Chapter Text
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It was funny.
Blitz and Stolas had spent so many hours in bed together that they should be comfortable with each other. They’d seen each other exposed, naked and spread. They’d bitten, sucked, licked, f*cked every single point they could on each other – well, almost – but right now, stood staring at each other in the room, neither knew what to say or do.
It was almost like they were strangers again.
Blitz’s tail flicked behind him, his only nervous tell as he stared across the room at Stolas. Stolas, who was still hugging himself, seeking his own comfort as he met Blitz’s gaze.
The only sound was the crackling of the fireplace on the far wall, filling the room with warmth. Well, that and the sounds of their increased breathing. Neither had moved, or exerted themselves in any way, but both were almost panting, their anxiety trying to overtake them.
Blitz was the one who pushed past it first, pulling his eyes away to look down at the floor just to the side of Stolas. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, fingers clenching. The crystal embedded in the glove of his left hand suddenly felt heavy. ‘I’m … sh*t, Stolas. I’m so sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ Stolas’s voice was carefully measured, as he tried not to give anything away. He almost succeeded, too, except once the word passed his lips, he had to swallow hard to bury the ball of emotion climbing up his throat at being so close to Blitz.
‘Yeah.’ The imp shuffled on the spot, still looking down, so all Stolas could see was the tip of his circus tattoo. He couldn’t make out Blitz’s eyes at all. ‘I f*ck everything up. I f*cked us up. You up. And … I’m sorry.’
‘Blitz.’ He could do this. He was strong enough. Holding his breath to calm his nerves, Stolas stepped forward.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Four.
Blitz stiffened as Stolas’s talons came into view, still refusing to raise his head. He felt vulnerable right now. Open. Raw. All he’d said was sorry, but he was already exhausted from the weight of the crystal and his emotions. From exposing himself, already.
Having Stolas this close … close enough to reach out. To touch. To hold…
One long finger found its way under his chin, and he shuddered, eyes closing as his head was guided upwards.
‘Blitz.’ Stolas’s voice was gentle. With a soft, small smile, the Goetia stroked his thumb across Blitz’s chin, eliciting another shudder. ‘Come. Sit with me.’
The finger withdrew, and Blitz’s head fell again. Carefully picking his way across the carpet towards the large, red sofa in front of the fireplace, Stolas let out the breath he’d been holding.
It didn’t help. He’d been close enough to Blitz that his scent had filled his senses almost instantly. That mix of metallic blood, spice and lust that was so uniquely Blitz. Stolas had spent many mornings, waking to an empty bed after the full moon, snuggling himself into the pillow Blitz had rested on just to surround himself with that scent.
With a sigh, he lowered himself to one end of the sofa, crossing his legs and staring forward at the flickering flames of Pride.
Blitz stood still in the centre of the room for a moment as Stolas settled himself, mind actually empty for once. Something in his mind had short-circuited with the brush of a thumb across his skin. Not lust – no, he definitely wasn’t horny right then – but something. Something he couldn’t name. No, not couldn’t. Wouldn’t name, because he had a sneaky suspicion he knew exactly what the feeling was.
It wasn’t until Stolas looked over his shoulder, seeking him out, that he managed to make his feet move, stumbling forward. He nearly tripped over himself twice, but somehow made it to the opposite end of the sofa to Stolas in one piece.
‘I’m in rehab,’ Stolas offered, turning his gaze back to the fireplace so he didn’t have to face Blitz’s reaction. ‘I surrendered my phone to Asmodeus before I went in, so I haven’t been able to contact anybody – contact you – for the last month. I wanted to keep away from everyone until I got control of my weakness.’
Blitz pulled himself up onto the sofa – really, why did Hell insist on making so many of them just that little bit too high for imps to get onto gracefully? – and then twisted until he was facing Stolas.
He knew that. Kind of. From Octavia, from Oz, from Fizz. But there was a question none of them had been able to answer. ‘Why? What’s rehab got for you?’
Stolas’s hands smoothed down the front of his trousers, before his fingers interlaced over his knee. Only his thumbs still moved, tapping out a pattern only he could hear. Blitz watched, adjusting until he found a comfortable position against the cushions.
If he noticed he was unintentionally mimicking Stolas, his left leg thrown over his right much like the Goetia, back straight, he chose not to acknowledge it.
‘The day we first met, as children.’ Stolas turned his head, ever so slightly, until he could look at Blitz from the corner of his eye. ‘It was my birthday. I was ten.’
The day they – oh. Coldness washed over Blitz.
