Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Oh, darling!" A man raised his hand in greeting.

Blitz looked behind himself because surely the darling couldn't be him. He was seated at a high-top table across from Moxxie and Millie, third-wheeling their date. 

The guy was hot, way too fucking hot to be approaching him. But, nope, yup. The wisp of a man was making a beeline to him from the bar.

Blitz had noticed him earlier—of course he had noticed him. How was he gonna miss hips like that in slacks so tight they could've been painted on?

He was a blond fucking God, lean with eyes so dark he couldn't tell the pupils apart from the iris. 

And he was tall, Blitz's grade A weakness. The guy probably stood a whole head higher than him.

Blitz wanted to scale him like a goddamn tree.

“You’re my boyfriend now,” the man said seriously, sliding into the seat next to him. No hello. Nada.

“What?” he asked.

“My boyfriend. Now,” the God of twinks said, wrapping his arm around Blitz's and grabbing his hand in a death grip. 

Blitz was gonna ask some more questions; something between 'who the fuck did he think he was' and 'if he wanted to get married' when another man appeared beside their table with two drinks in hand.

“I told you,” Blitz’s new boyfriend said to the guy. “I was simply waiting for him to arrive.”

His new boyfriend turned to him. “You should’ve told me you'd arrived already! I looked so foolish at the bar without you and it seems I misled this young man.”

The 'young man' in question raised an eyebrow and looked to Blitz as if to see if he would deny it.

“Yeah,” Blitz said, going along for the ride. “Yeah, I ran into Millie and Moxxie and forgot to text you.”

He motioned to the couple across the table and they waved.

The young man narrowed his eyes and turned back to his new boyfriend, setting both drinks on the table. “I call bullshit. You’re in here every weekend and I've never once seen you with him.”

His boyfriend sucked his teeth. “You don't have any idea when we started dating, though I haven’t the faintest idea why it matters to you."

“It doesn't. You're clearly a whore,” the man said flatly, lifting his drinks again.

“Hey!” Blitz cut in, standing up on the footrest of the chair—or whatever the fuck that bottom part was called. “Pendejo! Don’t talk to him like that.”

The guy smirked and Blitz felt his new boyfriend try to pull him back down. 

“What’re you gonna do?” the asshole asked and then smirked. “You low-riding leprechaun.”

Okay, fuck that asshole. Blitz shoved his shirt sleeves up, ready to take this shitstain to the floor but his new boyfriend slid a hand around the side of his hip, brushing bare skin, and he got distracted. 

The asshole chuckled. “Thought so,” he said and he walked away.

Fucking…Blitz was half-tempted to follow him but then the boyfriend pressed a kiss to his temple. 

“Thank you, darling.”

Like a short circuit in his brain, Blitzø stuttered, “Y-Yeah, sure. No problema . Es …It’s all good. In…the hood,” he trailed off.

“ Qué lindo ,” Millie cooed quietly. 

Blitz tried to kick her under the table. 

His new boyfriend reached out his hand to Millie and Moxxie. “I’m Stolas. Thank you for your help.”

As M&M shook hands, silver bangles on Stolas wrist caught the light of the lamp above them. A charm of a star swung in an arch. His long fingers had a few rings on them of twisted silver in the shape of moons and planets.

Stolas brushed his hair behind his ear, exchanging pleasantries with M&M, and Blitz saw he had a golden earring of a shooting star dangling from it.

His eyes traveled to his now exposed jawline, well-defined, to the almost silky smooth skin of his throat. Did he even grow facial hair? 

When Stolas turned to him and waited patiently, Blitz just stared back, sipping from his drink. Stolas’s smile was warm and their knees touched under the table.

“This is our boss, Blitz,” Moxxie said eventually—because apparently Blitz had let his brain shut off. 

“Let me buy you all a round,” Stolas said. 

“We couldn't,” Moxxie protested and Blitz shot him a glare.

“It's no trouble," Stolas said, retrieving a black card from his wallet. “I will open a tab. Order whatever you'd like.”

A black card. Blitz had never seen one in person. This fucker was handsome and rich. 

After Stolas got up and walked over to the bar, Blitz leaned across the table, smacking it with his palm. 

“Listen up. You’re my wingmen.”

Moxxie wrinkled his nose. “But didn’t you swear of white men after—”

“Shuuuut the fuck up,” Blitz pressed his whole palm on Moxxie’s mouth, who slapped it away. “I need this,” he said. 

Millie bumped her husband’s shoulder. “Didn’t ya see him? Legs for days.”

“For days, Moxx! Dios mío, lo quiero follar all night, bitch,” Blitz said as he tipped back in his chair to get a better look.

Moxxie put his hands over his head. “Everyone can hear you,” he whispered harshly. 

Blitz waved him off. “ Quiero mojar my churro in his culo.”

“You’re going to do what to a churro?”

Rolling his eyes, Blitz said, “Fucking keep up.” 

Millie whispered to him. “Tap that ass.”

Blitz shushed them suddenly. “He’s coming. He’s coming.”

“ Eso es lo que ella dijo,” Millie said with a smirk.

Blitz high-fived her. 

Stolas’s eyes gleamed in the low light, two voids of darkness. He grinned knowingly. “That’s what who said?”

Blitz was gonna marry his ass. 

Chapter Text

Blitz was keeping the drinks to a minimum, nursing the topshelf tequila that Stolas had bought him because no fucking way was he getting whiskey dick tonight. He needed to perform, he needed to impress.

They still sat at the high top with M&M, having dived deep into a conversation about music which had turned early on from punk to punk rock to rock opera to opera to musicals. Stolas and Moxxie were now in a heated debate that Blitz did not care about because the God of Twink’s fingers were on the inside of his thigh and climbing from his knee to his crotch. 

Ay, el fuego

If Blitz crossed his legs, he could probably get him to touch his dick. From just those small moments, when Stolas had held his hand, he knew his palms were smooth and soft against his calloused ones. 

Well-manicured nails scratched the fabric of his jeans, just grazing his balls, and his dick twitched. Stolas’s hand stilled and Blitz feared he would remove it. But, dios mio, Stolas spread his hand instead, flexing it purposefully over the crotch of Blitzø’s pants, and palmed his growing bulge. 

Blitz snapped his head up, cupped Stolas’s face, and pulled him down for an open-mouth kiss that was a little sloppy and a lot rushed. Stolas didn’t seem to mind though, placing both his hands on Blitzø’s chair, pressing him against it, and kissing him back with the same hungry enthusiasm.

“Oh, ugh…okay.” He could hear the disdain in Moxxie’s voice. 

“I believe that’s our cue, Moxx. Al rato, B.”

Blitz barely registered them leaving because Stolas climbed in his lap, and Blitz’s hands traveled down the goddess arc of his back to that fucking ass. He slipped a hand into one of the back pockets and squeezed. 

They were a tangle of limbs and heated breath, Blitz knocking two of his beers clean off the table when he tried to hoist Stolas’s ass on it. Stolas kissed his jaw, dragged his teeth across the skin, and whispered, “I have a room upstairs.” 

Blitz threaded his hands in Stolas's dark hair, pulling him back with a little force. “The fuck are we waiting for then. Ándale, novio,” he said, almost a complaint and swatted his boyfriend’s ass.

Stolas stretched his long legs to the floor with ease and Blitzø resisted the urge to jump on his back.

At the bar, Stolas closed out his tab and was handed back that Black card. In the elevator, the camera in the corner got a free show of Stolas's head game and his head game was on point. 

Backed into the mirrored glass by a God on his knees.

The clink of his belt. 

A warm palm. 

Blitz's hands in his hair, guiding him deeper. 

The wet slide of his tongue. 

His flushed, pale face.

The numbers climbing on the elevator to the Penthouse. 

How he swallowed everything. 

Fuck, even the way Stolas wiped away the trail of spit away with the back of his hand.

Blitz nearly killed himself tripping out of the elevator, knees weak, pants sagging from the belt that remained undone. He was led through the suite by his wrist to the bedroom, where he dragged Stolas onto the bed on top of him, making out like fucking fifteen-year-olds, the grind of a hard-on against his stomach. Somewhere along the way kicked off his pants, leaving only black boxers on.

He ran his hands down to the hem of Stolas's shirt, lifting it, touching the smooth skin underneath. The feel of his spine under his fingertips, of his shoulder blades as they moved when Stolas held himself up and bit kisses into his neck. 

Blitz sucked in a breath when he felt teeth graze the particularly sensitive spot below his ear. 

“Oh?” Stolas hummed against his skin. “Right here then?”

The kiss was tender and languid, and he was going to have a fucking hickey. His legs fell slightly more open and he bit back a moan. 

Blitz needed.

With practiced skill, he undid the fly on Stolas’s slacks, reaching in, grasping the hardness he found there, stroking it firmly, reveling in the way Stolas pressed his hips forward into his hand. 

All of it. Todos. 

Blitz pulled his hand out, spitting onto his palm so he wouldn’t chafe him with his calluses. 

Stolas chuckled, removing his mouth from making a twin hickey on the other side of Blitz’s neck. “I do have lube.” 

“And?” Blitz smirked. “You really want to stop to get it now?” 

Pulling away more, out of Blitz’s reach, Stolas said, “Perhaps.”

He leaned back, adjusting so he straddled Blitz, and removed his shirt in a semi-strip tease. Stolas’s skin there was flawless, pinkened with a heated blush across his chest. 

With much less ceremony, Blitz sat up, steadying the taller man in his lap with one hand. He pulled off his own shirt, letting his hair fall against his back, hiding the worst of his scars but his skin was still a mismatch of white splotches against brown.

Like a cow.

Stolas reached out and grasped some of his dark hair, twisting it around his palm, looping it over his wrist. He tugged Blitz toward him gently. “Beautiful.”

The guy was estúpido.

Estúpido hermoso.

And Blitz was a whore for hot idiots. He tilted his face up, eyes stuck on the pink of Stolas’s lips and the way his tongue wet them just briefly. 

The hand not in his hair reached out and grazed his nipple. Blitz arched into it and Stolas returned to it, pressing harder, teasing, pinching. 

He closed his eyes and allowed himself a minute to relax into it before he flipped them, shoving Stolas down. 

“Popper?” Stolas offered. 

Ah, so the twink could surprise him. 

Not that he minded. He could top from the bottom.

Blitz shook his head, tugging at his pants. “Just heavy on the lube, princesa.” 

Stolas raised an eyebrow. “Princesa?” 

He lifted his hips, helping Blitz pull his pants off, revealing he was commando underneath. Perfect. 

And it had to be a set up. There was no way Stolas was that perfect. Maybe Mills had set this whole thing up. She knew his weaknesses with the way he overshared in their texts.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Stolas asked as Blitz stared at the perfectly hard dick that was definitely going to make him cum like a little bitch. 

“Huh?” He sucked in some air, licking his lips so he didn’t drool on himself because Stolas had to be some kind of God. 

Or maybe a very clever devil. 

A warm hand squeezed his ass and Blitz jolted as Stolas easily lifted him out of his boxers. 

“Strong bitch, ain’t ya?” Blitz said, distracting himself from the way his face flushed because he’s gonna get the wind knocked out of him and he’s embarrassingly eager about it. 

Stolas shrugged. “I do alright.” 

It wasn’t the sexiest thing to say, but it was the last real conversation Blitz attempted to make. 

Because there was heat and skin, and a body under him, and fingers teasing him open, stretching. 

A mouth that tasted of gin and pineapple juice, sucked on his bottom lip, groaned into him, swallowing his own stunted gasp as he sat himself on Stolas’s dick.

