#and as for young link. rent was DUE

[zootopiathingz]

This is both the dumbest and the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,, and I’ve been watching it on repeat like 6 times now

[elodieunderglass]

Hey bestie whats a narrow boat? I saw you tag that on something you reblogged and I'm pretty curious now!

- Terry Darlington, Narrow Dog to Carcassone

A narrowboat (all one word) is a craft restricted to the British Isles, which are connected all over by a nerve-map of human-made canals. To go up and down hills, the canals are spangled with locks (chambers in which boats can be raised or lowered by filling or emptying them with water.) As Terry says above, the width of the locks was somewhat randomly determined, and as a result, the British Isles have a narrow design of lock - and a narrowboat to fit through them. A classic design was seventy feet long and six feet wide. Starting in the 18th century, and competing directly with trains, canal “barges” were an active means of transport and shipping. They were initially pulled along the towpaths by horses, and you can still see some today!

Later, engines were developed.

Even after the trains won the arms race, it was a fairly viable freight service right up until WW2. It’s slow travel, but uses few resources and requires little human power, with a fairly small crew (of women, in WW2) being capable of shifting two fully laden boats without consuming much fossil fuel.

In those times the barges were designed with small, cramped cabins in which the boaters and their families could live.

During its heyday the narrowboat community developed a style of folk art called “roses and castles” with clear links to fairground art as well as Romani caravan decor. They are historically decorated with different kinds of brass ornaments, and inside the cabins could also be distinctively painted and decorated.

Today, many narrowboats are distinctively decorated and colorful - even if not directly traditional with “roses and castles” they’ll still be bright and offbeat. A quirky name is necessary. All narrowboats, being boats, are female.

After a postwar decline, interest in the waterways was sparked by a leisure movement and collapsing canals were repaired. Today, the towpaths are a convenient walking/biking trail for people, as they connect up a lot of the mainland of the UK, hitting towns and cities. Although the restored canals are concrete-bottomed, they’re attractive to wildlife. Narrowboats from the 1970s onward started being designed for pleasure and long-term living. People enjoy vacationing by hiring a boat and visiting towns for a cuter, comfier, slower version of a campervan life. And a liveaboard community sprang up - people who live full-time on boats. Up until the very restrictive and nasty laws recently passed in the UK to make it harder for travelling peoples (these were aimed nastily at vanlivers and the Romani, and successfully hit everyone) this was one of the few legal ways remaining to be a total nomad in the UK.

Liveaboards can moor up anywhere along the canal for 28 days, but have to keep moving every 28 days. (Although sorting out the toilet and loading up with fresh water means that a lot of people move more frequently than that.) you can also live full-time in a marina if they allow it, or purchase your own mooring. In London, where canal boats are one of the few remaining cheapish ways to live, boats with moorings fetch the same prices as houses. It can be very very hard for families to balance school, parking, work, and all the difficulties of living off-grid- but many make it work. It remains a diverse community and is even growing, due to housing pressures in the UK. Boats can be very comfortable, even when only six feet wide. When faced with spending thousands of pounds on rent OR mooring up on a nice canal, you can see why it seems a romantic proposition for young people, and UK television channels always have slice-of-life documentaries about young folks fixing up their very own quirky solar-powered narrowboat. I don’t hate; I did it myself.

If you’re lucky, you might even meet some of the cool folks who run businesses from their narrowboats: canal-side walkers enjoy bookshops, vegan bakeries, ice-cream boats, restaurants, artists and crafters. There are Floating Markets and narrowboat festivals. It’s generally recognised that boaters contribute quite a lot to the canal - yet there are many tensions between different kinds of boaters (liveaboards vs leisure boaters vs tourists) as well as tensions with local settled people, towpath users like cyclists, and fishermen. I could go on and on explaining this rich culture and dramas, but I won’t.

Phillip Pullman’s Gyptians are a commonly cited example of liveaboards - although they were based on the narrowboat liveaboards that Pullman knew in Oxford, their boats are actually Dutch barges. Dutch barges make good homes but are too wide to access most of the midlands and northern canals, and are usually restricted to the south of the UK. So they’re accurate for Bristol/London/Oxford, and barges are definitely comfier to film on. (Being six feet wide is definitely super awkward for a boat.) but in general Dutch barges are less common, more expensive and can’t navigate the whole system.

However, apart from them, there are few examples of narrowboat depictions that escaped containment. So it’s quite interesting that there is an entire indigenous special class of boat, distinctive and highly specialised and very cute, with an associated culture and heritage and folk art type, known to all and widely celebrated, and ABSOLUTELY UNKNOWN outside of the UK - a nation largely known around the world for inflicting its culture on others. They’re a strange, sweet little secret - and nobody who has ever loved one can resist pointing them out for the rest of their lives, or talking about them when asked to. Thank you for asking me to.

[positively--speculative]

Please Donate or Share!

Hello I am Ghada Musleh from Gaza (Palestine). I am a university graduate working with young children and women. My husband, Muhannad is a sales representative. My daughter, Gram is 10 months old.

My mother, Fayza suffers from an enlarged spleen and liver is also with us. My mother’s health is declining and she needs to travel for her medical treatment.

I was displaced from the beginning of the war. I remember my displacement from the 10th of October in the ugly schools of the agency, where the bombing intensified around me. I bled out of fear for my infant daughter, who is not experiencing her childhood, and for the tenderness of her father. The displaced were killed in front of my eyes in the schools. A woman in front of me was targeted by gunfire. My family and I were displaced more than ten times from school to school. I saw death with my own eyes. My little family and many civilians were targeted in front of us. I cannot lose sight of these nights when the occupation forces called my husband and threatened my house. Unfortunately, my house was bombed and our memories were bombed. We have nothing left.

I am desperate and urgently need to save my family by leaving Gaza. There is no safe place in Gaza due to death, hunger, dehydration, disease, displacement, and bombings.

HOW WILL THE FUNDS BE USE?

The cost of evacuation is €5000 per person, amounting to €20,000 for the whole family.

€2000 for visa and passport applications and fees to expedite the evacuation process.

€5000 for two months of expenses in Egypt to pay for food, rent, necessities, and medical care until we can get back on our feet and rebuild our lives.

Unfortunately, evacuations have stopped while the Rafah border is closed. We do not know how long this will be. Daily expenses for necessities such as food and water are increasingly high.

Examples of daily essentials:

Flour €30

Diapers €40

Vegetables for a day €40

An amount will go to GoFundMe fees (2.9% + $0.30 per donation), bank transfers, and the high commissions (15-20%) to receive the money due to shortages of cash here in Gaza.

I ask you to support me. To help me and my family escape from Gaza to save them from the ongoing genocide. Every donation, no matter how small will help save my family. Please consider sharing my campaign widely with your friends and family. I will be forever grateful for your help.

Here is the link to https://www.instagram.com/gharam202336/?hl=eng

With eternal gratitude,

Ghada, Muhannad, Gram and Fayza

Funds raised will be transferred to Ghada to cover necessities while in Gaza and to evacuate the family.

[ana-bananya]

€1,814/€5,000

This campaign was started back in April. Donations have been very slow.

ThomaSerena and his family evacuated from Sudan to Egypt. Since then, he and his brother have been struggling to find a source of income to support their family. He struggled to create this link because he prefers to be the one helping people, but he ultimately decided to seek support for the sake of his family.

ThomaSerena and his family are also facing increasing rent to the rise in the cost of living in Egypt. On top of these financial burdens, his family is also struggling with the stress of having to relocate to a new place after everything they've lived through.

Despite his hardships, ThomaSerena has also dedicated himself to helping 4 other Sudanese families in need:

€10,195/€50,000

Here are the details given about the 4 families this fundraiser is for:

1. Salih's family:-

Salih Abd Al whab is still stuck in sudan with his younger brother and sister along with their mom, their dad passed away may he rest I peace. Salih is pressured by the circumstances to join the army and help take our country back and I applaud him for it, he refuse to do otherwise, but his only wish is to save his family hopefully escape to egypt and live a better life or support them while they're in sudan.

2. Ahmed' family:-

Ahmed Atif is the eldest in his family, he fled to egypt as well. Ahmed is the eldest of the family and he was a last year medical student before the war started. They lost everything as well, and he was forced not to proceed with his studies due to insufficient funds, I urge you to help him finish his last year and help his family.

3. Ali's family:-

Ali Assir fled to egypt as well with his family along with his mother, his wife and his 3 year old child. Ali was an aspiring guy that started a family before the war and was taking care of his mother as well after his father's death may he rest in peace. He was working tirelessly to give his family a good life, but all of that came crumbling before his eyes with the start of the war. His mother is old, ever since they moved to egypt she has been sick and suffers from depression due the circumstances they're in. Ali and his wife can't think if sending his daughter to school since they barely have enough funds to live by. Helping them will help their mother and help their daughter start her education that is much needed and it pains my heart that a young child won't start their education because of this. I'm sure this will also help his mother with her depression if she sees her family doing well.

4. Noha's family:-

Noha Ibrahim also fled to egypt along with her mother and father. She had an older brother but he passed away while waiting for his visa in Halfa, which is the boarder between sudan and egypt due to his deteriorating health, may he rest in peace.

Noha and her family haven't been the same since his death. And right now noha is the sole breadwinner of the family and she can't keep up, both her parents are old and require medical care. Helping her will help them as well.

[miss-oranje-disco-dancer]

not old enough (not old enough ch.1)

pairing: leon kennedy/reader

cw: smut, age gap (reader is 18), vendetta!leon?, alcohol, semi-public sex, possibly dubcon bc both leon and reader are intoxicated

summary: you and leon meet at an unnamed bar, but you're too young to be there (because this is the US in my limited imagination). 18 may be too young for you to legally drink, but you can legally hookup with dilfs. 

word count: 2k

ao3 link

You were sitting on a barstool, drinking a whiskey sour, and making conversation with a man in his mid-30s, you’d guess, who was relatively attractive minus the slur of his words and dark circles around his eyes. He looked like more of a mess than you would by the end of the night. You went out that night with a few friends, wearing minimal clothing, hoping to attract the attention of men. One friend was getting over a breakup and the other was past due on this month's rent, so none of you were opposed to older men. Forgetting younger boys and getting cash weren’t your motives that night, though, you were just being supportive, so when your friends ditched you to leave with a man you thought was too sleazy to go home with, you were stuck at the counter of the bar with a slightly-less sleazy looking man, who said his name was Leon. 

You couldn’t remember how the conversation came to this, but you showed him your ID. Maybe he wanted to verify your name or see the stupid picture they took of you at the DMV, but you’d had quite a lot of alcohol in you at that point, and if you had to retell the story, this was where it all began. 

You hoped he wouldn’t notice the birthdate on it, which made you a little too young to be where you were. He’s wasted, you thought, he’ll never know. But, maybe it was his former-cop instincts, which you knew nothing about yet, that led him to notice the one critical detail on your license, the one that could get you in big trouble - your birth year, which would only make you 18, not 21. 

He was about to announce it, when you dragged him away from the bar. “Don’t say anything,” you tried to sound tough, as if he couldn’t kill you in one punch. 

He laughed at your feeble attempts to intimidate him, and said, “I’m not just gonna let you sit here and continue to get drunk. It’s dangerous for a young woman like yourself.”

It came out more flirtatious than he’d expected or intended, but you fired back with, “Please, I don’t wanna get in trouble. What can I do to get you not to tell, Mr…” You realized you didn’t know his last name.

“Kennedy. Leon Kennedy.”

“Please, Mr. Kennedy.”

“No, I don’t want you drinking anymore.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a liar.” Leon waved the ID he was still holding, up in the air, too high for you to get it back. You jumped up, helplessly, looking like an idiot. 

“I can’t get arrested, please. I’ll lose my scholarship and I won’t have money to go to school anymore.” You started spewing off any sob story you could think of in an effort to convince him. 

“Fine, but I’m calling you a cab and you’re done for the night.” Leon tossed you back your ID.

“Can I just finish this one?” You gave him your cutest pouty face. 

He groaned in exasperation. “Fine. Come sit down, then. Don’t want you falling over in those heels.”

You were a bit unbalanced, but it wasn’t the drunkenness, it was the heels. At least, you hoped it was.

Upon realizing there was only one barstool left unclaimed, Leon sat you down on his lap. You turned your head and smiled at him. The face of a winner. He knew he was playing right into your hand, but you were so precious. The combination between his genuine instinct to protect you from some of the men at this bar who could hurt you and the fact that his dick was starting to get hard everytime you shifted in his lap made him decide to stay with you, despite his better judgment. 

You could adjust your sitting position in such a way that your skirt would ride up, giving Leon more than a glimpse of your lace panties. It looked innocuous to the patrons around you, too. It was a sight made only for him. 

Leon tried to subtly pull your skirt back into place, without staring, and inform you about the wardrobe malfunction, but you just held your hands over his, one on each hip, making it even easier for you to grind your ass into him. At this point, Leon knew you were doing this on purpose, but he couldn’t help his natural reaction of physical arousal, which you’d noticed. 

“Do you wanna take this somewhere more private?” You whispered to him.

He wanted to decline, but he also felt uncomfortable being surrounded by all these drunk men at the bar while he was red in the face and rock-hard due to some teenage girl on his lap, so he said, “Okay. Where?”

You led the way to the restrooms in the back of the bar. 

You were 18 years old, and here you were, in the men’s bathroom of a dive bar pressed up against the stall door, hoping the clamor around you would hide the sounds you were making. Leon knew this was wrong. 

You’re way too young for him and doing it in a bar bathroom would normally be below him. He would be disgusted by the whole thing if he’d stopped drinking a few glasses ago and if your skirt wasn’t short enough for him to catch a glimpse of your pink lace thong. He was proud his dick still worked at his age and level of inebriation. The women’s room might’ve been cleaner but you weren’t going to wait in line, not because you cared about the embarrassment of walking in with a man but because you needed him immediately . 

His lips crashed into yours the moment he’d locked the stall door. You had one leg up around his hip, the other high heel on the tile. You held onto him while he kissed you feverishly to keep from swaying and to stop your knees from buckling at the feeling of his lips on your neck. He was sucking on your skin, carelessly, leaving marks while a thumb, wet with saliva pushed your panties to the side to play with your clit. Older men did it better; he could find the most sensitive parts of you without assistance.  

Leon’s breath was hot against your ear whispering “ shut the fuck up ” when you whimpered, feeling his fingers prod at your entrance. Your hands made their way down his body in search of his already throbbing cock. You popped the button on his jeans, yanked his zipper down and he did the rest. He wanted it fast, didn’t want you fumbling around trying to get his dick out. He found his wallet in his back pocket and pulled out a condom, ripping the wrapper with his teeth before sliding it on. Leon wasn’t trying to get anyone pregnant, let alone an 18 year old girl. 

At that point, his fingers were slick with your arousal, so despite his size, he could slip into you without any pain on your end. You still felt the stretch, but it felt good to be filled. 

“You’re so fucking tight,” he hissed through gritted teeth, “Wouldn’t be able to get my cock into you if you weren’t soaking wet for me”.

His crude words made you moan, cute little cries, which he covered up with his mouth pressed firmly against yours as he pounded into you. With forceful thrusts, he set an unforgiving pace, rattling the door hinges. Anyone who walked in would know exactly what was going on between the two of you. 

And they did. 

Whistles and cheers came from drunken men in the restroom. No one was perverted enough to try to peek through the slats or over the door to watch, but the humiliation was still there. Clearly, you were getting off on it. Leon could feel your pussy clench around him. He couldn’t care less about what other gross men in this bar thought of him, but any disrespect towards you pissed him off. When the word “whore” came out of some asshole’s mouth, Leon took one of his hands from your hip and held it up, sticking his middle finger over the stall.

He knew they were just jealous that he was getting lucky and they weren’t, but you were young and he didn’t want you to feel insecure about the whole thing. A part of him knew you’d probably regret it in the morning, and he was sure he would too, but he figured he shouldn’t add to the degradation

“Don’t listen to them,” he mumbled into your ear, “You’re a good girl.”

You blushed; the praise only made you more aroused. Leon took notice. 

“You’re doin’ so good for me, yeah? Takin’ me so well.”

Your top - if you could even call it that - was still on. Leon decided it shouldn’t be, so he slid the straps down your arms, and as suspected, revealed your bare chest. Just as he thought, you couldn’t fit a bra under that tiny piece of fabric. Leon cupped your breasts, squeezing lightly, then ran his thumbs across each nipple, making you gasp. You began to buck your hips up, trying to get more than he was giving you. He was holding back for your sake. He didn’t want to ruin you more than he already had.

But even with your thighs trembling, you were begging for him “harder” , “deeper”, “faster” , and he’d give you whatever you wanted because he needed to make you come. 

Each deliberate thrust hitting a particularly sensitive spot inside you was working in tandem with the hand he’d moved down to play with your clit, getting you closer and closer to your orgasm. 

The rhythm of Leon’s hips became more erratic, he was teetering on the edge and running on sheer desperation. If he knew one thing it was self-control, and you had to come first, he was going to make you. Looking at your head lolling with nothing behind your eyes as he fucked you dumb was making this the most difficult mission in his life. 

He didn’t have to hold back much longer, though, because with a pornographic moan, which was the only thing covering up the lewd sounds of slapping skin, you came hard. You clung to the fabric of his t-shirt while your inner walls spasmed uncontrollably. 

The sight was enough to make Leon come, working through his orgasm with slow rolls of his hips, his forehead pressed up against the metal door, so you could hear a groan escape his lips followed by heavy breathing. You were practically sobbing, mascara and tears painting your face. 

When Leon looked at you, taken by post-orgasm clarity, he cupped your cheeks and kissed your teary skin - something he wouldn’t normally think of doing in this situation, but you were so precious. He wished there was more he could give you. 

Once you’d assured him you were okay and that the tears were from overstimulation not pain, he insisted on calling you a cab to take you home. He’d remembered that his initial intention that night was to ensure that you didn’t do anything stupid while drunk. He’d already failed that mission, but he made sure you didn’t drink and drive. He called himself a cab as well because at his age, sex made him more tired than it used to. To his surprise, standing outside the bar in the cool spring air, you hugged him goodbye. He tried his hardest to reciprocate the tenderness you were giving him. 

“Goodbye, Mr. Kennedy,” you whispered before getting into the cab.

He smiled and gave you a nod, gazing at your post-sex, glowing face. One he wouldn’t get the chance to wake up next to. Taking you home would’ve been worse though, and he knew that.

The next morning, the hangover hit him with a headache and a fuckton of guilt. There wasn’t a way he could apologize to you, but he sure as hell wanted to. While brushing his teeth, spitting out the aftertaste of last night, he noticed ink on his skin, a number written in permanent marker on his forearm. He didn’t remember you doing this, but your first initial was marked next to the number to confirm his suspicions. It was you.

[copperbadge]

Radio Free Monday

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Ways to Give:

discursivetacenda is an ace artist in NW Indiana, outside of Chicago, facing eviction after struggling to make rent while unemployed; they need to raise about $1K before the 16th of this month. They are offering commissions and also selling on Etsy; you can read more, reblog, and find commission and giving information here.

Anon linked to trippingthemoonlightfantastic needs to make rent after the passing of their mother; they are selling watercolor florals on their Etsy and offering special reduced prices on tumblr. You can purchase from their Etsy here or read more at tumblr here.

a_phoenixdragon is raising funds to cover bills for the next week; she has hit a rough financial patch that is lasting longer than expected and needs help to make it to payday. You can read more and find giving information here.

mtdewwhore is a queer afro-indigenous person offering tarot and tea readings to help raise rent while they recover from brain surgery; they are also currently a caregiver for a 3-year-old. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

Mendi is blind and has been unemployed for almost six months despite active jobsearching; she's applying for services to gain income but many are on hold due to requirements to prove her disability. She needs to raise funds to cover bills and stay above water; you can read more and support the fundraiser here.

Anon linked to naamahdarling and her partner, who lost two of their beloved cats this week, Smooch and Raleigh; they're raising funds for assistance with covering medical bills and end-of-life expenses. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

Recurring Needs:

onedollopofsourcream is raising funds for food and medication for their family including young children; they need medication that is important for family mental health. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

we_are_spc's AC in their house has gone out, and they are trying to stay cool with only one fan; they are unemployed, and the heat is bad for both their asthma and their cats. They have a tech coming on Tuesday, but still need to raise funds to cover the repair; you can read more and support the fundraiser here or give via paypal at celticphoenyx@gmail.com, via venmo at rowansong, or via cashApp at rowansong.

loversdoom has recently been diagnosed with PCOS and needs help to afford the prescribed birth control pills on top of living expenses; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here or give via paypal here.

thegeeksqueaks's school district has shorted her on her summer teacher's budget; she can't afford currently to stock her classroom for back-to-school. She's raising funds to get food and hygiene tools for underserved kids as well as various aids for neurodivergent kids. You can read more and reblog here, give via DonorsChoose here or via paypal here, or purchase from an Amazon wishlist here.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

[videogamepoc]

Dear Friends,

We urgently need your help for Mohammad and his young niece, Asel, along with his elderly parents and brothers. They have lost their home in Gaza and are now facing an incredible challenge: fleeing to Egypt for safety.

What They Need:

$5,000 per person to cover the cost of escape and initial relocation in Egypt.

Additional funds for food and rent as they start over.

How You Can Help:

Donate here: https://gofund.me/f751a38a

Every dollar counts and will make a significant difference. If you can’t contribute, please share this post to spread the word.

Thank you for your support and compassion during this critical time.

With gratitude,

Thanks for your message! ❤️

Mohammed's campaign has not been vetted yet.

His GoFundMe link is new and has $0 of its $50,000 goal so far. Please donate and share!!

Mohammed Alwadiya is a math teacher with a doctorate in business management. After several years of trying via IVF, his wife and him were able to have their first and only child, Eleen. With the war, their home, car, and school was destroyed by the military. Living in tents and constantly being displaced by the military, they are now facing a severe lack of food, water, and medicine. They are also facing a myriad of new illnesses and epidemics due to overcrowding and water contamination. Mohammed also had to tragically identify the remains of his martyred sister and her two children; he is now left caring for her surviving, albeit injured, daughter. He is living in constant fear for his life, as well as those of his wife, daughter, niece, and sick elderly parents.

[vyjuarts]

"Sharing is caring"

- says Crystal, while eating the biggest piece of a whole cheese roll

As a belated Apprecimaytion entry for @bg3-apprecimaytion's amazing event, I would like to bring you the sweet little dragon ladies having a snack for prompt 31: cheese, with a guest star, the squirrel plushie!

