Chapter Text
It goes like this: Sklonda, for the first time in fifteen years, is serious about liking someone. Now, that someone happens to be an enormous devil from the Nine Hells, but, at this point, who the fuck cares? At least she knows what she’s getting into this time.
It helps, in a way, that Gorthalax is a dad too. It helps that he’s just as invested in Fig as she is in Riz. It’s a transparent, unspoken knowledge between them as they drift through the summer, feeling tentatively through the first steps of a relationship. There is a mutual recognition that nothing will ever be more important for the other person than their kid. Either of them would kill or die for their children; to sacrifice something as simple as a budding relationship would be easy.
But, somehow, the understanding that they are not even close to the most important thing in the other person’s life brings them closer together. Life is busy. Everything is hectic. There are always more balls up in the air than there are hands with which to catch them all. There’s never enough time, and so it makes what time they do carve out for each other more significant, more meaningful.
To no one’s surprise, the news that Gorthalax and Sklonda are going to put a label on it and start actually dating after a few months of going on dates but dodging the word, delights Fig beyond belief. She is ecstatic. She keeps talking about a twelve-step plan to get every single one of the Bad Kids to be a sibling of hers in some capacity.
Riz is a bit more reserved, which they also expected.
Sklonda had been a bit surprised by just how much Riz’s opinion seemed to matter to Gorthalax, but he had explained, “You all are a complete family, and it’s always an adjustment to add someone else to that. Fig has already got the hang of big changes in that department, but Riz doesn’t. He is your most important person, and one of my daughter’s most important people, and, I think, all around a remarkably rooted person for his age. I value his opinion, and I certainly don’t want to make him uncomfortable by avoiding a conversation with him about this.”
And, well. If Sklonda had to pick a moment that it spilled over from a crush into something serious, something she might even call love, it would be then.
It goes like this: it is a Sunday afternoon and they’re in the Gukgaks' apartment, the same walls and peeling paint and broken window and coffee-stained dining table. The fan still creaks and the AC still doesn’t work, but the window is wide to let in the summer air, and it feels like something new is starting.
Fig, Riz, and Sklonda are sitting at the kitchen table, Riz and Sklonda in the normal chairs, Fig in one of the folding chairs that “mysteriously” began to appear around when Riz’s friends started hanging around last year. Sklonda and Sandra Lynn are both politely pretending to not notice the change in camping chairs at Sandra Lynn’s house.
Even on the floor, Gorthalax’s horns still stand taller than either her or Riz’s heads from their positions in the chairs. He is sitting cross-legged on the scuffed floor, hooves folded up beneath him, shoulders folded in and wings down and tucked away. It is, Sklonda has come to see, the position he takes when he is very nervous about the outcome of the interaction he’s about to have.
It’s honestly a little hilarious to see him so scared of his daughter and her son. Sklonda, personally, has few fears about the course of this conversation. Then again, she’s had about fourteen more years with her kid than he has, so she probably feels a little more stable about gauging her kid’s reaction at this point. She is very kindly refraining from teasing him until after the conversation ends.
Gorthalax clears his throat. His wings flap a little bit before tucking back in even tighter than before. “So,” he says, “how are you all?”
“Not really all that different than we were when you saw us this morning,” Riz says.
Sklonda tries very hard not to grin like an idiot as Gorthalax shuffles, and probably fails.
“You had a good time at the pool?”
All of the kids had convened at the apartment earlier to take the bus down to the public pool, enjoying the tail end of summer before school starts up again. It had been a rare morning off of work, waking up to Gorthalax in the kitchen, making pancakes on the stove and chatting with Riz, satisfying some of his endless curiosity about the inner machinations of the universe. (But what’s the actual process of a soul transferring to different planes through death? How do people get where they’re supposed to go? How often do people go to the wrong place?)
Her son, bless him, is supremely bad at small talk, but Gorthalax, who fell by rejecting temperance, is more than willing to indulge his desire to know everything. Which means she walks out to find Gorthalax very carefully sprinkling blueberries into pancake batter, explaining the process of inter-planar soul transferral, and Riz, perched on the counter, tail swinging, ears perked up, notebook sitting on his lap as he twirls a pencil through his fingers and watches Gorthalax with rapt attention. They both turn to look at her, smiles so different but both so warm, and Sklonda thinks she could be very happy like this.
The rest of the kids roll in in a mess of flip flops (Kristen), overflowing tote bags (Gorgug), and comically oversized, heart-shaped sunglasses (Fig). There’s a lot of shouting and giggling and shoving and then they’re all tumbling out of the doorway, goodbyes tossed over their shoulders as they exit, Kristen spraying crumbs everywhere as she shouts through a blueberry pancake sticking out of her mouth like a dog with a frisbee. Riz gives her a hug, and then chases his friends out the door with Adaine, her calling out, “Gods help me, you all will put on sunscreen, or else!”
They’re gone all day, and Sklonda and Gorthalax sit in the soft quiet. He helps her study for the online classes she wants to take, putting away credits toward her law degree. Turns out, dating a devil of the Nine Hells who made contracts for a living for thousands of years means that you have a pretty good resource for help.
