Chapter Text
Blitzo doesn’t like kisses.
It’s something about the way they feel, all soft and sensitive and transparent. Utterly transparent, he thinks, leaning against a pillow probably so expensive it was illegal, remembering the way Verosika’s lips pulsed under his, horny but apathetic.
“Does anyone love you , Blitzo?”
“No,” he answers honestly, a tiny fissure of chilly vulnerability creeping under his skin. But then his eye catches the glare of the carnival lights reflecting off the smooth barrel of his gun, blinding his vision and his emotions. He smiles, and the fight continues.
Kisses were, would probably be, more enjoyable between two people who loved each other. Shit like that was too, too soft for demons like Blitzo, who fantasized about money more than romance.
Too soft. Right. Too soft, both emotionally and physically.
He supposes that’s why he doesn’t mind being kissed by Stolas.
Stolas’ kisses are never soft. They can’t be, not with his sharp beak and his hungry eyes, and more often than not, they were cold, his beak matted with chilly tears that left trails of salt on the black bone.
Stolas’ kisses are pecks, literally. They hardly last more than a second, a quick bump of cold bone on burning skin. Blitzo supposes that perhaps he’s developed a Pavlovian response to Stolas’ kisses just because they’re, more often than not, followed immediately by Stolas’ beak falling beside Blitzo’s ear, where he whispers a litany of “please”s and “Blitzy”s and bitten off moans.
Blitzo rather likes reducing Stolas’ vocabulary to a two-word maximum, even if he doesn’t like anything else about him.
Well.
Blitzo supposes that isn’t completely true. He glances to the side of the cigarette he hasn’t lit yet, watching the way Stolas stretched on the blanket beside him, cracking his neck as he read an astronomy textbook, tears forming in his red eyes at his yawn.
Stolas’ feathers always look soft, but they look almost ethereal when backed by the glow of small nightstand lamp that had no right looking as similar to moonlight as it did. The feathers on his face are mussed, making him look just a tad more gentle. Not as sharp. Not as prince-y. He blinks slowly at his book, and he’s getting sleepy, Blitzo can tell. Satan, his eyelashes are long.
Blitzo tears his gaze away, maybe a bit more forcefully than he needs to. He fishes out a lighter from the drawer next to him (did Stolas start keeping that for him?) and flicks the fire on, missing the end of his cigarette a grand total of three times.
So Stolas is objectively. Objectively. Attractive. Kinda soft-looking, sometimes. Pretty. Whatever. Fuckin’ whatever. That’s always been a thing. Blitzo knew that, Stolas definitely knew that-- whatever.
This is not , Blitzo thinks, sounding a little bit desperate even to himself, some sort of revelation .
His flicks of the lighter get a little more unstable, a little more frustrated.
A clawed hand reaches over and takes hold of the lighter, lighting Blitzo’s cigarette with practiced ease, as if he’d done the same thing a thousand times before (He has, Blitzo realizes).
“Silly Blitzy,” he giggles quietly, giving Blitzo a soft pat on the head before curling up beside him, stretching one last time before closing his eyes to sleep.
Blitzo feels warm.
This, Blitzo tells himself, and it sounds like a command, will not be a problem.
…
He leaves at dawn the next morning.
He feels Stolas shift in the bed as he stands, feels his arms lingering around his torso. Stolas sighs. His breath carries an air of morose disappointment as it echoes around the bedchamber that he’d soon lie down alone in, as Blitzo is sure he’s done a million times.
Blitzo thinks he’d see Stolas try to force a smile to send him off, trying and failing to hide the crushing loneliness carved around his fake smile.
So he doesn’t turn around.
…
Red light is just beginning to shine through the tall windows he passes, Hell’s own version of the sun peeking above the urban horizon.
Blitzo adjusts the collar of his jacket as he walks down the grand halls of the Goesha family mansion, trying not to feel small in corridors designed for demons three times his size with two million times his wealth.
As he passes the doorway leading to the kitchen, he pauses for just a moment. A soft sobbing, along with a tinny baseline and guitar blasting from earphones, reaches him through the walls.
