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Hell didn’t have seasons the way Earth did, but if it did, this would be autumn.
The air smelled like scorched pumpkin and fermented cherry wine. Trees with razorblade leaves shed their skins in rust-colored curls, scattering like ash across the cracked stone path.
Tucked deep in this canyon, past a collapsed rail line and defunct succubus brothel was where they had finally arrived. The greenhouse loomed, half-buried in red rock and caution wards. Overgrown, black-glass panels fogged with steam and rot, vines curling down its ribs like veins across an exposed heart.
Blitzø lit a cigarette and stared at it.
“You sure this is the place?” he muttered.
Behind him, Stolas adjusted the straps on his field satchel, a recent gift from Blitzø, and nodded stiffly.
“Positive,” he said, flipping open a clipboard. “The Malebolge Horticultural Guild authorized a temporary breach for specimen inspection. And I’m the only available demon with the proper clearance.” He paused. “Or at least, I was. This is sort of off the books considering my current political standing.”
He didn’t say since I lost everything. He didn’t need to.
“Regardless,” he continued, “I’m likely the only one with intimate enough knowledge of the genera inside that greenhouse to collect the sample they want unscathed. At least my academic career still means something.” His delicate features were pinched, slightly weary as they often were these days. He forced a smile that stuttered Blitzø’s heart in his chest a bit. “Or perhaps, of course, I’m just somewhat more… expendable. After everything. Either way, I must admit that it’s nice to have been the one to bring some business in for the company for once. And we don’t even have to leave hell!”
“Expendable my ass,” Blitzø bit out. “Don’t say shit like that. I don’t give a fuck what some hoity-toity, sticks-up-their-holes types might think.” Stolas only met his eyes, and a moment of some unsaid thing passed between them.
That had been happening a lot these past few months.
“Thank you. For coming with me, I mean.” Stolas said softly. Blitzø only nodded. When Stolas’ attention shifted back to the greenhouse before them, he looked him over. White button-down shirt, short sleeves. Plain brown pants, as simple in their design as the fabric was cheap. No grimoire. No glow. Just a gorgeous, tired man with paperwork instead of power.
“You sure you’re up for this?”
Stolas tried to smile. “It’s just a plant.”
“You read the field sheet, right?”
“I wrote the field sheet.”
That didn’t comfort Blitzø. He flicked ash into the dirt and muttered, “Still don’t get why we’re doing this in Hell instead of some backlot on Earth.”
“Because this plant doesn’t survive in Earth’s biome,” Stolas said, already walking toward the gate. “Too sterile. It needs… ambient corruption.”
“And we’ve got that in spades,” Blitzø muttered, following. “Whatever. As long as they’re paying us.”
The greenhouse exhaled.
Not wind. Not heat. Just a wet, musky breath, like something had noticed them.
Blitzø’s instincts prickled.
Inside, the glass was fogged. The vines writhed in slow-motion as if dreaming. Smooth, greenish-purple tendrils curled like wet rope from wall to ceiling, buds blooming with soft, dark suckers. The floor was cracked tile over loam. It smelled like rotting fruit and nectar gone sour.
And something else. Something underneath.
“Vitis Epithumea,” Stolas murmured, gaze drifting across the main cluster. “Only seven recorded specimens in known demonkind. Sex-reactive. Psionic. Rumored to be semi-sentient.”
“Rumored?”
“Theories conflict,” Stolas said. “They were banned from cultivation after the Ashmadia Nesting Massacre. The spores triggered an orgy that lasted three days. The Vitis devoured most, but even the survivors were skeletal. Some texts say it feeds on unclaimed lust. Others—”
A vine lifted lazily. Tilted toward him.
“—say it breeds with its prey.”
“Fucking lovely,” Blitzø muttered. “So what’s the game plan? Trim it? Interview it? Buy it dinner?”
“We collect a sample,” Stolas said, stepping forward. “That’s it. Quick in and out.”
The phrase hung in the air.
Blitzø snorted. “You did bring me along just to flirt.”
Stolas flushed.
And that was when the first vine touched him.
Just a brush, ankle to calf, like a cat weaving between his legs. He froze.
“Blitzø,” he said. Quiet. Tense.
“I see it,” Blitzø said, already pulling his gun.
