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Helluva Boss

Stolitz

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Facing It

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

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Set after episode seven, part one, on the return from Ozzie's club...

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Blitz laid on the sofa curled around himself for what felt like an age. One of the back cushions tipped towards him slightly where it had not been set in place, or perhaps where one of the spikes on his back had caught it, jostling it out of place. The living area of his apartment was just as the imp had left it, down to the framed photos on the wall, all with his face blocked out wherever he featured. That was a story for another time, though not a night that Blitz wanted to remember.

The imp groaned, burying his wet face into the cushions, drawing a smaller one - that must have been Loona's - into his chest. It should have been more comforting than it was to hug. The musty scent clawed its way into his nose - something that had once been comforting and yet now only reminded him of his loneliness.

He should have it dry cleaned. The cushion covers...things. Shame there were no real dry cleaners in Hell. They were all money laundering, though not discreetly or secretively like they would on Earth.

"Fuck..."

The word was hissed in a rasp of breath, the imp curling in more tightly around himself, his tail wound around his leg, as if that could somehow hold him together, stop him from falling apart. The tears on his cheeks already attested to that.

Sure, it had been his own fault, fuck, for inviting Stolas out to Ozzie's, but, seriously - how was he to fucking know that Fizzarolli was going to be there? He would have fucked up anything, but the thing was that the jester... Well, he was a performer, or at least had been in the circus before the accident. He'd always resented Blitz for that, but Blitz didn't blame him for that. Only for how Fizzarolli had changed afterwards, even though Blitz had changed too.

Fuck, shit was all fucked up. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Blitz grunted, pressing the pillow harder against his chest. If he pressed hard enough, maybe it would stop the pounding of his heart, the ache that felt as if it was cutting him apart, splitting through him, rending him through. Once he'd been slashed from his thorax to the centre of his chest, one of the worse knife wounds he'd received. That didn't compare to feeling as if the pain was emanating from inside him, snarling up and reaching out as if it was going to claw its way out from his chest.

And Ozzie... Asmodeus... Fuck. He had history with Stolas? What was up with that? Or did that just mean that the powerful demons knew who the others were, nothing more complicated than that? But, as Blitz knew, everything was complicated when it came to demons.

The look in Stolas' eyes before he'd flipped the menu up in front of his face, even though Blitz knew that he had ordered... That had broken him. For a forlorn heartbeat of a moment, he had allowed himself to think that the owl was going to pull off something ridiculously suave, that he was going to lean back in his chair, give that little smirk and order, perhaps, the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu. Only to spite Asmodeus and Fizzarolli for daring to think that they could shove him down, lifting Blitz to his level simultaneously. For however things were to be between them, he'd always wanted to be on the same level as the owl, not always looking up to him.

Yet that could not be denied, one of them royal, the other not. And Stolas had not slammed them all down to the ground in a show of great callousness and ambivalence to their opinion, no... He had hidden his face. He had been ashamed. He was still ashamed of being seen with an imp.

Ah, there it was, the familiar tightening in his chest, feeling as if there was a claw around it, digging deeper. Perhaps it was looking to pluck out his heart. With how he felt, the imp would not have minded all that much. Maybe it was better to be dead-dead, gone from even Hell, than to face the pain.

Hell was all about pain. It was about time he'd learned that. Just what did he think that he was better than everyone else, that he could be happy? Millie and Moxxie were happy - but those fuckers just seemed to find each other at the perfect time in the perfect place. It couldn't be like that for many, not at all, not when the scales of fairness were decidedly swung against the denizens of hell.

Blitz shivered. Cold. He was cold. That wasn't a good thing, not in Hell. It was so rarely cold there, only in one Ring of Hell, and he rarely visited there.

Movement. Oh, it felt like death itself to move his body, his aching, blasted muscles screaming at him. But if he got up, dragged his howling, ravaged body into motion... Yes, he knew that was better. That got him up. That changed things. He couldn't do anything lying where he was. He'd learned that a long time ago.

Driving... Ah, to Hell with it. It was not as if him not being in a safe state to drive was any different to normal. It might even make him drive better than usual, clomping his way down the stairs in his boots, the apartment on the sixth floor, smack bang in the middle of the complex. Screams and howls emanated from other apartments, but Blitz did not pause. It was all normal for Imp City, let alone a run-down block of apartments like that.

It was strange to move, as if he was a puppet jerked around and controlled by a master's strings, the puppeteer grinning above him. Blitz shook off the unwelcome mental image, swinging himself into the van, his battered beat-up that, well, had seen better days by a long shot. He still loved that fucking car though.

"Come on... Where the fuck we going then?"

He talked to himself, muttering under his breath, his tail flicking back and forth in impish agitation. Anywhere, fucking anywhere. As long as he was out, doing something, anything... He had to be anywhere but home.

