? It wouldn’t exactly be a surprise. The kitchen appliances were new. The carpet was new. 

A temporary divider had been put up in between the bathroom and the kitchen with just enough space for a twin-size bed and a set of drawers, which Stolas had already put in there. It cut off how easy it was to get to the kitchen, but he had a space the size of a closet now. 

Stolas had said it was only temporary and Blitzø didn’t know what he had in mind, but he wasn’t a fucking charity case. As soon as he was back on his feet, things were going back to normal. 

Stolas squeezed his hand. “You will have access to the appropriate weapons for work.”

Blitzø snorted. “Define appropriate.”

“What is necessary for the mission.”

He tried cracking a smile. “So my pistols and my six-shooter?”

The look he received was jarring, cutting. Stolas glared at him and the grip on his hand tightened. “Please do not ever put us through that again.”

Blitzø could not stand that look nor could he promise that. He turned away to where Loona and M&M were discussing if they’d found everything and if they should take the knives out of the kitchen. 

Loona looked at him and then turned back to M&M. “Yeah. Take them.”

He flipped her off and she returned the gesture, but there was the faintest upward pull of a smile on her face. 

At least she could take a joke. 

Blitz sagged against the couch. His hand was still in Stolas’s grip, but it was no longer being squeezed to shit. His time in a coma almost felt like a dream, a fuzziness around the experience, but he remembered a few things and one of them was my darling. It used to be ‘my little imp’ and shit like that.

Stolas had also kept the photo on his lock screen—the one Blitzø had taken of them together—and he didn’t hide it from anyone. Not Loona or Octavia or the nurses. Almost like he wanted people to see it. 

In the last week, Stolas had spent so much money on him, on the hospital bills, on the apartment without so much as a dirty leer or comment about his throbbing cloaca. 

And they weren’t fucking anymore either. When Loona had finally left him alone again before he’d been released from the hospital, Blitzø had made a joke to Stolas about it probably being a bit until he was on his feet, but he could pay Stolas back in cock if he wanted to ride. 

Stolas had almost struck him across the face—had lifted his hand, had looked downright pissed—before bursting into tears. Then, Blitzø was made aware that in no uncertain terms the deal was over. Maybe the heart monitor had given him away because Stolas assured him that Blitzø and his company could continue to use the Grimoire until Stolas could procure crystals. 

But there would be no sexual favors. Stolas had sat on the bed next to him and held both his hands and told him that he wanted to continue to be there for him while he recovered and even afterward “if you permit it.” 

Like what the fuck kind of angle was that? Maybe Stolas felt guilty because Blitzø had gotten the wrong idea about those text messages? Or about Ozzie’s or some other shit?

The door to the apartment clicked shut. Loona and M&M’s voices faded as they carried all his shit down to the van. Stolas turned to him. “Would you like to tell me what is on your mind?”

Blitzø shrugged. “Not really.”

Stolas inclined his head in a very small nod and released his hand because, of course, Blitzø had said the wrong thing and pushed him away. So much for wanting to be there for him if he got tripped up over something as small as not wanting—

An arm slipped behind his shoulders and Stolas pulled him closer. “You should rest,” Stolas said.

“All I’ve been doing is resting,” Blitzø complained even if he tucked himself into the feathers the way he liked. 

Stolas hummed a non-reply. 

They were silent for a while. The TV played in front of them on low, some cartoon movie about horses and friendship that Blitzø didn’t particularly care for but was still pretty good because it was about horses. Blitz picked at the blanket that hung around his shoulders and draped across his lap. 

Just a few inches away, Stolas’s hand rested on the same blanket. What if Blitzø was wrong though? What if it wasn’t all guilt that made Stolas do that stuff? What if my darling was actually meant affectionately and not like some weird possessive shit?

What if he actually cared the way Blitzø cared?

Tediously slowly, Blitzø moved his hand over until it rested against Stolas’s, pinky to pinky. 

Fuck. That was as far as he could get. 

When had he become such a pussy?

Thank fuck Stolas didn’t say anything about it. Just turned his hand over and took Blitzø’s in his own. 

The movie was coming to the end, getting real serious. The main pony was giving a whole big speech to the other weird racist ponies. “We can stay separated by fear and mistrust or we can choose friendship. We can choose love,” she said and looked at a picture of her dead dad. 

Stolas squeezed his hand. 

Okay, what the fuck?

“That’s the true magic,” the fucking pony said. 

Before he lost his nerve. 
Before he lost his nerve. 
Before he lost his nerve. 

He had to say it. 

“Do you even like me?” he asked, his voice tapering off, ending on a whisper.

“Oh, Blitzø, darling,” Stolas said softly, little pupils shining. He dropped Blitzø’s hand in order to cup his face. “More than you know.”

Notes:

Thank you to everyone for reading!

Please check out some of my other works