Another vine curled up Stolas’ side, under his shirt, wrapping his torso in slow spirals. The buds at the tip were opening, pulsing, damp petals parting to reveal the suckers within.
“Ah, Blitzø…”
Blitzø thumbed down the hammer of his flintlock but kept it trigger guarded. “This specimen is far, far, overgrown.” Stolas murmured in a tight, even voice. “It’s too sensitive. I think—I think it’s reading my general, um. Charm towards you as—oh! That’s tight, shit— as arousal.” Stolas gasped, stumbling back a step, but the vines were already coiling around his thighs, his wrists—
Blitzø fired.
The bullet ripped through one of the vines, splattering dark green fluid across the floor.
The wrong vine.
Stolas cried out— not in pain, but panic.
“Don’t—don’t cut it now!” he gasped. “If you sever one mid-coil while it's active, the others panic. They’ll tear me apart!”
Blitzø hesitated, grip tight on the gun. Watching more vines slither up Stolas’ legs, parting his feathers, baring his body inch by inch like a slow, deliberate strip. Protruding, red little thorns began to slowly slit open fabric that didn’t immediately part. Inch by inch, more and more of the long lines of Stolas’ body became exposed
He looked helpless.
His magic was gone. His title was gone. And this wasn’t a show anymore; not one of those fucked-up flirtations in an alley or the office, or in the glow of the tv of the apartment. This was real.
Blitzø swallowed.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I charmed someone to death. You arouse all you want, bitch, I’ll teach Audrey fuckin’ III here how to keep its hands to it’s fucking self. Tell me how to stop it.”
Stolas was panting now, vines brushing over his chest, his hips, the exposed folds at the center of his thighs. One of the buds pulsed and nudged between them. Blitzø watched half in horror, half hopelessly hard, as the bulb at the end of the vine furled open to expose a pink gradient of little nodules that pulsed and oozed something sticky. Then it struck like a snake and latched onto Stolas’ clit with wet suction, and he moaned.
“It d-doesn’t disengage,” he stuttered. “The only thing to do now is… Blitzø, I’m so sorry, if—if it makes me come before a partner does—” he choked, “it thinks it’s claimed me. And it feeds.”
Blitzø blinked. “Feeds?”
“Digests. From the inside out.”
“Fuck.”
“Blitzø,” Stolas begged, body now lifted fully off the floor, arms overhead, spread and trembling, “please—if we’re going to stop it—you have to do it now.”
The vines were moving faster. Suckers flicked along his inner thighs. Another tendril began nudging at his cloacal opening — slow, exploratory, but insistent.
And Blitzø’s body answered.
Hard.
Hungry.
Terrified.
He dropped the gun.
“Okay,” he said, voice shaking with rage and something deeper. “Okay. You want me to stop this thing from fucking you to death?”
He stepped forward.
“Then I guess I’d better fuck you first.”
The vines had him displayed like a relic from a ruined chapel — arms bound overhead, legs parted, body bared and glistening. His feathers were tousled, pinked with heat and damp from the humid air. Nectar dripped from the suckers latched to his thighs and hips. One had already attached to his clit, pulsing in slow, rhythmic suction that made Stolas whimper with every drag.
His opening nearly visibly throbbed— wet, flushed, needy.
“Please—” he gasped, twitching as a second bud traced along his cunt, the sucker dragging soft, obscene circles. “Blitzø, please—”
“You said I have to make you come first,” Blitzø growled, dropping to his knees between the prince’s legs. “Then I’m gonna make damn sure you do.”
He shoved his jacket off and buried his face between Stolas' thighs.
The scent hit him first. Sticky-sweet, floral and earthy, with a sharp musk underneath. His tongue pressed flat against the trembling cleft of Stolas' cloaca, and Stolas groaned, shattered, desperate— Christ on a stick, Blitzø had missed that sound— but thankfully not in pain. Just from too much.
Because the vines weren’t stopping.
Even as Blitzø began to lap at him— greedy, rough, possessive— the buds kept suckling. The one at his clit tightened its grip, now synchronizing to Blitzø’s strokes. Another began to part his inner folds, pressing inside just enough to tease.
“I’m gonna kill this fucking plant,” Blitzø muttered between licks.
“You can’t,” Stolas sobbed. “Not now—just—just don’t stop—”
Blitzø didn’t. He devoured him — tongue curling inside the cloaca, fucking deep while one hand reached up to palm Stolas' ass, fingers digging into the soft down of feathers just above a coiling vine that threatened to push in alongside him.
