FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Helluva Boss

Stolitz

---

The Full Moon

Stolas

---

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

_ _

_ _

He couldn't do it that night. Well, he wanted to - more than anything. But, sitting at his dining table with a bowl of half-eaten cereal that tasted like cardboard in his mouth...he couldn't. The stained-glass windows rose behind him, his robe slipping from his shoulders. Uncharacteristically for him, he tugged it back up into place. Stolas had already been exposed enough for his liking.

An empty mansion. A hole in his heart. The cold floors greeting him where he had forgotten to turn the heating on (funny that he had to think about that in Hell). There wasn't much there that made him want to give himself the faintest drop of sustenance was worth it.

The owl swallowed, though the lump in his throat was not so easy to force down. He couldn't eat it, as much as the prince knew that he needed to eat something, anything. He'd even sent the servants away, not wanting anyone there.

They'd assumed that he was doing something particularly kinky with Blitz that night, something that he wanted the entire staff gone for. He let them believe that. But Blitzy... No. He had to call him by his real name, his proper name. The imp had never liked that pet name.

So, time to tell it as it was: Blitz wasn't coming. And his heart ached even more for the absence of the imp that he had grown too fond of.

Sick. He'd told Blitz that he was sick. And had he believed him? Or had Blitz decided that he wasn't worth the trouble anyway?

He couldn't blame him, not really. He'd never told Blitz that he thought there was something more between them. That was one of the reasons that he had separated from Stella, that he wanted the chance for something more to grow there. There was no love between him and Stella anymore and even she had agreed that separating was the better course of action. But that was before the vile night at Ozzie's had taken place.

After that...he didn't know if there was anything left that he could salvage of his relationship with Blitz, whatever that had ended up being.

Stolas didn't bother putting the bowl away. That was one of the many benefits to having servants. When he simply didn't have the energy to do so himself, he could leave things like that out. The imp servants, as kind and as thorough as they were, would most certainly not think any worse of him for leaving a single bowl out of soggy, day-old cereal.

All he could do, his body weary, moulting feathers like a plucked chicken, was drag himself back to his bedroom, step by dreadful step. The weight of his body sucked him down as if he was forcing himself forward through quicksand, the movement of his limbs sharp and jerky, gaining ground in inches rather than feet, slow and far from steady.

A puppet. Not to Blitz, of course, but he felt like he was one, controlled by something that was not of his design, something out of even the control of a prince of Hell. He had thought that he had so much in his control, even the transaction between him and Blitz where he got a night with Blitz, every month on the full moon, though it was not always about sex, not to him.

Well. Stolas shook his head, pausing at the door of his bedroom, staring at it woodenly. He didn't even know if he had the strength left to open it, but the thing there was that the sex was pretty amazing. Even though he had had sex with Stella in the earlier days of their relationship and marriage, before things had changed, it was nothing in comparison to what he'd had with Blitz, the raw passion. Maybe it had been so good because there had been something more there.

The edges of his beak clicked together and Stolas let out a sad hoot, finally entering his bedroom. The full moon shone in through the closed balcony doors, pushing him into motion only enough to hasten to close the curtains. He didn't need another reminder of what that night was supposed to be.

Blitz had intrigued him, made him feel things, emotionally, of course, that he had never considered possible over his many years of living, and now... Now, he didn't know what was to come of that.

"Oh, Blitzy..."

There was no one there to hear his nickname for Blitz, holding it tenderly close, as if it was a secret that had to be balanced on the tip of his tongue, yet never allowed to let fly. He'd been so persistent with that little nickname and Blitz had made it clear throughout their time together that he had hated it. So, why oh why, had he persisted in using it?

In the long line of mistakes that he'd made, however, it was likely one of the smaller ones. Stolas stretched out on the sofa facing the television, not caring for his askew robe, the rumpled sheets, the stray, loose feathers that drifted off as if he was going through a moult. It was all part of the bigger picture, if not the grander one. And he could not say that he was all that interested in his physical appearance anymore. What did it matter when he didn't have anyone to preen for, to look good for?

He didn't want to admit that he'd kept it, but Blitz had left a small, soft toy horse there the last time that he had been by. Yellow with a black mane - Blitz would have corrected him on the colouration specifics if he had been there - it was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, but it made him feel a tiny little bit better, a little bit more as if he had something of Blitz there, a link to him. That link may have been tenuous, more so than ever, but it was still there.

If Stolas held onto it, maybe he could still have a chance. A chance to make things right, a chance to say all the words that he should have before Blitz drove off after that night at Ozzie's, a chance to take things forward in truth and honesty, not lies and assumptions.