Hands on his hips, nails digging into his skin, trying to rock him, lift him, fuck him.

Oh, God, please, yes. 

Blitz pushed Stolas’s hands off his waist and moved, grinding down, punishing himself with the burn to hear the sounds of praise. 

Stolas moaned. “Like that, darling. Just like that.”

He loved that shit. Lived for it.  

“I’m gonna fuck you until you see stars,” Blitz said, rocking in that good way that sent shivers up his own spine. “I’m gonna…”

Stolas placed a hand on his stomach, spreading his long fingers. “I’m already seeing stars.”

That was so fucking cheesy. 

A roll of the hips. His name as a moan, as a plea. 

Grinding rougher, faster. Until he was grabbed by the arms and pulled down. Kisses on his mouth, his face, his throat as Stolas held him tight, bucking up into him.

“So good, darling. So good for me.”

The flush of praise. The pleasure of being used and held.

“More,” he asked. 

Stolas’s groan, the stutter of hips; cum pumped into him, hot and wet and dripping. His own pleasure tipping at that, the shudder spreading from outward, rising with his voice and a garbled mess of Spanglish until he tingled all over.

Under him, Stolas panted; his face a mess of red cheeks and drool, and lovely dark eyes that watched him with lazy satisfaction. He grabbed his hair again, pulling his face close.

A kiss, soft and unhurried. 

“Hey,” he said as they parted, voice rough. He cleared his throat, swallowing back the want inside him from the neat way their mouths fit together to the furious way his heart beat at Stolas’s smile. 

“Hey,” his fake boyfriend said back. 

It wasn’t until after the third round, so early in the morning that the sun had begun to rise, purpling the sky outside the large penthouse windows, that Blitz realized what was off.  Stolas laid stretch out on the bed, tracing circles on Blitz’s thigh, peppering kisses against his calf.

Sitting up against the pillows, Blitz played with Stolas’s other hand, threading his shorter fingers through Stolas’s long ones, flexing against his, biting him lightly at each knuckle when Stolas’s kisses got too sharp. 

When he saw a band of somehow even lighter skin on Stolas’s ring finger, where a ring had clearly been.

So he was married. 

Of course, he was married. 

Things were never that easy for Blitz. Nothing good was ever actually good. But, he’d fucked married men before, sometimes on purpose. Like those one night stands that needed a reason to leave, that were testing the waters to see if they wanted to split from their spouse or if they were gay or if they wanted to split from their spouse because they were gay. 

He wasn’t a piece of shit that way. He was doing a service.

But, he never got tangled up with them. Never more than one time. 

“Something the matter, darling?” Stolas hummed against his calf. 

Blitz pulled his leg back with a strangled laugh at how it tickled. “Nothing,” he said after a moment. “Just tired.”

Stolas crawled up the bed. “Then let us sleep.” He shifted until he was under the covers before pulling Blitz on top of him, cuddling.

“Hey, pinche princesa,” he complained, squirming. 

“Not a princess,” Stolas answered with his eyes closed, continuing to hold him.

Blitz slapped his hands against Stolas’s chest. “Yeah, well, I don’t cuddle.”

Stolas opened his eyes. “Would you rather sleep in all the wet spots?”

Maybe. 

“Fuck you,” Blitz said, but stopped moving and settled in.

Stolas closed his eyes again. “Yes, you did.”

When he was sure Stolas had fallen asleep, Blitz untangled himself from the blankets and Stolas’s arms. He slipped off the bed like a shadow in the morning light and pulled on his boxers. 

He found his shirt easy enough but his jeans were another matter. He found Stolas’s slacks first and paused. 

Cheaters with spouses that cared never left their rings at home. People that were poly or ethically non-monogamous did or sometimes just left the ring on their finger altogether.

Fishing through the front pockets of Stolas’s slacks, Blitz pulled out the little golden ring. Yup.

Stolas hadn’t taken a receipt from the bar either, knowing better than to leave a paper trail. Blitz pulled out the thin black wallet from a back pocket and flipped it open. 

Stolas Goetia

Well, at least Stolas’s name matched the one on his driver’s license. 

There were only two other cards in his wallet, a library card and the Black Card. So probably not his main wallet. 

The Black Card was heavy, almost like it was made of metal. The name on the card wasn’t Stolas’s but a business. 

Goetia Industries

Made sense. His spouse probably couldn’t check the company account. 

Blitz studied the card for a moment longer and then flipped back to the license. Goetia.

The twink looked a little young to be the owner of Fortune 500 or whatever. So maybe it was Daddy’s money? Or some well-off uncle. 

He opened the section for the bills, finding a few $20s and a picture of an irritated teenage girl, standing next to Stolas. The goth-in-training was his spitting image from the arch in her nose to the shade of her hair. The only thing different were her eyes, which gleamed a powerful blue.

Freaky.

Blitz took five of the 20s and set the photo back. 

Something for his trouble. 

He went into the outer room, finding his jeans, and finished getting dressed. As he tucked the bills into his own wallet, he looked back through the open bedroom door. 

Stolas still slept, butt ass naked, looking fucking golden in the sunrise. 

So Blitz went back into the room and stole the Black Card too. 

Chapter Text

“Excuse me. I’m looking for Blitz.”

Shitfuck!

There was a voice he hadn’t heard in weeks. The bell at the front door had jingles and Blitz was waiting to hear Loona greet the new client. Instead, it was…

“Stolas!” Millie’s voice boomed from reception. “What a nice surprise!”

It wasn’t tho. He was about to get his ass handed to him. Blitz hopped out of his chair and hurried to the door to his office, attempting to lock it before—

Moxxie opened the door. 

Fucking Moxxie. 

“Sir, there—”

“Shh!” He shoved his hand over Moxxie’s mouth and attempted to drag him into his office. 

“But, Stolas—” 

Blitz manhandled Moxxie inside without shutting the door. “Cierra la puta boca,” he whispered harshly. 

Moxxie stared at him solidly for several long seconds. Then, he whispered back, “What the fuck did you do?”

“There you are!” Stolas exclaimed, shoving the door open. 

Mierda!

“Heyyyy, Stolas,” Blitz said, attempting to lean against his desk casually. He faltered, his elbow sliding off, but caught himself. 

Stolas still looked fucking beautiful—stunning dark eyes and a smile wide and bright, and it looked real at least. Dressed in a blazer so nice even Blitz knew it was expensive, the twink took a seat in the chair usually reserved for clients. 

“How are you, darling?” he practically cooed.

Blitz nodded, shooting Moxxie a ‘fuck off’ look. “Fine,” he answered, watching as Moxxie did not fuck off but continued to stand by the door. 

Whatever.

Putting some distance between himself and Stolas, Blitz walked back around his desk and took a seat. “What can I help you with?”

Stolas’s smile grew and he leaned forward, placing his elbows on the wooden surface of his desk, folding his hands. He rested his chin in his hands and tilted his head innocently. “Oh, I believe you know why.”

Blitz swallowed and shook his head. “You…uh…need us to track someone down? Got a bounty?”

The smile turned into a smirk. Slowly, Stolas leaned back, opening his jacket a bit. He pulled a stack of papers out of an interior breast pocket as if he did actually have a bounty to put on someone. 

He unfolded the papers carefully and began to read, “Uber $46.70. Amazon $24.99. Amazon $4.99—”

“I don’t know what that is,” Blitz said. 

“Royal Farms $76.82,” Stolas said and raised his eyebrows. “DoorDash $143.23.”

“Oof. Sounds expensive. Hope the guy got a good tip.” Blitz shrugged and took a random paper from the top of his inbox, pretending to look it over. 
 
“Amazon $16.74. Starbucks $36.65. BGE $2,439.55.”

Blitz paused, glancing at the man across the table. Perhaps he hadn’t thought that through the whole way. “What? Someone steal your account info? Want us to track them down?” he asked. 

Stolas set the paper on the desk and pushed it over to him. Then, he started to read the second paper with the BGE account number. 

Behind Stolas, Moxxie’s mouth fell open. “You didn’t,” he mumbled, disbelieving. 

“Fuck. Listen—”

Still looking like it was all a fucking game, Stolas read out the address of IMP and the following purchase—$1800 in rent—for the same address.

Then he went back to the next purchases Blitz had made from Amazon and a Disney plus subscription and then all the steaming apps. 

“Pornhub $143.88,” Stolas said as he set down the second sheet of paper.

Moxxie groaned. “No.”

“Cállate!” Blitz shouted at Moxxie before turning to Stolas. “Mira. I can explain.”

Stolas paused, waiting, watching him. 

But he didn’t have a fucking answer. He’d taken the card and meant to only use it to get home and maybe buy a couple of things, figuring it would get frozen soon. 

Except it didn’t. 

And the business was really behind on a few bills so he tried it on the most pressing one—the electric—and it went through. Then, he just kept going on the office rent, on stuff for Loona, on groceries, on his own rent…

His brow furrowed, knowing he was caught, and the panic scrambled inside him, doing what it did best. His lip curled, a flash of teeth and bravado, and sharp edges. “Sounds like you need to keep better track of your things,” he said.

It was Moxxie that tackled him, toppling his chair. “You bitch!” Moxxie shouted at him. “We can’t pay that back.”

Blitz caught a glimpse of Stolas jumping out of the way as he hit the floor hard on his back, feeling a muscle pull. Fuck. He hated being 30. 

Moxxie kept shouting at him, slapping the shit out of him like a little bitch. Blitz slapped back, managing to at least get out from under the other man except his sloppy half-bun had come loose and Moxx got him by the hair, yanking it like he was in a cat fight. 

“Boys!” Millie bellowed at the door.

Her footsteps were heavy as she came over and forcefully separated them. “Como perros y gatos. Los voy a amarrar si siguen peleando!”

Blitz tried to joke as he unwound the tie from the tangles in his hair. “Verdad? Sounds bueno to me.”

She looked at him sharply. “Keep it up. Vas a ver,” she said but she dragged Moxxie out the door by his ear and slammed it shut. 

Standing in the corner, Stolas brushed his hands over his pants, ridding himself of invisible wrinkles or—more likely—the filth of the underclass. “W-Well…”

Blitz rubbed at a scratch on his face from Moxxie’s fingernails, and finished tying his hair back up. He righted his chair, keeping his eyes on his desk. “It’ll take a while to pay you back, but I’ll do it.”

Stolas didn’t say anything, but he did sit back down across from him, and he hadn’t called the cops which was a good sign. 

Pulling up the banking app on his phone, Blitz leaned his elbows on his desk and looked at the money in it. 

$25.09.

Fuck. 

He could write a check. But it would bounce and probably fuck him over more. Flicking his eyes up, he saw Stolas’s full attention was on him. 

Trying not to grimace, he opened up Zelle on his phone. “If you give me your number, I can send you $20 today.”

“I’m not—” Stolas held up his hands, the papers crumpled in his hands. “I do not need your money.”

That was obvious. Blitz was pretty sure that was an Armani suit and he only knew that because Moxxie had a hardon for those sorts of things. 

Stolas set the rest of the papers aside. “I am not here to distress you. I’ve already replaced the card after all.”

Blitz clicked the screen off on his phone and set it face down. “Then what?”

For the first time since arriving, Stolas seemed unsure of himself. The first few buttons of his navy shirt were undone, showing a swath of pale skin that was slowly turning pink. “I thought…I supposed we had a nice evening and I enjoyed spending time with you…”

Stolas picked at the nailbeds of his well-manicured fingers as the blush traveled up his chest to his neck. "Perhaps it was a silly thing of me but I thought you might've taken my card in an attempt to see me again."