The kids roll back in in the late afternoon, golden hour creeping in through the open blinds and following them in with sun-kissed laughter. The rest of the kids depart, leaving only Fig and Riz and the faint, lingering smell of chlorine.
“Fig burned herself,” Riz says immediately. “And so did Kristen.”
“How was I supposed to know I needed to reapply three different times?”
“Adaine and I told you to! And you dunked us in the deep end!”
“That was not the deep end,” Fig says, reaching over to mess with his chlorine-crusted curls. “You’re just our little guy.”
Her voice is so fond that Sklonda can’t even be mad about it. She does clear her throat though, before they can devolve into full squabbles like kindergarteners. Both of them turn to look at her, and though their bodies are so different, their expressions are near-identical mirrors of one another, wide eyes and attentive openness.
“We wanted to talk to you all about something,” Sklonda says.
Immediately, Fig’s face breaks into a smile caught somewhere between a knowing smirk and golden-retriever excitement. “Yes?” she says, stretching the middle syllable out like taffy, fangs glinting in her grin.
“So,” Gorthalax says, tail flicking rapidly, back and forth, back and forth. “Sklonda and I have been going out for a few months now, and we’re making it official. We’re dating.”
Fig leaps out of the lawn chair, pumping her fist and whooping. “Hell yeah!” she cries, delighted. “My sibling plan is working! Oh, and I’m super happy for you all, obviously.”
Gorthalax and Sklonda turn to Riz, whose body language is mostly unchanged. “Congrats,” he says with a smile, and it’s nothing like the effusive exuberance Fig is giving off, but Sklonda knows him well enough to read the settled contentment in his shoulders, and knows that he is being genuine.
“We just wanted to check in with everyone before we start spreading the news,” Gorthalax continues slowly, carefully.
Riz blinks. His eyes narrow. He looks from her to him and back again. “Why?” he asks. “This is a you guys thing.”
“Well,” he responds, even, measured, but so deeply nervous, “I know that this is the first time that this has happened for your mom, and, by extension, you, in a long time. It’s a change. I wanted to check in and make sure that you know you can talk to us if there’s anything you’re worried about.”
Riz’s ears flick. His mouth opens. His brows furrow in incredulity. “Gorthalax. Are you asking our blessing to date?”
Sklonda counts to ten to keep from bursting into giggles.
“Because, I mean, this really is not a choice that I get an opinion on. You’re adults, you can do what you want. But, like, even if my opinion did matter, I like you. You’re nice to Mom. I’m okay with you all dating.” He shrugs. “Honestly, I kind of thought you already were. This feels like having a baby shower after the baby is born. We already knew.”
He looks Gorthalax up and down, and meets his eyes. They harden for a brief moment, flashing with a faint sheen of light, and she sees both Fig and Gorthalax exhale, an involuntary shiver running through them at the sudden pulse of celestial magic. (Sklonda wishes, not for the first time, that she could feel it like a cleric. That she could know what it feels like to touch the casual electrical current of her son’s soul.)
“And, you know that if you ever try anything, she has a gun and is not afraid to use it.”
“I know,” Gorthalax says, not unthinkingly, but with the depth of someone who watched her shoot at a dragon.
Riz nods. “Cool.” He turns to Sklonda, yellow eyes soft. “Mom. I want you to be happy. Does he make you happy?”
Sklonda lets out a deep breath. She thinks about the pancakes in the fridge, the ones Gorthalax can’t eat but made anyway for her kid before she was even awake. She thinks about the stack of study guides and notes in her briefcase annotated with dark red ink and flowing cursive. She thinks about a week ago, when they went out for coffee in the middle of the night after she got off work and her eyelids kept trying to glue themselves together but her chest was so warm that she didn’t want to sleep.
“Yes, kiddo,” she says, “he does.”
Riz smiles. “Okay,” he says. He turns to Gorthalax. “Welcome to the family. There’s a whopping three of us.”
“Not anymore,” Fig sing-songs, bouncing over to sweep Gorthalax into a hug, then Sklonda, then Riz. She smells like cinnamon and cloves and pool water.
“You’re stuck with us forever!” she trills, gleeful, and Riz laughs.
All of the tension dissolves from Gorthalax’s posture, wings opening slightly, back straightening. He laughs in tandem, low and rumbling and so, so relieved. He glances over at Sklonda, and she takes his hand, grinning.
It’s something new. She doesn’t know where it’s going to take them, can’t see the ocean the river is spilling toward, but for now, it’s enough. It’s more than enough.
—
It goes like this: Pok Askandi falls, and falls, and falls. The Bottomless Pit is aptly named.
He’s done this plenty of times, been a “damned soul,” retrieved some piece of information, returned to Bytopia, rinse and repeat. It’s stressful, in a good way. But this mission is proving a first.
There are countless entrances to the Nine Hells. The Bottomless Pit is an easy access point. Or, it would be, if the devil were here.
Pok has been falling for weeks now. Where the hell is Gorthalax the Insatiable? And what is it that could be more important to him than his domain?