(All related fics are linked below 💙)

Adorable little white-blue glistening girl, Crystal is from "Small Crystal" by Gothic_Bloodstain and the bigger faded copper-red lady, Torimgetih is from my fic "Fool's Copper". This is a bit after their canon stories, thus Tori and little Crystal('s horns) are bigger now. Both fics are different takes on "what if Astarion adopts a tiny dragon?" idea we had on our discord server.

I always have an immensly huge sweet spot for Crystal's story, which is the wholesomest dadstarion take, but with a twist of it not being a child, but a tiny dragon. She is adorable, little baby of a dragon with an appetite of an ancient dragon, and I love her for it! Astarion does take good care of her. 💙 You can definitely say she is spoiled rotten with her sweet play room, full of toys and food, that needs restrictions due to her weight consideration.

Torimgetih is my (usually) sophisticated young, teenager aged dragon lady with some issues. But in case of her as well, her version of Astarion will need to slowly warm up to the mute, strangely small dragon.

Since @cinnamontails-ff 's "Like Two Dragons in The Rain" fic for Apprecimaytion event, they live rent free in my mind! Tori would be the protective big sister of her tiny protectee and her squirrel plushie. As Cin's fic predicts, they would get together from time to time, having their Astarions cause havoc in the city while they are having flight and Draconic speech training. 💙

I would like to show my appreciation for Xen's wholesome fic and Cin's Apprecimaytion of said fic with this tiny drawing. 💙 Thank you for your amazing writes!

[kaybreezy3000]

Dumped in a new world with no powers and abandoned by his family, Five quickly found himself in a very bad place both mentally and physically.

Piece by piece, Five tried to push away his pain and erase the proof of what had been done to him. He survived like he always did, but there's a fine line between surviving and living, and living is hardly what he could say he’d been doing with his new life.

Not until years later did Five see that nothing he had done could fix what had been broken inside of him. For that to happen, it would take another fateful rainy night and another shocking encounter that would completely turn his world upside down.

~This the first chapter (1600 words) of the full story that was originally posted on A03 6-16/2023 but was just reposted on there today to honor pride month, and because of edits done to make it fit more with what we know about the real season 4. Even if this is not your normal pairing, please give it a chance. Out of all the things I have written, this story is my favorite. You might love Five even more after reading it. ❤️_see AO3 link at bottom to read the rest.

~This one starts out very dark, so please heed the tags. It gets worse before it gets better but it's all for a reason so hang in there.

Some of the Tags (see A03 for full list): Rated M or E, attempted rape/non con, PTSD, trans female character, angst, first-time, finding yourself, revenge, unexpected romance, sub/dom, sexually explicit content/adult themes, sexual humor, overcoming tragedy. seeing yourself and others with openness and love, Five’s time travel fix-it optional finale to the show. -There are warnings on chapters so you can skip bad parts

Chapter One: Prologue

The Morning After

The heavy rains had stopped hours ago, and the sun was rising in a rosy ball of brilliance on the horizon. Five squinted against its rays as he nervously scanned his surroundings while he limped from the motel lobby, across the parking lot to his room. Due to the very early hour, there were very few people out, but he still couldn’t bring himself to let his guard down until he was out of harm’s way.

An old woman sitting on a bench in front of one of the other rooms was watching him, but she was harmless. Five could tell that she was only looking because he was too young to rent a hotel room. He was a kid, without an adult, and he was wearing an expensive three-piece suit and that wasn’t something you’d normally see in this kind of neighborhood.

She was clearly concerned, and thankfully she hadn’t been the only one to look at him in that way in the last eight hours.

Even though it had happened, Five still couldn’t wrap his head around the kindness a near stranger had shown him when his own family had deserted him. If not for the man Five had met earlier at an all-night diner, there was no saying where he’d be, or what else bad might have happened to him.

Five took one more look around him to make sure nobody was about to jump him, then he stuck his key in the door and entered the musty room.

His eyes scanned the beat-up furniture, the stained carpet, and ugly geometric patterned bedding laid out on the sagging mattress. It reminded him of the rooms The Commission put him up in.

As odd as it was, at that moment, Five wished he could go back to the simplicity of those unpleasant days.

Eat, sleep, kill people, and survive long enough to get back to save his family. That was all he had to do, and he was fine.

Now he wasn’t sure what would become of him, and he was not fine.

After checking the main area and the attached bathroom to make sure no one was hiding in there, he rushed back to the door to deadbolt the lock and fasten both security chains.

Five’s back slid down the wall behind him as his plastic bag full of cheap clothing from the drugstore slipped from his hand.

Unable to fight it anymore, he folded in on himself in a crumpled heap. He buried his head in his hands, his fingers digging into his aching skull as if he could force the pain away.

Everything hurt despite the over-the-counter pain meds he had taken, but the thing bothering him the most was the warped way he was seeing himself.

Everything inside him felt wrong.

Five’s chest began to tighten, and his heartbeat started to pound in his ears. It felt like the whole thing was hitting him all at once, assaulting him all over again.

He broke out in a cold sweat followed by hair raising goosebumps.

To his horror, he could feel the prickling sensation of hands touching him in ways they shouldn’t be.

Suffocating heat waves suddenly ripped through him. His skin felt like it was on fire and he wished so badly he could crawl out of it and his extreme shame.

As if on cue, somewhere outside sirens wailed.

To add to all this, Five could see bare and battered flesh, and those frightened eyes looking out through metal bars that were meant to detain an animal not a human. Those eyes were wordlessly asking him for help.

That person had been bound so tightly and was in such bad condition that Five could hardly believe they were alive still. The sight of someone so young like that in that place was so wrong, just like what had just been done to him.

Five wasn’t doing well before seeing that caged boy, and after finding him, Five’s shocked state only got worse.

He could hear the blaring sound of the law getting closer and he had to go.

He didn’t even attempt to break the boy free. He had heard everything that happened to him and he'd seen him, but he evidently chose not to reveal any of that to the police. 

That stranger had protected him.

With gut-wrenching guilt overwhelming him, for about the millionth time in the last twelve hours, Five couldn’t catch his breath.

On the floor of his motel room, Five's voice came out so weak. “I didn’t have a choice,” he whimpered, pleading with that boy he had let down to forgive him even though he was all alone. 

He shut his eyes again. That sorrowful face was gone but the unwelcome hands were back.

“Please, no. Not this. Anything but this,” Five begged, in a fruitless effort to stop his own mind from tormenting him.

Soon he was bombarded with ghosts of laughter mixed in with a steady song of his own desperate cries. 

As strong as Five’s mental fortitude had been all his years, at that point, he couldn’t shake his hallucinations or silence the voices, no matter how hard he squeezed his eyes closed or pressed his hands over his ears.

Five could feel himself being physically crushed all over again as he was mercilessly held down.

“Stop,” he breathed over and over, trying to force the hands away, but all that resulted was a broken man in a boy’s broken body falling apart in the shadows of a rent by the hour motel room.

When Five's mental breakdown finally subsided enough for him to somewhat function again, he pulled his stolen pistol free from where he still had it tucked in the back of his dress pants. As he bound his arms around his thin legs, he gripped the weapon tightly in his shaking hands, like it could protect him from the blind panic that was threatening to pull him under.

Five's dark hair spilled over his boney knees as he rested his forehead on them. Silent tears ran like a river down his cheeks.

He kept telling himself that things could have been worse. The mystery person he had left behind didn’t know who he was, and they would never see each other again. That boy was still alive thanks to him and if he hadn’t come along, they probably wouldn’t be.

At least Five could say that.

As if by some miracle, now he had a very fragile feeling of safety thanks to the money in his pocket and the motel room to hide in. Letting those somewhat positive facts sink in started to help slow his breathing, but soon Five began to beat himself up for screwing up so badly to begin with.

“Just knock it off! You may look like a child, but you really are a worthless fuckwit if you can't pull yourself together enough to stop acting like one. You are fucked up. What else is new!” he babbled, having a conversation with himself that mirrored many he’d had over his life while in times of skirting the edge of madness.

It took Five awhile to stop his internal beratement, and to stem his flow of burning tears, but he did. He was on the verge of mental and physical collapse, but he forced himself to get up. Driven by inborn stubbornness and venomous hatred, he tried to focus on the very odd conversation he had in the diner with the older stranger that had become his unlikely savior.

With somewhat of a plan forming in his head, one that involved going back to the diner the next night to meet up with his new acquaintance, Five’s motions were unfocused and zombie-like as he stumbled to the bathroom and started looking over his many injuries.

Angry red lines and purple bruises painted his thighs. As bad as he looked, there was no forgetting that every inch of flesh on that boy he saw tied up in that cage looked so much worse.

Trying not to lose it again, Five began to clean his wounds with supplies he purchased at the pharmacy. Then he showered, scrubbing his pale skin until it was an angry cherry red, but he couldn’t stop because the longer he abused his own flesh, the more a new form of numbness settled inside of him, acting like a buffer to drown out his sickening levels of shame.

Redressed in simple black sweats, a white t-shirt, and a zip-up sweatshirt, Five set about taking care of the pile of his dirty clothes on the floor. With repulsive thoughts coming back, he quickly tossed the underwear he had been wearing in the garbage. Then he washed his dress shirt in the sink and did his best to freshen his suit by hanging it up.

In a basket on the small dresser, he found a comb, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and even a travel sewing kit. Almost too tired to see straight, he yanked the snarls out of his hair and brushed his teeth. Lastly, he sat down on the hard bed and restitched the metal clip inside his fitted pants so that it would stay latched, and his pants wouldn't fall down. Then he added a top button to replace the one that was torn off when his pants were forcefully yanked down. 

Piece by piece, Five had tried to erase the proof of what had been done to him, but not until years later did he fully gather that nothing he had done then, or in the years to come, was ever going to be enough to fix what had been broken inside of him. For that to happen, it would take another fateful rainy night and another shocking encounter that would completely turn his world upside down.

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[sissytobitch10seconds]

Ozzie's

Fandom: Helluva Boss Summary: Blitz is desperate for a job and just happens to get one that gives him more than he bargained for. It's the best thing that ever happened to him, even when it puts his body through the second hardest thing he's ever been through and squeezes every ounce of love into his heart. Warnings: Mpreg, pregnancy, trans Blitzo Buckzo, graphic childbirth, mentions of parental death, mentions of massive disfigurement, sex work, and mental health issues Word Count: 26,345 Ship(s): Asmodeus | Ozzie/Blitzo Buckzo

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A/N: So this fic was a direct request from my mutual based off of a roleplay that we did. Which is why Satan and Ozzie are both children of Lucifer. I did change a couple things from the roleplay so that it was easier for other people to understand. If you have any questions about my headcanons for what happens post-fic then I'd be happy to tell you all! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Part One: The Meeting

Out of all the jobs that Blitz had applied for, he hadn’t expected to get an interview for a club as prestigious at Ozzie’s.

After the final straw at his last job, he had scrambled to get his resume out into the realms of Hell so that he could get another source of income as quickly as possible. He had a shitty apartment in the outskirts of Ransom in the Greed Ring, but the landlords down there were harsh when it came to getting rent in on time. Sometimes they would even evict their clients for not having the money ready to go up to a week before it was due. While Blitz had absolutely hated working in Loo Loo Land, the degradation of being forced into a mockery of clown makeup to perform in front of screaming kids and asshole parents was going to make him destroy the entire thing one day, he knew that he should have stuck with it while job searching. He had never been more stressed than he was with homelessness hovering over his head for the second time in his life.

It had been a breath of fresh, non-smog air when he had finally gotten the call from one of his potential new employers to inform him that they were willing to see his work and considered him as an actual applicant for the job. So, Blitz had broken into the local gym so that he could practice all night before it opened so he could be prepared. He hadn’t had money for a proper outfit to perform in or his own silks, which was why he’d had to break into the gym.

The interview had gone really well, though. Blitz had always been really good with the silks and hoop, his mother had shown him how to do it in the Lust style as that was where she was raised before she was adopted by her mothers. She had loved getting to share that bit of her culture with her children and so nothing that Cash said had ever discouraged her from doing it. It meant that he was able to do the drops better than anyone else as he had been doing them since he was a very young child. He thought that he was out of practice when he arrived, but by the time he had seen some of the other performers auditioning he knew that the job was meant for him. He was able to adapt his favorite routine to what the interviewers requested of him and flew through it to the beat of the music that they were pumping through the speakers.

Blitz was so grateful for his mother doing that for him now that he was standing in the center of his apartment with the confirmation that he had gotten the job being spoken into his ear.

He scrambled for a paper and pen, writing down the time he was supposed to arrive and the closest approximation of the name he had been given to check in with down. “Fuck yes!” he cheered as soon as the phonecall ended and he was left in his apartment. He rushed around the place as he got his things in order, mostly just grabbing the remnants of his makeup and a waterbottle since he didn’t trust whatever the club was going to be providing him with.

He had to leave more than an hour early to be able to make it to Lust in time. The infrastructure of Greed was far worse than the rest of the Rings because of the nature of the Sin that ran it and the Overlords that controlled certain cities. None of them wanted to spend their well earned money on something that would benefit another person, only themselves. While houses were ornate and expensive, driveways paved so that they almost sang when a car was driven over them, the roads and office buildings looked as though they were a sneeze or two away from turning into dust. There were also very few street signs that could be followed because many of them had been stolen and then melted down so that the lower demons could earn an extra dollar or two. Both of those things combined to make it an absolute nightmare to drive all the way from Ransom to the car-equipped elevators so that he could go to Lust.

He arrived quite a bit more frustrated than he had been before, but those thoughts were almost immediately wiped from his mind when he remembered that he got to perform again. He had wanted to go back to performing almost as soon as he had gotten kicked out of the circus, it was something that he knew and was thus comforting. He had tried to do that at Loo Loo Land but apparently Mammon thought that clowns other than him deserved to be splattered with tomatoes and chastised when they didn’t land a joke just perfectly. Blitz had always been a better acrobat than a clown anyway, so this job was going to fit him far better.

He parked his car in the parking space that was allotted for employees and then gathered his things. He walked to the back door, still glancing down at the sheet of instructions that he had been given, and then knocked. He only had to wait for a second before a tall succubus with pale green skin and two large bat wings clinging to her shoulders opened it. “Can I help you?”

“I’m the new aerial dancer,” Blitz blurted out at once. “I was told to meet someone named Starla?”

“She’s the choreographer for the club, I’ll show you to her office,” the succubus said. She moved away from the door and then walked further into the club.

Blitz had spent a lot of time in bars when he was recovering from the fire and even before then, when he had been made to go and pick Cash up from wherever he was drinking that night. Ozzie’s was different than all the bars he had been in before. It was a club with a lot of sex, first of all, and secondly it was a lot classier than those bars had been. The walls all had high quality wallpaper covered plaster on them, instead of poorly painted cinderblocks or bricks. The floor wasn’t sticky in the slightest and every step on it made it become evident that it was also real hardwood. The lighting in the back hallways was white and bright so that it was easy to pass by all of the doors, each one of them with a name and a picture of the person that got to occupy it. A couple of the doors led to offices instead of dressing rooms, those being propped open or with a window in the wall next to the door so that the person working inside could be seen from the hallway.

“I look forward to seeing you in rehearsal,” the succubus that had led Blitz through the halls said as she gave him a small wave. She seemed to be actually friendly with him instead of just trying to get into his pants. Something that no one had told him about the Greed Ring when he was a kid was that people just kind of took what they wanted, even from other people. All the hookups that he’d had since moving there after the accident had been very forceful. Some people refused to even take no for an answer and had to be smashed upside the head before he seemed like a low enough investment that they wouldn’t pursue him any further. Lust didn’t seem to be like that even though the demons up here had the magic to seduce hellborns and humans alike.

“Thanks,” Blitz said awkwardly late as he watched her go down the hall. He turned around and then opened the office door so that he could poke his head inside.

“Hello? Are you the new hire that I was told about?” the demon behind the desk asked. She was a stout sinner with green fur that was smoothed back around her face so that it came to a lazy point on her cheeks. She had a pair of cat ears on her head but her fingers were very human, with the exception of the long nails that were at the tips. She was dressed in a pantsuit made of silk and the same color purple as the walls outside.

“Uh, yeah,” he nodded. He had been so much more eloquent in the interview, but he was nervous now. It was so much easier to pretend that he was someone cooler than life and better than everyone else when he knew that there were basically no stakes. A lot of the jobs that he applied for he was barely qualified to do, so he had been a little loose when it came to being interviewed. He was good at this job and had secured it, so he didn’t want to lose it by being too much himself during his first rehearsal.

“My name is Madame Purrs. I know the pun, I believe that was why I was given this form. Now if you would follow me,” the woman said as she motioned with one hand. They walked down more of the perfect hallways until they got to another dressing room. The door had a piece of paper taped onto it with the name that Blitz had given them when he had interviewed, but the actual plaque and picture were both empty. He hoped that he would be good enough to get the same treatment that everyone else had one day, it had been his hope for as long as he could remember thanks to his father.

She opened the door as she said, “Each of our performers gets their own dressing room. This is because everyone employed by Ozzie’s is given the go ahead to earn extra money by sleeping with guests and thus you need a private space with which to entertain them. It’s advised that you keep your makeup and costumes here so that you can change quickly when you’re scheduled to be out on the floor. If one of the customers that you’ve previously slept with begins to harass you in your dressing room or even out on the street, please inform management so that we can handle it. I’ll see you down the hall on the main floor once you’ve changed into the outfit we had prepared for you.”

Blitz knew that he had put his measurements down on the application that he had filed, but he hadn’t realized that they already would have gotten him something to wear so that he could perform that night. He thanked Madame Purrs and then stepped into the room so that he could get ready. The door swung shut behind him, heavy and likely sound proof so that he wouldn’t disturb the people that were passing down the hall if he had a customer back there. He wasn’t expecting to be given such a large space when he had just started out, but the entire thing was beginning to become more exciting the longer that he delved into it.

His eyes flicked over every single part of the dressing room. There was a large curtain set up over what he assumed to be the closet, and when he opened it he was confirmed on that suspicion based on the singular costume inside. Next to the closet was a screen where he could change quickly and privately even if there were other people in his space. There was a massive vanity against the wall between the door into the dressing room and the closet, with lots of lights that had a variety of settings labeled on the switches next to them. Across from that was a couch, plush and the same deep velvet color as the walls outside. There were a couple throw pillows and even a blanket tastefully arranged on the back. Along the walls were a bunch of empty picture frames that Blitz assumed people could keep posters in from their past advertised performances. 

He set his bag down on the table and then unpacked it. The makeup took up a laughably small section of the massive vanity. He knew that he would fill it up once he had a reasonable wage instead of the bullshit that Mammon had been paying him for the backbreaking performances he had put on for snot nosed kids.

Blitz set out a breath to calm himself and then got to work. He removed his street clothes and left them in a neat pile on the vanity before he did his makeup so that his features would show when he was up in the air and the disappeared out of the door. He found the rehearsal room and was quickly acquainted with the people that would be working around him because the first night of performances that he was doing were solo.

---

Blitz had been rehearsing for hours and knew the choreo like the back of his claws. He knew that he could do this, and yet there were still nerves grasping at his stomach like they were trying to drown him. He had been performing for his entire life and he had never been that scared beforehand. He had been thrust out in front of people more times than he could count only to embarrass himself by fucking up a trick or landing on his head or making a horse that had no legs. He had never been scared of being on stage during that time, only what would happen to him when he got off.

He supposed that might have been part of the reason he was so scared to go on stage now. The clientele was expecting something erotic and mystifying, something to watch in the background while they let hands wander all over their partners or got their dicks sucked by floor workers. Blitz had never done work like that before and he was scared to try it for the first time. He was also so excited that he felt like he was going to swallow his own tongue once he actually got the chance.

The person performing after his was over gave his hand a gentle squeeze of encouragement when the current host of Ozzie’s introduced Blitz’s stage name. It felt good to be called by something that he had picked for himself instead of something that was given to him because it was marketable or easier to say when drunk.

Blitz hurried out onto the stage when all the lights in the club dimmed. He hooked his hands through the top of the silk after wrapping it twice around his wrists so that he could be secure. He then draped some of the red fabric over his chest to hide his outfit as he leaned back. The spotlight came on at the same time as the music, letting him know that the performance had finally started. 

The music that they had picked had a deep base and a sultry voice attached to it. He knew that the pop star Verosika Mayday often performed at Ozzie’s since the sin that owned the place was her patron, but he hadn’t expected one of her songs to be so openly sexual given what she usually played for the majority of Hell. He supposed that it made sense since they were in a sex club and she was a succubus, but it still surprised him every time he heard that voice singing those lyrics.

He writhed forward so that the silks draped off of him and onto the ground. The costume that he had gotten for this performance was a piece of sexy lingerie that clung to his body in all the right places. The bodice was a corset with thick black wire that ran over his body in three inch increments, cupping his small tits to bring attention to his dark nipples. They were matched to panties, which clipped onto a pair of dark black garters and stockings that had the same lace pattern as the rest of the outfit. He had forgone the mask that they had offered to him to keep his identity more secret since he didn’t care much about that.

He moved back and forth with the beat of the music, forming the splits before the silks began to pull him upwards. He swung around in a lazy circle so that everyone could get a good view of his outfit and it was obvious that he was held onto it by bound hands. He felt weightless as he was pulled up slowly into the air. As soon as he reached the top, he pressed his legs together and then wound the fabric around his calves and ankles before he freed his wrists and then fell down backwards.

He was hanging upside down as he rotated slowly, showing everyone the majesty of his body while they gasped and awed at him. His entire body felt charged with the attention that they were giving him and he knew that this was going to become addictive. He got more into it as things went on, enjoying himself with every reaction that he got from the crowd gathered in the bar. He could feel a pair of eyes boring into him from one of the private boxes where the high paying customers spent their time, so he knew that he was more likely to get a visitor at his dressing room when his performance was over.

He gave a grand bow when he was finished with the song and sauntered off the stage. There had been clapping and whistling for every single one of the performances since what they were doing was very challenging, but he noticed with a decent amount of haughty pride that his was loudest.

Giddy excitement flew through him and made him feel like he was vibrating or like he was still twirling around in the air. It made his fingers and toes tingle and his cheeks hurt from smiling so much. It had been so long since he had felt like that after a performance that he almost felt drunk on it. There was something so tantalizingly wonderful about being the subject of someone’s arousal, and he knew that he was because that was the point of the club. Blitz had always been fascinated by sex and being the object of someone’s desire. He liked being able to get that feeling going in someone by doing something provocative of flirting in just the right way. Having a job as a sex worker gave him exactly that because he was able to forgo the normal social constructs that sex was somehow something holy or that should only be shared between a certain set of people. He could have as much sex as he wanted without people thinking that he was a somehow debauched or that there was something wrong with him, because it was his job and he was working in the Lust ring where that was easily accepted.