So, he drove, one arm out the window, a pistol in hand, shooting anyone that got in his way off the road. The roads were packed and heaving even in what should have been the dead of the night. Hell never slept, after all, yet the shrieks of sinners, demons and the lower lives of Hell clamoured in a torturous cry, all as one being, filled the background at all times. It was something the creatures of Hell got used to over time.

Or not. Maybe. Whatever.

He swung back and forth across the road, headlights shattered, the bare bulbs illuminating the road where streetlights were not a thing. Sometimes they were dotted around "better" residential areas. Not often.

"Get out of the way, fuckers!"

Not up to the standards of his usual insults, but, Hell, it would have to do. He'd have to make do with it, growling deep in the back of his throat, a sinister snarl curling down the line of his lips. It was nothing to do with the arseholes on the road, only the vileness of all that had taken place that accursed evening. The bang of the pistol rang out, shooting out the tyres of anyone in his way, swinging around them, exploding the gas tank of another. Blitz didn't care. It was all a day in his life, for him, but it did make his heart stop aching a tiny bit, that distraction. It made him feel just a little more like himself again.

The feeling, however, was temporary, the pangs returning.

If he hadn't invited Stolas out, things would have been different. Things would have been normal. But all he'd wanted to do was to get into the club, get fucked up and watch Millie and Moxxie having the relationship that he could only dream of. The only way that he had thought of to quickly get into Ozzie's had been to get Stolas to use his influence to get in - and that was about as far as the imp had thought that one through. He hadn't thought that Stolas would want to do more than stare lustfully at the acts, as expected, enjoying the show...

Well, things there had gotten seriously out of control. That much could be said and he didn't want to spend his time going over and over what had happened in his own head. If he didn't do something...well...he was already doing something...fuck... Could he do more something?

Blitz snarled and slammed the heel of his hand into the steering wheel, ignoring the car that he ran off the road as he swung around and...

...And came upon the closest side street to Stolas' mansion. Fuck! How the fuck had he gotten there? Blitz growled and slowed to a crawl, pulling over somewhere on the side of the road, residential properties almost giving the illusion that one was not in Hell. The manicured front gardens setting the moderate properties back from the road, however, gave it away with the carnivorous plants either slumbering or wriggling about in activity within their gardens. Some of those plants were nocturnal. Blitz hated that he wouldn't have known that if he had not spent time in Stolas' greenhouse before.

Woodenly, as if he was called by a higher being, though he had no business with angels, Blitz parked up properly and slid from the van. In the dead of the night, the road down there was quiet, separate from the highway, almost leading him to believe that he was somewhere peaceful, somewhere that was not the Hell that he was used to, the darkness of his thoughts making that Hell an inner one and an outer one.

He had to do it. Had to scale the wall, bypassing the magical shields that had been coded for his presence. Clearly, Stolas had not thought to change that yet. Blitz probably wouldn't have either, not that quickly, not with how he had not at all been thinking clearly after getting back from dropping Stolas off.

Across the garden, skirting the fountains. Didn't want to run into Octavia, not that night. Although he and the nearly adult owl talked sometimes, it was not the time. She was a good kid, though he would not be able to call her that for much longer. The owl barely tolerated being referred to as anything less than a grown woman and adult as it was. Perhaps she had been hanging around with Loona a little too much.

The thoughts distracted him enough to retrace his old footsteps, moving silently through the night. Even in Hell, the sky was coloured a deep, rich purple, reminiscent of the reddish hue it normally had in their Ring of Hell. Maybe others were a lighter shade, or even crimson through the night, but he had not spent too much time elsewhere since he had been a child.

Maybe that was why it felt so important to him, the slyness, the secrecy. Everything could have been fine if it was just a full moon night, if he was only sneaking through to Stolas' bedroom as he usually did. But it was a different night, even as he skilfully scaled the creeping plant that Stolas had grown especially up the side of the palace to his balcony to help Blitz scale it. Blitz had told him that it was not a smart idea, considering that anyone who wasn't him wouldn't have too much trouble with it anyway, but it was tricky to get out of his bedroom from the balcony with the book in his arms without a little help. Still, Blitz had not wanted Stolas to compromise on his security, even if he'd wanted to make things easier for Blitz.

Up the vines, no book in hand, still wearing his black leather jacket, the one with the spikes on the shoulders, from the club. He wished he had left it at home, but there was no going back now, nothing more he could do. And there was nothing for him to do, not as he crouched, peering into the dark room, letting his eyes adjust to the light, though imps had surprisingly good night vision as it was. The glow of their eyes, however, was something that they struggled to hide in the pitch black, hardly able to blend in with it unless they came with a few more tricks than what Blitz had brought along with him.

Yet there was Stolas, the imp hating how his heart skipped a beat. The owl didn't look in great shape, naked under the bedsheets, but they only half covered him, as if they had been flung there in a hurry. Grey feathers littered the bed and the surrounding floor that Blitz could see as if the prince had been thrashing or stomping... He didn't seem the kind to throw things. Nothing was out of place but a pillow.

