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Helluva Boss

Stolitz

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Soft Mornings

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

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Blitz woke slowly, pulling himself through the soft mist of sleep, swimming back to the surface. Yet the bed that he woke in was not his own with the hard mattress that always left the imp with lumps in his back, his tail feeling as if there were knots in it, lining the entire length. No, the bed that he woke in was soft and downy, so plush that he felt as if he was sinking into it, even though he was supported at the same time.

It was better than his bed, though that was not something that the imp ever had wanted to admit, blinking himself awake in the bedroom of his "once a month lover", Stolas Goetia. His nose was pressed into the owl demon's downy chest, the thick fluff of feathers so soft, so light, tickling his nose.

Blitz groaned quietly, not so loud that he feared that he would wake the demon. What business did the owl have in having feathers that soft? There was always a scent to them too, beyond the aroma of sex from the night before, that lingering tang of sweat and male musk, though Stolas' natural scent was slighter, more delicate and almost feminine. Blitz swallowed hard, licking his lips, but the feel of the bird in his mouth did not dissipate.

Lavender. That was what the owl exuded, the oils that he worked into his feathers in bathing and preening lingering between cleanings. He was always so careful about his appearance and took such great care of himself...though Blitz knew well enough that such extreme account of one's appearance hid what was beneath too.

Blitz sighed, tracing the owl's features, the white heart-shape of his face, down to the line of his beak, with the tip of his claw. Stolas... He hid so much and the imp wondered if he even knew it. It was one of the reasons that he came back, even between full moons, thinking that if he could give the owl a break from the rigour and the strain of his everyday life, the farce he was forced to put on, he could help just a little bit. Not that he would ever admit that out loud, though maybe Stolas knew. Maybe they both understood that they were closer than a so-called contract, even if they didn't know how to put it into words. In that way, they were alike.

For under the well-kept feathers were bags under his eyes, tiredness creasing the corners. The owl was thinner than he had been before, losing weight, moulting more, though it would have taken a practised eye to catch a detail like that. But Blitz had caught the bottle of feather-enhancer in the bathroom cabinet, looking it up on Voogle to see that it was supposed to retain feathers, meant for avian demons under stress or those that had reached an elderly age. Of course, being immortal unless he was killed, Stolas was far from elderly. That left only one option, with what Blitz knew.

You should rest more, Blitz told him silently, wishing that he could say the words out loud. But he doubted that Stolas would take his advice. Hell, it was not as if Blitz even took his own advice. Stolas needed to realise that he could not keep going at a breakneck pace, even if that was not what it looked like most of the time. He had to take a moment, had to rest, had to step away from his wife and perhaps even his daughter too, to look at himself.

That could be frightening. Fuck, it was terrifying. It was what Blitz avoided every day of his life. But that was just why he was so familiar with the concept of it, why he was familiar with staring into the blackness of his failures, even though he could not see what Stolas was going through as a failure.

A prince forced into an arranged marriage to bring together two families at the pinnacle of the rebellion... Loveless, of course, with his wife cheating on him from the early days. Stella had never had an issue with cheating and would not have cared if Stolas had fucked someone of their class of demon in the slightest. She only cared when he fucked below his station - even to the lowest of the low, supposedly, where the imps lay. Every day had forced the prince through an act of putting on a face, of being someone he was not, though no one had ever said that Hell was meant to be easy. It was Hell, after all, even for those in power. They just made the best of it that they could.

All else was merely the consequence of that, his sexual repression, his struggle to build and maintain relationships... The owl had even needed a contract to get Blitz back around and Blitz, well... He sighed. He acted like the arsehole he was to everyone else to Stolas too, all so Stolas would not lose what he had, those peaceful nights of sleep after being fucked out of his goddamn mind. The escape of his, admittedly odd, little roleplays. The long phone calls with Blitz, where he could monologue for hours. The rare movie nights and meet-ups at places with their daughters, like down at Strange Occult, the rare times where Stolas got to be, well...Stolas.

All that could be ripped away in but a moment. And Blitz, as he grew closer and closer to the strange yet lovable owl, didn't want to break the spell.

"But I can't tell you any of this, can I?"

For there was more hidden under the surface than people on the outside might have believed. He smiled faintly, stroking the owl's feathers, his long fingers curling around to the back of Stolas' head. The demon was deeper asleep than Blitz had realised, though that allowed him a little more time to look at him, to muse through his thoughts. He didn't get many slow times like that either, soft times that allowed his mind to drift, to wander, to work through things that lurked in the back of his mind otherwise, even while he was out on the job.

Stolas slumbered, a pillow hugged to his chest, almost face-down in it, though enough of his face and beak was still exposed for Blitz to trace the outline, mesmerising it. One day, he was afraid that he would lose it all, yet he had lost enough, time after time again, that he was not all that sure that it would be all that much of a surprise to him. That was why he took what he could get when he could get it, even if he had fallen more deeply for the owl than realised.

But the moments in bed together, those soft mornings when it was just the two of them in the huge mansion together, were nice. They didn't have to be anything more than simply nice either, the owl and the imp, ignoring their status in hell, if only for a little while. Blitz nuzzled into Stolas' chest fluff again, the owl's arm moving over him in sleep, cuddling him, drawing him in closer to his body.

"You're such a long bitch," Blitz chuckled, soft enough to not wake his partner. "But...I love you anyway."

Quietly, softly. Maybe Stolas would wake and think it was a dream. Maybe the words would not linger at all. But they would be there, in the air, lingering, drifting. They could float away or they could stay, though they would not change the path of Blitz' heart.

With Stolas' hand resting on his back, possessively holding him there, Blitz allowed himself that moment of rest too, Stolas' lavender scent enveloping him, along with the soft fluff of his chest. Sunlight streamed in through a crack in the curtains, but it had not yet slanted up to their faces, laid up on top of and close to the pillows, respectively.

The mansion was quiet. Outside, a hell-bird sang, warbling a song. One of Stolas' carnivorous plants snapped up a rodent of some kind, taking an early snack while its master was otherwise engaged.

All normal. All light. All patient. It was there that Blitz breathed and slipped away, dozing for the few minutes he had left with Stolas.

Maybe he would return that evening, as he knew the bird had a meeting with Lucifer that day, tell him something like that he needed to review a movie for Loona or something. Stolas would fall for that, sit down with him and hopefully not go over and over the meeting in his head, whether it was good or bad.

He would do what he could do for him.

But it was never enough.