 He could still feel the silk pressing up against his body through the lace and on the bare parts of his body. He could still feel the eyes from the special guest in the upper box boring into him and watching every minute movement that he made when he was twirling around the stage with his hands roaming over his body. The clapping and cheering and whistling and smell of arousal was heady in Blitz’s head as he closed the door to his dressing room.

He sat down on the bench in front of his vanity and took the makeup wipes that one of his coworkers had gifted him when they had ended rehearsal to open up the show. He was going to clean up and then head home for the night, excited that he was earning the salary that was going to allow him to search for a better apartment.

A knock on the door sent a shiver through his body unlike anything that he had ever felt before. Before he got up to answer, Blitz checked himself in the mirror and swore that he saw his mother. He knew that he looked like an imp, like his father, but he could see so many succubus-only features oozing out of him in that moment. He almost had the same magical aura that she had always had when she was performing in the circus, before she got sick.

Blitz shook his head to rid himself of the thought before he stood up and answered the door. He let his eyes stay down at the floor for a moment as he got the door all the way opened and then leaned against the frame. He was putting his body on display for the customer that had been enthralled enough by his first performance to come and enquire after him. He knew that the more private shows were a secret that was kept very poorly, to prevent the more famous stars from being overrun with fans that could violate boundaries. 

“Hello there,” he greeted. “I take it you’ve come to sample the goods instead of just ogling them?”

The demon on the other side of the door was a touch taller than him, the usual height for pure concubus instead of a hybrid like himself and his sister. They had dark blue skin that was complimented by the black lipstick and eyeliner that they were wearing for makeup. Their horns were tall and curved inward and out, the thin white lines in between the black glowing a faint blue to show their arousal. Their hair was styled back in neat braids, bright blue in color and hanging around their face and shoulders to bring attention to high collarbones and sharp cheekbones. Their outfit was a blue and white striped corset over the top of a fishnet top, complimented by a pleated black skirt that fell all the way to midcalf and kitten heels. It was a cross between the modern punk movement that humans were bringing down when they became sinners and the traditional fifties era American housewife and Blitz couldn’t get enough of it.

“I was hoping that I would be allowed to. What do you think, beautiful?” the incubus asked. Usually Blitz wasn’t able to tell if someone was one of the three, but it was easy to tell with the demon in front of him. They radiated energy that made Blitz want to buckle and be consumed, something that he hadn’t gotten in so long. He felt good as something inside of him bloomed with warmth, similar to how he had felt on stage but different in a way.

“Depends. Are you gonna share a name I can scream out while you’re pounding me into that couch? I haven’t actually had a chance to break it in yet,” Blitz tried to give his best bedroom eyes. The last time he had attempted that, his partner had laughed and it had killed the mood immediately after.

The incubus stepped forward, leaning down so that they were a hair’s breadth apart and that was like drinking pure H8, something he never wanted to forget. “My name is Asmodeus, but if you’re inviting me in then you might as well call me daddy.”

He should have been scared by that. He shouldn’t have been so turned on by the idea of riding the King of Lust and Prince of Hell’s cock, but he was. He knew that it might be a bad idea to get involved with royalty given what had happened last time, and the fact that he was still technically owned by the Duke Paimon and his son, but he couldn’t think about that in the moment. He couldn’t think about how he might lose his job and be out on the streets again, or how this could tear his world apart at the seams. 

Instead, all he focused on was the feeling of desire that was coursing through him and making him feel powerful. He was drunk on the feeling, clinging to it with both hands like it would run away from him if he loosened his grip in the slightest.

---

Part 2: The Pregnancy

Over the past three months, Blitz began to notice peculiar changes in his body.

Some of them were good and very easy to explain. His chest and face filled out when he was getting the proper nutrients, something he likely hadn’t gotten since he was a very young child and the circus was doing exceptionally well due to his mother. His skin had also cleared up and evened out now that he was using the proper equipment to take care of it, thanks to some of the people that he worked with at the club. He noticed that he was also building muscle in his back and legs from the work that he was doing. It was nice to see his body taking the shape that his mother’s had been when she was around his age, at least from the pictures that he had seen of her.

Some of the other things that he was experiencing were strange. He began to crave fruits and vegetables something fierce, which meant that he was eating in Sloth and Pride a lot more than he had been before. Lust had a fair amount of fruits, but almost all of the foods that weren’t really expensive were the ones said to bring someone’s libido up or make them aroused. Pride had a lot of fruit thanks to the king preserving the orchards that the native people had planted there back before the fall. Sloth had vegetables because they were slow to grow and easy to produce. A lot of the staples of the diet that were shipped around were grown in Wrath, but they were overproduced and not as sweet because they weren’t able to get the nutrients from the soil like the foods produced in other rings were. It was a bit more expensive to source so much of his diet from rings that he didn’t live in, but it was the only thing that he could do to make his mind shut up about those types of foods.

While the skin on his face had begun to even out with the use of the beauty products offered to him by his coworkers, he noticed that he was beginning to develop some zits and bumps near his horns and around the spines on his back. It was uncomfortable and not something that had ever happened to him before, but it was pretty easy to excuse as his body reacting to the change in substances since he was using new products and working out far more than he had before.

Something that was far harder to pass off as nothing was the way that his clothing was beginning to fit. He had expected some things to begin to change when he began to build muscle from working out every day. He hadn’t expected the size of his hips to continue to widen with every passing week. He had to take his costumes to be tailored by the club seamstress almost every week, he could tell that she was growing very fed up with him by the end of it. No one had commented on the way that his body was shifting as he worked, especially since he was able to complete his job despite it.

He did notice that was beginning to get more difficult. He was tired all the time, for one. All he wanted to do was curl up in the big comfy bed in his apartment, the mattress now elevated off the floor and free of the bugs that had been on it when he had found it, and sleep for the duration of the day. He found himself sneaking backstage between his performances on days where he was appearing in multiple different routines so that he could pass out at his desk. He was glad that the sinners had updated the technology in Hell so that he could have a phone to wake him up if that was going to be the case, at least. Something that the new technology could not help him with was the fact that his center of balance was all out of wack, causing him to have to overcorrect when he was doing drops at certain times.

There was one thing that had changed that he knew he couldn’t ignore. One symptom that pulled all the others together in a neat little bow so that they were blowing up in his face, telling him the path that was laid out ahead of him was going to be a terror to deal with. It was so serious that he had been unable to look it in the face and accept that it was even there.

Throughout his entire life, Blitz had always had spotty menstrual cycles. His mother functioned as the nurse and midwife for the tribe, so she had been the one to inform him that as a hybrid, his body wasn’t as up to par as it might have been if he was entirely imp or concubus. He had longer cycles than other demons did because imps had a period of fertility every other month, regardless of their gender while concubus mirrored humans after the ten thousand years that they had spent going up to earth and seducing them into the sin of Lust. It meant that his cycles came about every forty five days and that was incredibly hard to keep track of, especially when he wasn’t getting enough food to have his body’s systems working as they usually should.

It had been three months since he had last woken up to bleeding between his legs.

He had been able to brush it off during the first two months as his body figuring things out now that all of his needs were being met and he was being more active than he had been before. There was no ignoring it now that ninety days had passed by without even a tiny cramp.

So, he rose early on the day that he had late afternoon rehearsal and popped down to the store at the end of the street from his apartment. Everything in Greed was marked up as high as the shop owner could get away with and still sell something, so the pregnancy test took everything in his pockets and a bit off his card as well. He was glad that he was able to pay for it in majority cash so that his bank wouldn’t have a trace of his panicked suspicion on it.

He returned to his apartment and fled to the bathroom, tugging down his pants while opening the box with his other hand. He hadn’t been this scared for a test result to come back since he had taken a pregnancy test with his mother as a teenager. He and Fizz had just been fooling around back then, before Blitz had caught feelings and then begun to run himself in circles. That had been when Tilla had examined him and determined that his cycles were just going to be a little off for the rest of his life thanks to the way that his body had been made.

This was a lot more serious. He had all the symptoms that he had learned about while he was studying the later half of her job, on top of missing his period for three months. He knew that it was possibly he had conceived even though he had assumed that his awkward menstruation was going to make it really difficult to do so. He should have been more careful so that he could have just brushed this off and not even thought about it. Instead, he had raw dogged the King of Lust and now his womb might have signed his death warrant.

Blitz tried to get the thought out of his head as he finished peeing. He set the test down on the tiny counter of his bathroom and began to scrub his hands after replacing the cap. It was hard to not just stare at the little window for the result to show up and tell him if he was properly fucked or not.

He let out a little snort at the pun that he had made in his own head, which eased the anxiety that was swirling around in the pit of his stomach. That feeling flared back up tenfold when he realized that it was possible he was feeling morning sickness for the first time. He had to run his hand over the base of his horns and back of his neck to ground him, something that his mother had done frequently when he was upset about something.

The hybrid finally reached down for the test, his claws shaking slightly due to the anxiety that was coursing through him. If he was pregnant, then there was a chance that he wouldn’t be able to keep his apartment because the landlords in Greed were always looking for a chance to take their property back. He could also lose his job, not only because it was harder to do silks when pregnant but because he was pregnant with the boss’ baby.

“Don’t panic before you know what you’re panicking about, dickhead,” Blitz reminded himself. He held the pregnancy test, with the little window down, for what had to be another five minutes before he finally got the gall to flip it over. He had splurged for one of the ones with the digital screen that said the word ‘pregnant’ or ‘not pregnant’ depending on the level of HCG detected, that way he didn’t have to worry about the whole process of trying to figure out how many lines and what color meant that he was pregnant.

He felt his heart stop, start again, and then sink low into his gut as he read the result that was staring up at him. All the signs had been there and if he was more confident in the abilities and knowledge his mother had given him, he would have assumed that he was pregnant already. This was just the confirmation that he needed so that the information stuck and felt like it was well and truly real.

Blitz placed the test down on the counter like he had before and then looked at himself in the mirror. The fuller face could be a symptom of the pregnancy, he knew that plenty of people began to gain weight all over their body in preparation for breast feeding when the newborn was actually there. The tiredness but lack of bags under his eyes made sense now too, it took extra energy to grow another human inside of his womb. The off balance was the thing that scared him the most, especially since he was a twin. 

He placed his hand on the bottom of his shirt and then pulled it back around his waist so that it was entirely taut. He turned to the side and then felt his breath hitch in his throat. Before, his stomach had been almost concave since he had been nothing more than skin and bones thanks to his frugal food budget. Now, it was domed out. He hadn’t noticed right away because everything in his body was changing as his body bulked up. Now, it was screaming in his face that it was the beginning of a bump. It didn’t even look like the bloating that he got before his period, it was already forming into the teardrop shape that came with the second trimester.

The fear that was gripping his nerve endings was enough to make him force it out of his mind and not think on it any longer. If he kept going over how much time he had left to get all his affairs in order before his life collapsed around him then he was going to have a breakdown. He didn’t have time for another breakdown, the panic over his pregnancy had already eaten up all the time he had before he had to drive to Lust for his work.

---

Blitz was glad that his mother had taught him so much before her passing when he was seventeen. It meant that he was able to watch for any signs of danger in his pregnancy without splashing money he didn’t have out on a doctor’s appointment. The insurance that he had with Ozzie’s was pretty good, but he knew that if he went to see an OB then they would have to report it back to his work. 

He was showing pretty significantly now, the bump that he had noticed after taking the test expanding just a little bit with every day. He knew that his boss and coworkers had to notice that his body was changing more than it would have just because he was taking care of himself. A bit of pudge on his belly, or even a gut for that matter, was going to look a lot different than a baby bump. He performed in basically no clothing, which meant that it was impossible to hide his belly when he was at work. Despite that, no one had said anything to him and were simply just treating him a bit differently. He never had to get his own water bottle during rehearsal and he was always given a bit of the baked goods that were brought in before everyone else was. Something else that made him uncomfortable had appended at work, which was that he had begun to get some rather excited customers that spent most of their time worshiping his stomach due to it. He was turning more people away from his dressing room, which was again made easier based on the fact that his coworkers were oddly protective over him.

Still, them knowing that he was pregnant was different than the boss at the top of the club finding out that he was expecting. He had tried to go through the employee handbook on his own to figure out what the stance on pregnancy and parent employees were, but the words were too much for him. He had struggled to read Impish when he was a child due to the fact that the letters would jumble themselves around in his head, but he struggled to read the common language of Hell because he had taut it to himself and his glass eye sometimes made him have a headache when he was attempting it. So that had been a futile waste of an afternoon and another reason why he decided that he wasn’t going to be able to go to a hospital to get his pregnancy checked out.

Instead, he just checked himself over. Before every single show, he would lay back on his couch and palpate his belly to try and find the location of the baby. His womb was firm and malleable, allowing him to feel the head or bum of the baby when he pressed down in just the right place. That, on top of eating and sleeping better than he had before let him think that things were going pretty well with his pregnancy.

He kept pushing on for the next month, until he felt those eyes boring into him from that private box again. He was in a group performance this time, which was one of his least favorite ways to perform now. He liked it when he was twirling around on the stage and drawing the eyes of the crowd to only him because he was the only thing that they could look at. It was harder to do when he was a background performer for Verosika’s special shows or when he was performing with some of the larger names that drew bigger crowds to the club.

It was strange to be hoisted up into the air, wrapping the silk around his feet and legs to support him as he went, and feel the eyes on him. He knew that a few people that liked the way his body looked, growing heavy with child, were going to be paying attention to him over the others, but this was different. The presence watching him was wrapped around his body like the silk, though it was warm instead of cool on his exercise-feverish skin. It made his insides feel as though they had been melted down into soup, it made him feel special and cherished again despite the fact that he wasn’t doing much.

He stumbled back to his dressing room when his night was over, trying to keep his knees properly supporting him. He felt almost drunk on the attention that he had gotten when he was out on stage. He hadn’t felt like this in months, not since the King of Lust had stopped coming to the club and watching him perform. He collapsed down onto the couch in his room, his hands immediately going to his stomach as he began to palpate to locate the baby and make sure they were still safe.

A knock on the door to his dressing room brought him out of his motions. He knew that he couldn’t just call for them to come in since it was after a show and that might mean it was a customer. If he invited a customer into his room, it was far harder to get them out than it was to slam the door in their face to let them know that they really weren’t wanted and needed to stop pushing. Blitz’s stomach growled as he hoped that it was another one of his coworkers with something sweet to eat.

He opened the door and then his breath was sucked from his lungs as it had been all those months ago. He was met again with Asmodeus, the King of Lust and the Prince of Hell. He was dressed in a pinestripe suit, a belt around the waist to bring attention to the natural curves of his body. Everything else about him was exactly the same as it had been back when they had first crossed paths, which made Blitz irrationally angry.

The anger was there for a couple of seconds before it drained out of him and all he could focus on was the panic of the situation that he found himself in. He had kept the pregnancy a secret specifically so that it wouldn’t go to the upper management of the club and get him in trouble, but now the other father and the owner of the entire ring was standing in front of him like it was no big deal. “Anything I can do for you, Your Sinfulness?” Blitz asked. He could hear the warble in his voice that gave away how scared he was, but around that he was able to get everything else out as naturally as possible.

“I think that you can, friend,” Ozzie replied. He bowed his head towards the rest of the room and the message was clear. This wasn’t a conversation that either of them wanted to have out in the open hallway like this, it was a private matter and should be treated as such.

Blitz stepped backwards and let the Sin enter his room before he shut the door securely behind him. He grabbed the robe that was hanging on the edge of the vanity mirror and wrapped it around his body so that he wasn’t as exposed as he was before. He didn’t know what it mattered, the king had been inside of him four months ago and had seen his mostly naked body out on stage only ten minutes prior. It wasn’t like there was anything that he needed to hide or could hide anymore.

The two of them stood in the dressing room in silence, neither of them daring to speak the secret that hung in the midst  of the two of them. “Is it mine? Is that why you didn’t tell me?” Ozzie asked, his voice slightly broken when it finally sliced through the space between them.

“It is, the baby is yours,” Blitz said, shaking his head so that he could correct himself before a misunderstanding could get him smote. He wasn’t even sure if Sins could do that, but he knew that they all used to be angels, or at least most of them were. He hadn’t learned a lot of history outside of what the tribes had done to help Lucifer when he had fallen. He knew that the youngest of the Sins, Wrath, was born in Hell and had an angelic form but was different than the others had been. He was fairly certain that Ozzie was an angel that had been born from Lucifer in Heaven, but he wasn’t certain.

Regardless, he knew that he was deep in trouble now. The other being had likely thought that he was using protection when they had sex together, so he hadn’t even suggested a condom. Blitz was the one that was stupid enough to think that he couldn’t get pregnant when he was also half succubus. He should have known better and yet he didn’t, so he was standing in a stuffy dressing room with his womb swollen with the future bastard of the Lust Ring.

“I’m going to have a baby,” Ozzie whispered. His black-blue eyes widened with shock as he sank down onto the couch where said baby had been created.

“You don’t have to,” Blitz said as he touched his stomach. He robe did manage to do a decent amount to make it less obvious, but he felt like he was already huge despite being only four months into the process. “I-I mean, I don’t want to have an abortion but given that you’re the King it’s not like I can really say no to you. If you let me continue with the pregnancy then I promise that you’ll never hear anything from either of us. I won’t make you pay child support and I’ll keep it a secret. You won’t have to do parenting or take care of me or anything.”

“What are you talking about?”

Blitz knew that he had been rambling, but he was fairly certain that the words coming out of his mouth made more sense than didn’t. He closed his jaw so hard that his teeth clicked uncomfortably in his mouth, but he could barely even think about that. He took a step back from the Sin as he said, “You didn’t ask for this and I’m not going to baby trap you.”

“I may not have asked for this, but it’s happening. It’s also not baby trapping if you didn’t have sex with me with the intent of getting pregnant so that I could never leave your life,” Ozzie replied. “Do you know why they call me the weakest of the Sins?”

“Uh, no,” Blitz shook his head. He thought that it might help soothe the royal’s ego if he were to say something about how he didn’t think that Ozzie was, but in truth he knew barely anything about the royals outside of how abusive they were to the people that they viewed as beneath them. He didn’t really feel like admitting how shit the education in his circus had been at the moment, though, so he left it at that.

“Lust is not something that is damaging, it is something that creates and flourishes when it is nurtured,” he beamed. “It’s not like the other Sins, where something has to be taken or forced. It is something that is shared between two, so it seems less powerful but is actually more because it takes two souls for one action. Lust, in its purest form, is something that must be done between two people and granted with want from both. If it’s not, then it’s greed or pride or wrath. What we did was fall entirely into lust, and sometimes children are created through that.”

“So what are you saying?” Blitz asked. As much as he loved the husky sound of the sin’s voice, he did want to get to the bottom of the situation. He was exhausted and wanted to go home so that he could sleep on his much improved mattress, even if it was still more uncomfortable that the couch in his dressing room. His eyes flicked over to the aforementioned piece of furniture as he began to debate whether or not he could get away with sleeping there when he wanted.

“I’m saying that I’m going to take responsibility for lust, as it is my sin. I want to help you raise this child if you will allow me to,” Ozzie beamed. He was so pretty when he smiled, it was like his entire body was radiating the light and beauty that he carried inside of him. Blitz knew now why the sins had been produced in Heaven before they had fallen. He began to wonder what actual angels, the one that lived to God’s standards, looked like if this was the ethereal being that had been cast down first.

He fidgeted for a while, toying with the end of the belt on his robe. “I do. I want to be able to give this kid their best shot at life and I’m not totally confident that’s going to be with me. Every kid also deserves a chance to have both their parents in their life so that they don’t have to worry about what they did to make said parent hate them enough to leave,” he was letting a lot more of his trauma show than he thought he would. He shook his head to remove the tears that were welling in the corners of his eyes and took a deep breath, “What I mean, outside of these stupid fucking pregnancy hormones, is that I will totally do the coparenting thing with you.”

“Wonderful!” Ozzie beamed. He held his arms out and asked, “Is it alright if I hug you?”

“You have been inside of me, why do you care about consent for hugging?” he laughed. It was strange to think about the fact that a part of Ozzie was still inside of Blitz, a being that was half the Sin and half the hybrid. He wondered if his child would be mostly concubus or if they would be a forth of Blitz’s parents and half angel.

Ozzie’s hands dropped down to his lap and his beautiful brow creased with stress. “Blitz, just because you consented once doesn’t mean that you’ve consented to every time after that. You are a person and your body is yours to control. It’s why I wouldn’t have been upset if you had aborted the fetus.”

That made something inside of Blitz release and relax. Ozzie trusted him to go through with the pregnancy or terminate it based on what he wanted his body to go through, he didn’t want to terminate because the baby inside of Blitz’s womb was going to be his bastard. Maybe the Sins didn’t care as much about that as the Goetia families did. He sniffled as he tried hard to hold back tears, really not used to people caring for him like that.

“You can hug me,” he finally managed to get out, his voice wet and drowned in a sob.

Ozzie reached out and wrapped his arms around the hybrid, bringing him into a warm hug. It made that feeling inside of him bloom and burst out like a flower that had finally gotten enough water to reveal all of its petals to the sun instead of just enough to form the reaction within its stem. He felt more like himself and more like a stranger than he ever had in his entire life. He could almost taste the nervousness rolling off of Ozzie in waves, but there was an undercurrent of trust and excitement as well.

He pulled back from him after a minute or two, when he had finished crying. He pulled himself up and pulled his clothing bag out. He said, “I kinda need to go home so that I can continue to bake the kid, but I want to keep talking about this. Do you think that you could give me your number or something? A burner is probably fine too, just so that I have a way to text you dates of appointments or when the kid is here or something.”

“If you think that I’m going to leave your side when you’re giving birth then you’re stole cold wrong. Unless you don’t want me in the birthing room, in which that is entirely your choice,” Ozzie said as he pulled out his phone. He pulled up his number and then handed it to Blitz so that the hybrid could write it down in his own device. 

Blitz didn’t have the energy to process what he had said, so he immediately put it out of his mind and then said, “Thank you for not firing me. I don’t know what the club’s policy is about pregnancy, but I’m not even sure that fucking thing would apply to me seeing as I went right up to the top.”

“You’ll get paid leave until you’re fully healed and back up to performing. We don’t like it when people are being physical while their bodies are injured,” Ozzie said. “Goodnight, Blitz. It was wonderful to see you perform again.”

---

Blitz slept for almost twelve hours when he finally got back to his apartment. It was the best sleep he’d had in a long time, since he knew his job was secure and his kid was going to have one stable parent in their life.