“You filthy, pretty little thing,” Blitzø hissed, pulling back just far enough to speak against slick, delicious heat. “You’re soaked. You’re fucking starving for it.”
Stolas moaned like a creature possessed.
“I c-can’t help it,” he gasped. “The plant—it makes it worse—every time you touch me—”
“I know,” Blitzø said, and sucked at the apex of his swollen mound.
Stolas nearly sobbed, body convulsing — but he didn’t come. Not yet. His muscles trembled.
The vine at his entrance pushed deeper. A slick, tapering length, now writhing inside him. Blitzø snarled.
“Fuck off,” he snapped and bit down on Stolas' thigh just enough to make him jerk in the vines.
The tendril pulled back as if offended.
Blitzø grinned against Stolas' skin, dark and mean and his.
“That’s right. He’s mine.”
He licked again. Kissed his clit with a light, teasing suction. Spat and shoved two fingers inside Stolas beside the invading tendril, forcing the plant to accommodate him.
Stolas whimpered as the vines hoisted him higher, like the plant had decided elevation made him more appetizing. His arms were man-handled back behind his spine in a tight bind, wrists overlapped and wrapped in something soft and slick. The strain arched his chest forward, ribs expanding with ragged breath as sweat beaded beneath his feathers.
More vines coiled under his knees, lifting his legs until he hung fully open, hips tilted forward, thighs trembling in the air. His back had no support except for a single tendril looped tight across his shoulder blades, making his whole body tremble just from staying suspended.
He looked like an offering.
He sounded like a whore.
He probably couldn’t help it with the way a particularly long, thick vine was slithering between his slick folds, ridged with pulsing veins and studded with slick nodules that caught on every nerve, dragging syrup-thick nectar over him until it pooled in globs and hung in obscene, clinging ropes. It dripped slow — sweet as floral rot, heavy as oil — down his trembling thighs.
“Gods,” Stolas sobbed. His hips jerked. “I— I can’t—”
“You can,” Blitzø growled, standing now, unbuckling his pants. “Because I’m gonna fuck you so hard this fucking plant knows who you belong to.”
Blitzø’s belt hit the floor with a soft clink. His cock slapped free — flushed, throbbing, already leaking, the tip slick with arousal.
Stolas whimpered the moment he saw it.
Not because of the size — though he’d missed it, gods he’d missed it — but because the vines reacted. The suckers pulsing at his thighs shivered, as if scenting Blitzø’s intent. The one inside his cloaca wriggled deeper, and another was curling lower, angling toward his clit again.
“No—no, they’re trying—” he gasped.
“Yeah, I see them,” Blitzø growled, grabbing Stolas by the hips.
Blitzø stared, panting, stroking his cock lazily with his thumb gliding through precome.
“You ever see yourself like this?” he asked, voice low and rough. “Suspended like some altar-bound virgin sacrifice?”
Stolas' mouth parted, whether to deny it or moan, even he didn’t know, and the vines lowered him, just slightly, until Blitzø’s cock brushed his bottom lip.
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Blitzø growled. “They get it. Smart plants.”
Stolas choked out something like a plea. His arms flexed in the binds, useless. His legs twitched open wider as if inviting more.
Blitzø didn’t wait. He grabbed a handful of feathers behind Stolas' head and shoved forward, sliding his cock into Stolas' mouth in one long, deliberate thrust.
Hot.
Wet.
Submission.
“Fuuck, look at you,” Blitzø hissed, hips grinding just a few inches in. “Sucking cock while you’re tied up like you were born for this.”
Stolas gagged, only able to moan brokenly around him.
The vines responded instantly. One looped across his chest, squeezing tight just under his ribs. Another slid between his thighs and latched to his cunt with a squelch — suckers locking over his clit and inner folds in pulsing rhythm.
“Mmf—!” he choked, mouth still full.
“Oh, you like that, huh?” Blitzø snarled, pulling out just far enough to slap his cock across Stolas' lips. “Didn’t even need to be told. You just open up like the good little fuckhole you are.”
Stolas sobbed around him.
Drool ran down his chin.
His eyes were glassy, rolled up, glazed with lust.