Was he fucking serious?

Blitz had robbed him and never planned to see him again.

Stolas, with his dark, pupiless eyes, must've seen how confused he looked because he got to his feet suddenly. 

“I'm sorry,” he said quickly, voice pitching up. “I've interrupted your business with my…I—”

He seemed to think better of whatever else he planned to say and yanked the door open, striding out.

In the reception area, Stolas's voice carried, “It was nice to see you again, Millie, Moxxie.”

“Leaving so soon?” Millie asked.

Que paso?

“Unfortunately,” Stolas answered and the front door clicked shut. 

After a moment, Moxxie pushed the door open to his office, examining it like he was looking for traps, or whatever Blitz had given him in lieu of the money.

The fuck had he meant? Stealing something to see him again? Who did that?

 “What's the damage?” he asked when he found nothing. 

Blitz just stared at him. “Nada,” he said after a while. He pulled out some painkillers for his back and knocked them back dry.

This wasn’t a fucking romcom.

Moxie raised an eyebrow. “Okay, no offense but no way. That’s thousands of dollars.”

As he dug back into his desk drawer, Blitz shrugged. He pulled out the Black Card and Moxxie’s eyes bulged.

“You didn’t give it back?!” he asked, nearly a shriek. 

And suddenly, Blitz felt defensive as fuck because it wasn’t his fault he was in this situation.

Okay, it was mostly his fault but Stolas approached him first and the ass was married and he didn’t even give Blitz a chance to give it back before he just left.

“He didn’t ask for it!”

Moxxie groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sir,” he said derisively. “You need to mail it to him or something. We cannot have it in the office.”

Irritation stirred in his chest, a fire that pushed around thoughts. Because he was an asshole, but he wasn’t the asshole first. But now he looked like an ass. 

Which wasn’t fair. 

“You know what?” he said, standing up. “Get your coat.”

Moxxie took a step back. “No. No. Whatever you’re planning, Blitz, no.”

Blitz grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair and slipped his arms through. “Fine. I’ll take Millie.”

“Vamos!” she shouted from the other room, sounding way too close to his office. 

“Stop eavesdropping,” Blitz said, pushing the door open and seeing her standing by the wall. 

She just grinned. 

The problem with Mills was she had the wrong idea. On the drive, she wouldn’t shut up with questions about how their night had gone, what Stolas was there for, what they talked about, blah blah blah. 

Until she started to get text messages. 

It didn’t take a genius to figure out who they were from.

“B!” She slapped his arm. “How could you?” 

“Ow, Mills. Ah!” 

She pinched him hard. 

“Estúpido! What were you thinking?”

Blitz pumped the brakes the next time she jabbed at him, and she jerked forward from the safety of the seatbelt. 

“Hey!”

“Alto~” he whined back at her. “That’s what you get.” 

Millie side-eyed him but didn’t say more about it. 

They rode in silence downtown until Blitz remembered he didn’t know where the fuck he was going. 

He started to type on the GPS for Goetia. It would probably come up. He swerved a bit, swearing when someone leaned on their horn, and Millie shoved his hand away.

“What’s the address?”

Blitz kept his eyes on the road, circling a few city blocks. “He works at the Goetia place.”

“Which one?” she asked.

He blinked, glancing at her to see if she was fucking with him.

Nope. Just waiting with her hand, hovering over the Goetia listings. Okay. Se joda. What did he know? His last name was Goetia and he had a company card so a high roller. 

Penthouse hotel room. Expensive suit. Swiss watch. 

Probably upper management at least. 

“Do they have, like, a corporate office? Headquarters?” he asked.

Millie searched it up on her own phone and then selected one of the locations. Right in the heart of fucking downtown. It was either use the parking garage or try to find street parking in the middle of the day and then walk several blocks. 

You know what? He was gonna make Stolas validate his parking. 

He pulled into the garage and took a ticket. As they rode the elevator down to the lobby, Millie smoothed out the shoulders of his jacket, the cleanest piece of clothing he had on. His combat boots had seen better days and the form-fitting black pants were definitely shit—probably ones he’d worn four times this week. 

As they stepped into the air-conditioned entrance, Blitz didn’t stop to look at the koi pond or the  stuffy suit-wearing assholes that turned up their noses at the two brown working-class assholes scuffing up their floors. He walked right up to the blonde receptionist, who did not look up from the ipad she was tapping on. 

Millie folded her arms on the raised desk. “Excuse me. We’re here to see Stolas.”

To his left and right, Blitz caught two security guards posted by the few turnstiles that led to the elevators. The guards were already talking on their own headsets, watching the interaction. 

The receptionist's judgment of them was quick and severe, just a casual appraisal of them from the shoulders up. She smiled, professionally disingenuous. “You need an appointment,” she said. 

Millie nodded. “Does he have anything open for today?”

Blitz could almost see the lady hold back a laugh. 

“No,” she said in a clipped tone. “I’m afraid the next one is six months out.”

Blitz pulled the heavy card from his pocket and tapped it against the marble top obnoxiously, causing several heads to turn. “Tell him his boyfriend is here.”

The receptionist’s eyes grew fractionally bigger, but only by a fraction. She pushed a button on her headset and murmured into it. “Sir. Pardon the interruption. A man is here and he has—Yes. Yes.”

She looked back up at him as if trying to decide something. With one hand, she covered her microphone. “What’s your name?” she whispered. 

“Blitz.”

Uncovering her microphone, she said, “Yes. He said…I’m so sorry about this…He said he’s your boyfriend?”

There was an audible squawking sound, loud enough that Blitz could hear it. The receptionist held up one finger. “Sir?” she asked quietly as if Blitz couldn’t hear her two feet away.

Stolas must’ve said something to her. She pinched her lips together tight and nodded. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

To them, the receptionist motioned to some fancy chairs that looked like they were more for decoration than actual use. “Please take a seat. He will be with you shortly.”

“Novio?” Millie said as they got settled. 

Blitz rolled his eyes. “It’s a joke.”

In less time than Blitz thought, Stolas arrived, nearly slamming open the stairwell’s door, red in the face. He’d left his blazer behind and his shirt had come untucked. The man straightened immediately, brushing down the wrinkles in his shirt, haphazardly tucking it in. 

He nodded at the few businessmen staring at him before making a beeline toward Blitz and Millie. Half-out-of-breath, Stolas said, “Would you two come with me a moment?”

As they walked with Stolas past reception, opening a small door to bypass the turnstile, Blitz flipped off the both guards behind his back. They took the elevator to the top floor—mierda—and Stolas escorted them to an office engraved—engraved!—with Stolas’s name, past what had to be his own personal receptionist or something. 

When Millie saw it, she elbowed him in the gut.

Blitz attempted to trip her and failed. 

After the door closed, Stolas asked them to sit and took a seat on the couches in his office, not behind the large oak desk.

“I beseech you not to make jokes like that,” Stolas said as Blitz and Millie settled opposite of him. 

Blitz sucked his teeth and tossed the Black Card at him. “‘Cause of your wife?”

Beside him, Millie audibly gasped. Good. See? He wasn’t the asshole. 

“And he’s got a kid,” Blitz added.

Stolas frowned, his brow wrinkling deeply. He opened his mouth a few times before he settled back against the couch. He crossed his long legs and looked out one of the large windows at the city skyline, the same skyline they’d looked at that evening. 

“So…” Stolas bounced his ankle up and down. He gazed back down at the Black Card, turning it over. “Was it spite then? I wasn’t wrong? You did have a good evening?”

Hold the fuck on. He did not come here to talk about his feelings. Blitz slunk down and crossed his arms. “You shoulda told me that shit up front.”

Stolas nodded. “I apologize.”

“Kay,” Blitz said, getting up. “So you got your card back.”

Millie got up too and they walked toward the door. Stolas followed, his long legs easy by passing them. 

“Pardon me, Millie,” Stolas said as he placed his hand on the doorknob to open it for them. “Would you give us a moment?”

“Um…” She turned to Blitz with big eyes. 

“No, Mills.” He grabbed her wrist to keep her there even as Stolas opened the door. 

She worried her bottom lip. “Pero que si—”

“El sabe español,” he reminded her, stepping out of Stolas’s office.

She paused, pulling back. They were so used to speaking Spanish when they needed. “Pero,” she started again. 

Blitz groaned but let her go on. 

“Si no está casado?”

Stolas hummed. “Estoy casado,” he answered in very stunted Spanish. 

Blitz made a ‘see’ gesture at her. 

“Pero,” Stolas continued, “No soy un hombre casado if that makes sense.”

It didn’t, but it was also hot as fuck that Stolas knew he was supposed to use the different verbs. Millie widened her eyes at Blitz purposefully and he knew she wasn’t going to leave it alone.

“Fine,” he said. 

“Thank you,” Stolas answered with a smile and then addressed his personal assistant. “Maria, would you keep Millie company for me?”

Maria, the only Latinx person he had seen in the building, nodded eagerly. “Ven acá,” she said, standing to pull over another chair. 

That explained where he might’ve learned it. 

After Blitz had resettled back onto the couch, Stolas sat on the couch again and began speaking immediately. “I apologize again for not telling you right away. Stella and I…Well, we don’t have a formal arrangement in the sense that we have spoken of it.”

“Uh huh.” That was a great start.

Stolas rubbed the back of his neck. “She—not that this is about her—But she is the one who began the affairs. We don’t satisfy each other.”

Blitz pointed at him in an up and down motion. “You’re gay as shit.”

With a chuckle, Stolas said, “I am, yes.” He paused and clasped his hands together. “I haven’t…I don’t usually pursue anyone per se. I am more discreet than she is in my…”

When he continued to fumble for a word, Blitz supplied, “Conquests.”

“No,” Stolas said immediately, shaking his head. “No, that isn’t a word I would use. ‘Evening companion’ is perhaps better and not quite what I meant. While I believe she suspects it, I have not explicitly told her of my proclivities.”

“English,” Blitz demanded, already feeling frustrated with this whole thing. “Or Spanish.”

Stolas puffed out his cheeks. “I am still ‘in the closet’ I suppose.”

Blitz’s whole brain screeched to a halt. “So let me get this straight. You’re cheating on your wife—”

“I wouldn’t call it cheating.”

Blitz ignored him. “And she’s cheating too, and she doesn’t even know you’re cheating—”

“Not cheating.”

“Because you’re gay.”

“I haven’t explicitly told her,” Stolas attempted to clarify. “In all likelihood, she already knows.”

“I can guarantee you that’s not true.” Blitz rubbed his face with both hands. “Look, I’m gonna be honest. That doesn’t make this shit a whole lot better.”

He heard a sigh and looked up. Stolas had leaned his arm upon the armrest and propped his chin on his hand. He was looking out the large windows again. 

Blitz pulled his legs up onto the couch, sitting criss-cross. Might as well get comfortable since it seemed like this was about to take a minute. “So were you just letting me know…or you got some other reason for telling me about your ‘not cheating’?”

At first, Stolas didn’t say anything, just kept looking out the window. Then, he said softly, “Perhaps it is selfish.”

“You think?”

Stolas chewed the inside of his cheek and dragged his eyes back to Blitz. “I wanted to know if I could see you again. Spend more time with you. And if that is something you would like as well.”

Blitz narrowed his eyes. “Like fuck buddies?” Maybe he could do that if Stolas actually talked to his wife about an open relationship. 

Except the way Stolas turned pink made it pretty fucking obvious that wasn’t what he meant. 

“Wait…You want me to be your mistress?”