When he woke up, he dragged himself to the bathroom and then got some breakfast. It felt nice to be showered and fed, especially after also being so well rested. If someone had told him what pregnancy would do to his ability to take care of himself he would have laughed in their faces, but he honestly felt better now than he had since he was a teenager and working for his father in the circus.

He didn’t even mind when his phone chirped as Ozzie texted him. He picked it up and scanned through it before his stomach sank down into the black pit inside of him. The King was asking about when his next appointment was, which meant that he had to admit that he hadn’t been to a doctor yet. 

After about ten minutes of writing, editing, and deleting, he had finally come up with the message. He explained about the training that his mother had given him when she was alive and how he had been using that since he didn’t want to alert anyone about his pregnancy lest he get in trouble at work. Surprisingly, the Sin was very kind and understanding about the matter. He and Blitz talked for a while longer about the medical plan that they wanted to pursue during the pregnancy and eventually worked out that Blitz would start seeing an OB now that the pregnancy wasn’t something that would get him in trouble.

That was how they had ended up where they were.

The waiting room for the obstetrician that the king had suggested was a nice enough place, certainly better than the hospital in Greed that Blitz had been to when he was a kid. The walls had some tasteful paintings of mothers with their babies, thankfully all the beings were different than each other so that it didn’t feel like the clinic was meant for one type of demon and not others. The receptionist was across from the double glass doors and had been very nice when Blitz had approached her to check in. There were plush chairs and couches spread all around the waiting room, each of them a different height to accommodate the different demons that would come to visit. 

Ozzie was back in his incubus form, a good way to keep his real identity from the people around him and a better way for him to fit in the buildings meant for smaller beings than his sin form. Something about that form also brought a great deal of comfort to Blitz and made him feel like more of a person than he had in a good long while. He was able to lean against the other being for comfort whenever the doors opened. For some reason, being out in public in a place he had never been to was really unnerving for him.

It felt like he had already been there for an eternity when the doors into the back of the clinic finally opened up and someone called his name. He was on his feet as quickly as he could be with the heavy weight of his womb sitting against his hips. It had only been about two weeks since he had told Ozzie about his pregnancy, but he already felt like it was far more real than it had been when he was keeping it a secret. Blitz may have been more agile that most pregnant people were due to his job and the natural form of his body, but that didn’t mean he was a spry as he had been with twenty or so less pounds of fluid and baby inside of him.

“If you two would just follow me back this way,” the nurse said as she lead them through the maze of halls to a little alcove. It had two chairs, a scale built into the ground, and a basket full of all kinds of things that Blitz wouldn’t be able to name despite his medical training. “We need to take your weight and a couple other vitals before we get started, just so that we have a good baseline of where you are so we can watch for things like high blood pressure or increased heart rate. Are you alright with that?”

The nurse was far kinder than any of the medical staff had been after the fire, which put Blitz at ease. He knew that he had to get medical assistance during his pregnancy and Ozzie felt most at ease with this hospital since it was one of the many that his Aunt Belphegore founded, but he was still fighting off the memories that night had left him. “Uh, yeah, that’s fine. Do I need to take off my shoes or jacket or anything?” he asked. He hadn’t even realized that his hand was resting on his belly until he had moved it to his jacket and suddenly it felt like he was even more exposed than he would’ve been if he was naked.

“Unless you’re carrying a dictionary or rocks in your pockets, you should be good,” the nurse replied as she nodded her head to the scale.

Blitz glanced back at Ozzie and then felt the tension in his shoulders melt away when he saw that warm, reassuring smile on the king’s face. He stepped onto the scale and didn’t even flinch when the nurse moved around him so that she could press the button to take a snapshot of his weight. She wrote down the number and asked, “Could you sit in the chair and take off your jacket? We need to take your blood pressure and heart rate.”

“Right,” Blitz nodded as he sat down heavily in the chair. He removed his jacket and handed it to Ozzie, who took it and folded it up like it was a priceless heirloom and not the most beat up thing that hadn’t come out of a dumpster in all of Hell.

The nurse slipped a heart monitor onto his finger, the one that allowed his claws to rest comfortable on the other side of it while it was snug on his fingertip. The blood pressure band went on his upper arm and he had to turn away while it was inflated. He hadn’t realized quite how much it was going to stress him out to be back in a hospital situation after so long being outside of it. He knew that he wasn’t totally over the fire, given that it had only been about three years, but he had stopped having nightmares about it a long time ago. He thought that it would be easy to replace the bad, foul memories with new ones centering around the King and his baby.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Ozzie soothed as he crouched down next to the hybrid. He could have sat down in the other chair, but it was easier for Blitz to see him like this. Even when he was in his incubus form, he was still a bit taller than the other being so if they truly wanted to be the same size then they had to make some adjustments to where they were in space. “Just breathe with me, okay? I know that this is hard.”

His voice was even and steady, that deep rumble that spoke to something deep inside of Blitz and made him feel like he was whole and real. The hybrid watched as the king took in a deep breath and then let it out slowly. He followed the movements himself, taking breaths so deep and whole that they filled up his lungs before he let all the air out at once.

He felt more grounded to the time around him and less lost in the past that he had run from. It was easy for him to finish that part of the appointment and walk to the room where the OB would actually be seeing him. He had taken his jacket back from Ozzie by the time that they had gotten there, though he didn’t need it. The sun from the ring nearby was streaming through the window and heating up the room so that it was a pleasant temperature for anyone that was not a living, breathing incubator the way that he was.

“Do you think that everything’s okay?” Blitz asked. “I mean, you saw the way that the nurse looked when she was writing shit down in my chart. What if I already have hypertension or some shit? It’s way too fucking early to induce me into labor.”

The longer that he spoke, the more anxiety he could feel rising inside of him. He had been pretty good about making sure that the body of the baby was still where it had been before, but it was hard to palpate his own abdomen after so much time had passed. He had been able to see the babe growing in his womb, but that didn’t mean that everything was right. While it was the best that they had in the circus, since they couldn’t afford a portable ultrasound or doppler machine, the humans and Sins had created a lot more new technology that could monitor pregnancies more intimately than that. If he had scheduled an appointment with the OB before Ozzie had caught him, then he already would have had at least one ultrasound and the viability of the pregnancy would have been checked as soon as the test came back positive. Instead, he had let fear dominate his choices once again and had forgone all of that until someone else had pushed him into it.

Before he could spiral too much further into his own mind, Ozzie said, “Nothing is going to be wrong with our baby. You’ve been doing a really great job taking care of yourself and I’m sure that’s extended to the pregnancy too.”

Blitz nodded as he took in the words. He had been eating right, sleeping often, and making sure that nothing was ever too hard against his stomach. That had all happened as soon as he had found out that he was expecting, so it was unlikely that he had done any substantial damage to the little baby inside of his womb.

The door then opened as someone poked their head inside. “Is now a good time?”

“Uh, yeah,” Blitz nodded when he realized that both of the other beings around him were waiting for his consent. He wasn’t quite used to being the center of attention in that way, usually when all eyes were on him it was because he was performing or because he had done something that no one liked.

“Wonderful! My name is Dr. Layla, and while I am a sinner I can assure you that you are in the best of hands with me as I was certified by Queen Belphegor’s counsel and the Sin herself,” the doctor said. The door clicked shut behind her so that they were in the privacy of the office. She was speaking quickly and clearly, like it was something she’d had to say a thousand times over to drill it into the heads of her patients.

“I trust you,” Ozzie said. It made sense, since the sinner in front of them was in Sloth and not somewhere like Greed or Pride. Sinners would be deposited into the ring that represented the sin they had been tempted with most when they were alive, which was why there was such a large quantity in Pride. God apparently liked to say that anyone who didn’t worship Him enough was prideful, or at least that was the explanation that Blitz had gotten as a child when he had asked about it.

“Me too,” he said. “I mean, I work with a couple of sinners so you can’t be too bad.”

She chuckled, “Thank you. May I ask who we have supporting you?”

“This is, uh,” Blitz stopped. He wasn’t sure if he should call Ozzie by his nickname or by his full name, given that he was in a smaller form so that he could protect his identity. It was going to come out eventually that the King of Lust had bedded someone hard enough to knock them up with a definite parentage, but that didn’t mean that the information had to come out right now.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to despair for too much longer as the incubus smiled warmly at the doctor and then stuck out his hand. He said, “My name is Ozzie, I’m the other parent.”

“Nice to meet you. Given the wording, I’m assuming that the two of you aren’t together romantically or queerplatonically?” Dr. Layla asked. Her voice was free of all judgment and criticism, which was something that Blitz hadn’t realized how badly he needed. The idea that a couple needed to be married was a very human idea, brought about by something that God had told one of his prophets on earth. Given that God wasn’t one of the deities that controlled and was worshiped in Hell, by beings other than the sinners, nothing that he decreed really applied to them. Within the tribal community, though, it wasn’t common for a child to come from two people that weren’t courting at the very least. Blitz hadn’t been back to visit his tribe since the fire but he still held their possible judgments very close to his heart.

“No, we barely know each other. Kid was a happy fucking accident,” he snorted a little bit at the pun and got an affectionate eye roll from Ozzie. For a brief moment, he wondered what Fizz would have done if he had been there in that moment to see what was happening between the two. Fizz was the only person that Blitz had ever longed for a family life with throughout his entire teenagedom and dating experience.

“Alright, just wanted to make sure so that I didn’t make anyone uncomfortable,” the doctor nodded. She shifted on her stool as she continued with the actual part of the visit, “Now, I’ve noticed that the last visit you had at a hospital, at least that we have on file, was when you were around nineteen. Does that sound about right?”

“Yeah, I’ve never really been one to do the whole ‘checkup’ thing,” Blitz explained as he rolled one hand over itself to dismiss the idea entirely.

“May I ask why? You don’t have to answer if it’s too personal, but if the reason has to do with a fear then I might be able to help you through it so that you have a more comfortable pregnancy,” Dr. Layla explained. One of her eyes blinked before the rest of them did, which was a little distracting from the question.

He glanced over to Ozzie and then back to the doctor. He decided that he was already deep enough in the situationship with the king that disclosing his true status wouldn’t be that big of a deal. After all, the king was spending time with him because Blitz was knocked up with his children instead of because he was dating him, so it wasn’t like it was that big of a betrayal of trust. He took a deep breath before he let the entire thing spill out of his mouth, “Well, I grew up in the circus. We were one of the last remaining imp tribes from before the Fall so it was a way for us to stay together, travel the usual roads, and make money so that we could interact with what Hell has become. It’s not really traditional for tribal imps to go to the doctor at a hospital or to even be near one of them every single year so that we can make appointments. The elevators cost money now, kinda.”

The sinner nodded, blinking at him again. “I can understand how if it wasn’t usual for you to go to the doctor when you were a child then you wouldn’t have done it when you were an adult. I was also unaware that there were imp tribes before the Fall, but I suppose that it makes sense. Thank you for teaching me!”

“We did have someone that checked on people. My mother was the tribe’s nurse and midwife. Taught me a lot of stuff too, which was why I never though that it was important to spend money to go to a doctor when what I did fixed everything well enough,” Blitz shrugged. He spared a glance over to Ozzie and felt his heart beat settle down. He had been so scared to disclose that he was a tribal imp because many of the other demons in Hell considered them to be the lowest of all the creatures that resided in the rings, but Ozzie didn’t seem to be sneering at him or judging him at all.

“Good to know. So I take it you already know a bit about pregnancy? Such as what not to eat and the kinds of exercises that you should be doing to reduce back and hip pain?” the doctor asked, jotting a couple more notes down.

“Yeah, I do. I think you’re the first person that hasn’t doubted my ability to check on my kid,” Blitz chuckled. It was nice to have someone in the hospital respect him. The nurse had been nice enough, but he had seen the way that her eyes widened when he had provided her with the dates of his last cycles and how far along he had to be.

She smiled kindly at him, “In life, I was a trained midwife. I became an obstetrician when I arrived here because it was the standard that made the most amount of people comfortable and allowed me to get a job. Granted, I didn’t expect giving women critical medical care would end me in Hell, but it was nice to continue doing what I loved. I trust you, as a midwife, to know the basics of how to guide a pregnancy through to the finish. I say basics because, unfortunately, when it has to do with our own family or bodies we are a bit biased and can either see the best or the worst in certain actions that may not be as dire as we feared. That’s my job, to listen to you and use my distance from you as a way to diagnose and help you.”

He really liked the sound of that. He had been worried, based on the looks he had gotten from the other staff and the unpleasant interaction with the receptionist over the phone, that this was going to be the worst thing he had subjected himself to since the Mammon concert. Dr. Layla was warm, perfectly professional, and very respectful. He felt good handing his medical care over to her, especially since he knew that it would also help Ozzie feel better.

“So should we get started?” he asked.

“I think that we should!” she replied chipperly. 

She had Blitz lay down and then palpated his belly with one hand to get the fundal height before she reported it to the imp. It was exactly the dates that he had in his own mind, especially since there was only one or two days between when the baby could have been conceived as he and Ozzie had seen each other rather briefly again after the first night they had spent together. She had a nurse come in and take some blood so that they could run routine samples, as well as a bite of urine to make sure that he didn’t have any signs of hypertension or gestational diabetes.

“This is the really fun part. Usually we do an early ultrasound to make sure that the embryo has implanted in the right location but based on how far along you are without extreme amounts of pain, I’m not going to advise one until the anatomy scan in about two weeks. However, I would like to use the doppler to check on baby’s heartbeat. That means that the both of you can hear it too!”

Blitz grinned so wide that his cheeks hurt, he couldn’t remember any other time that he had felt that excited about anything. He turned to look at Ozzie and saw that the look was matched perfectly. It was nice to have someone that was just excited about something happening to Blitz as he was. Fizz was supportive, but he was so anxious that he usually hid his feelings under passiveness and a shrugged body. No one else had stuck around long enough to see what Blitz’s life was actually like and he was the only being that he could blame that on.

Dr. Layla instructed Blitz to lay back on the crinkling paper that lined the examination table and then pulled a machine in from the hallway. “This is a doppler machine and it bounces high frequency sound waves off of red blood cells in the human world, or black and blue ones for the demons down here. It’s going to allow us to hear the baby’s heartbeat and make sure that it’s nice and strong. Would you mind pulling up your shirt?”

“That’s what got me into this mess in the first place,” Blitz joked, earning a choked snort from the sin beside him. He did as he was asked, pulling his shirt up so that it was resting just underneath the support bra that he had to buy himself when he hit his twelfth week. He hadn’t expected that much chest growth because his mother hadn’t had much, according to her, but he was having enough that it was uncomfortable to go without. The secure fabric was also a reassurance when his nipples began to get hyper sensitive.

The doctor placed the doppler down on his belly, and immediately the entire room filled with a sound that Blitz had never heard before. He’d been checked over for blood clots when he’d had his eye removed, but his hearing had been so busted by the fireworks in that moment that he hadn’t gotten to hear the sound of his own heartbeat like that. The doctor began moving it around so that the whooshing got stronger and softer depending on where it was. She then stopped when she got to the lowest part of the belly, shifting it from left to right until she found a very, very fast sound.

“There it is! That’s the sound of your baby’s heart. They’re sitting quite low, but that just means that you’re…” she trailed off. It sounded almost as if there was an echo from the heartbeat, a slightly quieter whooshing in the background of the first one. “Hmm.”

“What? Is everything okay? Is the baby okay?” Blitz asked. All the fears that he’d had when he was sitting in the waiting room and post-nurse were beginning to swell in the forefront of his mind. All he could think about was how he had stayed away from the hospital for too long and now his baby was badly injured in a way that he could have prevented if he wasn’t such a coward.

Dr. Layla soothed him with a single finger, moving the doppler slightly. “I can hear a bit of an echo in the heartbeat which could mean a lot of things. I’m going to schedule you an ultrasound a week early from when we usually do the anatomy scans so that you can get a better idea of what’s going on. I don’t think that this is anything to be too considered about, so please don’t stress yourself into a tizzy. I promise that we can get this sorted out,” she smiled at them both kindly.

The machine was removed from Blitz’s stomach and he sat up in a bit of a daze. All he could do for the rest of the appointment was sit beside Ozzie and try to listen to the important information that the doctor was giving them. It felt like so much had happened in one day even though very little had changed in his life. He was still going to return to his shitty apartment in the Greed ring and he was still pregnant, with a baby that might not be as healthy as he had originally hoped.

“Do you want me to bring you home?” Ozzie asked. They had met up together, but the Sin didn’t have a car present since he could call his staff to cart him around even into the other rings. Blitz, on the other hand, had driven his van from his apartment to the clinic, so he had to get driven or drive home in that if he had any hope of getting to work the next day.

“Uh, yeah,” Blitz nodded. He was still barely paying attention to what was going on around him, mostly just trying to focus on not holding his breath to the point where he died. It was surprisingly harder than it sounded, mostly because the nerves in his chest were constricting every single organ inside of his ribcage and pelvis.

The hybrid handed the keys over to the Sin and then clambered into the passenger seat of the van. They drove silently through the streets and into the elevator that brought them to Greed. Blitz only started talking when he had to give Ozzie directions on how to get to his apartment. It was a bit amusing to see such a powerful being struggle to navigate the myriad of potholes that littered the road on the way there.

Ozzie parked the car where he was instructed to and then rushed around to the other side so that he could open the door for Blitz. “Do you, uh, do you enjoy living in Greed?” he asked. His voice was strained, like he was trying to be polite but wasn’t sure that he could manage it for longer than necessary.

The hybrid shrugged and then motioned for Ozzie to come with him. They had a couple of things that they needed to talk about concerning parenting and the pregnancy in general, so it was better that they move somewhere where Blitz could sit down instead of standing in the shittiest parking lot ever seen that side of Pride.

Once they were in the hallway of the building, Blitz answered, “I don’t really like it but they’re one of the only rings that charges the same for hybrids or will rent to them at all. I had to find a place to live because being homeless or living in the back of my van was really not working out. You’d be surprised about how fussy those overlords can be about how their spaces look.”

The Sin gave a huffing snort, “I had to deal with quite a few of them myself after I took over the ring. They’re unbearable.”

“You’re telling me. Imagine how they are with you, someone that has a shit ton of power over them and is also literally an angel, and then imagine how much worse those bigoted assholes are going to get when they find out that I’m the second lowest of all the classes in Hell,” Blitz said.

“I’ve always hated the class system. When we fell, I was just barely old enough to remember some things from the early days. The imps that took us in were part of a tribe that roamed the Pride ring primarily, which was why my father ended up settling there first instead of somewhere a bit less tinged with poison,” Ozzie explained. “Those beings may not have lived the way that we had previously in Heaven, but they were far kinder and had a better community than I had ever seen. I never understood why they were looked down on by the other demons, simply because they didn’t possess the same talents as the others. They were still wonderfully gifted, I mean, look at the kinds of things that you can do on your own! You didn’t even have the priests to teach you the way that the old tribes did.”

Blitz felt his cheeks growing hot the longer that Ozzie talked. He had learned about how his people had traversed the land in search of the Fallen, since they had been prophesied by the Saints of Hell to help them once they arrived. He knew that one of the tribes his parents belonged to had helped Lucifer and Asmodeus when they fell, but there was no way that he would have known how much Ozzie still appreciated that kindness to that day.

He turned away from the Sin and cleared his throat, “Listen, man, if you want to help me get a better place where I can do my half of the kid raising then you’re welcome to.” He was mostly joking, but half of him was hoping that he could leech a bit off the Sin’s kindness to get a leg up in the world. Maybe, once it was known that a hybrid from the tribes had birthed the King of Lust his heirs, then it would be easier for other people like him to not flounder as much as they currently were.

“It’s funny that you mention that,” Ozzie said. “I don’t have to find you a place because I already have one. I own an apartment in Pride that I use to visit my siblings when my dad needs a break.”

“I always forget that Satan and Charlotte are your siblings. You don’t act like the Grand Prince of Hell or whatever. At least not when you’re with me,” Blitz said. The idea that Ozzie might act more humble or as a person instead of a grand mythic figure when he was around Blitz made the hybrid’s heart flutter in a way that he couldn’t describe.

“If Charlie heard you call her by her full name I think that she would cry,” he laughed. “She’s always be so sweet. You know, they’re both really excited about the baby.”

Suddenly Blitz felt very lightheaded. He placed his hand over the mark on his forehead as he sunk down onto his shitty couch, trying to breathe evenly. “You already told your family?”

Ozzie sat down beside him, the blue of his face far darker with the new blush that he was sporting. “I know that I should have asked you if it was okay for me to talk about it, but I was so excited to be a parent and they’re my family. Are you alright?”

“Well I just found out that the fucking royal family of Hell, literally the most powerful family that has ever existed, knows that I’m carrying your brood in my gut,” Blitz mumbled. “Are you sure that none of them are going to get mad at me for being of a lower class? I mean, there are plenty of other demons that you could have had a kid with and technically that offer is still on the table.” He was rambling at this point, trying to get out the feelings that were swirling around in him like a late-season Wrathian storm. It was hard to process everything that he had gone through during that day and he honestly felt like he deserved a metal for not breaking down and screaming for everything to stop.

“I’m not going to back out of this, now or ever,” the Sin said, his voice hard and determined. “Like I said when I first found out. You and I made this baby from Lust, which is my domain. I want to help you raise them and support you both for all the work you’re doing for me.”

“It’s just pregnancy,” Blitz argued, feeling his cheeks heat with embarrassment.

“I had to watch my dad go through the pregnancy with Charlie and Satan, I know that shit is hard work,” Ozzie shook his head. There was a slight faraway look in his eyes, which meant that there was probably something more to that story that he wasn’t saying. Blitz wanted to pry deeper, not only so that he could know more about the royal family for the sake of pure curiosity, but so that he could know more about Ozzie. The Sin had been imposing in the beginning, but he made Blitz feel assured of himself and safe in a way that no one had before. It was intoxicating and fun, he wanted as much of it as he could get his hands on.

They sat in silence for a while longer before the conversation drifted back to the apartment. Blitz regretted not asking questions about Ozzie’s family and past when he had the chance, but he knew that his living situation was more important. Eventually, they decided that Blitz would move to the apartment in Pride and get a certain amount of money every month that would cover his utilities and other necessities, fluctuating depending on the age and needs of the baby. Blitz would have to work for the things he wanted or didn’t need to live, but he had a safety net to fall back on now that he was carrying the Heir of Lust in his womb.