“Is this what you wanted?” Blitzø growled. “All that pining, all that flirting, and this is what you really wanted. My cock deep in your throat while these vines suck your greedy little cunt dry.”
He thrust again, harder, burying himself to the base. Stolas' throat bulged, neck muscles fluttering. His body jerked in the binds, but he didn’t pull away.
Blitzø groaned. “You love this.” I love this, he thought desperately.
He started to fuck his mouth in earnest; deep, brutal thrusts, one hand gripped tight in feathers, the other fisting Stolas' hair. Each time he bottomed out, he held there for a second, feeling the tremble in Stolas' bound body, the slight flex of muscle that meant he couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t even move.
Every moan vibrated down his cock like a lust-soaked prayer.
“You take me so good, fuck, it’s like your throat wants me.”
Stolas choked again — a wet, gurgling sound that somehow still sounded like yes.
Blitzø nearly came from that alone. He couldn’t risk that; he had fuck-all idea of what counted as ‘claimed’ to this pervert-ass, little shop of whores fucker, and he wasn’t about to stake Stolas’ life on oral counting as a home run, no matter how mind-blowingly desperate he was to feel that pretty little throat work every drop of cum out of his aching balls.
The vines made no move to stop him. They parted just enough for Blitzø to wedge himself between them — with them. To the plant, he wasn’t a threat. He was a rival.
He lined himself up and spat into his hand, slicking himself fast.
“Hold on, sweetheart.”
And with one brutal thrust, Blitzø drove in.
Stolas screamed.
From the sweet pain, the stretch, Blitzø’s cock pounding into him as the vine writhed beside it, rubbing against every hypersensitive nerve.
He clenched violently around them both.
“Holy shit,” Blitzø snarled, driving in again. “You’re gripping so fucking tight—!”
Stolas was wailing now, tears in his eyes, chest heaving, body trying to twist in the vines that held him perfectly bound.
“I—ah—I can’t—I can’t—”
“You will,” Blitzø growled, fucking him harder, deeper. “You have to. You hear me? You don’t come until I say. You don’t give it to them.”
The suckers on his clit were vibrating now. Feeding on the sounds, the sweat, the heat... another bud wrapped itself to Stolas’ inner thigh, latching with a wet pop that made Stolas arch in Blitzø’s grip.
“You feel that?” Blitzø hissed. “This thing wants to fuckin’ steal this from us. It wants to use you up and eat you alive.”
“Don’t want that,” Stolas sobbed, “only you. You take me. Please, Blitzø—claim me.”
Something broke open in Blitzø’s chest.
He grabbed Stolas harder— one hand tangled in his feathers, the other clawed into his thigh. His hips snapped forward in a brutal rhythm now, slamming into Stolas so hard the vines shook with every impact.
“You’re mine,” he growled. “Say it.”
“—yours–”
“Louder.”
“Yours— yours! Yours, I’m yours—just—Blitzø, don’t stop!”
The vine inside Stolas began to pulse. A slow, rhythmic pressure, synced to his quickening breath, his rising cries.
Blitzø felt it, felt how close Stolas was— and it terrified him.
“Come now,” he barked, slamming in deep. “With me.”
And Stolas did.
He came with a scream that shook the air, body convulsing, tears streaming down his cheeks as his climax shattered through him, wave after wave and Blitzø followed only a heartbeat later, choking his name, buried to the hilt.
The vines froze.
Then hissed.
The suckers popped free. The tendrils uncoiled. They withdrew from Stolas’ body like smoke.
Then slowly, like a retreating tide, they loosened their grip.
For a few suspended seconds, the greenhouse breathed.
Stolas sagged in the vines, limp and trembling, panting so hard he couldn’t even make sound. His feathers were soaked, the skin beneath flushed a violent pink. His thighs were slick with nectar and cum, both his and Blitzø’s, and his cloaca still twitched with aftershocks; open, twitching, claimed.
Blitzø was still inside him. Still panting. Still feeling. Slowly, the vines began to withdraw, one by one. As if satisfied.
The suckers detached with wet little pops. The inner vine—the one that had nearly triggered Stolas’ death—slipped out in a slow, rippling motion and curled itself back into its pod, pulsing with eerie contentment.
And Blitzø felt it: not just the retreat, but the shift. The whole greenhouse had gone quiet. Like a hunger sated.
He looked down at Stolas— and froze.