Blitz shuddered. That was the pillow he usually slept on. Had Stolas put it out on the bed for him to lay his head on when Blitz had asked him out on a date? For...after they came back?

"Fuck..."

The single word came from him in a hissing rush of breath, deflating even more than he already had. Truthfully, Blitz did not know what he could do, how he'd even dragged his aching body up there. Now that he was up on the balcony, he was more tired than ever, as if his entire body wanted to lie down, to sleep. Maybe he would... But there would be no guarantee that the prince would not find him in the morning.

Did he want to be found? Not after that fiasco, the pain cutting through him like the blade of a knife, a wound that he could not recover from. Yet there was some part of Blitz that could not stop himself from sitting there, from watching, from maybe...hoping?

Don't do that.

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He closed his eyes against the encroach of tears.

Don't fucking do that again. You don't deserve it.

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But Stolas was there, sprawled out, hugging a pillow to his chest. Maybe he hoped it was the imp in his sleep or maybe not. Either way, that the owl had been distraught, even shedding his feathers from the stress of everything, was obvious, even to Blitz.

He couldn't deny that. He had hurt Stolas. That made everything worse.

The owl's chest rose and fell more harshly than usual in sleep, tossing and turning, more feathers drifting off with each heaving toss of his shoulders, trying to find a comfortable position. Stolas muttered in his sleep and Blitz pressed his forehead in against the glass of the balcony doors, the ones that could be opened out, watching Stolas through a single pane.

He wished he could hear what he was saying. Or maybe he didn't. He didn't know anymore.

And then the demon's eyes snapped open, all four of them, red and glowing in the darkness. Just in time, Blitz pulled himself to the side of the balcony, out of sight, his heart pounding, blood roaring in his ears.

Fuck! What if the prince caught him out there? That could either be really bad or...good? Fuck, why did things have to be so difficult?

He frozen, the night air caressing his skin, heart pounding, wanting to sweat, though he was still not hot enough for that, accustomed to higher temperatures in Hell than what the night could offer him. Clenching his jaw until it ached, the imp pinned himself back against the wall to the side of the doors, part of the vine crushed lightly behind his back, a flower tickling the nape of his neck.

Quiet stretched out before him, around him, filling the silence with more of the same. One of the plants in the garden rumbled a growl and looked around as if it was seeking a late meal.

No Stolas appeared.

Slowly, cautiously, Blitz peered back around into the bedroom, only to find the demon back on the bed, the covers pulled up more comfortably and warmly around him, though the feathers on his cheeks showed fresh tear tracks.

Shit.

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Drawn up to his chest was the pillow that Blitz used, the owl's beak buried in it as if he was inhaling the imp's scent, a clear meaning behind the action. There was something there that not even Blitz' fucked up mind could deny, as much as all the old, broken, repetitive thought patterns wanted to tell him, over and over again, that he was useless, that he was worthless, that he didn't deserve love, that he was too broken to do anything good in the world. He didn't want to do much good, mind, just for the one bird. The stupid birdface who had made him...

Well, Stolas had not made him do anything. It had been all of his own free will. He could always have said no. Yet Blitz could not have said no to developing something more for him, not even able to put words to it in his own mind. Yet the image of it remained, as if it was a thought that could not be put into words, yes... The impression of it as strong as his beating heart.

Once more, the imp looked at the prince, took in his saddened face, the owl drifting into sleep again. It was not a restful slumber and all Blitz ached to do was to get in there, to hold him tightly, to tell him that it was all going to be okay, how sorry he was. Yet anything of that ilk, well...it had never been that easy for him. Go figure.

Blitz sighed, his hand pressed up to the grass, wishing that he could just fall through it and have everything be okay again. Things weren't that simple, however.

He knew one thing. He was head over heels for the damned owl, the royal prick. And Blitz didn't know what in Hell to do about it.

Maybe it was already too late. Maybe his chance was already gone. Maybe he'd never even had a shot to begin with.

The thing was...he'd never had much of a shot. In life, in work... Perhaps now in love too. Or whatever the fuck it was between him and the feathered prince. He'd made life work, somehow. He'd made work...work. Eventually.

Why not...something else too?

Fuck, I can't believe I'm going to fucking... Satan's balls!

"Sometimes, you've just got to face it head-on, Blitz. Now, are you an imp or are you a fucking imp?"

He'd gotten up time after time again when a rain of bullets had been heading his way, facing down the odds against all costs. He had to do it again, even though that was the kind of situation that he thought that he really might end up bruised and battered and left for dead in the worse way.

He clenched his fists, staring at the prince through the window, shaking faintly.

He had to do it. Had to do something. Blitz may not have quite known what that something was yet, but he knew that it had to be done.

First, he needed to prepare. But at least he had hope. Maybe for the first time in his life.

Maybe not even for the last.