Stolas’ daughter, huh. Octavia, Blitzo is pretty sure. Despite how he puts on a show to glance off to the side when Stolas is talking, he does listen. Sometimes.
He thinks briefly of a young hellhound with sunken, hopeless eyes and a dark glare, with no family and no stability, who’d cried the first night he’d adopted her. Without fully processing what he’s doing, and definitely without any sort of plan, he steps into the kitchen.
Octavia immediately notices him, quickly pausing her music and pulling out her headphones to make a few shaky, desperate swipes at her eyes.
Blitzo pretends not to see her, walking behind the counter to open the fridge and pull out a carton of milk. He glances towards the cabinet where the glasses probably are, notes that it’s several feet above his reach, and shrugs before drinking straight from the carton.
“Gross.” Octavia grimaces, her voice still choked up.
“Oh, get off your fucking high horse, Princess. As if you expect me to believe that inbreds draw the line at putting their lips on a container. Actually,” Blitzo snorts. “That’s just about the level of ridiculousness I’d expect from you people.”
He knows that wasn’t what Octavia was talking about. He knows she was probably referring to the fact that Blitzo was an imp, laying his grubby, low-class hands on the groceries of royalty. Even so, teenagers are teenagers, royalty or not, so Blitzo swallows down the annoyance.
“I used to drink from the carton too, you know,” Octavia points out, and Blitzo raises an eyebrow at her. “When I was younger. But then I read this article-- you know, paper-based containers are actually super shitty at keeping liquids pure and bacteria-free? When you get saliva on the lip of the carton, the container’ll soak it up, and then it’ll get in the milk and stay and proliferate in the milk the next time you pour it.”
Blitzo stares at her for a second. So it wasn’t the-- hm. There was something familiar about Octavia.
“You really are Stolas’ kid,” he says without completely meaning to.
“What?” She’s still sniffling, but she’s looking at Blitzo with shiny eyes.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I just meant you two had the same kinda weird-ass habits. You both get stupidly excited about science nerd information shit.” Blitzo remembers smoking a cigarette as Stolas rambled on and on about demon plant cultivation and human realm succulent resilience for what seemed like hours on end, the same excited look in his eyes. “Your dad’s a grass nerd.” He sneers. “Not even the kind of useful kinda grass you can smoke, either.”
Octavia stares at Blitzo while he chugs down the rest of the milk and throws it towards the trash can. It misses. He doesn’t bother picking it up.
“...huh.” Octavia says eloquently.
“The fuck is it now?” Blitzo leans against the counter and crosses his arms to look at her.
“I guess I didn’t… expect you to know anything about my dad. I always… I thought… I thought it was just…”
Octavia is beginning to look strangely enlightened, and it makes Blitzo uncomfortable. He turns to leave.
“Wouldn’t it be weirder if I didn’t know anything about him?” He replies.
“What does he like about you?” Octavia cuts in, looking curious.
“Dunno. Bye, Octavia.” He’s almost at the doorway.
“You know my name,” she whispers to herself.
“No, I don’t. Bye, October.” Blitzo bolts down the hall. He thinks about running straight out the door, as usual, but he’s thinking about Loona again, and how Octavia is really just a miniature, non-horny female Stolas, and he turns back to Stolas’ room with an internal groan.
He marches in, nearly slamming the door open, and Stolas’ startles out of bed, rubbing his eyes.
“Blitzy?” He squints at him, and he has no fucking business looking so good when he’s just woken up. “You’re back? Did you forget something, or--”
“Your daughter’s crying in the kitchen. Go talk to her. I’m fucking off.”
“What..? Via is?” He instantly looks more alert, frantically looking for some sort of clothing to cover himself as he scrambles out of bed. Blitzo throws him the robe he keeps on his hanger, as if it’s second nature.
Just as he realizes how automatically his hand reached for Stolas’ robe, Blitzo decides that, no, he isn’t doing this today, isn’t thinking this today, not in this economy, not at this ungodly hour of the morning.
He leaves.
Stolas thanks him with a soft, achingly sincere voice. Warmth sprouts in Blitzo’s chest even as he scurries off.
He wishes it didn’t.