---

A week had passed since the last time that Ozzie and Blitz had talked in person. They corresponded often over text, the Sin asking how Blitz felt three times a day. The hybrid knew that the other being was just as worried about the baby as he was, which was reassuring. He still wasn’t super used to someone caring about things that he did with the same level of passion and commitment, but he was adjusting slowly. Every time that he got that text on his phone, he would reply with exactly how he was feeling and an assurance that the baby was okay.

By the time that the scheduled ultrasound came around, they were both so nervous that they were entirely silent from the club to the clinic. Blitz was picking at spots on his arm and face, the lines of his burn scars now agitated and leaking black blood. He hadn’t done something like that since he was a kid, back when he still had acne to fuss over in the mirror every day. It was a soothing motion but also one that was very obviously destructive, which in a weird way helped settle him down more.

They got up from the seats in the waiting room and went through the whole process of getting the vitals and weight checked out. Instead of going to one of the private examination rooms, though, they were led to a larger room with a set of different machines up against one of the walls. The nurse had Blitz lay down on one of the paper-covered tables and promised that the technician would be in soon.

The duo continued to sit in silence once they got there. A half dozen joked with varying appropriateness came into Blitz’s mind and then left it just as quickly. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do in this situation since he and Ozzie weren’t together. He had begun to wonder what it would be like if they were romantically involved like so many other people who had created children together were. 

That had led him down a rather dark rabbit hole where he remembered the way that all of his other relationships had turned out. He wasn’t a very easy person to love, he had always known that, he got scared when it came to commitment and did a lot of things that were viewed as very hurtful from the people he cherished. Back when he was dating as a younger twenty-something and teenager, that hadn’t mattered. It was just him and he had already faced the worst things that could happen to a person post-fire. Now, it was different. He wasn’t just worrying about himself, his livelihood, he had a child to worry about. If he got involved in a romantic relationship with Ozzie, then it could cost him his child and his child one of their parents. While he trusted Ozzie with the safety and health of his baby, he also knew explicitly what it was like to grow up knowing that one parent didn’t want to be present on purpose.

A knock on the door broke him from his thoughts and he looked up. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Dr. Layla coming in with the technician. “Hello to you both. I don’t usually come with for this kind of thing, our technicians are very capable, but given the stressful situation I thought that it would be better if I was present,” she smiled kindly.

“Yeah, I think that would be for the best,” Blitz nodded. He was aware that the technician wouldn’t have gotten hired onto this job if they weren’t competent, but it made him feel better to have the doctor that had understood him so well before working with him again.

“My name is Ash, I’ll be checking you out and letting you two get a picture of your baby today!” the technician smiled kindly. “You’re lucky enough to have come in after we stop using the vaginal probe, so I’ll need you to roll up your shirt and push down your pants so that your whole belly is exposed.”

Blitz did as he was asked, just as he had done for Dr. Layla when she had palpated his abdomen. He didn’t like having his hands off of his tiny bump, not when there were other people in the room and individuals that he didn’t know for sure. He understood that this was very important for the health of his child and for the mental well-being of himself and others. He rolled his shirt up so that it was sitting underneath his bralette and his pants were down around his boxers. It revealed the entirety of the tear-drop shaped bump, which made him realize that he was already a bit bigger than he thought he should be for where he was in his pregnancy.

“This is going to be a bit cold, I have tried to warm it up a little,” Ash warned as they presented a bottle of clear liquid that looked very much like lube. They turned the bottle upside down and then squirted a decent sized amount onto his belly before doing the same to the wand in their hand. They then turned the wand upside down and began to spread the gel around like they always did in the movies. Once they had finished with that, they began to move slower over the apex of his stomach while squinting at the screen. After a moment, they smiled and turned the screen towards them, “This is your uterus, all this black space is the fluid that the baby sits in. Here you can see the placenta, it’s attached very nicely to your uterus and the umbilical cord appears to be in the exact location we want it in.”

Both parents turned to Dr. Layla to get a bit more infirmation, which she was happy to provide. “The placenta is against the back wall of your uterus, which means that you’re going to be able to feel it when baby moves, and the umbilical cord is attached to the center which allows for the majority of the blood flow to go right to baby. It’ll let them grow big and strong until they’re ready to be born and shouldn’t give you any fits when it’s time to deliver.”

The good news made Blitz’s shoulders droop with relief. He had been sleeping fitfully due to a surprisingly high amount of nightmares that informed him he was moments away from waking up to blood all over the sheets, again. “What about the heart? Is the heart okay?”

“We’re getting there, it’s alright,” Ash soothed. They probably had to deal with very worried people all the time, it wasn’t just a whim to get an ultrasound after all.

They moved the probe down further, the screen blurring with black patches and gray moving blobs. Finally it settled down and the technician grinned. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, doc?”

“I believe that I am, and it would explain what I heard with the doppler!” Dr. Layla beamed. “Blitz, I would like to be the first person to inform you that you are expecting a beautiful pair of twins!”

“Holy fucking shit,” Blitz whispered. He knew that his eyes had gone comically wide and his face was probably chalky and pale. Part of him was so excited to be having twins since he was a twin himself, but the other part of him was terrified that history was going to repeat itself. What if his babies ended up hating each other the way that Barbie hated Blitz? What if he ended up ruining another pair of twins because he destroyed everything that he touched?

Ozzie gasped and stood up next to him, staring at the screen like the images on it were going to disappear if he so much as blinked. He had taken Blitz’s hand when they had entered into the clinic and hadn’t let go, which was a testament to how nervous they both were. Now, he brought Blitz’s hand up to his mouth and kissed the back of it adoringly. “We’re going to have two babies! This is the greatest honor that I have ever received.”

The reaction from the other being was enough to jerk him out of his panicked thoughts, “What? Honor?”

Ash cleared their throat. “I’ve heard that you grew up in the tribes, which means you probably don’t know a lot about succubus culture, right?”

“As fucking embarrassing as it is, yeah. My mom thought that there were more important things to teach me at the time and then her time was cut a little short,” he admitted. He felt tears welling in the corners of his eyes and then embarrassment swelled through him. While he wasn’t sure that he was ever going to be ‘over’ the death of his mother, he had stopped crying about her and everything that reminded him of her a long time ago. It was hard to regress back to the place that he had been before now that the hormones from the pregnancy were changing the way that his body worked.

“Well, in concubus culture, pregnancy is revered. It’s considered to be borderline holy to create another being through the power that comes with us. Having multiples means that you’re even holier than you would be if you were having one,” they explained as they continued to move the wand around to get different angels of the babies. “Your partner there is telling you that it’s an honor to have a child with you because you are creating life, which is the apex of our purpose.”

“Woah,” Blitz whispered. He had known that children were very important and pregnant people were to be treated gently in tribal imp culture, but his mother really had no time to teach him anything about where she had come from. He wasn’t even sure if she had known that, he had heard stories of how hard Cash had worked her when she was having him and Barbie. He knew that his mother had been adopted by her mothers, his grandmothers, when she was about six after her father had passed away of Cancer. He wondered if she would be excited that he was having twins or scared for him, scared that he would fall down the same path that she had.

The appointment moved on through the normal beats that would occur during an anatomy scan. They showed off the fingers, toes, and all other things that they could see from the twins. He learned that they shared a placenta, which meant that they were more likely to be identical, but had separate amniotic sacs. It was wonderful to get to see their little kicks and movements on the grainy black and white screen, but it was even more exciting to know how soon he would be able to feel those movements on the skin instead of mistaking it for a muscle twitching or gas.

It was ruined just a bit by the constant confirmation that Ozzie could never be his partner. He may be revered and cherished while he was growing life, but soon he would birth them into the world and then he would no longer be appreciated in that way. Ozzie would be able to take their little ones to live the privileged life of royalty, leaving Blitz with a broken heart and nothing to show for it once more. After all, time and time again it had been shown that all Blitz had to do was say the wrong thing once before he was dropped harder than yesterday’s beef.

“Do you want to know the gender of the twins today or would you prefer to wait until they’re born?” Ash asked.

“Uh, we’ve got to think of two names. I’m not thinking of four because I don’t know which gender they are,” Blitz declared. Given that he was trans, not that it was as big of a deal in tribal culture as it was in the common landscape of Hell, he didn’t think that it was super important to decorate the nursery with pink or blue. He just wanted to be able to think of a proper name and see if he could give one of his children his mother’s name, as a way to honor her since she never had been in life.

He realized that he wasn’t alone in the room when he felt a hand squeeze his own and he turned his head to the side, “is that okay?” he asked Ozzie.

“I don’t see why not. My siblings did want to throw you a party, but we can do a gender reveal for everyone else instead of just for us,” Ozzie said with a little shrug.

Blitz turned back to the technician and said, “Can you find out and then write it down? That way I can give it to my sister-in-law and she can figure out a way to reveal it at my baby shower.”

It still felt weird for him to be that involved in the lives of the royal family, but he was going to have to get used to it. He and Ozzie may not have been in love or romantically involved in any way, but it was important for him to feel as though he were a proper presence in his children’s lives even before they were born. If that meant holding off on the name search until after Ozzie’s siblings had thrown him a baby shower with a gender reveal, then so be it.

“Let’s see if they’re cooperating then,” Ash nodded. They turned the screen away from the expectant parents and then began to move the probe around again. Dr. Layla peaked over their shoulder to confirm and speculate as well. After about five minutes of whispering between the two of them, Ash got a paper and wrote down the genders before sealing it in an envelope. 

Blitz took it when it was offered to him and then passed it over to Ozzie, “Make sure that Charlie gets this.”

“I’ll make sure that whatever she does is kind of subdued,” Ozzie assured him, bringing Blitz’s hand up to his mouth so that he could kiss the back of it.

“Hey, if she wants to waste a bunch of fireworks on me then that’s her decision,” he chuckled. The idea actually scared him, mostly because it might alert dangerous forces to the presence of his twins, but he wasn’t going to argue with the Princess of Hell.

---

When Blitz was six months pregnant, his life changed substantially again.

He was still working at the club, but he did fewer shows and wasn’t choreographed to do anything nearly as dramatic as he had been doing before. He understood the caution given the state that he was in, but he did miss it. He was glad that he was still getting paid the same salaried amount, but it honestly felt like he was taking from the other performers that had to pick up on his slack. None of them seemed to mind and the older ones even brought in baked goods in exchange for attempting to feel the babies move before anyone else did.

He had been packing up his apartment in Greed since he and Ozzie had discussed the fact that he would be moving. He had to be really slow and subtle about it because his lease didn’t end until he was six months. He knew that if someone picked up on the fact that he was moving and then ratted him out to his landlord, then he could lose his deposit or have to pay an extra large fee for breaking his lease even though he wasn’t planning on it. So he had to sneak plants and boxes to Ozzie’s apartment in Pride every time that he went to work or went to an appointment. It was slow going, but it meant that on the day that his lease ended, he was able to get the rest of his necessities out and into his van. It was nerve-wracking to drive away from the apartment with all of the things that had come with it still inside, including the last month’s rent and a letter saying that he wouldn’t be renewing it.

He arrived at the apartment after an hour or so of driving and then grabbed the box of his most treasured belongings. He got up to the apartment with the special key that Ozzie had given him and let himself in. “Oh, honey, I’m home,” he said in an extended voice, trying to parody the human shows that VoxTek sometimes ran when production was slow on the other projects.

“Welcome back!” Ozzie called from one of the bedrooms. They had discussed the move extensively over the phone and it had been decided that if the Sin had finished his work early then he would be able to come and help, but he had a lot to do that day. Blitz couldn’t ignore the way that his heart sped up at the idea of someone so powerful doing something so kind for little him.

He shook his head to try and get the thoughts to leave him alone as he took in the rest of the apartment again. He’d already brought several boxes in, so they were littered around the counter, walls, and anywhere else that he could put something down. The layout of the apartment was fairly straightforward, with the tile of the kitchen drifting into hardwood to dissect the spaces where the island didn’t already accomplish that. There was a small sitting area against one wall that would allow for more formal dinners, three chairs already next to it with two high chairs in boxes on top of it. To the left of the living room was a hallway that led to three bedrooms, one of them set up to be a rather distant guest bedroom and the other filled to the brim with baby stuff as it was becoming the nursery. The last bedroom was the master because it had an en suite, and it was also where Blitz was going to be staying.

Ozzie poked his head out of the communal bathroom and then his eyes drifted down to the box, “You shouldn’t be carrying that, you know.”

“It’s the lightest box in the van and I couldn’t just turn up here totally empty handed. I’ve got your huge kids pressing against my spine right now and that means that if I’m going to walk, I have to make sure that I’m multitasking.”

“Alright, fair point. Remind me not to argue with you in the future,” Ozzie chuckled, his blue eyes twinkling mischievously.

“Man if you keep smiling at me like that then I’m going to fall in love with you,” Blitz huffed. He had meant to keep it in his own head, but he had been talking out loud to the twins since he had read that they could hear him even while they were in the womb. He tried to ignore the way that his cheeks flushed darkly when he realized what he had done and continued to bring the box in.

The silence between them could have been cut with a butter knife, but Ozzie was smooth enough that he was able to bring it back to somewhere that felt livable. “If you give me the keys to your van then I can bring everything up for you. That way you can focus on unpacking everything here. That will be less stressful on your body, right?”

“Uh, yeah, should be,” Blitz nodded. He set the box down on the coffee table and then wandered to the bathroom. He sat down on the floor and began to unpack the box containing all the extra bathroom supplies he had, storing them under the sink and in their proper cupboards. There was already quite a bit of stuff in the apartment from when Ozzie had lived in it temporarily to spend time with his siblings, which made it feel a bit like Blitz was moving in with him.

He’d never actually moved in with one of his partners before because they had never gotten that far, but he had dreamed about it. He knew that he and Ozzie weren’t together and they weren’t moving in with one another, but he couldn’t help the way that his heart ached with longing for it.

They worked together in silent unison for the rest of the afternoon. Blitz went from room to room as he unpacked the things that Ozzie had brought upstairs and what he had already placed in the apartment. Moving his plants around so that they were all getting the appropriate amount of sunlight was what had taken up the majority of the time, but it was also hard to bend down and put all of his clothes away. The sun had begun to set over the horizon by the time that Ozzie knocked on the door that led into Blitz’s bedroom. 

“Hey,” the hybrid smiled at him as he held his belly and slowly moved into a standing position. It was getting harder and harder for him to move now that he was noticeably showing, his balance was more off than it had been in his entire life. He was happy about it though, because that meant that the twins were growing big and strong under the protective hand the kept on them.

“I was thinking of getting some dinner. You feeling anything specific?” he asked.

“I want really greasy fried Chinese food,” Blitz grinned. “Like, the unhealthiest thing for me in the entire world.”

He had expected the Sin to argue with him about it. He was carrying the future heirs of Lust, it made sense that the king would want his diet to be strict and healthy so that the kids wouldn’t come out maladapted or anything. Instead, what he got was a smile that made him feel like he was going to die, “Coming right up. Would you like to make the cribs with me while we wait for it to come?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Blitz nodded. He had come with very little, so most of the unpacking that he had to do was picture frames and private items. He didn’t really want to do that while someone else was in the house, so he was happy to leave it for the time being.

The duo walked over to the next room that they were going to transform into the nursery. Apparently Ozzie’s siblings had already come and painted the walls so that they were more neutral, other than the nursery. The nursery was painted a pastel yellow color with a dark blue ceiling that had glow-in-the-dark stars in perfect constellations stemming out from the cloud light in the center of the room. Blitz sat down on the ground beside one of the crib boxes and then got to work on that. Ozzie began to attach the shelves and bookcases to the wall where they had discussed their locations.

The conversation stayed quiet for a while, before they began to talk about baby names. As much as Blitz had said he didn’t want to have to come up with four names since they didn’t know either gender, it was fun to think of names. Ozzie’s were all somewhat related to Heaven and the old times since that was his only experience, but he seemed really open to the circus and tribal names that Blitz suggested.

They were now sitting on the big sunflower rug in the center of the nursery with the food spread out next to them. Blitz took a massive bite out of his wanton and then let out a happy moan, snacking down on it even harder when it began to satiate his craving. Once he had filled his belly enough to feel like he wasn’t going to die from lack of food, he said, “So for girls names what do we have?”

“Dahlia, Tilly, Aurelia, Kalypso, Andromeda, and Clementine,” Ozzie said, counting the numbers off on his fingers despite the chopsticks he held in one hand.

“I don’t like Saints names, I knew too many kids named Dahlia when I was growing up. Tilly is also pretty close to my mothers, so if we could use that as a potential middle name instead?” Blitz asked hopefully.

“Of course! Don’t worry about honoring my parents with middle names either. I think that it’s weird to do it to someone still alive in the realm you exist in and I hate my father,” Ozzie said as he popped a bit of food into his mouth.

“I thought that you and Lucifer were really fucking close or whatever. It’s all the tabloids ever print about, since Lilith left and stopped causing drama,” Blitz commented. He didn’t pay a ton of attention to the news because it was very sinner-centric, but it was important to know some things about the royal family. Lilith had disappeared around the same time that the exterminations had started, but no one knew why and had gotten bored of speculating very early. Instead, they focused on the attention the Lucifer was giving his children since he hadn’t been seen since the youngest prince and princess were born.

“Lucifer is technically my mother. I was conceived and born in Heaven, the first to fall but not the first to land,” he explained with a shrug. “My other father is still in Heaven. He watched us fall and did nothing to stop it. It’s one of my earliest memories, including the pain that I felt because of how damaged my wings became when I was thrown out.”

“Jeez,” Blitz wrinkled his nose. He wasn’t sure what was worse, the abuse the Cash had dolled out on him or the neglect that whoever Ozzie’s father was had done. “We’re both going to be better parents than our dads, right?”

“Of course we are. I mean, look at all the effort we’re already putting in!” he grinned, spreading his arms out to show off the nursery. It was already coming together, even if they were missing a couple of things that Blitz hoped they would get at the baby shower that Charlie and Satan were putting on.

He set his food down and stood up, one hand under the swell of his stomach and the other grasping at the mostly finished crib. He let out a yelp of surprise when the item moved to the left and then suddenly he was falling. Before he had the chance to hit the ground, he felt a pair of steady arms around his waist to guide him down safely.

He laughed when he looked up and saw that Ozzie had caught him and the comfortable place that he had landed just so happened to be the Sin’s lap. “Fancy meeting you here,” Blitz chuckled.

“Are you sure that you’re okay to continue working?” Ozzie asked. His hands moved as if they were possessed, shifting around Blitz’s waist so that they were resting on his heavy belly instead. He threaded his fingers underneath the slope and then shifted the way that his arms were so that he had taken most of the weight off of the imp’s struggling hips. 

Blitz let out a happy moan and melted back into the hold of the incubus demon. “Hey, this was a freak accident. If you ever bothered to show up to the club anymore then you would be able to see how elegant and sexy I am when I swing from those silks,” he grinned. If he was being honest, he wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to last through the entire nine months while working. He was able to keep his balance better than other pregnant people might have if they were doing his job, but the fact that he was carrying two babies made his bump heavier than the standard person’s would be.

“Mm, I’m going to have to take you up on that,” Ozzie purred. He leaned down and nibbled at the underside of Blitz’s jaw just the way that he liked it. He had never been someone that was huge on pain and sex, but he did like the feeling of his partner’s teeth digging into his skin. He let out a breathy little sigh as he exposed more of the skin to Ozzie so that he could keep up the good work.

Both of the demons went absolutely still when they felt something that they had never felt before. Blitz shifted so that he was sitting in Ozzie’s lap with his back to the Sin’s chest. He placed both of his hands down on the baby bump and waited until he felt it again, the soft bumping of a hand or a foot against his palm.

“I think that the babies are moving!” Blitz gasped. He had been waiting for that to happen, because it meant that someone was going to be able to feel it from the outside instead of him only being able to feel it when they rolled over or got extremely rowdy.

“Woah,” Ozzie breathed. He released the weight of the bump slowly before he began to focus on trying to feel their children squirming around inside of Blitz.

“Isn’t it cool? I’m so glad that some of the other dangers at your club have been pregnant before otherwise I would have thought that this was a contraction or something,” he laughed. It was scary being pregnant when his mother had died several years ago, because while she had taught him about the medical parts of pregnancy there was something different about going through the process himself. It was nice to know that he still had a village around him, even if it wasn’t the one that he had always envisioned himself having.

Ozzie’s hands moved reverently down the front of his stomach to the underside, where he felt another small kick. “You’re really having my babies,” he whispered like it was something he was just realizing.

“Glad that you finally processed that fact, big guy,” he chuckled.

“This is amazing,” Ozzie whispered, nuzzling further into him. 

Blitz just smiled as they continued to sit like that together until he had to pee for the fortieth time that day. He felt right at home in the arms of the Sin, settled and reassured that he was appreciated.

---

Part Three: The Birth

Being nine months pregnant was going to drive Blitz entirely and utterly insane. He was massive, his belly barely fitting in any of the maternity clothes that he hadn’t altered himself. He struggled to get out of his chair or bed whenever he sat down and his back ached all the time. He had continued to be active even as he got into the third trimester, which kept him relatively limber and helped with the waddling just a smidge. He couldn’t imagine how much worse he would have been if he hadn’t done that.

He had taken leave early from the club since it was stressing both him and Ozzie out to have his body presented in the club with only silk preventing him from falling. He spent most of his time watching shows, practicing his horse drawing skills, and looking into what had happened at people in his circus. 

Ozzie had told him that he was helping a young imp get prosthetics after a fire had turned him into a quadriplegic. It wasn’t hard to put together that it was Fizz, so he had begun to look into the real reason that the fire had taken out so much of the circus. It didn’t make sense that birthday candles had managed to set the entire thing ablaze like that, and it wouldn’t have been burning hot enough to burn the caravans down to the ground. He had always liked the idea of being a PI, it sounded interesting for a job and he was bored out of his mind.

Something else had to have happened during the fire that had caused it to go so out of control so quickly. So far, he had been able to get in contact with Wally, the imp who had been holding the cake, and gotten a confirmation that he also thought it was strange. His father was nowhere to be found and had likely let the tribe dissolve, but he was digging further and further into the matter. Blitz had a half-written letter that was going to go to Fizz as soon as he had some actual answers to show. He wasn’t going to try and get sympathy from the imp that he had hurt so badly, he just wanted to give Fizz the same kind of closure that he would get when he found out what had really happened. That way, it would be easier for Ozzie to pursue whatever romance was blooming with the imp and raise the twins with Blitz.

He had been sitting on the couch for an hour when he got a twinge in his back. He thought that it was simply from not having moved very much during the day, but then he remembered that he had lost his mucus plug the night before. His hands were shaking as he reached out to the side of the couch and grabbed his beaten phone.