Stolas opened his mouth and stuttered over a single syllable before he coughed and tried again. “I-I would like to date you. Yes. If that’s what you would like too. We had such a nice time and you’re so alluring and…”

Blitz’s brain sort of unplugged because no fucking way. Stolas was hot and tall and rich, and wanted something to do with him? Someone as fucked up as he was? 

“And I thought maybe if you felt the same, we could try—we had such a connection. I’ve never felt so alive.” Stolas was fucking rambling. “I had to ask at the very least. I couldn’t stop thinking—not when you made me feel the way I did and I thought—I hoped it was mutual. Oh, please say something before I make a complete fool of myself.”

Blitz closed his mouth and fell back on his go-to because he wasn’t getting wrapped up in shit that was gonna be more than sticking his dick in something, no matter how much he kinda wanted to. 

“You’re married,” he said. 

Stolas lifted a finger. “Technically, though I asked for a divorce recently. She didn’t take the news well, but…Well that isn’t really your problem.”

Blitz scrutinized his expression, the openness of Stolas’s posture, the slight pink on his cheeks. He ground his teeth and something clenched in his gut. “I don’t…I’ve been with guys in the closet and I’m not looking to do that shit again,” he answered. 

With a prompt nod, Stolas stood up and walked to the door like that was it. How fucking easy? He was just gonna drop it like that? So much for trying—

Stolas opened the door. “Maria.”

“Yes?” her voice floated into the large office. 

“Would you draft an email to the company and BCC my wife that I am sorry to have hidden it for so long, but I hope they would understand that, while it is none of their business, I am a gay man and I will be going forward as such.”

Besides an initial squeak from Millie, there was silence. Loud fucking silence. 

“Um,” Maria’s voice said after a few seconds. “Congrats. I…will get right on that.”

Stolas thanked her and closed the door, coming back over and settling himself on the couch again. “Give me a moment please, darling,” Stolas said to him. “I need to make a phone call.”

He pulled out his phone—the latest iPhone—and dialed. Blitz could hear the ring. 

“Hello, Starfire. I’m sorry to call you at school. Yes, no, everything is fine. I wanted to let you know that I’m coming out today.” 

There was a pause as Stolas listened to something she said. 

“As gay, Via.”

Even Blitz could hear the laughter from the phone. Stolas’s smile was small but warm.

“Thank you. I’ll see you at home…I love you too.”

When Stolas hung up and set the phone down, he watched Blitz expectantly. 

Like put a guy on the spot, why don’t ya. Shit. “You just…exploded your life,” Blitz said.

Stolas shrugged and waved a hand as if the whole thing was no big deal, but there was a tremor in his hands and his voice shook slightly when he spoke. “It was bound to come out sooner or later. Rather I get ahead of it. Now.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “May I take you out?”

Chapter Text

Blitz exchanged numbers with Stolas because he couldn't not do that after Stolas had taken a torpedo to everything he had known for a date.

While they were doing that, a little notification rang from Stolas's computer followed by another and another and then dozens. 

Stolas got up and muted his computer. When he went to sit back down on the couch, Blitz stopped him and said, “You don’t wanna…uh…take care of that?”

As if it had genuinely never occurred to him, Stolas blinked. “I suppose I should, shouldn’t I? Do you mind if we finish this chat later?”

Blitz stood up with a shrug. “Yeah, it’s whatever.” 

It was way more than whatever. 

Stolas walked with him the few steps to the door. “Thank you for coming by and hearing me out today.” 

Blitz bit back his initial thought of “thanks for not pressing charges” and just went with “Uh huh.” 

Because Stolas’s cheeks were pink as he his hand rested on the doorknob but didn’t turn it. The taller man cleared his throat.

 “W-Well, I suppose I will see you soon,” Stolas said.

From the way Stolas continued to blush and how his eyes weren’t on Blitz but on his mouth, it was incredibly clear what he wanted. 

Blitz hooked a hand behind Stolas’s neck and pulled him down. It took half a second for Stolas to respond, not even enough time for Blitz to second-guess himself, before Stolas had pulled him close, almost lifting him off the floor to kiss him back. 

They were halfway into making out by the door—Blitz’s jacket thrown on the floor, Stolas’s shirt untucked—when someone knocked.

“Sir,” Maria said from the other side. “Stella just entered the building.”

“Fuck,” Stolas swore softly. He pulled away from Blitz, but slid his fingers down his arm until he grasped Blitz’s hand. 

Stolas was doing some soft ass bullshit. 

His hand was lifted and he felt Stolas press his lips to his palm, and he felt it because he didn’t see it because he was focused on his boots and how he wished he could stomp on the butterflies in his stomach.

“You should go,” Stolas murmured. 

“Yup,” Blitz responded, moving to grab his jacket. “I’ll see ya.”

This time, Stolas actually opened the door and Blitz tucked his jacket under his arm. He ignored the little squeal Millie gave him and just started walking to the elevators. Just as he got there, the elevator arrived and the doors opened to a very, very white woman with platinum blond hair. She stormed out, almost running into him, and shouted at the top of her lugs, “Stolas!”

Dressed head to toe in pink, the bitch was flanked by two equally shitty looking assholes, who each carried at least three expensive looking shopping bags from Prada and Gucci. 

As Blitz and Millie stepped in the elevator, he turned and shouted at her, “Hey, bitch!”

She stopped and whipped around, glaring at him. 

Before she could say anything, Blitz continued, “I fucked your husband!”

Millie held down the ‘door closed’ button and Blitz got to see her face turn completely red before they were out of sight. He certainly heard her echo though down the elevator shaft though as she screeched, “Who the fuck was that, Stolas?!”

Whoops. 

He and Millie rode down the elevator in companionable silence, and he put his jacket back on.  They ignored the whispers and scrutinizing looks as they walked through reception. It wasn’t until they were back in the van that Millie asked, “So?”

Her eyes were fucking huge. 

Blitz turned the key in the ignition. “He’s getting divorced.”

Millie squealed, stomping her combat boots on the floorboards so hard he thought she might stomp right through the metal. When she stopped, she grabbed him by the arm and shook him. “And? And?”

He smirked but kept his eyes on the road, “And I agreed to a date.”

That squeal was louder somehow. 

They decided to have lunch on Friday because IMP had to go several states over for the weekend to find some asshat that murdered his ex “in self defense” and then skipped bail. 

So Blitz parked in the same parking garage in slightly nicer clothes because Stolas didn't know exactly where they were going, but he doubted it was gonna be a Chili’s or something. Grabbing his leather jacket off the seat, he went in and remembered to actually get parking validated by reception this time.

The same woman was there, iPad in front of her, but this time she sat straighter when he came in, a smile slapped across her face. “Oh, Blitz! Mr. Goetia said you would be arriving. Can I get you anything?”

Blitz leaned against the desk and handed her his parking ticket. “Validation.”

“Of course!” she said cheerfully and stuck the little piece of paper in a machine. “So…” she said as it printed out a fresh ticket. “Where did you guys meet?” 

Blitz snorted at her transparent attempt to fish for information. He pointed to the little ticket that had popped out. “This’ll get me out of the garage?” 

“Yes!” She plucked the ticket out and handed it over to him, unperturbed by his response. Then she motioned to the elevators. “I’ll buzz you through if you want to head up.”

Tucking the ticket in his jeans pocket, he headed through and took an elevator up. Maria greeted him with a kinder smile. “It’s good to see you again,” she said. 

“He vuelto,” he responded, lifting his hand. 

She blinked, paused, and the smile grew wider. “Bienvenidos!”

Blitz grinned in return. “Don’t get too excited. I’m not as good as Millie. Mostly swear words.”

Maria nodded, her smile not the least bit faded, and rose from her desk to knock once on Stolas’s door. 

“Come in,” Stolas’s voice came from behind the closed door. 

Opening the door slightly at first so that Blitz couldn’t see, Maria popped her head around. “Blitz is here,” she said. 

“Okay!” Stolas’s voice shot a little higher and tighter. “Okay, yes. He’s…early? He can—No, wait. Send him in. Please.”

Over Maria’s shoulder, Blitz pushed the door the rest of the way open. “Hey,” he said. “You ready?”

Stolas slammed a closet door shut, whipping around. “Oh!” He was pink in the face. “Uh…just give me a moment,” he said and went over to his desk, bending down.

Blitz closed the door and strolled into the large room, his hands in his pockets and his jacket still tucked under his arm. “Whatcha doing?”

Gold buttons were left undone on Stolas’s gray-blue shirt as he typed something on his computer. His dark eyes flicked up to Blitz and back down. “I…A few last minute things. I hadn’t expected you yet.”

Shrugging, Blitz walked over to the closet and opened it, ignoring the quiet whine from Stolas. A pile of clothing had been tossed haphazardly into the bottom and empty hangers hung from an upper rod. 

He did not stop the amused grin that spread across his face. “Playing dress up?” he asked, turning to Stolas, who had gone beet red. 

He fidgeted with his hands clasped in front of him. “Perhaps.”

Blitz let him squirm, raking his eyes over the black v-neck undershirt down to the high waisted tight slacks. Were those the same as the night they met?

Dragging his eyes back up to the skin he could see, he glanced over the slender neck to Stolas’s lips and noticed a scratch over in the corner of his bottom lip from where it had been split. It was more noticeable with the way Stolas’s mouth was twisted with discomfort at being studied. 

“Ha! Didn’t take you for one to get in a fistfight,” he asked, motioning to the scrape.

Stolas touched his lower lip where a scab had formed. “Ah, no,” he responded with hesitation. “Just a…” He paused and seemed to reconsider his words. “I suppose it was a skirmish.”

Blitz raised his eyebrows. “You win at least?” he asked.

Doing up the buttons on his shirt, Stolas said, “I like to think so.”

Together, they headed out the door and down through the lobby, ignoring the covert stares. As soon as they reached the garage, Blitz came to a full stop. He had not cleaned out the van. At all. 

Old coffee cups and energy drinks littered the floor of the front seats, plus a few take out bags from the last stake out earlier in the week. Fuck, he had all kinds of trash down there. Maybe even a condom or two. Moxxie usually cleaned it out the day before they went out-of-state except now Blitz had the van. 

And Moxxie had been talking to him about something he should do with the van last night, but Blitz was more focused on getting home to rinse this asshole’s blood off him. That bounty had been a real piece of work; junkie that probably had Hep C hiding in the sewer whose rich mom wanted IMP to drag him home so she could force him into rehab. He’d scratched Blitz to shit and given him a bloody nose so the favor had been returned, and he knew from experience getting the blood out from under his nails got harder to do by the hour. 

So, no, he wasn’t listening when Moxxie probably told him to clean the van. 

“Pendejo,” he muttered.  

Stolas also stopped. “Excuse—”

“Not you,” Blitz said quickly. “Fuck, not—Just the van. It’s not…clean.”

Stolas’s mouth turned up from the frown. “Oh, well, I doubt it’s that bad.”

Blitz shook his head. “No. It is. It’s a shithole. I’ll call us a Lyft or something.”

Pulling out his phone, Blitz started to open the app when Stolas pushed his hand down gently. In his other hand, he held a little black thing that looked a lot like a bullet vibrator. He clicked it a few times and, directly next to them, a black Tesla Model X beeped a silly little beep. 

“Are you fucking serious?” he asked as they approached and the doors automatically opened for them. “You were gonna ride in my piece of shit van when you have this?”

Stolas slid into the driver’s seat and his door closed. “I am sure it’s not a piece of shit.”

No. It was. “Bitch, this is a fucking space ship,” he said, looking at the large computer monitor thing where the radio was supposed to be and a steering wheel that had a shit ton of buttons and was pretty much a video game controller. 

