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“What the fuck did you do to my dad?”
Stolas hadn’t planned to see anyone today, let alone a furious looking hellhound. Via was staying with her mother again and Stolas was resigned to another day of loneliness in his large and vacant palace. “Me?” he squawks, flustered and indignant. Suddenly, he realizes he knows this hellhound. She’s Blitz’s daughter. “How did you get in here? Why are you here?”
The Hellhound–Loona, he remembers–brandishes a heart wrenchingly familiar glove. “The stupid rock you bought him off with,” she growls. Honestly Stolas hasn’t heard her speak in anything but a growl so perhaps it is just her regular voice.
“‘Bought off’,” he repeats, “I gifted him that crystal to ensure he would be able to continue running his business.”
Loona huffs and rolls her eyes, “yeah after you discarded him like yesterday’s trash. I know he’s a fucking shithead but even he didn’t deserve that.”
Stolas stares at the hound in disbelief, “I did no such thing!” He’s about to continue explaining himself but thinks better of it. “This is my house and you are trespassing. Please leave.”
Loona just gives him an unimpressed look. “As soon as you tell me exactly what happened between you two–starting on the full moon,” she makes a disgusted face, “but leave out the sexy stuff please…”
There have been at least 2 additional full moons since the night in question but Stolas doesn’t have to ask what night she is referring too. He hasn’t seen or heard from Blitz since the morning after Verosika’s party. If only he’d also been able to stop thinking about Blitz in all that time
He feels his temper stirring because how dare this person–Blitz’s daughter–make demands of him. How dare she come into his house and tell him what to do and order him to relive moments he’d rather leave buried–not that they are buried since he hasn’t managed to stop thinking about everything that happened–but she doesn’t need to know that. She has no right to know any of it. It’s none of her business.
“There was no ‘sexy stuff’ as you so charmingly put it. I will ask you again to leave.” He waves his hand dramatically in the direction of the door, even though with Blitz’s crystal the door is unnecessary.
The look on Loona’s face is one of horror and Stolas momentarily thinks he’s offended her with his dismissal but she ignores it entirely to his chagrin.
“Wait what? But he was so excited to see you. He spent the whole day preparing. He–”
Stolas interrupts her, his annoyance hitting a fever pitch “I didn’t want it to be just sex anymore!” He takes a deep breath, trying and failing to regain his composure. “Why are you here? What was between your father and I is none of your business.”
“I already told you. I’m here because I want to know what you did to Blitz.”
“Why does it matter?!” Stolas practically shrieks.
“Because he’s self-destructing and I’m scared!” Loona yells back, looking immediately embarrassed by her outburst.
That gives Stolas pause because this is Blitz’s daughter after all. “My apologies my dear, but that could not have anything to do with me. He made it abundantly clear that he does not care for me–”
“Yeah and that’s bullshit because he’s a terrible liar.”
Stolas blinks. He’s not sure what to do with that–the implication that Blitz not caring for him is a lie–that Blitz’s own daughter thinks differently. “I have known Blitz for a long time. If he returned my feelings I would know.”
“Yeah well you don’t know him like I do.” She crosses her arms and turns away and it reminds Stolas so much of his own daughter.
It shouldn’t matter but it still stings to know its true–that Stolas doesn’t know Blitz as well as he hoped.
“Just tell me what happened that night–exactly what happened–please.”
Maybe it was the fact that Loona didn’t seem the type to beg, or maybe Stolas just couldn’t pass up a captive audience to his pain. “I don't know what you could possibly expect to learn.”
Loona rolls her eyes. “Just humor me. He showed up with a big bag of toys and gave you some over the top chipper greeting I’m guessing? Then what?”
Stolas is a little taken aback at the accuracy. Perhaps Loona does know Blitz well–but of course she knew some things–she was his daughter after all and they live and work together. “He showed me some of the things he purchased.”
Loona shudders but doesn’t interrupt
“I asked him if he had my book.”
Loona’s eyes widened in shock. “What?”
Stolas isn’t sure how that tripped the girl up.
“Let me get this straight…he comes over to uphold his end of the bargain–the one you negotiated by the way–he’s excited to see you and he’s put all this effort in and you just ignore all that to ask him for your book?”
“Well yes, it is part of our deal for him to bring the book.” Stolas got the feeling that he was walking into a trap.
“Which he always does…”
“Well yes… he said that as well.”
Pinches her brow in a way that reminds Stolas so much of her father, “then what?”
“I told him I need it back permanently…” The ‘trap’ begins to take shape in his mind, helped along by the look on Loona’s face.
“What the fuck!”