It took a moment of slow breathing and rationalization before he set his phone down, forgoing the decision to call Ozzie about his possible labor. He got up off the couch and began to wander around the apartment so that he could make sure everything was in its place. The guest room was littered with work from the Sin since they were both more comfortable with him staying around now that the due date was coming closer and closer. They had been warned by Dr. Layla that the twins would likely come early since they would simply run out of room, but the succubus side of Blitz seemed to be coming in handy for him again as he had already passed the thirty five week mark.

Ozzie was going to be staying until the babies came and then for about six months afterwards to help with the adjustment period. Neither of them really wanted to have to ween the babies early and Blitz wasn’t super keen on switching to only pumping. He’d always had a dream of being able to take time off when he had young children, the way that every new birthing parent in the circus got to. With the maternity leave that he had from the club and the financial security that Ozzie was providing him with, he did actually have that chance. Given his desires, it didn’t make a lot of sense for him to suddenly switch to only pumping so that he could send his babies away for a week at a time when they were barely even half a year old.

Somehow, Blitz had found himself in the nursery. He settled down in the rocking chair that was positioned underneath the window. He placed both of his hands on his heavy belly and began to rock slowly back and forth to soothe the nerves that were growing in the pit of his stomach. He knew that labor could come at any point and it was going to be happening soon thanks to the other things that his body had been going through, but the idea was still very scary. He had seen dozens of women give birth with various ease and complications alike, but it was different to be going through the process himself.

He had allowed himself a bit of cognitive dissonance while staring out across the grimy skyline of Pentagram City for nearly an hour. When he had five contractions within that timeframe, he knew that this wasn’t a false alarm. He’d had those a few times before, but was able to catch it before Ozzie had the chance to check his phone and then freak out.

Now, the real thing was happening and he was sure that by the next morning he was going to be a parent. The idea was as thrilling as it was terrifying, thinking of the next two decades that he would spend having two little beings asking everything of him. He knew that he would give it to them in a heartbeat, but that didn’t stop him from worrying if he would be able to provide for them like he dreamed.

He tried to center himself by focusing on getting through the next couple of hours. He’d always had bad cramps on his cycle, which made the contractions seem like a slightly elevated but not too egregious version of that, but he knew it was likely going to get even more painful.

Blitz grabbed his phone and texted Ozzie to let him know that it was baby time. Barely five minutes had passed before a swirling blue portal opened up with the Sin of Lust, in his fully demonic form, slipping through and into the room. “Are you okay?” Ozzie asked, his eyes wide and worried.

“Uh, yeah?” Blitz answered. “I did tell you how far apart the contractions were, didn’t I?”

“I don’t know, I only got as far as the first sentence,” Ozzie admitted a bit sheepishly. He shifted down into his incubus form and something inside of Blitz settled. It could have been the fact that he didn’t like demons who were literally looking down on him, he’d had that problem with royals before, but it might have also been because he and Ozzie were compatible as partners when he was in that form.

“Labor can take fucking days, Oz,” Blitz chuckled. “I told you that my contractions were far apart so that you would finish up your work and then help me out, I didn’t expect you to come home in a total tizzy.”

“Well, uh, I was just worried. When my dad had the twins they came after like five minutes of him being in labor,” Ozzie explained. He looked like a chastised child as he sat down on the couch beside Blitz, wringing his hands in front of him. “I’ll never forget how scared he was when my Aunt Bel delivered them. I didn’t want you to feel like that.”

Blitz felt his heart melt in his chest and he reached his hand up to cup the other man’s face. “You are the sweetest person that I have ever met in the history of forever,” he commented.

“I’m just being a basically decent person. One of these days I’m going to track down that father of yours and read him the riot act for the way that he made you feel when you were growing up. Now, are we ready to have a baby?” Ozzie asked.

The joke that he was going to  make about Ozzie not really being the one to have the babies died on his tongue. Instead, he just nodded his head and began to get things ready. He wasn’t going to say that Ozzie was an absent father or hadn’t been as involved in the situation as Blitz was, because while he wasn’t carrying the children he was obviously trying very hard to participate. He had dropped everything that he was doing at work to come home when Blitz had simply texted him that the babies were going to be coming in the next day or so.

---

Blitz got to eat a lot of carbs and protein with that meal so that he would have plenty of energy for the coming ordeal. He sipped on water to stay hydrated as they watched his favorite movies, pausing them when the world would go black because he was having a contraction. The app on Ozzie’s phone was getting its work out for the first time since they had downloaded it when Blitz had hit the seven month mark.

They continued to grow stronger and more frequent. The pain was even and steady, which encouraged Blitz because he knew that nothing was going to stall if he kept going on that trajectory. Outside of the normal fears that came with giving birth, he had been terrified of the pain lasting for far longer than normal or endangering the babies inside of him. The contractions lasted about a minute each, sometimes differing as Blitz got better or worse at handling the pain depending on the way that he was sitting or what he had been doing. They came at about every ten minutes, then jumped to seven, then down to four.

At that point, they called Dr. Layla. She didn’t normally did home deliveries because it wasn’t standard in the living world anymore. Blitz had grown up where everyone’s homes were also their hospitals, so he felt more comfortable delivering his children in the safety of the apartment that he had carved a place for himself into. She had agreed to give them special treatment since she also missed being able to practice as she had been taught to before she became a sinner.

The midwife arrived only twenty minutes after they had called her. She got Blitz to his room and then checked the progress that he was making, just to be sure that the contractions weren’t just for show. She had Blitz place the pads of his feet together and then move them as close to his bottom as he could, inserting two fingers into his vaginal canal after placing gloves on. “I can assure you both that wonderful progress is happening! You’re going to see your twins soon,” she beamed at them both.

Blitz couldn’t ignore the way that his heart fluttered madly in his chest and excitement rushed through him. He was fixing his pants when he turned to look at Ozzie. He hadn’t sent the Sin out of the room because he knew that Ozzie was going to be seeing a lot more before the process was over, it also felt good to have him there for every single part of the delivery process. “Did you hear that? We’re going to be parents soon,” he grinned.

“I know! You’re so amazing,” Ozzie whispered as he knelt down in front of Blitz and kissed him sweetly. When he pulled away, they were both blushing and a bit shocked that it had just happened. They knew that it wasn’t time to talk about it, not when Blitz was consumed with another contraction.

---

Now that the midwife was present, they had a bit more direction than they had before. She instructed Blitz to bounce on the yoga ball so that they could get the babies down into the birth canal and hopefully into the right direction. When he had finished with that, he paced around the house to try and help gravity work things down into the right position. It ended up working to a point, because his water began to leak a trail from the kitchen to the living room before he had noticed that something was wrong.

“I am leaking!” he shouted as he felt the patch on his pants grow bigger and bigger. “I swear to fucking shit this better not be piss.”

“Even if it was, neither of us are going to judge you for that. You’re bringing children into the world and that’s not known to be the most elegant experience,” Dr. Layla informed him. She brought him to the bathroom and then sat him down on the toilet as she dealt with his dirty pants and underwear.

Ozzie sat down in front of him, a small smile creeping over his features and his hand trailing words and markings onto Blitz’s leg. “Are you scared?”

“Honestly? Not as much as I thought I fucking would be,” he chuckled. “I like having you here, makes it feel like I can actually do this.”

“You can,” Ozzie said. His brilliant blue eyes were sparkling with a kind of emphasis that Blitz never thought that he was going to be getting. “You’re the strongest person that I have ever met and you’re so resilient.”

“I’m just giving birth, you don’t have to give me a speech like I’m trying to fight Heaven,” Blitz flushed. The kiss from earlier was still sitting in his mind like an elephant in the room.

“I think that you could fight Heaven by yourself if you set your mind to it,” Ozzie grinned. He laughed when he got a punch to the shoulder from the imp. He gave a little pout afterwards and earned a kiss to the spot to make up for it. They had joked that they were practicing for when their kids came after they found themselves doing that to each other. It was a nicety now that everything was in the process of changing, it cemented that his friend was still there and still ready to help raise the babies working their way into the world. “I’m serious though, Blitz. You’re so unimaginably strong and resilient, you’re going to be able to get through this like breathing.”

They stared at each other with wide eyes, the air hanging heavy with the unspoken words. Blitz could feel his heartbeat pick up in a way that was completely unrelated to the babies squirming around in his belly. All he could think about was the deal he had made himself, that he wouldn’t catch feelings and he wouldn’t act on anything even if he did. Ozzie was the other parent to his babies and while he was handsome, supportive, kind, and generous, there was no way that their relationship would go anywhere but down. Blitz’s family and many of the other members of the circus had reminded him time and time again that there was nothing he could touch that wouldn’t break, including and especially relationships. He wasn’t going to ruin his babies’ chances at getting to know such a wonderful man as their father nor was he going to risk a custody battle that would leave him once again alone.

“He’s right, you know,” Dr. Layla said from the doorway.

The duo snapped apart and let her come in so that she could finish her job. 

---

She helped Blitz stand once the amniotic fluid had stopped dribbling out of him and he went back onto the yoga ball. He clung to the edge of his bed so that he could rock back and forth without the risk of toppling over if he went just a little too far in either direction. Ozzie sat behind him and rubbed his back, especially down around his hips.

It quickly got too hot for him in the room that he was laboring in. He removed his shirt so that he was entirely bare, not that either other person in the room really seemed to mind. They had turned the AC on, which was actually functional in the apartment thanks to the money that Ozzie had been able to shovel into something that Blitz would never have even dreamed of affording. He knew that the doctor and his co-parent had to be absolutely freezing in the room, but he still felt as though he was roasting even with it cranked all the way up.

He began to let out small groans of pain whenever the contraction reached its climax. Now that the cushion of the amniotic fluid had left, everything felt so much more than it had before. He reached his hands onto the edge of the bedframe and began to dig his claws into it when the pain was beginning to occur. The anticipation of it was the worst thing, because he could deal with the pain when it was there but the memory of what it had been four minutes ago was so much worse than the experience.

“I’m going to explode,” Blitz grumbled after he had been laboring for an additional two hours after his water had broken. The contractions had changed the way that they felt, now tightening his belly to a frankly ridiculous amount while bringing what he could only describe as pressure throughout him.

“You’re not going to explode,” Dr. Layla chuckled. She knelt down on the ground in front of him while Ozzie moved behind Blitz to help him stand properly. She put another pair of gloves on and then checked his dilation before she gave him a bright smile. He kind of wanted to kick her for that, his contractions and labor were making him really grumpy. He held himself back because he did really like his doctor and didn’t want to chase her away, he just wanted to bite something. “In fact, you’re going to start pushing now and we’ll have the babies soon. Remember what we talked about?”

“Oh, oh shit. Oh fuck! Holy fucking balls!” Blitz gasped in surprise. He knew that pressure sometimes meant that the time to push was coming soon from the training with his mother, but hearing that said from another person brought into context just how close he was to making their twins.

“Do you remember or do you need a refresher, Blitz?” Dr. Layla asked again. She had gotten up so that she could make sure that they had all the supplies they would need for when the babies made their full debut.

“No, no, I remember,” he breathed. He could feel another contraction slowly beginning to cry up his back so that it could wrap around his hips and heavy belly. He readjusted his grip on Ozzie’s hands and then looked up to him for reassurance, which he got in the form of an excited-yet-nervous smile.

He turned his head back towards the wall that they were facing and then let out a huffing breath to get his confidence. He took in a lungful of air and grunted as he began to bear down. He didn’t even care that his bowels were moving with each push, all he could focus on was the massive baby that was descending through his birth canal as she got ready to be born. He only let it go when the contraction loosened its hold on him entirely, leaning back against Ozzie.

“Good! That’s wonderful, you’re doing it just right. Is this position working for you, Blitz?” Dr. Layla asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” he nodded. He had his eyes closed as he focused on the feeling of the baby sitting low in the birth canal and the hands that were holding him up. He groaned as another contraction began to creep up his back and then wrap around his belly, but he was able to use the pain and pressure that it brought to do something useful.

With every single push he was able to feel the baby moving lower and lower down inside of him. He let out a surprised cry of pain and stopped pushing in the middle of a contraction when all the nerves in his vulva suddenly felt like they were on fire. He panted as he tried to process what that feeling had been, his eyes now open and looking around for some kind of explanation despite it coming from inside him.

Dr. Layla placed her gloved hand on his leg and said, “You’re doing really well, you’re already crowning. It’s going to burn something fierce while you push but I know that you’re strong, you can do this.”

He looked at her with what he knew was fear, his heart was beating quickly from more than just the exertion of pushing. He set his jaw, gave his head a small nod, and then bore down as hard as he could when the next contraction came. It was easier to do it now that he was totally aware of what was happening, it was confusing when it was happening to him instead of to someone else.

He grunted and yelled out when the crown of fire really started, his vulva expanding as wide as it would go to get the apex of the baby’s head through the birth canal. He gasped and felt his knees buckle when suddenly he constricted down again and felt something slide from him entirely. “Knees, can’t hold myself up,” he mumbled.

“We can do that, come on, down you go,” Dr. Layla said with a slow nod to Ozzie. She had her hand between his legs, cupping whatever had just come out of him. He assumed that the baby’s head had finally been born, based on the way that he still felt incredibly overwhelmed by the amount of baby inside of him but his vulva was no longer actively being stretched to the maximum capacity that it could reach.

He was eased down so that he was kneeling before the doctor said, “I’ve checked for the cord and you’re good to push when you feel the urge. If you need to take a break then just pant for me for a while.”

“I don’t need a break,” he almost snapped. He felt bad for doing so, but his mind was so focused on giving birth that it was something floating around in the back of his thoughts instead. He would apologize for the way that he acted when the babies were out of him and healthy, for now they were the only thing that he could focus on.

He grunted and grasped Ozzie harder as he pushed again. The pain that came from the shoulders turning and exiting him was just as bad as the head, but it also felt a bit different because the shoulders were a wide oval instead of a circle. He felt his legs shake as the rest of the baby was delivered, sliding down into Dr. Layla’s hands, right before she brought the newborn to his chest and let him hold her.

Despite the fact that his body felt akin to what it had after the fire, his entire world narrowed down to the newborn in his arms. She was covered in black blood, vernix, and a lot of other gunk that he couldn’t quite name, but she was the most beautiful thing in the entire world to him. The tiny newborn had the beginning of horn nubs at her forehead, right where he had when he was her size. Her skin was a soft shade of pastel blue like Ozzie’s when he wasn’t in his Sin form. Her tiny fingers had a place where claws would grow in later, but for now they were absent entirely. Her nose and lips looked like Ozzie’s had in the pictures that Lucifer had been able to draw up in Blitz’s mind during the baby shower. She had a tail with a club at the end of it and hooved feet, a perfect mix of her parentage and grand-parentage.

“She’s amazing,” Ozzie whispered. He had shifted Blitz a bit so that the imp was laying down on the waterproof padding they had lined their floors with. It was easier for him to hold their daughter when he was no longer entirely vertical, so he didn’t mention anything about his sweaty back sticking to Ozzie’s bare thigh.

“She’s ours,” Blitz grinned. He lifted one of his fingers up and trailed the back of it over her chubby little cheek and jaw, reverently memorizing every single part of her. She was his baby, he had worked for nine months to make her inside of his body. He was flabbergasted that she had come from him when he was so used to the only thing he could bring being pain. She was beautiful and perfect and made from him, so something in him had to be good too.

Dr. Layla clamped and tied the cord before cutting it, setting the scissors back in the kidney dish so that no one would step on them. She asked, “Would you like me to bath the baby and get her in her bassinet or does one of you want to try and do that in the meantime? It has to be done before Number Two makes her appearance.” They had already discussed the facets of a vaginal delivery of twins that shared a placenta, so the next baby would come when she wanted to and they would go about business as usual while they waited.

“Yeah, you should do it,” Blitz said. He didn’t want to let go of his baby and he wasn’t sure how he felt about her being held by someone that wasn’t her partner, but he knew that the midwife had done this for her entire life and death, so she would treat the baby gently. The plus side of having a baby with a Sin was also that he could destroy anyone that tried to hurt their little one, which allowed him to give up some control. He would have done it himself, but he felt so shaky from the delivery of his baby that he wasn’t sure he could figure it out on his own.

“What were you thinking of naming her?” the midwife asked. She walked to the corner of the room where they had set up the baby washing station. The water was a little above room temperature from this point, having been incredibly hot when Blitz’s labor started in earnest. She dipped a rag into the water and then began to smooth it over the baby’s skin to get all of the stuff off of her.

“I think we wanted to meet them both before we decided which name went with which twin,” Ozzie said. They had settled on their names a little while after the baby shower that Charlie and Satan had thrown Blitz. The names, along with vines for one and the night sky for the other, had been painted onto the cribs in the nursery. They wouldn’t be used for another month or so as Blitz struggled to recover and the bassinet was a closer location, but it was the thought that counted.

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Dr. Layla smiled. “Back in my day, people rarely knew that they were going to have twins before they started having contractions again. I knew women who thought that their afterbirth was another baby!” she laughed.

Blitz was glad that the science and education in Hell was better than it was in certain parts of Heaven. Almost everyone that he talked to knew the basics of pregnancy and what went into it, especially in the concubus circles. It must have been incredibly scary and difficult for people that knew nothing about pregnancy and had to go through the ordeal completely blind. It was terrifying for him and he had training in how to deliver babies and assist pregnant people, so it was likely so much worse without that baseline of knowledge. For what had to be the thousandth time, he thanked the Saints and his mother for everything that they had done for him during the process of bringing his children into the world.

He was drawn out of his thoughts when he felt a great rush of fluid between his legs. He looked down at the stained pad of cotton and newspaper, which was collecting everything that continued to spill out of him. “I think my water just broke again,” he commented.

Dr. Layla looked up from where she had finished swaddling the eldest twin and then grinned at him. “It most certainly did. This is good progress, it means that you’re going to be meeting your second child very soon,” she explained. She finished wrapping up the baby and then placed her down in the bassinet beside the bed, on the other side from Blitz so that it wouldn’t get bumped or knocked over during the process of everything. She had cried when she was born, like all babies did after going through something that traumatic, but now she had settled down to a couple of gurgles. It was as if she were reminding her parents that she was still there even though they weren’t directly hovering over her any longer.

“How much sooner?” Blitz asked. He didn’t like the fact that the pad underneath him was now squelching when he moved his legs a little bit, so he began the process of standing up. Before he could even put weight on his shaky legs, Ozzie’s hands were on his elbows and practically scooping him off the ground. The solid warmth of the twins other parent behind him reminded him that he was okay and that he could do this. He wasn’t sure what he would have done without that, probably handled the entire situation a lot worse than he currently was.

“Thanks,” he whispered. He remembered the kiss that they had shared earlier just as he got another contraction. The amniotic fluid had been the only thing keeping the other baby from being born, since he was already fully dilated, so he grunted as he began to bear down. He was almost relieved that the pain had wiped the image from his mind, had brought his heart back to racing because of the pressure and not because he felt like he was falling in love.

“Well done, you’re doing very well,” Dr. Layla murmured as she got the pad swapped out for another one and then helped him back down onto his knees. This time, he placed his hands down onto the ground as well. His hips were tilted low so that gravity could continue to help him, but his belly had shrunk enough that he was able to be in a different position than he had with the first.

He pushed for almost ten minutes before the second baby’s head began to crown. The same pain as before befell him and he pushed through it because he knew what would be coming. He paused and panted when he was told, allowing the midwife to check for the cord and rotate the shoulders. It was a strange feeling, but he felt almost meditative as he began to push again and delivered the rest of the little one.

The same processes as before were completed. He got the baby onto his bare skin and then assessed her features. They weren’t identical, the smaller of the two babies had his red skin and no horns. Her fingers lacked claws and likely always would, and her feet resembled that of a concubus instead of an imp.

Dr. Layla took the baby and then cut her cord before she went to wash her. The placenta was delivered just as the second twin was laid down in the cot next to her sister. They both seemed to settle once they had the other to cling to, which made Blitz’s heart ache something fierce.

Only a couple of years ago he had been a twin himself and had sought comfort in his sister the same way that his girls were doing to each other now. He knew that Barbie hated him because he had caused part of the accident that had burned down their circus and was blamed for it, but he wondered what she would have thought of him being a parent. He was sure that she would have been supportive of him if she had been there during the delivery, fussing over every aspect of it to make sure that everything went to the plan he had set. He knew that she would have cooed over her nieces like they were the most precious thing on the planet. Most important, she would have encouraged him to go forward with his relationship with Ozzie. She was good like that.

“I’m disgusting. Can I take a shower or something?” Blitz asked.

“Are you able to stand?” Dr. Layla asked as she inspected the placenta in the basin that she had caught it in.

“I can stand. His name is Ozzie and he has big hands,” Blitz said as he tilted his head back. Their eyes met and he felt another sprig of butterflies shoot throughout his body despite the exhaustion that was weighing so heavy on him. He could handle anything when Ozzie was by his side, he was absolutely and utterly sure of it.

“Then I would suggest getting a shower in, before the girls decide that they’re hungry and the rest of your attention goes to them,” the midwife replied.

Ozzie carefully placed an arm underneath Blitz’s legs and another one around his back. With a single smooth motion, he lifted the hybrid up and walked him to the bathroom. They had already placed a shower stool inside of the stall due to Blitz’s aching hips when he began to near his labor, so he got to sit down on that instead of having to stand entirely on his own. The water felt blissful and cool as it began to run over his body, but it was nothing compared to the washcloth covered in soap that Ozzie used to wash his sweaty body.

When the shower was over, he stepped into the special underwear that would track how much he was bleeding and help carry the flabby skin of his belly while his organs were returning to their rightful place. He dressed in sweatpants and a nursing bra but decided to forgo a top as he was carried back to the bedroom. Ozzie laid him down on the bed right as the twins woke up and set of a chain reaction with each other.

Dr. Layla helped them lift the babies up and then get them nursing. When she left, she took all the things that had been involved in the birth and gave them instructions to try and keep the twins on the same schedule so that the adults in the house could keep their sanity. They were both going to try their best, but Blitz was glad Ozzie was immortal when he heard the horror story she had to tell about twins keeping parents up constantly.

---

Parenting came naturally to Blitz, unlike so many other things. He was able to learn the sounds of the babies’ cries almost immediately after they were born. He was able to tell when they were hot, cold, hungry, tired, lonely, or needed to be changed. He was able to tell which one was Kalypso, the older of the two twins, and which one was Aurelia, the younger and smaller of the two.