Blitz even had some buttons so he started just pushing them while Stolas said the car had been a gift from blah blah blah and he had wanted something less flashy, but ended up with this instead. But Blitz found the butt warmer and he didn’t care if it was the middle of summer; he liked his ass warmed. 

They drove and Blitz watched how the car automatically slowed as Stolas approached a stoplight with several cars ahead of him, how the side mirrors blinked when a car was in his blindspot, how his butt was warm but his face had a nice breeze from the AC. 

Stolas handed over his phone with the explanation of “If you’d like to play some music.” As if that were just a thing that people did. Like…Blitz could change all his phone numbers to fake names or text his wife or read his messages. 

That shit never would’ve happened in the van, mostly because the van still had a CD player with one very shitty CD jammed into it; Moxxie’s soundtrack to the original Broadway version of Cats. When he’d given up trying to pry the thing out himself with a screwdriver, he’d taken it to his car guy who said the whole player would need to be replaced for a couple hundred dollars. 

Yeah, no. 

The worst part was the CD still worked. 

Blitz scrolled through Stolas’s phone, realizing that he had bought all the music—full fucking albums—on there, none downloaded it illegally. As it turned out, Stolas was a sap. He had a ton of love songs on there, which Blitz was not gonna play. 

Just fucking weird for a first date even if it was Queen.

There were also a few musicals and the rest were Punk/Rock bands like Panic! at the Disco, Paramore, and Fall Out Boy. Blitz chose Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance.

As soon as it came on, Stolas leaned over as if they were sharing a secret and said, “This was my anthem the year it came out.” 

“You dramatic bitch,” Blitz said with a smirk. “Did you get your heart broken or something?”

They came to a red light and Stolas shrugged. “I married Stella that year.”

What…in the fuck.

Stolas’s mouth was pinched tight as he stared at the intersection in front of them like he wasn’t exactly seeing the street ahead of them, but some messed up memory. 

Wait…Blitz lifted the phone and looked at the album info that the song came from. 2006. 

Mierda. 

Stolas hadn’t even graduated college when he got married to that bitch. Blitz hadn’t even dropped out of college yet. 

Blitz changed the song just as the light turned green. Stolas blinked and looked over at him, affronted. 

“I like that song,” he protested. 

Someone honked behind them and Blitz flipped them off even as Stolas waved an apology and began to drive. 

Blitz wrinkled his nose. “But you just said—”

“I know. I still like it.”

Fine. Blitz turned it back on, starting it from the beginning, but the mood was kinda ruined. Not unusual there, Blitz ruining shit before it really even got started. 

They drove in silence the rest of the way to the lunch spot Stolas had picked out, which actually wasn’t too showy; an Italian bistro tucked away on a side street. 

One of those where you brought a book or something and sat at a table, and a girl in a checkered apron came by to take your order, but they also only served shit like real espresso with those hard bread sticks. 

Italy Italian not New York Italian. 

Somehow, he and Stolas got curbside street parking and Blitz checked the sign 14 times to make sure Stolas’s fancy shit wouldn’t get towed. Inside the restaurant, there was only one other older couple dining. Stolas and Blitz opted to sit outside to eat. 

There wasn’t much traffic through there; a few bicyclists whizzed past, some people walked their dogs. The table they sat at wobbled; uneven, or probably the shitty city sidewalk. 

Whatever. 

The problem with Blitz’s job was that he saw things. This wasn’t a bad location for a restaurant, but it was an odd choice. The only person he’d seen beside the waitress was two burly men; one drinking at the bar and the other behind. Whatever conversation being had had stopped as soon as they had entered. 

Even after they gave the waitress their drink order, she went to the man behind the bar, who then disappeared behind the swinging kitchen door.  

Stolas seemed to be having a better time though. His shoulders had relaxed and he looked over the menu in a kinda distanced fashion like he already knew what it said. 

Like he went there a lot. 

Mierda. Did Stolas know this place was probably a front? 

Blitz stared into the glass front of the window again when Stolas rapped his knuckles on the table. With his eyes still on the menu, he said, “Best not to get involved in their business.”

…

Leaning forward, Blitz whispered, “Then why the fuck do you come here.”

Stolas shrugged. “The pasta is made fresh and the location affords privacy.”

“Jesucristo. Okay. You officially have some balls.”

Stolas chuckled. “I wish I did.”

Before Blitz could respond, the waitress came out to their little table. Stolas ordered a prosciutto plate thing and a separate cheese plate for the table that had fancy names but basically looked like fancy charcuterie boards, saying something about grazing and conversation. He also got an aperol spritz, which sounded Italian and the waitresses seemed to be pleased by his order. But Blitz couldn’t tell if it was bullshit or not. To be safe, he ordered a negroni because that was the most Italian drink he knew. 

After she walked away, Blitz leaned forward on his elbows, intrigued. “You do though. Got cojones. Asking me to be your mistress, knowing I track cheaters down.”

Stolas frowned, his nose wrinkling. “That isn’t the only work you do.”

“Uh huh. And sending that email. And eating a joint run by what has got to be the mafia,” he whispered the last word. 

A smirk tugged at Stolas’s face, highlighting the scabbed over cut on the other side of his mouth. “I suppose you could see it that way.”

Fuck it. Blitz leaned forward, grasping Stolas’s chin with his hand and ran his thumb over the split, touching his bottom lip. “What are you gonna tell me next? You do MMA at night?”

It was meant to be funny, to be kind of sexy or sweet. He meant for Stolas to lean forward into it, to tease him into a kiss. But Stolas flinched and turned his head. 

Blitz let go, listening as Stolas stuttered an answer. 

“N-No. Nothing of that sort. I’m not much of a fighter,” Stolas mumbled, touching his mouth. “This was more of an accident.” His eyes lowered to the checkered tablecloth.

“You called it a skirmish.”

Stolas blinked, glancing up to meet his eyes. “Did I?” He chewed on his upper lip and his eyes flicked over to the road, watching a car roll past. “I suppose it was an accidental skirmish.”

Okay. No. 

He’d tracked enough pieces of shit and abusive assholes, talking to their estranged spouses while hunting that trash to know better. With as much patience as he could muster, Blitz kept his face neutral and his voice even. Still, it sounded hard. “You know my mom once fell into my dad’s fist like that.”

Stolas forced a smile. “Let’s have a nice lunch. We don’t have to discuss any of that.”

Ha ha ha.

“No.”

Chapter Text

Stolas had not convinced Blitz to leave it alone. With all his stuttering and nervous chatter, Stolas had somehow made it worse and Blitz was on the warpath, ditching their lunch and getting into the driver’s seat of Stolas’s fancy car. And—being Stolas’s fancy car, it started up as soon as Stolas got close enough with the key.

“Now, wait a second. Let’s think about this,” Stolas tried to say to him in a voice that pitched a bit to whiny.

“Entra el carro or I’ll voy your culo aqui,” he responded in Spanglish with an evenness that lied about how his insides seethed. Stolas had said that this was a regular thing. In telling Blitz not to worry, Stolas had revealed that this happened more than once. Kinda whenever the bitch was angry enough at him or whatever went wrong in her day like getting an email from your soon-to-be ex-husband that he wanted a divorce.

Stolas relented and, as soon as the passenger door was closed, Blitz took off. Years of tracking assholes down gave him a good sense of direction and he headed straight for the second home where he knew that puta was staying.

Maybe he had done surveillance on her.

Whatever.

After he realized where they were going, Stolas didn’t say a word and neither did Blitz. Blitz did not drive as recklessly as he would have if this had been the van, but it wasn’t. It was Stolas’s pretty little car. Still, they got their in much less time than they should’ve, pulling up to the gates Blitzø had forgotten about.

Luckily, they opened before he had to say anything into the little box because he wasn’t sure they were going to let him in if he opened his mouth.

Racing up the gravel driveway to the entrance, Blitz barely threw the car in park before he stomped out. The doors at the top of the smoothed staircase opened after he pounded on them for two minutes straight.

Stolas lingered in the driveway by his car, leaving it idling.

A butler—the only one this place had—opened the door and Blitz pushed past him, shouting into the grand foyer. “Donde that fucking puta?!”

“Uh…” The butler looked back to Stolas, who shook his head slightly.

Oh, that was enough. “No te quedarás ahí y aguantarás más su mierda. No por algún blanco cunt, Gucci-drizzling, Kardashian-wannabe.”

He turned to the butler. “Sabías sobre esto?”

“Uh…Sí?” the butler responded, eyes darting toward the staircase. “Sin embargo, no se nos permite—”

Fuck that. “Te quedaste allí y dejaste que ella lo pegara cuando quisiera porque no querías decir nada. No, no me des excusas.” He trembled with anger, balling his fists at his sides, feeling as if he were his mother scolding some dumb teenager. “Voy a joderle el culo. Le haré saber con quién se está metiendo porque esta mierda no volverá a suceder. La dejaste tirar mierda?! La dejaste gritarle—”

“Estas gritando,” the butler helpfully informed him.

“Estoy gritando por él!” This scrawny shithead was testing him. “Porque necesita que alguien—una maldita persona—le haga saber que esto no está bien. Usted y sus trabajadores en la casa principal nunca permitan que esa mierda vuelva a suceder. ¿Sabes que? No. Ya no se le permite estar ahí. No la dejes entrar por esas malditas puertas. Si escucho que la dejas entrar, si veo otro moretón en él que no le puse ahí de mi consentimiento—”

“Ugh!” a shrill voice whined as if she’d seen a rat. “It’s you!”

Blitz turned on his heel, spotting the bitch at the top of the staircase. “You!”

He started for her and was promptly pulled backward by very white arms that held him around his waist. Stolas. So Blitzø settled on screeching at her while she screeched at him.

“You rotten whore! Apuesto a que tu cunt no ha visto una polla en años. No, espera, eres del tipo que fucks around. Cuántas malditas veces tuviste que tomar el Plan B, zorra no cuidada? Eres un imbécil que usa dientes.” He pretended to laugh and crudely mimed a blowjob.

She seethed, “You crude fucking faggot! Speak English or are you too dumb to learn?” She flipped her hair before turning to Stolas. “You couldn’t get a real man so you settled for this violent midget?”

Blitz didn’t want her antagonizing Stolas and shouted back, “No vuelvas a tocarlo nunca más! Alguna vez! Te daré el doble de lo que recibió. Coño, necesitas aprender tu maldita lección.”

“Go back to Mexico or wherever the fuck your illegal ass is from!”

“Debería hacer que mis primos vinieran aquí y te hicieran pedazos y te arrastraran de regreso a México y gut you like a fish on Good Friday. ¡Idiota! Estúpida zorra! Te metiste con la wrong one today. Te metiste con el hombre equivocado. Será mejor que nunca dejes que te pille en la calle porque vas a catch these hands, bitch! Que te jodan!”

“I’m calling the police!”

Stolas was tugging him out of the residence and using his deceptively strong body to shove him in the passenger seat. His knuckles were white as they gripped the wheel and his expression grimly and entirely pissed off.

“A tomar por culo,” Blitz exhaled, breathing heavily, feeling himself shake with adrenaline that couldn’t find a way out.

Silently, Stolas pulled out of the residence, waited for the gates to open, and drove off the property. The whole time his jaw clenched as if he were grinding his teeth.

Stolas didn’t even switch the radio on as they headed back toward his work.

Now Blitz had done it. He’d ruined what they had before their first real date. Like a fucking out-of-control asshole. He’d hit the roof like he had the patience of a child, screaming like a pig at the slaughterhouse.