Stolas is quick to defend himself. “I procured him an Asmodian crystal so he would not need it anymore!”
“Yeah but you didn’t fucking lead with that did you?!”
“No I–no…” his gaze settles on his hands, clasping and unclasping them nervously.
“So Blitz started bargaining right? Telling you he needed it and he’d do anything you wanted.”
Stolas looks up at her. Surprised again by her rightness “Yes actually.”
“Classic Blitz.”
“He tried to offer sex but I was resolved not to fall back into old patterns.”
“You turned him down?”
“Of course. I’d come to realize that what was happening between us–the deal I made–wasn’t fair to either of us and it was wrong–right from the start.”
Loona returns to pinching her brow. “Please tell me you didn’t inform Blitz that you believed what the two of you have been doing was wrong.”
“Of course I did! It’s true! But only after I gifted him the crystal.”
“Fuuuuuuuck. Okay back track. He was excited to see you, he was ready and willing to uphold his end of the deal, you took away the book and turned him down flat–then you gave him the crystal?”
Stolas frowns at the summary, feeling that it's unfairly simplified. “Yes I told him he would be under Lord Asmodeus’ jurisdiction but that he’d be legally accessing the human realm and that he was no longer obligated to be with me. I set him free.”
Loona does not look at all impressed. “Yeah and how did he respond to that?”
Stolas' frown deepens. He has to think about it for a moment. The night was a bit of a blur with how nervous he’d been and then how wrong everything went. “He was confused why I was giving it to him. He seemed to think he’d done something wrong?”
“Also classic Blitz. You hadn’t told him you had feelings for him yet right?”
“Not in words, no–but my intentions have been clear for some time.”
“No they aren’t” the Hellhound says it with such confidence that Stolas is taken aback. “He thought you got bored of him.”
“Why would he think that?”
Loona shrugs and looks almost guilty. “You hadn’t seen each other in months. You always gave him an out to not come over.”
“I didn’t want to use him anymore. I wanted to give him a choice.” [panic]
“I also may have told him you were getting bored of him…”
Stolas squawks “What?! Why?”
Loona definitely looks guilty now. “Mostly to mess with him. But I also figured it was true. I do the same thing when I’m trying to ghost someone. I also didn’t realize he was down bad–If I had I wouldn’t have messed with him–probably,” she adds on belatedly
Stolas didn’t understand much of that and he sighs, frustrated.“It doesn’t matter because I told him I had feelings for him and that the transactional thing between us wasn’t right. I told him I wanted him to continue his business and that he didn’t have to stay with me but I wanted him to, if he wanted to. He thought I was ‘fucking with him’ and proceeded to act like my confession was some sort of sexy roleplay…”
“Holy fuck Blitz you fucking idiot,” Loona grumbles, slamming her palm to her forehead in secondhand embarrassment. “I’m sorry about him. That fucking sucks.”
“Yes, well, it was clear to me that my feelings were not returned. He couldn’t even conceive of me having feelings for him.”
Looks skeptical. “Well what did you expect?”
“Yes perhaps it was expecting too much, for him to see me in that way–”
“No,” she cuts him off. “How did you expect Blitz to believe that you had feelings for him?”
Stolas doesn’t know what to say to that. [thought he was being obvious].
“I thought you were supposed to be smart.” [ruffles feathers] “Blitz is an imp–lowest tier in hell other than hellhounds–maybe. And you’re a fucking prince! You’ve got a goddamn palace while we’re in a one bedroom apartment…Blitz sleeps on a couch that we pulled out of a fucking dumpster. And that’s ignoring all his weird emotional constipation and self loathing that I don’t even fully understand.”
Stolas: “I told him I cared for him.”
Loona: “Yeah and I’ll stake my life that he didn’t fucking believe you. Honestly, he probably shut down and stopped really listening to you from the moment you asked for the book back.”
Stolas: “But that was–”
Loona: “Yeah, you really shouldn’t have led with that.” [scene stuff] “So what then? He just left?”
Stolas: “No. I was heartbroken so I walked away. I figured he would leave but then he began yelling at me and following me through the halls.”
Loona: “what was he yelling about?”
Stolas: “He said that I sprung this ‘feelings bullshit’ on him. He called me a ‘pompous rich asshole’”
Loona: cuts in “well…”
Stolas: “Why am I even telling you any of this? It is none of your business. What purpose does this serve for you? Making me relive all this?”
Loona: Growls. “Because I’m worried and if I can find out what set him off maybe I can help him.”
Stolas: “You can be assured that any change in his behavior has nothing whatsoever to do with me. For me to affect him, I would have had to mean something to him which I very clearly did not.”