The duo had gotten into a good rhythm with each other. Ozzie handled all the changings because Blitz was lucky enough that he didn’t have to supplement with formula and thus was nursing all the time. They would sleep during the night, usually in the same bed and waking each other up when it was their turn to do something. They slept late into the morning and then woke up around ten so that they could pretend to be alive until about eight. They ate hearty meals that were provided by their friends and family, keeping up their strength in that way.

It had been about sixteen weeks since the girls had been born and they were already so big, it absolutely baffled Blitz. He was glad that Ozzie was around to help him with the parenting so that he could be coherenting enough to watch the girls as they grew, he would be devastated if he didn’t get to have all of that simply because he was too tired.

Ozzie sat down beside him on the couch after placing Aurelia down in the playpen next to her sister so that they could be stimulated by a crinkle mat while doing tummy time. He cleared his throat and asked, “Blitz, can we talk?”

“We’re talking right now,” he said, though he knew that wasn’t what the Sin meant. He fidgeted when he saw the serious look in the other being’s eyes and then nodded, “Uh, yeah, we can talk.”

The worst of the worst was flashing through his mind as he waited for the Sin to collect his thoughts. Things had been going so well, and to Blitz that meant he was simply waiting for the other shoe to drop and everything to become awful again.

“So, I know that we agreed that we would just be friends. I want you to know that if you still want to be friends then I’ll respect that, but I have to get this off my chest,” Ozzie said. His gaze was flickering all over the room and his powder blue fingers were picking at the edge of the couch that they were on. He took a deep breath and said, "I love you. I've been in love with you for a while now. I hadn't wanted to tell because I was afraid that you wouldn't want me to be in your life anymore, but I can't keep pretending. I wake up to the thought of you, and at night, the thought of you helps me sleep. Your smile makes me forget my trouble, and your laugh is like music to me. You are so brave and handsome and smart, and I want nothing more to be in your life in any way I can be. I know that you hold fear from what had happened, and I have fear too, but I want to come home to you every night and wake up to you every morning. I love you Blitzø Buckzo."

There was a long moment of silence before Blitz said, “I love you too.”

“You do?” Ozzie asked, his brilliant eyes wide with shock.

“Yeah, I do. I have for a long time, I just didn’t want to make a move because of what happens every time I date someone. They always end up hating me and then vow to ruin my entire life, but with the kids I couldn’t let that happen. They’re so good though, perfect in literally every single fucking way. I know that I have good in me somewhere because that’s where they got it from, so I think that I can have a good relationship, especially if it’s with you,” he rambled awkwardly.

Blitz looked up just in time to be met with another kiss, similar to the ones that they had shared throughout the pregnancy. It was magical and perfect in all the right ways, even if they had done things a little backwards.

[cat-soda]

going gentle

Somewhere in the depths of her mother’s hard drive, there’s an old home video of Qiao Ling and Cheng Xiaoshi as kids. In it, little 4-year-old Qiao Ling makes Cheng Xiaoshi lay down beside her on the carpeted floor, then proceeds to pat his head and warble out a child’s rendition of her favorite lullaby. They’re adults now, but Cheng Xiaoshi still closes his eyes as Qiao Ling runs her fingers through his hair and murmurs her favorite lullaby, entrusting her with his dreams.

or, Qiao Ling wishes her brother would let her take care of him.

for @dlandofdreams

Pairings: n/a

Word count: 1368

Warnings for: post season 2 spoilers, hurt/comfort

[AO3 Link]

The phone rings at 3am, and Qiao Ling almost doesn’t hear it over the sound of rainstorms and thunder outside her window. It takes massive strength of will to pull her hand out from under her blanket and reach around for her phone, and then she only barely manages to crack her eyes open wide enough to see Cheng Xiaoshi’s name lit up on the screen. 

She almost considers turning over and ignoring him, but the next clap of thunder makes her sigh. She greets him with, “Why aren’t you asleep yet, Xiaoshi?”

Cheng Xiaoshi doesn’t answer her for a long moment — long enough that Qiao Ling sits up in bed, letting her blanket fall from her shoulders as she holds her phone closer to her ear.

“Cheng Xiaoshi?” she asks, urgently.

“...sorry, Ling-jie,” Cheng Xiaoshi says, finally, in a thick kind-of voice. She picks up the sound of sheets rustling as Cheng Xiaoshi clears his throat. “Never mind.”

He hangs up.

Qiao Ling gives her phone an offended look and calls him back immediately, picking at a persistent hangnail as she impatiently waits for him to pick up. “Don’t you ‘never mind’ me,” she says, as soon as the line connects. “What is it?”

His tone was weary. “It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have called.” Qiao Ling raises an eyebrow even though she knows he can’t see her, pinching her lips together and waiting for him to elaborate. “It’s just… with the storm, and Lu Guang isn’t gonna be back until later this week… I’m not used to sleeping alone anymore.” He admits the last bit in a bit of a tense, wobbly voice, sounding remarkably like the young boy who used to have to be picked up by Qiao Ling’s parents after being sent to the principal’s office. Defensive. (Vulnerable. Claws raised to protect all his soft insides)

(...when had Qiao Ling become a person Cheng Xiaoshi had to hide from when he was feeling vulnerable?)

Qiao Ling nods, standing up. “Okay. Gimme a second to find my coat.”

“What?”

“I’m coming over.”

“Whoa, rent’s not due yet, is it?”

“Don’t be a jackass.” Shrugging on her raincoat and patting her pockets for her keys, she adds, “Just make sure to unlock the door for me.”

“You really don’t have to come over. Qiao Ling, wait, seriously, I’ll eat the key if I have to!”

Qiao Ling stops, rolls her eyes, then rummages through her drawer for her spare key to Cheng Xiaoshi’s studio. “You’re dumb as fuck.”

“You’re the one stepping outside in a thunderstorm,” she hears him mutter.

“You don’t even live a full minute away.”

He scoffs, but when Qiao Ling gets to his studio, she doesn’t even get the chance to take out her spare key before the door’s being pulled open, a jolly jingle coming from the bell hanging above it.

Cheng Xiaoshi frowns down at her. “Crazy.”

She pokes him in the chest, hard. “Dumbass.” Pushing past him, she sets about in the kitchen making tea for the both of them, trying not to shoot glances over her shoulder at Cheng Xiaoshi following her every move while rubbing his eyes. 

He looks so haggard under the kitchen lights.

He hasn’t been sleeping well. Qiao Ling bites her lip, thoughts racing. Eyebags like that don’t show up overnight. How long has it been since he slept through the night? How long has this been going on? 

And, quietly, why hadn’t I noticed sooner? After everything with Qian Jin and Li Tianchen and Li Tia… she had been so relieved. She had been so determined to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep moving, and maybe that was why she had lost track of Cheng Xiaoshi. (Maybe that was when Cheng Xiaoshi started hiding from her. Maybe she’d made it too easy.)

Briskly, she shakes her head, warming milk in the microwave to pour liberally into Cheng Xiaoshi’s cup. It’s small, but he smiles at the milk and some unspoken memory, and her chest unclenches, just a tad. She breathes a little easier, now that he’s smiling.

“What’s so funny?”

He shakes his head at her, still smiling. She clicks her tongue but doesn’t push, instead simply handing him his cup. 

Qiao Ling idly checks her phone as she leeches off of the warmth emanating from her tea. It’s almost 4 now. She wonders where Lu Guang went. He always becomes weird and cagey towards the end of summer, but it was unlike him to disappear out of the blue like this. Cheng Xiaoshi would know, if she asked. “Do you think Lu Guang would mind if I slept on his bunk?” she asks instead.

Cheng Xiaoshi blinks out of his reverie. He’d been staring listlessly at his tea as he held it. “No, he wouldn’t mind.” He furrows his eyebrows as Qiao Ling finishes off her cup, places it in the sink, and goes straight for the closet where he keeps the spare bedding. “...are you really staying over?”

“Oh, all of a sudden, you don’t want me around. Is that it?”

Cheng Xiaoshi shakes his head. “No, I…” He looks away, squirming under her stare. “It’s just that you don’t have to. Seriously, it’s fine.”

“It’s literally nothing. Do you think it bothers me to do things like this for you?”

“...doesn’t it?”

She goes silent with disbelief. Then, she narrows her eyes at him. “It’s like you don’t understand how easy it is to love you.” Qiao Ling shakes her head and turns towards the stairs, blankets in hand. ���Now, c’mon. I don’t really want to hang out down here all night.”

---

Cheng Xiaoshi usually snores and kicks his blankets off half-way during the night. On the worser ones, he mumbles in his sleep — inane things, sometimes, and sad ones. When they were younger, he used to grind his teeth together so badly that Qiao Ling’s parents had to get him a mouthguard. Cheng Xiaoshi has never been a quiet sleeper. 

Tonight, though, he’s so quiet that Qiao Ling can’t help but to hear it.

Qiao Ling peeks her head over the side of the railing. To his credit, Cheng Xiaoshi does have his eyes closed, but it was less like he was resting, and more like he was concentrating desperately on trying to sleep. He lays on his back, fingers tapping rhythmically against his chest, and pausing when she says, “You’re so tense.”

“Quiet in the peanut gallery,” he responds, turning over onto his side with a grunt. 

“No wonder you look so terrible,” she continues, ignoring the look he gives her. Qiao Ling climbs down from the top bunk to sit down beside him. “Come here, let me brush your hair.”

It was the only form of affection he accepted from her nowadays, ever since he shot past her in height, citing that he was too old and it was too embarrassing for her to hold him (even when she thought he needed it). (She thinks, too, that he probably misses it, even if he won’t say it out loud.) This is enough, though, to make Cheng Xiaoshi perk up, nodding his head slightly and scooting closer to her.

Carding her hand through his hair, Qiao Ling curls the inky strands between her fingers. “It’s gotten pretty long. Are you planning to cut it soon?” asks Qiao Ling quietly, after a moment.

Cheng Xiaoshi lets out a soft huff through his nose, eyes drooping. “Maybe,” he mumbles. “I might let it grow out.”

She replies with a hum, letting herself smile as Cheng Xiaoshi finally relaxes, breath evening. It reminds her: somewhere in the depths of her mother’s hard drive, there’s an old home video of Qiao Ling and Cheng Xiaoshi as kids. In it, little 4-year-old Qiao Ling makes Cheng Xiaoshi lay down beside her on the carpeted floor, then proceeds to pat his head and warble out a child’s rendition of her favorite lullaby. 

They’re adults now, but Cheng Xiaoshi still closes his eyes as Qiao Ling runs her fingers through his hair and murmurs her favorite lullaby, entrusting her with his dreams.

“Little swallow, dressed colorfully,

Comes here every spring…”

---

a/n: i won't repaste my entire author's note from ao3, but i do wanna reiterate two (2) points! firstly, the lullaby that qiao ling begins to sing is called little swallow/xiǎo yàn zi (tl: wang li) and secondly, the part about cheng xiaoshi wanting to be held is 100% inspired by this post by anulithots and i had to tell you guys bc i think about it every other day (screaming sobbing throwing up) okay byeeeee

thank you for reading!!!!!! 🫶

[courfeyracs-swordcane]

Who are the ballad brothers I have seen you tag them on a variety of posts and I am intrigued

THREE MONTHS LATE BUT HERE WE GO!!! I also did a post about this ages ago which I’ll link HERE but! There’s been a lot of development since then!!!

This is going to get long. Sorry in advance. (Also I’m keeping it to just the Ballad Brothers themselves (and co) but lmk if you also want to know about the saints! They’re not at all relevant to the main plot (two and a half exceptions) but they live rent free in my head)

TLDR. Little guys took up residence in my head when I listened to music in the car and it’s become a whole scifantasy worldbuilding exercise.

Anyway!

KYRIE ALEIDIS BALLAD

- she/her

- 29 years old

- 5’11 (and a half)

- Massive Fucking Tech Sword

- Enneagram 8w7 if you’re an enneagram guy

- she is YOUNG she’s FANTASTIC she’s GOD’S FAVORITE and she’s NEVER GOING TO DIE

- The main character!

- She is the city (symbolic) and her name is god

- Former sword-for-hire/star player/golden girl/mascot/diversity hire (whatever you want to call it) for evil organization(tm) Rekah’s Finest

- (named after St Rekah of the Guard)(think somewhere between the CIA and the Pinkertons)(National guard type of thing that staged a very quiet coup/government takeover about a decade before Kyrie was born and is gradually got to the point where they’re running the city-state where this all takes place as a police state)

- current renegade and aspiring vigilante

- she fucked off the minute she turned 18 to join the metaphorical army/become a cop (same difference)(except there’s also regular cops and they kind of suck shit) and very quickly became very good at it!

- wound up as essentially the Special Little Guy they have as the face of the organization doing a lot of like. Public outreach and shit. Also doing a lot of assassinations inside and outside of the city

- A few years before the story starts she Realized Some Things about how her and Alonzo were orphaned and quit her job EXTREMELY publicly and extremely dramatically and left with nothing but her Massive Fucking Tech Sword and the clothes on her back and fucked off to go hide/live in a massive tower monument at the center of town

- It’s… legally difficult to get her out of there due to the historical site preservation regulations so she’s just been kind of vibing there ever since

- Theoretically. She’s trying to take down the RF and get them Out Of Her Damn City

- In practice she’s one singular burnout and has no idea how the hell to go about doing that so she’s mostly just hanging out in the tower and evading arrest

- She’s a fuck boy dirt bag piece of shit (etc etc etc) and I love her for it

- She gets no bitches despite being a local celebrity with one of The Fanbases Ever (she would do numbers on scifantasy Twitter) bc She’s So Sucks <3

- (no bitches except she does have a weird homoerotic thing going w her roommate/childhood best friend who’s kind of a reincarnation of St Ely who built the city and lives in the tower)(she’s not looking at it)(she’s got bigger problems called Avoiding Confronting Any Emotion bc if she looks at any of them she’ll have to process all of the Guilt she has irt. Pretty much abandoning her baby brother on the streets to go be a hero and then Never Contacting Him Again)

ALONZO BALLAD

- he/him

- 25

- 5’4

- two regular guns

- Kyrie’s aforementioned baby brother!

- Enneagram 3w4 which if you were friends w me 2019-2021 you’ll know exactly how much that says everything you need to know about this guy (derogatory)

- Most repressed mfer on the planet and a neurotic little freak

- Considers himself to be the only guy in this found family with a braincell. (Untrue, even if you don’t count An)

- His first instinct in a lot of situations is Improv Theater. (Seeing his sister for the first time in more than ten years? Better wear a hood and prepare a whole dramatic reveal about it. Ran into the guy he kissed at the office holiday party while trying to get his expense account wrangled for an upcoming assignment? Time to launch into an extended bit about how he’s so sad and poor and he’s gonna starve and freeze to death all alone on the street and Only They have the power to help him. please.)(they think it’s hilarious but jfc what’s wrong with him)

- The main issue with him is that he gets his apartment and all of his necessities directly from his employer, so his first priority at all times is Preserve His Job At All Costs

- He thinks of the way he lives as self care. I think of it as masochism.

- His main idea of a Life Plan from the ages of 15-his early 20s was Look At What His Older Sister Did And Then Do It Too

- (his main idea of a life plan from the ages of 3-20 was Don’t Get In Trouble Ever or They Will Come And Kill You To Death)(these are not especially compatible philosophies.)

- So he’s a sword-for-hire (gun for hire. And not even a fancy tech one. They’re not trusting any more Ballad brothers with any more expensive technology.)

- This is not working out well for him. he’s not overwhelmingly good at the job. He doesn’t find any purpose in killing people. He doesn’t even like blood.

- He is, however, very good at following orders. But only when he wants to.

- He’s also very good at Lying To His Boss’s Boss

- They keep sending him to try and assassinate Kyrie as like. Kind of a power move? Trying to show her that they’ve got her only family at their beck and call and they can make him do whatever they want

- Unfortunately Alonzo has no interest in killing her so those missions pretty much just wind up with him going to hang out in the tower and shoot shit for a couple days and then going back and turning on the big sad wet eyes for his report to tell them that he did his best he really did but she’s always been stronger and he just couldn’t take her— but he’ll do better next time he promises 🥺🥺🥺

- Kyrie had been their best guy for several years and Alonzo is, in all other regards, the perfect employee (turns in all his paperwork ahead of time, does every other mission very efficiently and never gets caught, goes to all the company mixers even though everyone can tell he’s exhausted, always has his uniform meticulously clean and pressed) so this is plausible, and they go “aww okay better luck next time :) go get some rest :)”

- Also he’s lowkey a hostage here. What are they gonna do? Fire him? No they need him for leverage

- It drives his immediate supervisor who knows EXACTLY what’s going on up the fucking wall. We will get to them.

- Gets Fucking Shot With A Cheater Bullet (very small timed action grenade) on an assignment midway through the story and his first instinct (instead of going back to the office where they have like. Actual doctors and medical equipment to deal with that) is to head to St Ely’s tower, where they have his sister and his kind of boyfriend and also his sister’s roommate who can sew and his childhood buddy Jonesie down the street who knows first aid

- He’s not thinking especially straight due to the Panic and also the Blood Loss from the Bullet In His Ribcage and he’s got a whole emotional thing about how he wants to die at home w his people— and then it goes off and he Fucking Dies. Whoops!

- He gets better his boyfriend (for real now lmao) is an aspiring necromancer and God’s Pet Freak (there’s a lot. Behind that. more later) and he very pointedly doesn’t believe in magic or saints or anything but also his chest cavity did very much get exploded and he’s fine now (besides the lingering Effects) so like.

- He deals with this by 1. Contacting his supervisor who lets the higher ups know there’s been An Incident. 2. Going back to work as soon as they’ll let him (like three days later). and 3. Getting himself transferred to the security division and becoming Ari’s dad’s bodyguard so he doesn’t have an excuse to go hang out at the tower anymore and he doesn’t have to look at any of those emotions he can just Focus on his Work <3

- Obviously that does not go well for him.

SENECA “ARI” FINCH

- they/them/any

- 25

- 5’2

- Enneagram 5w6

- Mad scientist

- Nepo baby

- Front desk intern for the RF financial department

- Aspiring necromancer

- God’s Pet Freak

- If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you raise a child in one of those beige instagrammable influencer houses. It’s this.

- Their dad is the puppet city governor for the RF (Kyrie wants him dead so goddamn bad)(he’s kind of a useless twink but he’s an easy guy to blame for all this shit)

- Their mom died when they were like 8 of something pretty regular and they have since dedicated pretty much their entire life to Bringing Her Back

- (No they were not especially close or anything why do you ask?)

- TECHNICALLY their dad, knowing their passion for Science (and not much else about them) got them a cushy RF job developing biotech to make the cool individualized tech weapons

- In practice, they got their funding and their fancy work lab and immediately proceeded to squirrel just about everything useful from it downstairs to their own personal lab in the basement (not on the floor plan) where they don’t have to worry about things like “supervision” “safety regulations” “proper ventilation” “their job” etc

- They are still doing their job but they’re getting it done in like. Two days out of the month and spending literally all the rest of their time on the necromancy

- It’s gotten to the point where they’re not even clocking in upstairs anymore so they made them take a couple shifts a week at the front desk of the financial department just so they have something on record to pay them for

- They’re okay with this! it’s fun to switch it up and there’s snacks in the breakroom

- I cannot emphasize enough how much they Do Not Leave the horrifying unventilated unethical science basement. there’s a couch in the corner and a sink and an employee bathroom in the stairwell what more could they need.

- One of the early plotlines is centered around Getting Them To Go Outside (really outside, not just to the regular parts of the RF building) and like. Idk. Maybe seeing a leaf or smth would be good for them)

- where they also wind up meeting and hanging out w Kyrie and El, doing some upkeep on Kyrie’s fancy sword, and being Absolutely Fascinated by St Ely’s Tower (there’s some generally buried Magic Shit that perks up when them and El are in the room together)

- BECAUSE!!! (And this is why they haven’t succumbed to the Fumes in the horrifying unventilated unethical science basement, or the gas leak in there from the pipe main running through the middle of it that they’ve been siphoning off of, or any of the experiments they do on themself bc they can’t get any other test subjects and also bc they wouldn’t trust anyone else’s testimony as to What It’s Like) the magic, which is how Ely built the city (and how all of the other saints Did Their Things as well but that’s a whole other can of worms) is a vapor that lives underground and speaks no human language but saw this little freak trying to defy the laws of nature from their hole in the ground and took a liking to them

- It can’t bring their mom back bc she’s been dead for fifteen years and it never met her so it wouldn’t even know where to start

- But it likes them! It follows them around and keeps them alive and helps with their experiments :)

- (they remind it of Saint Ely, who was a similarly tiny passionate freak, but that’s also a whole other can of worms)

- Ari is not aware of this in the slightest.

- Their second arc is getting Disappeared from legal existence (very easy. They live in a basement and barely ever leave it and don’t really talk to people), realizing that they are in fact mortal and could potentially die someday, and trying to contact their dad to make sure he knows they’re okay. (Doesn’t work. They’ve been disappeared and are no longer allowed past the front desk.)

- Their third arc (during the communal breakdown era. Kyrie’s abandoned by god arc where she decides to run away from her problems in a literal sense and Alonzo’s evil arc where stops speaking to everybody and dives headfirst into his job at the war crimes factory) is deciding that the same thing happened to their mom and the necromancy isn’t working because she’s NOT actually dead which means she’s out there somewhere and they can find her! :)

- That is not even a little bit true. :(

EL (no last name)

- he/him (woman)

- Doesn’t really have an age. They don’t really exist in time in the usual sense

- 5’0

- Enneagram 9w1

- Lives in the tower

- Just kind of showed up there one day as a kid and has been living there ever since

- There’s a nearby convent of some kind that fed and clothed them growing up (same place that looked after Kyrie and Alonzo after they were orphaned)

- Kind of a reincarnation of Saint Ely. not in so many steps bc again. Out of time and who knows how long he’s been there but like. He’s back for more but he’s a lady with an ounce of common sense this time. It’s unclear how much he’s aware of this part of it. He knows the tower is important, and he knows restoring the murals inside of it is important. I don’t think he knows why.

- only guy in this found family who’s even remotely capable of coping with the idea of death (he already did that)(kind of psychopomp coded about it)

- Kyrie’s best friend and second in command so much as she has a command. Weird homoerotic gay thing going on there. I assume there’s some of the traditional St Ely brand of devotion but like

- (And by traditional I mean I don’t think that’s a widely known thing about Ely the Saint but it is one of the more prominent things about Ely the Guy)

- Spends most of his time restoring the tower and the murals inside that nobody has seen in years

- (That’s a whole thing)(different can of worms)

- This is @nosongunsung11’s guy so I’ll tap them in for the details but I think that’s the basics!!