The day his “father” sold him to a royal demon for a f*cking pittance.
His tail flicked out again, and his jaw tightened. ‘Happy birthday?’ he asked, trying his best to keep the vitriol from his voice. ‘What the f*ck does that matter?’
‘I was ten,’ Stolas reiterated. ‘I went to meet with my father, to receive my duties. The grimoire that you know so well. Alongside my duties … he informed me I was to be married and to sire an heir. There was no negotiation to be had.’
Stolas had never told anyone else that before. People knew, he was sure. It was no secret that the Goetia very closely managed their bloodline. But did people know how young he’d been when things were set in place?
‘Everything in my life, from that moment on, went towards being the perfect Goetia. The perfect Prince. The perfect husband and, later, father. So, eventually, I started seeking an escape.’
Blitz looked away, focusing back on the flames. Pride flames. Not Greed. Never Greed. This wasn’t the time for his own memories, not while Stolas was talking about his past.
‘For years, the only place I found reprieve was at the bottom of a bottle.’ Stolas’s words washed over him, but Blitz refused to look away from the fire, the distraction. ‘I’ve spent nineteen years drinking away my worries. Hiding my problems from everyone I’ve ever known.’
Blitz knew a little about that. With a sigh, he reached up, rubbing one large hand over his face. Over the scars. ‘You’re an alcoholic?’ he asked. At Stolas’s hum of affirmation, he groaned. ‘What is it with me and the f*cking alcoholics? First Ver, now you.’
He didn’t mean it to be judgemental. Not in any way. He just meant … well, it seemed like he just drove them to it.
He didn’t want to consider that he was just attracted to those tortured souls who used alcohol to cope, because then he lost one of the many reasons to justify hating himself.
No, it was safer to assume it was his fault and not look any deeper.
Stolas turned his head away. Not to the flames, like Blitz, but instead twisting it around until he could see through the open balcony doors and out towards the Embassy. Even from here, its glow was obvious, a beacon of purity on the horizon. ‘I never wanted it to be this way,’ he whispered. ‘I tried. I tried so hard, for Octavia’s sake. But I failed, and when she discovered it a few weeks ago, I knew I needed to change.’
‘That’s why you were chugging drinks at the party.’ Realisation dawned over Blitz. ‘f*ck, Stols.’
Stols. The nickname almost brought a smile to the bird demon’s lips. Hearing it … it gave him hope, that maybe, this might all work out. If they could both lay their cards on the table, then maybe, just maybe, they could truly start something authentic.
But Belphegor’s words were still in his mind, warning him to be cautious.
‘Octavia found the alcohol and she encouraged me to get help. I asked Asmodeus, and he arranged for the rehab.’ Stolas shrugged, the move too calm, too controlled. ‘I’ve been there ever since.’
‘Until right now.’
‘Until right now.’
‘sh*t.’ Blitz was on his knees, scrabbling along the sofa until he was knelt right beside Stolas, before his brain could even comprehend that he was planning to move. ‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’
He wanted to reach out. To touch. To lay his hands on Stolas’s shoulder, chest, knee, something.
But he didn’t.
Why? Why was it so hard to touch the other demon? Why was he so afraid of it?
Stolas scoffed. He wasn’t ignorant of how close Blitz was, all of a sudden, but he tried not to show how much it unnerved him. He hadn’t been this close to Blitz in … how many months had it been since they’d last lain together?
‘I am a Goetia, Blitz. A prince. It is unbecoming to show any form of weakness to anyone, let alone an …’
He trailed off, the word drying up on his tongue as Blitz stiffened.
Let alone an imp.
He didn’t need to say it.
They both knew what he was going to say.
It was a point Stolas had been trying to forget about, since their argument in his palace. A point he’d never even considered before that moment. A point he had researched, when it was fresh in his mind, but had since let go because he simply hadn’t been surrounded by any imps – none of Belphegor’s assistant were imps, and he’d only been in Fizz’s presence for the one night.
Yet right now, he remembered everything.
‘You play with our feelings, think we’re smaller, not as important.’
Blitz knew it too. Felt the tightness of chains around his throat, his chest, his wrists. The bond of master and servant, the agony of knowing he was worth only a handful of change to a royalty.
He fell backwards onto his ass, pulling his knees against his chest. For whatever reason, he didn’t scoot himself back across the cushions, but he did turn his head away to stare at the flames. Again.
‘I’m sorry.’ Stolas’s voice was timid. ‘I didn’t mean it like that, Blitz.’