Loona: “Lucifer! Why are all men such idiots?! When he yelled at you. What else did he say? That couldn’t have been it.”
Stolas: “It was humiliating.”
Loona: “Like that fucking anti-Blitz party Verosika throws you mean?”
Stolas: “That’s different–how do you?”
Loona: “It's all over socials–we’ll talk about that later. Dad was in bad shape when he came home after the full moon so whatever happened started there. Spill or I’ll make sure Via gets all the videos of you from the party straight to her inbox.” Via’s probably already seen everything–it's not like it's hard to pick a Goetian prince out of a crowd of Imps and Succubi–but Stolas doesn’t need to know that.
Stolas: “he accused me of being classist and equated with other royals when I have never treated him as anything but my equal–”
Loona: humorless laugh. “Is that what you call infantilizing and fetishizing him? Treating him like an equal?”
Stolas: “I would never–”
Loona: “‘Impish little plaything’, [other things Loona would have heard]. And that’s just the shit I’ve heard. The way my dad talks, sounds like that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Stolas: “But I–I didn’t mean to.”
Loona: “It doesn’t matter what you meant. There is an insurmountable power imbalance between you two and maybe you can ignore it but Blitz can’t.”
Stolas: “He made that clear when he came back to yell at me more on Halloween.”
Loona: “Yeah, not one of his better ideas. But he did stay up all night drinking, crying, and blasting weepy romantic bullshit so that’s not really a surprise.”
Stolas: something dawns on him “He said he was listening to love ballads…”
Loona: “Fuck, he told you that shit? That’s embarrassing.”
Stolas: “He said a lot of things that day but I assumed they were all bullshit–he wanted me to think they were all bullshit. Could they have been true?” [Starts pacing and talking to himself like he’s forgotten Loona is in the room]
Loona: “Wait, like what? Stolas. STOLAS! What did he say?”
Stolas: It’s burned into his memory because it was so close to what he wanted to hear. It was an acceptable explanation for why Blitz had been so awful the night before but then Blitz had made a mockery of him again, “he said ‘this entire time I assumed the worst because I was convinced a prince could never love someone like me and I’ve let my self hatred stop me from apologizing to anyone I could ever care about’.”
Loona: “Shit yeah that sounds like him. Definitely not bullshit but it sounds like he chickened out. Which is also very like him. Is that when he decided to go on his weird as fuck ‘apology tour’?”
Stolas: “Yes. He said he would apologize to everyone but me.”
Loona: “Yikes.”
Stolas: “Even after finding out he didn’t do anything to save me from that scoundrel Stryker.”
Loona: “That was because of me. I’m not really good with doctors and it's really hard to get vaccine appointments.”
Stolas: “No dear. I am aware of what happened when I was kidnapped and I don’t fault your father for taking care of you. My daughter is my first priority too. Blitz told me about the Harvest Moon festival–that Stryker had tried to kill me once before and he’d never informed me.”
Loona: “Oh shit…yeah, but that wasn’t really his fault either.”
Stolas: unimpressed
Loona: “Stryker was working for Millie’s family. He’d been on their ranch for months. Fatt–I mean Moxxie was concerned they could be implicated in some sort of anti-royal conspiracy if it came out.”
Stolas: Taken aback “I would never–”
Loona: “Moxxie couldn’t take that chance. He begged dad to keep it quiet and we kept the angelic rifle. We thought that would be the end of it. If dad thought you were in danger he would have told you but we had no reason to believe he wasn’t working on his own or could’ve gotten more angelic weapons. And dad–he really believed you couldn’t be hurt. You should have seen his face after they rushed you into the hospital.”
Stolas: [reaction]
Loona: “He wouldn’t get into the van for weeks–even after Millie and I had the bench seat professionally cleaned–not until they released you from the hospital. And even then I couldn’t let him drive because he refused to use the rearview mirror.”
Stolas: “That is preposterous. He couldn’t even be bothered to come see me.”
Loona: “Yeah that wasn’t great but it’s a long way to Sloth from Pride without wheels and dad’s got something weird about hospitals–not that he’s ever told me why.”
Stolas: Stolas thinks about the scars that cover maybe a third of Blitz’s body and the ones that cover even more of Asmodeous’ paramore. [Stolas remembers the jester as a bubbly performer but he hadn’t been able to capture Stolas’ attention the way Blitz had.] “The fire at the circus.” He read about it when it happened. It had been all over the news but it wasn’t treated as a tragedy–to all the other demons and sinners in hell it had been a joke–a meme, because a few dozen imps meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.