Like his dad.

“Sorry,” he mumbled finally.

Stolas whipped his head around so fast that he jerked the wheel by accident, nearly sending them into the guardrail. He corrected in time, but pulled over on the highway anyway. “What?” he asked breathlessly, probably from almost totally his car. “What could you ever be sorry for?”

Blitzø gestured behind them with a shrug. “Going there like that—out-of-control, fucking…not listening to you—” His cheeks were roughly grasped in both hands as he was forced to look Stolas in the face.

“Don’t you ever,” Stolas scolded him. “Ever apologize for standing up for someone, especially after what she called you.”

“Huh?” In all of their shouting at each other, he hadn’t much paid attention to what Stella was shouting back. She called him a faggot and and a whore. She said that she was going to sue him for all he was worth, which probably wasn’t much—which was pretty accurate. She screamed the whole thing between them was laughable and maybe he was whoring himself out for a Green card. Bottom line: she’d said a lot of stuff.

“I…” Stolas opened his mouth and then closed it again. His hands fell away from Blitz’s face to his lap and he stared at them. “I would rather not repeat it verbatim. However, she used absolutely abhorrent and unacceptable language and insinuated that you came here illegally.”

“She use a slur?”

Stolas hesitated.

Blitz rolled his eyes as he looked past Stolas to the cars blowing by them. “C’mon. I’ve got thick skin and it’s not like you’re protecting her, right?”

“Everything,” Stolas said with a sigh. “A spic, a faggot, a wetback—”

Blitz laughed. “Damn. I’m mad I missed that one. It’s so old!”

Stolas grimaced as if he were trying to smile. “Yes, well, she also said many things about your status as a citizen.”

“Yeah,” Blitz said, waving his hand to dismiss it. “It comes with the territory.”

Even though Stolas hummed, he didn’t seem convinced. Then he cleared his throat and put his hand on the stick shift. “Let’s go then.”

The ride back was still pretty tense but Blitz held his tongue. He wanted to say so much, that the dogwhistles, the targeted comments hurt so much more. Like being called a thug or violent or out for a Green card. That he was dumb.

That was the shit that really got to him.

Mierda. He needed something to distract him.

As they pulled into the parking lot, Blitz smirked and jerked his thumb toward the doors. “Wanna fuck in your office?”

He was joking and he almost said so at Stolas’s look of shock. But it faded quickly enough because Stolas was a horny bastard. Long fingers walked up his thigh.

“Absolutely yes.”

So they still didn’t get that first date.

But they absolutely destroyed Stolas’s office so Blitz counted it as a win for the day.

Chapter Text

Blitz didn’t miss him. He couldn’t miss him. They’d barely hung out and really hadn’t even gone out anywhere. (Stolas had apparently needed to pay a decent-sized bribe to the mob that owned that Italian place after they’d rudely left, even though Stolas had already paid the tab for a meal they didn’t eat. Whatever. Oh, and Blitz wasn’t welcome back.)

After fucking on Stolas’s desk and couch and other couch and against the large windows, Blitz had to seriously go get the van cleaned before going on the stakeout and Stolas probably had real shit to do at his fancy job.

So, no, Blitz didn’t miss him. He just thought about him as he slumped in the seat of the van with Moxxie who had the telescopic lens trained on the house. It was crazy what some insurance companies would pay for. He didn’t even have to break in on stakeouts like this, just sit in the van and ‘document’ the suspect.

This fucker was supposed to have broken his back and he was in so much pain he was unable to work for the rest of his life, especially doing his construction job. So far, they’d seen the man stick pretty close to his truth. Either he sat on the couch or laid in his bed or went to the shitter. At the moment, they stared at the back of his head as he watched TV. Again.

Blitz wondered if he could charge the client anything extra for wasted time. They should put that in the next contract.

“Is he pissing in bottles?” Moxxie asked, wiping the lens of his camera again. “Because, seriously, he’s gotta do something.”

“Hm.” Right now, Stolas was probably relaxing in front of his own TV. Blitz hadn’t seen his house yet but he could bet it was a literal mansion compared to his studio apartment.

Ugh. Blitz could be luxuriating in a huge bed that was probably the size of the van.

“Oh,” Moxxie said with some surprise. “Who is this?”

Idly, Blitz watched a woman in stilettos and a trenchcoat walk up the steps to the rowhouse and let herself in. The insurance agency hadn’t said anything about a wife.

Weird that a hooker had her own key though.

The woman closed the door behind her and strode over to the couch, taking a seat next to the man on the couch. There was very little back and forth before the woman’s head disappeared as she bent over.

Moxxie groaned and his lip curled in disgust. “He hasn’t even had a shower today! I-I don’t know if he washed his hands after he last went to the bathroom. That poor woman.” He set the binoculars to the side and Blitz picked them up.

Qué asco.

As Moxxie took a few pictures, Blitz watched the man tilt his head back and spread his arms, resting them on the back of the couch. After a moment, the lady hadn’t come up for air, Blitz thought of how Stolas had gotten on his knees that first night and made his toes curl in the elevator. “You know who can suck a dick like a champion?” he asked.

“Don’t you dare!” Moxxie hissed at him. With a scoff, Moxxie then lifted the radio. “We have a visitor, honey.”

Ugh. The two of them were hopelessly sappy even at work. Blitz would’ve instituted a “no dating coworkers” if he knew it was going to be this boring between them. Not hot goss or anything.

Static crackled through the radio and then Millie’s voice. “I’ll be right there!” She sounded slightly out of breath and, in the background, a bunch of kids shouted.

Blitz swiped the walkie talkie. “Are you playing basketball again?”

There was no answer for a few full seconds before Millie said, “No?” But she was clearly running, huffing and puffing.

Blitz pulled up the maps and zoomed in behind the shitheads house to see a baseball diamond. He turned his screen to show Moxxie, who grimaced sheepishly.

Moxxie held out a hand for the walkie talkie and Blitz passed it over, going back to the binoculars. As Moxxie talked to Millie, Blitz watched the woman leading the man up the stairs.

Snapping his fingers to get Moxxie’s attention, Blitz pointed upwards to signal their departure.

“Hey, honey?” Moxxie asked. “You got eyes on the couple.”

“Hmm…Wait, yeah. Here they are. Curtains are closed though. All I got is shadows.”

“Fuck,” Blitz swore and began to side-eye Moxxie.

“No. No, Blitz, we are not breaking—”

“The client wants us—”

Moxxie rolled his eyes. “The evidence wouldn’t even be admissible in court.”

Blitz threw up his hands and settled back into the driver’s seat with a huff. A few minutes later, Millie reported that even from the shadows it looked like the guy was laying on his back.

The day rolled on slowly. The woman left. At peak heat of the afternoon, Blitz stretched his legs, taking a walk to the nearby park, determined to bring back something other than fast food for dinner and to piss in an actual bathroom instead of a port-a-potty or behind a bush.

It was mid-piss in the bathroom of a Subway that Stolas texted for the first time since they’d parted at his office. Deciding to aim with no hands—Blitz was an adult—he took the phone from his jacket pocket.

Stolas: I hope the day is treating you well. If you would give me an opportunity, I would love to take you out on a proper date when you return.

Kicking his leg up, hitting the handle to flush the urinal, Blitz managed to shake his dick off and messaged back at the same time.

Blitz: sure c u then

Stolas: When do you believe you’ll return?

Blitz: idk Monday? Unless teh client pays 4 ovatime

The client probably would too. If they didn’t get anything this weekend, the insurance company would ask them to stay a week or so longer to see what the guy did during the day. Blitz was betting it was more of this shit.

Stolas: That’s too bad. I would like to see you.

Blitz: yea

Stolas: Could I perhaps come on your stakeout? I would be unobtrusive of course.

Blitz: y?

Stolas took a while to get back to him and Blitz imagined it was because Stolas, with his long legs, was sitting at that Mafia joint, drinking tea from a real cup and reading a newspaper or talking to the waiter like the whole thing was not a front.

Or maybe he was his daughter. It was the weekend. Fuck, Blitz couldn’t remember her name. Meirda, he needed to learn his boyfriend’s daughter’s name, like, yesterday. Now it was too late to ask too.

Boyfriend. Were they boyfriends or were they just talking? Dating?

Probably the first one. Blitz shouldn’t get ahead of himself. Reel it back in. They hadn’t even had a real date, just fucked a bunch and argued.

Oh, shit.

That didn’t sound healthy.

Stolas: I am not sure if you are asking “why” or “and” so I will address both. Via is with her mother this weekend and, if I am being honest, I am a bit lonely. Isn’t that pathetic? I thought we could spend some time together since you are not doing much besides observing someone. I assume there is no client-privilege involved so I wouldn’t be breaching any contract you may have. We could talk. We could have dinner together or maybe breakfast. I wouldn’t want to encroach. I could get my own accommodations. Where are you staying the evening if you don’t mind me asking?

Stolas’s message was long and took him forever to read. Via, that was her name, although Blitz was pretty sure it was longer than that. He opened up his Notes app and added that to the one he had about Stolas. Random shit was on there. The drinks that Stolas ordered the night they met. The address of his ex-cunt’s brother. The hours he usually took his lunches during the week.

Totally not stalker stuff.

Blitz went back out to the counter and stood in line for their Subway orders. When he checked his texts to see what their orders were so he could tell the kid, he realized Moxxie had tried to contact him a few times about where he was and what he was doing.

Instead of responding directly, he snapped a photo of the Subway counter and the mottled skin of his hand on the glass barrier before sending it to Moxxie. After a moment, he sent it to Stolas too.

He should really respond to him, but Stolas would probably hate sitting there with them in the van. Right now, it was clean but it was boring and, slowly, it would get filled with takeout bags and empty cups.

Yeah, the insurance place was putting them up in a motel for the night but it was one of those where the door opens right out to the parking lot that some cop car was always parked in. Fucking poli.

Ready to catch the errant drug deal or john looking for a good time. The motel didn’t have roaches but it smelled faintly of cigarettes. Breakfast was a stale muffin and an apple or banana with fruit flies buzzing around it.

Honestly, after Millie and Moxxie started to hookup, Blitz just let the two of them have the motel and he stayed the nights in the van. Sometimes he’d watch the target. Other times he’d lay the back seats down and snooze. Stolas’s tall ass wouldn’t fit comfortably in there. Blitz barely fit.

Idly, he tapped his phone as he waited for the teenager to finish making the sandwiches before he remembered that Millie wanted chips and Moxxie wanted a Coke—not a Pepsi. He grabbed both of those and then a grape Fanta for himself.

His phone buzzed on the counter and he picked it up, seeing a new message from Stolas but he needed to pay the kid first. After, he gathered the bags in his arms and debated about making a 3-foot-long joke but couldn’t get it worded right so he left. Taking his time walking back to the van, he munched on his sandwich and finally started to pin down the joke for Moxxie at least though it had to be pared down to a two-foot-long.

Once back at the van, he knocked on the side three times before Millie slid it open. “Here.” He tossed one at her and then shook the other one at Moxxie. “I got a foot-long to put in your face,” he teased, lowering the wrapped sub to pretend it was his dick.

Moxxie grimaced before looking away with a smirk he tried to hide. “We both know it’s not a foot.”

Touche, bitch.

Blitz tossed it at him and climbed into the van, shutting the door behind him. After he got the update (or lack of one) from M&M, he pulled out his phone again and saw Stolas’s unread message still at the top of the screen.

Oh yeah.

Stolas: I did not mean to overstep. Please ignore my last message. We can arrange something when you return.

“Que paso?” Millie asked from beside him in the back Blitz realized he was scowling.