‘There’s no other way to mean it, Stolas.’ Blitz’s voice was muffled against his arm. ‘I am an imp. We’re the lowest of the f*cking low already, and I’m the worst of them all. I get it.’
He hated it. But he got it. He understood, better than anyone else. ‘I manipulate people. I use them, and I leave them broken when I’m done.’
‘You didn’t leave me broken.’
He scoffed. ‘You’re in f*cking rehab after I drove you into another man’s arms at a party designed for hating me that I got you an invite to when I initiated a fight with you and refused to apologise, like the dumbass I am.’ He pressed his face further into the crook of his elbow, hoping, praying almost, that it would be enough to stop the tears he could feel burning.
He hated crying. So. Much.
The sofa squeaked as Stolas moved. ‘You didn’t send me to rehab,’ he said, as a warm hand rested on Blitz’s arm. He would never admit it to anyone not in the room, but he leant into it. ‘I needed rehab before we ever met again as adults. Blitz, you … you helped me.’
Stolas stroked his fingers across the roughness of the fabric covering Blitz’s skin from his own. It was threadbare, some parts of it one stretch away from ripping open, but he would never say anything. Never judge.
No, he would just gently trace a path back and forth, offering comfort. Touching his lover with more than his fingertip for the first time in longer than he cared to believe.
One little touch. That was all it took for him to fall again. To forget all their troubles, for affection to swell within his heart once more.
‘You showed me what life could be. You gave me the strength to acknowledge who I truly was, and to start trying to break out of the cycle I was forced into. That’s not broken. That’s you helping put me back together after years of other people breaking me.’
Well, sh*t. That opened the floodgates. Blitz tried to hold back the tears, but … no, it wasn’t enough. With a sniff, he felt the first one start to roll down his cheek. It was quickly absorbed into his sleeve, but the damage was done.
Where there was one tear, there were always more.
He didn’t want to cry. Not here. Not in front of Stolas. He wanted to … what, get angry? No, he didn’t want to be angry, but he wanted a non-sobbing way to get these f*cking emotions out of his system.
But he had nothing, nothing he could do or consume right in that moment. Instead, he just had to let them come, and try to control himself to bring them back under control quickly.
Fortunately, this time, he needed only a matter of minutes to regain the mask of Blitz.
‘f*ck.’ Rubbing his face into his sleeve to remove evidence of tears, he managed to look up. His eyes focused, as best they could, on the pattern of the wallpaper – because if he was made to look at the owl beside him, he probably would start crying again. ‘Nobody’s ever said that before, you prick.’
‘But it is true, Blitz.’ Stolas co*cked his head, ignoring the lone tear tracking down his own cheek, brought on by listening to Blitz cry. ‘You started to fix me. You adopted your daughter when she had nowhere else to go, too, did you not? And you helped me find my daughter, when you didn’t need to.’
Stolas was still touching him. He hadn’t even noticed that he hadn’t moved his hand away yet. He was too busy searching the imp’s face, seeking out every subtle little hint of emotion there – and mentally chiding him for the tiny little cuts and the not-quite faded bruises still visible on his skin from whatever missions he had been on lately.
It was only when something slammed just beyond on the door to the room, followed by a somewhat muffled, ‘Ay Dios mio!’, that they broke their connection, both turning to look in that direction.
The door stayed shut, and no further sound came from outside. With a sigh, and taking advantage of the momentary lapse in the conversation, Blitz wiped his cheeks dry fully and shuffled himself back to his side of the sofa.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be near Stolas. It was that he wanted to protect his own, vulnerable self from the conversation going heavy. Again.
The sadness in Stolas’s eyes almost made him second guess his move, though.
Almost.
But not quite enough.
With a sigh, Stolas pushed himself to his feet. ‘I want to make this work, Blitz,’ he said, even as he turned his back and headed across to the open balcony. ‘I want, at least, to be your friend when all of this is over, if not more.’
The words were familiar. Blitz had read them already – they were in the letter he’d been given. So if Stolas was repeating words he’d already said once …
Stolas paused, just in the doorway, as the first drop of acid rain hit the balcony awning. Even from across the room, Blitz could hear it sizzle.
‘But I think,’ Stolas continued, ‘I need to tell you more about me. And I need to understand more about you. We’re at constant miscommunication here, and until we understand more about each other … we’re never going to be able to be more than just former lovers, who occasionally fight with one another.’
‘I don’t want that.’ The confession came quickly to Blitz’s lips. ‘I – I want – f*ck, Stolas, I don’t know what I want, but it’s more than whatever we’ve had for the past month!’
‘Then we should talk.’
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