Their relationship may have begun as a transaction based on the owl's interest in the imp...but it had become so much more of that. Where it was to go, well... Who was to say? Not him, not yet. He wanted to see, however, and that would require him to "pony up", as Blitz might say, and "get back on the horse". Stolas wasn't sure that he understood what that meant, not yet, but he was sure it was something to do with facing challenges, picking oneself back up again.

Hell-a-Novela. What a vice, a silly little show and yet one that he related to, perhaps more then than ever. Gabriella flung herself on a sofa, Alejandro chasing her, and Stolas caught himself wondering if things might have been different if Blitz had chased him like that.

Well, of course, they would have been different. But it was not always down to Blitz to make the first move either.

Absent-mindedly, the owl picked up his phone, a little more settled, though the clawing, burning ache in the pit of his belly had not abated in the slightest. Voxtagram opened from where he had been perusing it earlier, new notifications filling his screen, images to scroll through, one after the other.

He shouldn't have looked at his phone.

Blitz' Voxtagram account popped out; of course, it would be the highest hit on his phone, the page that he spent the most time on, scrolling through the photos of Blitz and his life that he had chosen to display to the world. It showed his lovely, sweet imp in a different light than what he got to see, a goofier, more playful side, as if he was a little more willing to share more in single snapshots of his life.

But what he saw had his heart sinking, Hell-a-Novela playing in the background, though Stolas could not hear it through the roar of blood pounding in his ears.

Blitzrodo: stoals said he was sick so wentout with the fam!

_ _

The imp looked happy, a grin on his face, Moxxie and Millie on either side of him, though Moxxie quite often had a look about him that suggested he wasn't quite on board with what was happened. Yet all the owl could focus on was the look on Blitz' face, the complete and utter uncaring in his yellow eyes, ever so faintly glowing in the lights of the club or the bar or whatever that they were at. The owl wasn't so sure that he cared anymore, his chest tight, something that he could not put a name to pressing in around, crushing him in an unseen hand.

Stolas swallowed, his heart pounding, the sick beat of it one that he wished he could stop. He couldn't drag his eyes from the screen, even as it blurred before him.

Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, dadum, dadum, dadum, dadumdadumdadumDADUM!

_ _

He pressed his hand to his chest, heaving, gasping, tears streaming down his cheeks without the owl even knowing how they'd gotten there. The phone had been tossed away, lying, still illuminated, on the bed somewhere, though all the owl could do was clutch the tiny, soft toy horse to his chest, sobbing his heart out, his face pressed into the pillows.

Never before had he cried like that, as if his heart was pouring out of him through his tears, soaking his pillows, clutching at them, pressing the tiny horse to his chest, talons even cutting his skin accidentally, for he was not aware of how hard he was holding his own body tight. He had to hold himself, for he feared if he did not wrap his arms around his own body that he would splinter apart, fracture at the seams, drift away into nothingness, leaving nothing for even him to hope for, to wish for, nothing all.

Yet the pain was real, slicing through him like the blade of a knife, digging and twisting as if it was an Angelic blade, one of the few things in the entirety of Hell that could kill demons of his power when the Exterminators visited. He howled, pounding the pillows, twisting back and forth, unable to even control his body, needing to embody the pain that was inside him, letting it out somehow, cutting up his pillows and sheets with his claws.

Feathers filled the air, but they did not soften the ache within him, dulling to a throb that came with every pounding beat of his heart. He shoved the tear-stained pillow away, dragging another in close, though the soft toy horse, albeit a little wet, remained in the clutch of his hand.

It was all he had left. Blitz didn't care. Blitz didn't want him. Blitz was carrying on with his life as normal.

Without him. As he had before.

Winding around himself, Stolas sobbed harder, though a little more of him broke apart with every heave of breath, knees drawn up to his chest, curled down around himself, a broken shape in a bed that no longer felt right without another, smaller body in it with him.

He cried himself to sleep. It may have been an anti-climatic end to the night, scattered feathers around him, though there was only so much crying that his soul could bear before his body shut down. Unconsciousness brought him sweet reprieve in the darkness of a dreamless sleep, which was all he could hope for, Blitz off out partying and him left in a yawning, empty home, more alone than he had ever been.

Through a crack in the curtains, where they had not quite been closed properly, the moon shone through, casting a glow on the moment that should have been one of passion. Its silver was no more down in hell, instead holding a crimson hue, but it spoke of so much more than one night.

It spoke of loss.

It spoke of heartbreak.

It spoke of love.

Yet in the light of the full moon, there was no love for him, not without Blitz.

And there never would be.