He’d wondered if that was what had scarred Blitz so badly, but he wasn’t sure until Fizzarolli had been kidnapped. According to Lord Asmodeous, Blitz and Fizzarolli had fallen out approximately 15 years ago–when the fire had swallowed up their entire livelihood and 4 of the jester’s limbs. They would have both been in the hospital for some time due to the extent of their injuries–Fizzarolli even more so.
“Yeah probably. When dad and Fizz made up during the whole kidnapping thing I looked him up and found out about the fire.”
“Kidnapping thing?” Stolas blinks owlishly at her.
Loona stares back quizzically “Yeah. Weren’t you there? Dad said you were trying to help Asmodeous get Fizz back but he broke them both out first. That was Stryker’s doing too. Payback for dad stopping him the first time apparently.”
The look of horror on Stolas’ face gives Loona pause. “I never saw Blitz. I just happened to be there when Lord Asmodeous received the blackmail video. But they didn’t ransom Blitz–at least not to me.”
Loona shrugs “They didn’t ransom him at all. They must have figured no one would bargain enough for him to be worth it.”
“That’s not true–If I’d known–”
Loona rolls her eyes. “You would have what? Told him you had feelings for him and then kicked him out when he didn’t respond the way you wanted?”
Stolas huffs, “That’s unfair.”
“Is it? What happened after he yelled at you? Because I’ve seen Blitz yell. He never backs down first. What did you do? Have your staff escort him out?”
“No–I would never,” he starts but then fidgets under Loona’s unimpressed scrutiny. “I was heartbroken–I knew what I’d been doing was coercive and monstrous but I never truly believed he could hate me so much. I couldn’t hold myself together anymore so I sent him to his van.”
Loona glares at him suspiciously, “You told him to go and he went?” It's clear she doesn’t believe that for a moment.
“No, I sent him through a portal.” Stolas has the decency to look guilty.
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
“It was not one of my finest moments.” Stolas avoids looking in the girl's eyes.
“No fucking kidding.”
They both stand there quietly for some time.
Finally Loona breaks the silence, sounding beyond frustrated, “Why did you have to go to that party–why did you sing that fucking song? If you care about him at all, why would you embarrass him like that?”
Stolas stutters through a reply, “I didn’t mean–I didn’t intend to–it just happened. I was drunk, and upset–”
“Yeah and fucking petty and vindictive,” Loona growls.
“I truly didn’t believe it would matter..It is apparent that he doesn’t care for me.”
“Even if he wasn’t into you, you’re a fucking prince singing about an imp in front of a crowd of his peers. And he definitely fucking does.”
Stolas huffs. “And what makes you so sure?” he asks in a way that Loona finds condescending.
“What makes you so sure he doesn’t?” Loona retorts.
“He couldn’t even fathom that I had feelings for him!”
Loona laughs humorlessly. “Because he fucking hates himself and he expects everyone else does too.”
“No. Blitz is the most confident and accomplished demon I know. And he has so many people in his life that care about him. You being here and pestering me just goes to prove my point. And the existence of that entire party which was full of people that care so much about him that they are devastated about losing him.”
“Believe me. He doesn’t see it that way.”
Stolas makes a gesture of frustration. “Have you gotten what you came for yet?”
Loona pulls out her phone and it makes Stolas realize how rare it is to see her without it in her hand. She taps and slides her finger across the screen before turning it to him. “There are pictures from the party after your song. It looks like you two were talking.”
Stolas looks briefly at the pictures Loona wants him to look at before glancing away. Blitz, partially obstructed by a filthy white sheet, is holding Stolas in his lap. Stolas’ cheek is pressed against his horns and he looks abjectly miserable. “I don’t remember much of it. I was very drunk by that point.”
Loona scoffs, “No kidding. Has he reached out to you since?”
Stolas refuses to meet her eyes again, fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve. “Just a text the next morning asking if I got home alright.” To Loona's expectant face that he can see out of the corner of his eyes, he answers the question she didn’t ask. “I didn’t answer it.”
Loona stares up at the ceiling like she’s looking for some sort of assistance from a higher power before narrowing her eyes back at the owl demon. “You know what. Fuck you.” She turns and her heel to walk from the room.
“I beg your pardon? Where are you going? What is your plan now?”
Loona glares over her shoulder at him and the hatred there stops Stolas in his tracks, “I’m going to try to convince my dad he’s better off without you because he probably is.”
Stolas doesn’t know how to respond so he just stands there, beak hanging open uselessly as she slams the door. Seconds later he feels the tell-tale electricity in the air that signals portal magic and realizes belatedly that she left the room for the sole purpose of slamming a door behind her.