AN “PUNK” JANG

- they/them (lesbian)(in gender moreso than practice)

- 35 but they’re lying about it. actually 33

- 5’5

- Enneagram 1w2 😬

- Twin fancy tech rapiers

- The previous Special Little Guy/Mascot/face of the RF

- Ran away from home, changed their name, and lied about their age to join up when they were 16 and they’ve just kind of been going off that ever since

- Went by Punk for a while towards the beginning of their career bc they were 16/17 and it Sounded Cool and it would up becoming almost like their callsign (that’s what Alonzo calls them bc he was very much an enjoyer when he was a kid. They were like Spider-Man to him. Blorbo from the news.)(and he continues to call them that bc he’s a little shit.)

- (They wound up naming themselves after Saint Anjane of Strength not because they believe in any saints but because they desperately wish they did and this way at least they can pretend they know what it might feel like to have that kind of faith.)(in a fun and funky coincidence, they’re actually very very similar to Saint Anjane herself. El has some Complicated Emotions about this.)(long story. It’s Saint Ely’s Monument but it’s also the closest thing he has to a grave— he pulled it out of the ground so he could be alone w/ Anje’s body after he got to her execution too late to talk her out of it)

- Got shunted when Kyrie showed up and was infinitely more personable due to her heroics in SciFantasy 9/11 (long story. Building exploded.) and general bright-eyed and bushy tailed unjaded Disposition

- And by shunted I mean promoted to middle management in the Murder Department

- They’re fine with this it’s significantly less work on their end

- They do make sure after that to have everything they need for basic living separated from the job though

- Only guy in this found family with their own actual apartment. And basic cooking skills. And healthy sleep schedule.

- When Alonzo gets into the Murder Department they wind up as his immediate supervisor!

- Exciting prospect at first! He’s a high profile assignment (hostage) and also an easy assignment (does all of his paperwork on time, completes his missions Quietly and Efficiently, doesn’t really do anything interesting at all)

- Less exciting prospect once they actually work with him. He’s a little shit and a motherfucker and he knows exactly what he’s doing

- They can’t stop covering for him at this point without doing a hell of a lot of paperwork and jeopardizing their own job so they’re stuck now

- Also. unfortunately. they got attached. They’re not the step-older sibling, they’re the older sibling who stepped up.

- They’re the one who arrests Kyrie at the beginning of the story and kick off the whole first half of the plot, but they also wind up putting in their two weeks after Alonzo Gets Fucking Killed and then immediately goes back to work

- They do it significantly better than Kyrie tho they keep their apartment and their bank account and return most of their uniforms so the rf doesn’t have any reason to come after them besides Aiding and Abetting (and also trespassing. On the protected historical site that is St Ely’s monument. But that’s the least of anyone’s worries here.)

- They wind up kind of taking charge of the. whatever the hell these guys are doing. during the Communal Breakdowns arc. they would really prefer not to be doing this but somebody has to. So.

- Also during that arc they wind up facing off with Alonzo and boy howdy is there a reason they got assigned as the rf’s Special Little Guy and he didn’t, bc he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell even with them holding back

AND THAT’S THE MAIN CAST! Thank you for coming to my ted talk! (Get it?) I’ve hit the image limit on mobile so I’ll come back and add the before/after pictures in a reblog bc I had fun making those

[inkbirdie]

Help Palestinian Families Without Donating!

If you’re unable to donate and looking for a way to help Palestinians, I cannot recommend Artist Antics enough (@artistanticsllc) on TikTok and YouTube. Amanda is a soap maker raising money for three Palestinian families (listed below) and donating all of the profits from social media. All you have to do is watch a short video, comment (over nine words on YT for engagement), like, and press the copy link button. What I do is leave muted videos on repeat on a device I’m not using all day and overnight. This way, you get to support these families while watching cool soaps being made. There are also incentives for when we meet donation goals with sales on soaps and a chance to get your soap design made. 

The families:

Nagham is a 19-year old college student still trapped in Gaza with her family. They need funds to be able to evacuate once the borders open. Until then, they need support to afford to survive. In Gaza now, a carton of eggs can cost $70. Tents cost $1,000, and Nagham’s family’s tents have been destroyed by bombardment multiple times. They had to create a new link for their fundraiser recently and lost their progress. The family, including 8 adults and 2 babies, is now in Rafah. Nagham also needs money for her and her sisters’ educations and to rebuild their home after they evacuate. 

Abdulla was studying to be a doctor at the University of Gaza and has now evacuated with his family. He and his sisters need donations to survive and finish school. He was collecting donations for his father Walid’s cancer treatment, but he sadly passed away last month after a long and difficult battle. Walid was a doctor and their hope for income after evacuating, so now Abdulla needs more help than ever to continue his studying to support his family. This fundraiser was removed by GoFundMe, so they lost all of their progress. Incentives by Amanda from Artist Antics support this campaign. 

https://gofund.me/2a3cd494

Asma and Mohammed: This young couple was separated for almost a year and unable to reunite until they raised enough money. Though they were both able to evacuate to Egypt and Turkey, they could not reach each other. They lost everything, including their home and business in the bombing, and Asma’s sister and grandfather were martyred. Now they are getting married and need funds to rebuild their bakery and rent a house in Istanbul. 

Please help to support these families by following Artist Antics on all platforms and engaging with all of their videos as much as possible. Share with family and friends as well. If you want to donate and only have a dollar, send it to Amanda on Venmo. They donate everything they receive there as a lump sum. 

All fundraisers are verified and completely legitimate. Updates are posted on Artist Antics’ platforms.

https://www.instagram.com/artisticanticsllc/

[overthinkingbelle]

Aaron Tveit appreciation post.

Movie appearances/roles:

2008-Ghost Town (Anesthesiologist)

2010-Howl (Peter Orlovsky)

2011-Girl Walks into a Bar (Henry)

2012-Premium Rush (Kyle)

2012-Les Misérables (Enjolras)

2013-A Dream of Flying (The Young Man) Short film

2015- Big Sky (Pru)

2016-Undrafted (John "Maz" Mazzello)

2016-Better Off Single (Charlie) Previously named Stereotypically You

2017-Created Equal (Tommy Reilly)

2018-Out of Blue (Tony Silvero)

TV roles/appearances:

2009–2012 Gossip Girl (William "Tripp" van der Bilt III) 10 episodes

2010 Ugly Betty (Zachary Boule) Episode: "All the World's a Stage"

2010 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit(Jan Eyck) Episode: "Beef"

2011 Body of Proof (Skip) Episode: "Point of Origin"

2011 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (Stevie Harris) Episode: "Personal Fouls"

2011 The Good Wife (Spencer Zschau) Episode: "Executive Order 13224"

2013–2015 Graceland (Mike Warren) Main cast; 38 episodes

2016 Grease Live (Danny Zuko) Television movie

2016 BrainDead (Gareth Ritter) Main cast; 13 episodes

2017–21 The Good Fight (Spencer Zschau) 3 episodes

2019 The Code (Matt Dobbins) 5 episodes

2020 One Royal Holiday (Prince James Gallant) Television movie

2021 American Horror Stories (Adam) Episode: "Rubber(wo) Man Part Two", (Jay Gantz) Episode: "Feral"

2021–present Schmigadoon! (Danny Bailey) Main cast; 6 episodes

Theatre works:

2003 Footloose (Garvin) Merry-Go-Round Playhouse [2003 Regional production]

2004 Rent (Steve, u/s Roger, Mark) US national tour [January – December 2004 National tour replacement]

2005–08 Hairspray (Link Larkin) US national tour [August 2005 – July 2006 First national tour replacement], Neil Simon Theatre [July 18, 2006 – January 18, 2007; April 1 – May 4, 2008 Broadway replacement]

2007 Calvin Berger (Matt) Barrington Stage Company: [July 3–14, 2007 Original regional production]

2007 The Three Musketeers (D'Artagnan) North Shore Music Theatre [August 21 – September 9, 2007 Regional production]

2008–10 Next to Normal (Gabe Goodman) Second Stage Theatre [January 16 – March 16,2008 Original Off-Broadway production], Arena Stage [November 21, 2008 – January 18, 2009 Original Washington, D.C. production], Booth Theatre [March 27, 2009 – January 3, 2010 Original Broadway production]

2008 Saved! (Dean) Playwrights Horizons

[May 10 – June 22, 2008 Original Off-Broadway production]

2008–09 Wicked (Fiyero Tigelaar) Gershwin Theatre [June 24 – November 9, 2008;

January 20 – March 9, 2009Broadway replacement]

2009–11 Catch Me If You Can (Frank Abagnale, Jr.) 5th Avenue Theatre [July 28 – August 16, 2009 Original Seattle production] Neil Simon Theatre: [March 11 – September 4, 2011 Original Broadway production]

2010 Rent (Roger Davis) Hollywood Bowl: [August 6–8, 2010 Limited engagement]

2014–15 Assassins (John Wilkes Booth) Menier Chocolate Factory: [November 21, 2014 – February 8, 2015 Off-West End revival]

2017Company (Robert) Barrington Stage Company: [August 10 – September 10, 2017 Regional revival]

2018–22; 2023 Moulin Rouge!(Christian) Emerson Colonial Theatre: [July 10 – August 19, 2018 Original Boston production] Al Hirschfeld Theatre: [June 28, 2019 – March 11, 2020, September 24, 2021 – May 8, 2022, January 17 – April 9, 2023 Original Broadway production; paused due to COVID-19 , Won 2020 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, Returning for limited engagement in 2023]

Feb. 9-May 12, 2023 Sweeney Todd (title role) Broadway revival, Lunt-Fontanne Theater (replacement)

Source: Wikipedia

[aesthyuckic]

☕️📓 cafe au lait !! ┊͙✧˖*°࿐

based on a dream i had the other night weeks ago. happy (late) valentine's day. fem!reader. 2,65k.

In the modern age, it was no secret that malls were dying. Late stage capitalism was at play according to most people, and some store fronts remained empty due to how high rent got. Donghyuck saw many stores come and go in his years there, it was sad to see people he loved as neighbors and that took care of him as a child disappear before his very eyes. Some spaces were replaced by new owners because despite the dying mall industry they lived in a tourist area that got hit hard around holiday breaks and on the weekends. It just wasn’t the same anymore. Though, his family’s restaurant still remained in their spot…

It had been twenty years at this point. He had been here for that same amount of time only moving here from South Korea at the age of two. He had graduated college, yet his bachelor’s in music got him nowhere so far… and here he was yet again, working for his parents just like he did when he was teenager in order to make a living.

“Donghyuck, stop slouching against the door way.” His mom whined to him. “It’s bad for your back and that’s not how you attract customers.”

“Mom, it’s a Tuesday at 2 in the afternoon.” He fixed his posture. “No one is coming right now and I’m tired. Why do I have to wear a white button up, slacks and a tie? I use to only wear black.”

“You’re a young man now.” She cooed at him while patting his cheek, lovingly. “And you’re handsome. Plus, don’t you remember in high school how you use to flirt with all those girls and they’d keep coming back? Even those older ladies found you charming… We got more business because of you and it’s about time you get in a relationship. People will come, just be patient.”

“I was doing that for the tips.” He blushed. “I’m perfectly fine by myself by the way.”

His mother rolled her eyes at him before patting him on his shoulder and walking back into the restaurant. He sat back down on the stool at the entrance that had a podium next to it with menus staked on top.

The mall remained relatively bleak, until he saw a group of girls come in that linked arms with another while smiling and giggling to one another as they walked into one of the stores. Judging by the bags they had, they were came from school and he guessed college just because it was too early for high school kids and they looked around late teens to early twenties.

It wasn’t long before they came out with paper bags on their arms and then he noticed, they were coming his way. He got flustered and stood up quickly before they had made it over to him. He grabbed the menus beside him.

“Is it okay to get a table for three?” One of them asked.

It was the one that stood out to him most with the brightly colored soft coral hair. She was the tallest of the group of girls but still quite short in comparison to him. However, her baggy clothes made her appear much smaller.

“Uh, yeah.” He blushed. “Follow me.”

He lead them to a table before giving them their menus and running off to go get the water they asked for. Little did he know at that time, it’d become a weekly occurrence that that girl would show up with shopping bags and her friends to eat. He always remembered her order but never her friends… She always got the tteokbokki. If he was lucky, she’d come by sometimes without her friends and that’s really when he got to know her… He finally found out her name and that she was only two years younger than him and studying music at a college nearby. He felt his heart flutter a bit in his chest as he fell in love little by little.

She came by one Thursday afternoon and Donghyuck smiled once he had seen her. She had a bag on her arm and a cup in the other.

“Y/n!” He said, excited. “Same as always?”

“How can you remember my order but never my friends?” She questioned. “I’m just messing with you. But I’m getting kinda tired, do you have any suggestion.”

“Oh my god, my mom makes the best kimchi jjigae.” He hummed.

“I’m not the biggest fan of cabbage but for you… I’ll try it. To go please.”

There went that flutter in his chest again.

“Coming right up.” He nodded.

He ran off to the kitchen to give his mom the ticket before coming back out to talk to the girl. He stared down at the big brown bag that was on the floor.

“Every time I see you, you always have a big, brown shopping bag…” He laughed. “What do you even get?”

“Oh! It’s nothing.” The girl brushed it off.

“If it was nothing it wouldn’t be there.” He scoffed. “C’mon show me! Please! I’m so curious.”

“Ugh, this is so embarrassing…”

She bent over before rummaging through the bag before she revealed some albums in here hand.

“Is that Shinee?” The boy asked.

“Yeah,” She blushed before putting them back in the bag. “New Jeans, Red Velvet and WEi too.”

“No way!” He gasped. “I’ve loved Shinee since I was kid! I still have one of their albums my mom bought me as a kid.”

“You know them?”

“I’m literally Korean, Y/n…”

“I know but that doesn’t mean you like k-pop! And frankly, I thought you’d be weirded out by me liking it.”

“Do you hear what we play in here? Do you hear that? It sounds like Lion Heart by Girl’s Generation playing right now. Anyway, who’s your favorite?”

“For Shinee? Taemin but Red Velvet, I love Yeri and I love everyone for New Jeans and WEi.”

“Taemin’s my favorite too actually. I always wanted to be like him as a kid. Not to brag, but I auditioned for SM entertainment.”

The girl raised an eyebrow at him almost as an ‘oh, really?’

“I’m taking you didn’t get in?” She tilted her head.

The boy clutched his chest and acted wounded, “That hurt! You’re so mean! For your information, I did get accepted!”

“Why are you here?” She asked.

“I was thirteen, not stupid. I just thought about all I had to give up and I love music and attention and everything but I don’t think I deal with idol life. Being stalked and having such a strict beauty standard pushed on me. I was good.”

A middle aged woman came out of the kitchen with a bag full of food. She saw the two talking to each other and smiling. She saw the way her son looked at the girl and smiled herself before approaching slowly.

“Sorry to interrupt. I have kimchi jjigae for you.” She spoke slowly before backing away.

The girl grabbed the takeout bag off the podium.

“Thank you, Mrs. Lee.” She smiled. “It was nice talking to you, Haechan. See you later.”

The boy watched as the girl walked away, not even aware of the smile on his face. He moved his attention over to his mom who was also smiling.

“What?” His expression dropped.

“You like her…” She sang, happily.

“Mom…” He sighed.

“You like her, you like her. My little Donghyuckie has a crush.”

She continued to sing behind her son as he ran off into the back to escape her pestering.

The following week, he saw her again. He was sitting reading before he noticed her coming in his direction. She was holding a drink, looked like same from last week as she also took a bite out of a cookie in the other hand.

"Are you cheating on me?" He gasped as he acted offended as soon as the girl got closer.

"What? Just because I'm eating something different?" She snickered.

"What even is that?" He asked, curiously.

"Iced vanilla latte."

"I like them too, especially from the little shop from around the corner."

"That's where I got this actually... I love their cookies too."

She ended up promising the boy to come by a little later once she was done looking around. It was the only way he'd let go of his fake work. Really, it was just an excuse to be able to see her again as soon as possible. Her coming every week at least once was an excuse to see him but he didn't have to know that.

She came the next week, a cookie from the shop in her bag as well as iced vanilla latte for her friend in one hand another drink for herself in the other. She almost skipped along to find her way to Haechan. She smiled to herself as she saw the boy reading a book once again as he sat at the podium. She hid the drink for him behind her back before making her way over to him.

"Y/n, it's nice to see you again." He chuckled as he closed the book."

"Surpise!" She brought the drink out to hand to him. "To make up for cheating on you last week."

"Oh! Thank you!" He beamed. "What do you have this week?

"Butterfly pea tea with lemonade."

"Pea tea?"

"Don't be childish. It's good for your eyes and it taste good. And it's coool because it turns pink when mixed with lemonade?"

"And why would you need all that?"

"I'm blind basically."

"You never wear glasses though"

"I don't think I look good in them..."

"I doubt that. I think you'd look pretty cute in them."

He only realized what he said out loud after the fact. His expression fell before he turned his attention to the girl standing in front of him that had a blank look as she blushed.

"i'm sorry." He apologized, blushing himself.

"No, no! It's fine!" She reassured him. "I'll see you in a bit."

He waved goodbye at the girl as she rushed feeling the fact that maybe it was not fine. She didn't come back even though he waited all evening for her to come back. It left him broken hearted as he let his mouth get ahead of his brain once again which may of or may not have messed up everything going for him. He didn't sleep that night.

Donghyuck waited for her to come back daily but it wasn't until that following Tuesday he saw her once again. He saw her go into the album store with the friends she always came with. He felt adernline rush through his body before he asked his mom for his break.

He rushed pass the store th girl was in just to make it to the cafe around the corner and bought three packs of cookies. He started to work up the courage to go in the store to talk to the girl. He finally took a deep breath before walking calmy into the store. Her back was turned to him and so were her friends' It started getting warmer so she wasn't in her usual baggy attire. She had half of her tied up with a pink ribbon and wore a frilly dress that matched. He thought she looked so pretty, even if it was just from behind. He snapped out of it and apporached her before tapping her on the shoulder.

"Hyuck..." She mumbled once she turned around and saw the boy.

"Um, hi, you look really pretty." He blurted. "Sorry, that's not why I'm here... Can I talked you by the water fountian outside?"

"Thank you and um, yeah, sure."

He nodded, trying not to break a sweat in that moment. He had the cookies hidden behind his back the whole time. He took a step back and allowed her to go in front, following right behind. The both of them stood across from each other in front of the fountain. They looked at each other for a moment for the boy broke eye contact with her just to stare at his feet.

"Hey, I'm really sorry about last week again... And just now too." He admitted. "Anyway, the cafe was having a buy three get three free special so here are some of those cookies you like."

He handed them to her, "My break is over but I hope you like them. It was nice to see you again."

He walked away too quickly before she could say anything. The girl's friends came out of the store shortly after the encounter.

"What was that about?" One asked as she put her bags down beside her.

"I think he likes me..." She answered.

"I've been telling you that for weeks now."

"No, but a lot..."

It took a moment for her joy the register at that statement. He liked her... When does that ever happen. she got so excited that she started to gush to her friends about the boy. Then she realized she needed to talk to him again but of course, there was issue of his job...

She told her friends to just go home without her that evening. She waited around until they had to start closing for the night. She sat somewhere she could go unseen as he did his work. Once she saw him start putting up chairs she went toward the restaurant. His back was turned but he heard the footsteps.

"Sorry, we are closed for the night." He sighed as he put up more chairs.

"You say that word to much, you know?" She hummed.

He turned around, "Y/n? What are you doing here?"

"I waited. You didn't let me say 'thank you' and I guess I realized I have more than just that to say..."

The girl took a step closer to the boy which only allowed for a few inches of space. The boy look visibly nervous as the girl got closer.

"So thank you for the cookies," She started. "Also, I like you, Hyuck. I think you like me too, am I right?"

"I-I-" He stuttered.

"I think this game went on too long." She pouted. "Now, use your words please."

"Yes, I do... I do like you."

The music change to a slow song all of sudden. The girl looked up with a smile.

"I think that's a sign. Don't you?" She asked to which he nodded. "So, will you dance with me?"

She extended her hand out for him to take which he did but not without hesitation. He ended up taking the lead right after. One hand intertwined with her own as his other hand rested on her waist and her own on his arm. She rested her head on his chest, able to hear the rapidness of his heartbeat that she cheekily smiled at before his chin came to rest on top of her head. After the song was over, the two came to hold each other's hand as they stared at each other.

"Man, I've wanted to do this for weeks." He confessed as he cupped the girl's jaw gently.

He bent down to connect each other's lips to one another. Softly, they touched and it felt like forever in those few moment with another. It was like passion coming out of hiding and being expolisive and like all the emotion started to felt at it's fullness. She deepen the kiss as she wrapped her arms around her new lover's neck in an effort to bring him closer as well as deepen the kiss.

The two young adults were unaware of the mom that was upstairs messing with the radio once she accidentally walked in on their conversation and quietly exiting, unnoticed. She smiled at work through the cameras after playing cupid.

[copperbadge]

Radio Free Monday

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

A note before we begin -- I'm traveling at the end of the week, and will be traveling home on Monday morning, so RFM may be delayed next week. I'm hoping to get it done at the airport or while in transit, but it may be midday before I get home and settle in enough to post.

Ways to Give:

Eric, a game store owner, is helping his adult daughter Rachel to secure stable housing near her young daughter; Rachel lives with chronic pain and severe social anxiety and is looking at several challenges to getting back on her feet. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.

Buy Stuff, Help Out:

francescaswords is publishing her most recent novel, a YA contemporary fantasy titled ROTTING TREES, via Patreon; she's recently had some worsening health issues including chronic fatigue, and is trying to finish her degree while facing mounting costs of living. Becoming a Patreon member offers access to the novel as well as helps support her; you can read more and sign up to give here.

Recurring Needs:

Anon linked to a fundraiser for prototrans, a disabled artist who needs help with rent money; they are also offering commissions. You can read more, reblog, and find giving and commission information here.

Anon linked to a fundraiser for killiel, who needs help to cover bills and debt; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

chingaderita's partner recently lost their job due to a house fire that also destroyed the house; they're raising funds to keep food on the table, to try and get a supply of water to keep clean and do laundry, and for various bills until they can find new work. You can read more, reblog, and support the fundraiser here.

thelastpyler is raising funds to help with food, transportation, and replacement IDs after being robbed; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here, and have an Amazon wishlist they can share if messaged with the request.

Anon linked to karla-hoshi or Hoshi on TikTok, who is raising funds for cancer treatment for her cat Naku; they caught the cancer early and hope that he can survive it, but can't continue treatment without funding. You can read more and support the fundraiser here, as well as find links to her updates on tiktok.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.