He smoothed the frown out of his face. “Dunno. Stolas wants to come down for the weekend but…”

Moxxie sighed loudly. “Did you not tell him we are working?”

Blitz sucked his teeth and ignored the stick in Moxxie’s ass. He read the texts over again. The fuck was Stolas trying to say? That he was so bored that he wanted to hang out even if they weren’t doing anything? That wanting to hang out and do nothing with Blitz was pathetic? Or that his work wasn’t hard so Blitz should be able to just drop everything?

Irritability wrapped around his throat. His job wasn’t hard right now. Yeah, it was easy to sit on his ass and spy but that didn’t mean it was any less work. Blitz took pride in his fucking jobs and attracting clients and getting results. Sitting still was hard at the best of times.

But it wasn’t like this target was going to go anywhere at night. He’d already stayed up the night before, when they’d first arrived, to check that the guy wasn’t a night owl or went to the clubs or something. So Blitz could probably check-in to a nicer hotel with Stolas somewhere nearby and get a good night of sleep and/or let out some of this pent-up energy. That could’ve been it; Stolas was just horny.

“What is he saying?” Moxxie asked because Moxxie was a nosy bitch who pretended like he didn’t like a good piece of gossip.

Blitz ground his teeth for a moment, debating whether to answer him, before he decided on something light. He threw Moxxie a grin. “He wants to get a hotel out here so I can fuck him.”

“Are you serious?” Moxxie asked, tone torn between disbelief and disgust.

Prude.

Blitz kicked his legs up on the the back of the driver’s seat, crossing his ankles, and rested his hands behind his head. “Guess my dick is that good.”

Millie snorted and he cut his eyes at her.

Blitz: Sure, cum thru @ 8

As he typed, Blitzø could feel Millie’s eyes on him. “Que?” he asked without looking away from his phone, waiting for Stolas to text back. What if Stolas had changed his mind because he took too long to respond? What if he decided the drive was too long?

She grinned with a mouthful of sanwhich. “Que lindo.”

“Shut up.”

“You like him.”

“Shut up,” Blitz said a little more insistently. “Or you want overnight duty?”

Millie hummed but didn’t say anything more.

Stolas: I will book the Four Seasons. Do you prefer Pelligrino or Perrier in the minibar?

Blitz didn’t even know what that meant.

Several hours later, the guy had made a microwave dinner and then laid down on the couch in front of the TV and had not moved except to change the channel. It was nearing 7:30 in the evening. “Let’s call it, gang,” Blitzø said, ambling his way into the front seat and turning the engine on.

Millie and Moxxie had their heads together in the back, not whispering at all. “He want’s to see his boyfriend.”

“His boyfriend,” the other agreed.

“Su novio,”

“Nooooovio.”

Blitz threw a wrapper at them.

Chapter Text

Blitzø walked into the fanciest fucking hotel he’d ever seen. The kinds of places Blitz stayed—when he splurged and didn’t want to stay in the van—usually had a check-in desk with a tired girl in a sweatshirt behind it. But this place, with its vaulted ceilings and chandeliers, had perky attendants in uniform, couches that smelled like real leather, and a whole restaurant to one side. Outside, someone had tried to get him to valet when he’d asked where parking was and he said no over and over until they informed him that it was complimentary for guests staying there. Now, a bellhop in a black suit and tie approached him, holding out his hand for the single duffel bag that Blitzø had.

“Nah,” Blitz said, adjusting his bag to his other side. The fuck was he supposed to do? Stolas had told him he’d already checked in and given him the room number and everything, but the staff was also watching. In his dirty v-neck shirt and torn jeans, he stood out and not in a ‘oh, hey sexy bad boy’ way, especially compared to everyone at the restaurant bar a few yards away, where even the dudes were wearing slacks and dress shoes. The hotel was probably one of those where the fucking elevators needed a keycard to even go to a higher floor.

Blitz stopped by one of the posh couches in the foyer in plain view of the staff. A woman with an airplane pillow around her neck and sunglasses perched on her nose—despite the fact that it was close to 8:30 P.M. and they were inside—was typing away on her phone.

He had just pulled out his own phone to ask Stolas if he should wait when he heard: “Yoohoo! Darling!”

And there was Stolas, dizzingly beautiful in high-waisted black slacks and a red cashmere sweater. Bangles hung from his wrists and dangling Libra earrings caught the light. His hair was no longer brushed back, but let loose and wild around his face. Stolas bounded over to Blitz smiling that perfect smile just like when they’d first met.

As Stolas got closer, Blitz noticed the very gay glittering makeup that adorned the edges of Stolas’s eyes in blue and green shades, and the winged eyeliner. A sinister thought curled in his throat. He wanted to make that makeup run, make a mess of that pretty face.

Fuck…Had they not seen each other outside of Stolas’s office since the first night?

Blitz’s heart pounded in his throat and he dropped his bag. As soon as Stolas got within arms distance, he used the couch to step himself higher and press his mouth to Stolas’s, kissing him like they’d been separated by war or some shit.

Stolas kissed him back with the same enthusiasm, wrapping his arms around his waist in a tight squeeze, holding him off the ground.

The woman with the airplane pillow made a disgusted noise and cleared her throat very obviously. Without letting Stolas pull away, Blitz lifted one hand from where it was looped around the back of Stolas’s neck to flip her off.

The woman’s irritated noise only got worse and Stolas did stop the kiss, slowly lowering Blitz back to the ground. He pressed one more kiss to his nose before he said, “Let me show you our room.”

The elevator ride was bullshit. Mostly because the bellhop had swept in and grabbed up his rucksack before Blitz could and ended up riding with them all the way up to their floor so Blitz couldn’t even give Stolas a sloppy blowjob in the elevator.

Then the kissass brought the bag all the way into the room too, setting it on the floor next to a couch, and Blitz tried to shoo him out, opening the door and making the motion. But Stolas told him to wait and tipped the guy for doing almost nothing. Finally, when the bellhop had gone, Blitz let the door slam and pulled off his jacket, tossing it to the side.

He expected Stolas to be right there and ready for his dick, but the twink was walking away from him in his tight pants, showing off his perfect ass—and not toward the large bedroom just beyond the next door. Blitz trailed after him.

“How was your day?” Stolas asked, ignoring the very obvious tent in Blitz’s pants. He stopped at a small dining table that overlooked the twinkling lights of the city. Lifting a fancy piece of paper, he waved it at Blitz. “Would you like to order room service or dinner? Or go out?”

Blitz just stared at him, willing the blood to return to his brain. The bangles jingled noisily on those thin wrists. He wanted to sink his teeth into that skin, work his way up his arm Adams Family style.

Stolas fidgeted. “Or you’ve had dinner already? Would you like dessert?”

“No.” Blitz shook his head, finally getting some sense. “I mean, like, I haven’t had dinner. We can…We can do whatever you want, but I got to get to work early tomorrow so—”

“Of course,” Stolas said, his smile returning. He held out the paper to Blitz. “Yes, absolutely. I…Why don’t we have something to eat here? You must be tired after working all day.”

Taking the paper, he glanced over the options and saw a bunch of shit that he didn’t know like ‘carpaccio’ and ‘confit’ so he placed the menu back on the table and pushed it toward Stolas. “Order for me. I’m gonna take a shower.”

He toed off his boots, kicking them into the corner and began to strip, starting pants first.

Stolas blinked. “Yes. Sorry. You must be exhausted. I can certainly—”

Clearly someone thought too much.

Blitz tossed his t-shirt in Stolas’s face and then slapped his ass as he walked past him and went toward the bedroom. “Ven,” he said.

Behind him, he heard Stolas nearly trip over himself as he hurried to follow. Blitz went straight for the bathroom and found himself nearly overwhelmed by the shower and the separate giant tub. The shower had two different showerheads, one that hung straight down from the ceiling and one attached to the wand so he could use it on his body. The slate floor was dark brown and the doors were made of very, very clean glass.

He was going to have Stolas read the menu to him in the shower or something but this…

They had to fuck in this.

Gonna press Stolas against the glass of the shower, see his fucked out face in the mirror when getting it from behind, be as dirty as they wanted ‘cause it was all going down the drain anyway, try something weird in the bath with all those fancy soaps that would probably make them smell like a Bath & BodyWorks, soak his body for a minute…maybe light some candles and turn out the lights, wrap himself in the fluffy robe when he was done, lay on cool, clean sheets.

…

Somehow, he’d gotten off topic.

“Fuuuck me,” Blitz groaned, feeling the weight of the week sit its heavy ass on his shoulders. He slouched forward, fisting grubby hands into the hem of his shirt and tugging it off. He barely had the energy to pull off his socks and boxers. Stupid clean hotel sheets making him feel guilty about taking his sweat-covered ass to bed.

Behind him, Stolas’s voice echoed lightly. “Can I help you at all?”

Blitz grunted and gave a half-hearted shrug of his shoulders. What kind of shit could Stolas even do for him?

It wasn’t even like the day had been hard either—just long. Blitz turned the handles, the immediate spray of the water blasted overhead like it was demonstrating how awesome its water pressure was. Steam wafted, not even needing to be heated up. Shit, he could get used to this rich people shit.

Stepping into the spray, Blitz let the water wash directly over his head, dripping down each piece of his long dark hair, down his arms which hung loosely at his side, off his fingertips to swirl down the drain below. Over the sound of the water beating on his shoulders, he could hear Stolas drone on about a dinner order.

But Blitz was zoning. He dipped his head, staring at the tile floor, wondering if it would be pathetic to sit down and wash himself. The water pelted his neck like a mini-massage. He exhaled heavily and let his eyes fall shut.

Moments later, he was startled out of his stupor as hands settled onto his shoulders. Both of Stolas’s hands rubbed over one shoulder and down his left arm. Fuck, he hadn’t even realized that Stolas had stopped speaking, had gotten undressed and opened the shower door to join him.

Lithe fingers traveled up and down over Blitz’s skin, blunt nails scratching lightly. His bangles jingled like a little melody. Blitz groaned, blinking his eyes open. Stolas’s hands pulled away before they returned down his other arm. He could feel Stolas’s body heat close behind him.

“Mira,” he started roughly and then cleared his throat. As good as Stolas’s hands felt, Blitz wasn’t sure he could go for any serious rounds even if he wanted to. Still, he could probably…“I can bend my tight little ass over if you—”

“Not necessary,” Stolas said firmly. His hands continued to work down to the tips of Blitz’s fingers, dripping soap suds that were washed away almost immediately. Stolas washed his neck and down his back with firm pressure, testing each knot he came to. After the fifth one, Stolas clicked his tongue.

“We should book you a massage.”

Blitz shook his head slowly. “No time.”

Stolas hummed like that was unacceptable. Blitz wasn’t even about to contradict him and try to explain his finances. That would just be…Well, Stolas wouldn’t understand anyway and they’d probably argue and Blitz would stop getting his back washed. It felt so good that Blitz didn’t even comment on the fact that Stolas wasn’t using a washcloth.

When Stolas moved lower, fondling his ass, Blitz said again, “If you want, I can—”

“No.” Stolas moved his hands immediately back up to his shoulders and forced Blitz to turn.

He let it happen, keeping his eyes closed against the warm water, and he felt Stolas’s hands return to his chest, washing there. Finally, deciding to help clean his own damn body, Blitz leaned forward and squirted a pump of body wash into his own hands and started to lather his pits.

“You know,” Stolas said, running smooth hands up and down his abs. “You need not pay me in sex.”

Blitz snorted and moved to scrub his junk before Stolas could start there too.