Where the vine had latched over his chest — just above his heart — there was now a dark, flower-shaped mark staining the feathers and the skin beneath. A stain that shimmered faintly gold, then dimmed, like cooling metal.
A brand, not of possession. Of survival.
“Stolas,” Blitzø whispered.
His eyes fluttered open. Wet. Glassy.
“…Did it work?” he asked hoarsely.
Blitzø let out a sound — half laugh, half sob. “You’re not dead, are you?”
“Give it a minute.”
Blitzø pulled out slowly, wincing when Stolas whimpered again— overstimulated, open, too raw for words.
Then he caught him.
As the vines lowered his body gently to the ground, Blitzø dropped to his knees and hauled him into his lap, holding him like something breakable. His hands trembled. His chest ached.
Stolas clung to him with no shame left at all.
In the quiet aftermath and sweltering humidity around their slowing breaths, Blitzø suddenly felt the wave of fear he’d been staving off. “I thought I might... I could have lost you,” Blitzø admitted, voice barely audible. “I thought—if I didn’t get you there in time—”
“You did,” Stolas whispered.
“But barely.”
“Still counts.”
Blitzø buried his face in the crook of Stolas’ neck and breathed in the scent of sex and fear and flowers.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For all of it. The waiting. The silence. The way I made you beg.”
Stolas exhaled against his cheek. “You saved me.”
Blitzø pulled back.
Their eyes met.
And for once, neither of them looked away.
They didn’t speak for a while.
The vines had fully receded, curling back into their nests of glass and soil like sea creatures retreating into coral. The wet, heavy air had gone still. Even the spores in the air glowed softer now — no longer hungry.
Blitzø held Stolas in his lap, both of them half-dressed and ruined. He could feel the tremors in Stolas’ limbs. His hands, too, were shaking. Adrenaline buzzed in his blood, only now slowing enough to be replaced by a quieter ache.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a torn sleeve of wet wipes.
“Really came prepared, huh?” Stolas croaked weakly.
“Shut up,” Blitzø muttered. “These are the same ones I use to clean blood off my fuckin’ guns. Count yourself lucky.”
He cleaned between Stolas' thighs gently, biting back the way his heart clenched when Stolas flinched at first, then relaxed into the touch with a soft sigh. Blitzø was careful with the bruises. The brand over Stolas' heart still pulsed faintly under his feathers, like the echo of a warning.
When he finished, he stood awkwardly and started gathering pieces of their clothing. His pants were ripped. Stolas’ shirt was in tatters. One of his boots had melted into the floor.
“We look like we lost a bet in a haunted sex dungeon,” Blitzø muttered.
“I mean… we didn’t win,” Stolas said, slumping against a shattered planter, breath hitching as he tried to sit up. “But we’re alive.”
They shared a look.
A long one.
Then Blitzø lowered himself back beside him, against the same tile, one leg pressed lightly against Stolas'.
“I don’t know what the fuck that was,” he said eventually. “But it wasn’t just a job.”
“No,” Stolas agreed. “It wasn’t.”
He looked down at his own hands. At the trembling still there. At the faint residue of gold shimmer where the vines had held him.
“I was scared,” he admitted. “Not just of the plant. But… that I’d die before you ever touched me again.”
Blitzø’s jaw clenched.
“…I thought I had to stay away. After everything. After— well. After the fallout. I didn’t think I deserved to ask if you’d even want anything like… um. This. Again.”
“Well,” Stolas said softly, “I could do without the extra participant next time.” Blitzø snorted, a laugh startling out of him.
They fell into silence again.
But it wasn’t cold.
Then — behind them — the greenhouse shifted.
Blitzø sat up straight, instantly alert.
But nothing lunged.
No vines reached.
Instead, at the center of the greenhouse, the main pod bloomed.
Just once.
Its petals peeled back in eerie silence, revealing a single black-and-red flower — delicate, glowing, and unmistakably shaped like a cloaca wrapped in thorned leaves.
Stolas stared.
“…Is it mocking me?” he asked, indignance creeping onto his eyeliner-streaked face.
Blitzø reached down, tore the flower from its stalk, and tucked it behind Stolas' ear.
“No,” he said. “It’s marking you.”
Stolas smiled.
For real this time.
And Blitzø, against every tangled vein in his cursed, wanting body, smiled back.