The taller man frowned and stood up. He rinsed his hands at the nozzle, higher than Blitz could even reach. Blitz could feel Stolas’s eyes on him, even though he kept his eyes on the shower floor as he scrubbed his crack and down his legs.

“Want me to wash your back then?” he asked, bending over further.

Stolas stepped back, out of most of the spray, giving him the space to bend, but he still watched. “I already showered.”

The fuck? Then, what was Stolas even doing in the shower?

Blitz rinsed his hands and then pumped more soap in them, glancing at Stolas whose pensive look had turned pouty. Blitz washed his face before he used the leftover soap in his hands to scrub his scalp.

The shower was still so hot—Dios mio, these fancy showers were the tits—so he tilted his head back, eyes closed, letting the water rinse him again. With quick movements, he slid his palms over his body, making sure all the soap was off before stepping away from the spray and wiping his eyes.

Stolas had already made his silent exit and wrapped a towel around his waist. He held another out to Blitz.

“What?” Blitz said finally after all the silence. He turned the shower off and, like, yeah, he took the towel, but he also wanted to know what he did wrong.

Being the pouty little bitch he was, Stolas rolled his eyes and pulled on a robe—one he’d clearly brought from home if the deep blues and grays was any indication. “Not everything has to be quid pro quo,” he answered and turned to the sink.

On the surface of the fancy polished stone countertop, there were jars of creams and tinted glass bottles that clearly did not come from the hotel. Stolas used a set of makeup wipes, taking off that fancy eyeliner that Blitz hadn’t even gotten a chance to smear.

And Stolas was wrong. No one gave things without expecting something in return.

Like the heathen he was, Blitz went about drying his body, rubbing everything down until he got to his balls where he spent extra attention, pulling the towel back and forth between his legs. That earned a chuckle from Stolas who was watching him through the mirror.

Once Stolas had washed his face and Blitz had pulled on the fuzzy hotel robe, Stolas gestured for Blitz to get his ass over to the counter, where he’d opened one of the jars. A curl of perfect white cream laid smooth. Without hesitating to appreciate the -ness of it all, Stolas stuck two fingers in that perfection and scooped out some of the cream. The container didn’t even have a label, just some French words engraved on it.

“Close your eyes,” Stolas told him, extending his fingers toward his face.

“Don’t need your fancy shit,” Blitz protested but did all the same. Something cool and feathery touched his cheek. Vanilla and lavender laid on the late-night charm as the cream was massaged into his skin.

“It’s all organic in its composition and provides all-natural hydration throughout the night,” Stolas was saying, sounding like a model on a commercial. He smoothed the cream over Blitz’s whole face in upward strokes. “The natural retinoids keep the wrinkles at bay.”

Blitz scoffed. “Calling me old?”

“Everyone ages, sweetheart.”

“Speak for yourself,” Blitz mumbled.

Stolas faux gasped. Then, his fingers moved away. When Blitz began to open his eyes, Stolas told him to shut them again. He did, shifting foot to foot, feeling the ache in the soles of his feet. Stolas’s fingers touched Blitz’s face again, but he couldn’t feel anything extra being added though he did smell chamomile.

“This is an oil I use in the evenings to soothe my skin, especially after exfoliating.” A few moments of quiet followed. “There we are,” Stolas said, drawing his hands away.

Blitz opened his eyes and examined his face in the mirror. It didn’t look any different. He watched Stolas apply the cream to himself. Really, it looked like a bunch of nothing. He picked up the jar, feeling the heavy weight of it like thick ceramic. “How much you spend on this shit?”

Stolas’s eyes only glanced at him. “It’s only about $100 a jar.”

Only.

“Meirda.”

Before Stolas could respond, there was a knock on the door. “That should be dinner,” Stolas said, not looking away. He gestured toward the door. “Could you get that for me?”

Blitz set the jar down and went to open the door. Instead of a person with a tray, the server wheeled in a whole cart and began to set plate after plate onto the small table, some with those silver covers on and others covered with only a cloth.

As it was unveiled before him, Blitz realized he wasn’t looking at something like a hotel pizza or burger. No. There was a basket with several types of brown breads, butter, and jam. With a flourish, the server drizzled dressing on two Caesar salads with kale in them. Then, there were the actual meals; roasted chicken with some sort of sauce on the side that wasn’t gravy and mashed potatoes, and short ribs with charred peppers and onions.

Damn, he was drooling.

“Thank you!” Stolas said to the server as he left the bathroom. “Just a minute before you go.”

The server nodded and waited as Stolas yet again grabbed cash from somewhere to tip him. As the server headed back toward the door, Stolas turned to him with a large smile and motioned to the spread. His voice wavered as if he were nervous. “I…Well, I wasn’t quite sure what you would like. I tried to cover all the bases.”

Nodding, Blitz slipped into the seat closest to him, barely registering how his damp hair stuck to his back. “Which…” His eyes darted between the two dinners. Stolas sat in the chair across from him. “I will take whichever entree you do not choose. I am not picky.”

Odd. Stolas wasn’t picky about dinner but he spent a hundred dollars being picky on face cream?

Whatever.

Blitz pulled the plate closest to him—the short ribs—and stuffed his face. When he finished—without room for dessert for once, he crawled into the big bed with its high thread count and its cool sheets. Warm and full, he watched as Stolas went around the room, closing the curtains and checking the lock on the door, adjusting the thermostat and turning out all the lights except the one on his side of the bed.

Slipping under the covers, Stolas reached his long arm up and turned the light off, blanketing them in darkness. The sheets swished and shifted, and Blitz smelled the chamomile and vanilla and lavender as Stolas got closer.

They must’ve reached for one another at the same time because their hands knocked into each other. They tried again and Stolas managed to cup his face, sticking a finger almost in to Blitz’s nose. Blitz, on the other hand, ended up open-mouth kissing Stolas’s chin. Quiet laughter erupted, muffled as if they were kids sneakily staying up late.

“Shush!” Stolas whispered through lessening giggles, clutching at him. “I am trying to be romantic.”

Blitz snorted, covering his mouth with his hands.

Stolas burst out in another round of laughter, egging him on, and Blitz laughed louder.

“Shh!” Stolas whispered.

“You shush.”

“No, you.”

Blitz snorted again. They went back and forth a few more times. Tears were gathering at the edges of his eyes and dribbling down the sides. His stomach muscles began to ache and he was sure the muscles in his face were going to cramp from smiling.

“Quiet, you sweet, silly man.” Stolas paused and he pulled Blitz to his chest. He inhaled, held his breath, and then said quietly. “My sweet, silly boyfriend.”

Stolas may as well have smothered him, but the thudding of Stolas’s heart was steady, if a little fast. Blitz didn’t say anything back, too busy tamping down the beating of his own heart.

Novio

Milie and Moxxie’s voices cooed in his mind. Before he knew it, Blitz had fallen asleep.

The morning was a whirlwind as it always was for Blitz when they were out on surveillance. As soon as his alarm went off, he was jumping out of bed. He ran through the room, pulling on clothes and calling Moxxie to wake up. He brushed his teeth at the same time as he tried to piss. He needed coffee and spied a machine in the corner.

Blitz was in the middle of trying to get it to work when Stolas groaned, pushing himself into a sitting position on the bed.

Sleepily, the taller man asked, “Breakfast?”

“No time,” Blitz answered and then huffed at the coffee maker, setting the place for the grounds back down and searching for however the water goes in. “Stupid coffee, puta bitch. Chingaso—”

“Surely you have time to pick something up on the way.” Stolas looked slightly more alert now, yawning and stretching as he slipped out from under the covers.

Damn, his naked body was beautiful, all flawless skin and long legs. And Stolas didn’t even seem to notice.

“Yeah,” Blitz said, not sure if he was agreeing because he had time or because Stolas was using some sort of naked witchcraft.

Ten minutes later, they were standing in the To Go orders line at a breakfast joint across the street. Blitz fiddled with his phone, texting Moxxie about what the two lovebirds wanted for breakfast and sending him the link. The line moved forward slowly as the conversation hopped back and forth, but Blitz kept close to Stolas, who stood slightly in front. He needed to map a way out of the city center to that shit’s house in the boonies.

No, wait. To the motel first.

Oh, bitch on a stick, there was some kind of accident on the freeway clogging up traffic.

At the counter, Stolas was ordering and Blitz finally looked away from his phone. He shifted forward, but paused, watching how the lady’s attention moved from Stolas and then to him, back to Stolas, and back to him.

He knew what was coming.

As soon as Stolas paused, the woman said, “Excuse me” to Stolas and shifted her focus on him, suddenly looking as impatient as Blitz felt. “Sir, if you’re looking for DoorDash orders, the pickup area is to your left. However, we’d like for you to wait in your car until you get the alert that it’s been completed.”

Blitz used to be embarrassed when this happened, used to feel low and ugly. He used to try to make himself look less like…Well, himself. He used to wear what his mom called Church clothes even to little breakfast places like this. He’d comb and style his hair, go clean-shaven. He used to plaster a smile on his face and stand as straight as possible. He used to apologize and say shit like ‘oh, I’m ordering for me’ and ignore the flush on their face and their own apologies. He would brush it under the rug because it definitely wasn’t because of the color of his skin or the big scar running across the whole of his face.

Now, he just turned to Stolas to see what he would say. Stolas’s eyes had narrowed and his brows had pulled together in a look of confusion, but his perpetual, professional smile remained. “He’s with me,” Stolas said, motioning to Blitz.

Didn’t seem like Stolas went a lot of places with someone like him.

“Oh!” The woman’s mouth even made that little ‘O’ shape and a blush began to spread on her cheeks. Her eyes flicked between them again and again. “Sorry about that,” she rushed, not exactly sounding sorry but definitely dropping her eyes to stare daggers at her register. “What would he want?”

Fucking…Blitz could speak for himself. He stepped forward slightly. “Can I get a—”

“Hold on.” Stolas held up a hand to the woman. “Why did you think that?”

Oh Jesus Christ.

“Stolas,” he said, tugging his hand down. “I was gonna pay separately anyway. I’m buying for Millie and—”

“No, no.” Stolas wiggled his wrist out of Blitz’s grasp, but then grabbed his hand, intertwining their fingers. “I want to know why she thinks we are not together, sweetheart,” he said, though his question was directed at her.

Blitz blinked, looking down at their hands and realized Stolas thought it was a gay thing.

Stolas—literal God of Twinks, who still had his very gay earrings on and had added Burberry white slacks with a black deep-V cut top—somehow thought that he did not appear gay enough to go out with someone like Blitz, who had on the same ripped jeans from yesterday and a new t-shirt that read “Be Gay. Do Crime.” underneath his beat-to-shit leather jacket.

“Pretty sure it’s not that,” Blitz responded flatly but squeezed his hand anyway. Focusing back on the woman, he ordered his team’s coffees and food while they both ignored how Stolas’s cheeks puffed out like an angry toddler. When Blitz went to pay, Stolas darted forward and tapped his Black Card against the card reader.

“Dude,” Blitz said, but Stolas just turned up his nose in that pouty bitch way and took the buzzer that was handed to them. They went to wait at one of the cushioned alcoves and sat beside each other because Stolas seemed to want to keep holding his hand.

“I cannot believe her,” Stolas groused, spinning the quiet buzzer with one long finger.

They really shouldn’t get into it and it wasn’t even that big a deal. Let Stolas think it was about being gay. Yeah, he would probably whine about it for a few more minutes but then they’d get their food and it would be over. All Blitz had to do was keep his mouth shut.

“I mean really,” Stolas said, “It’s as if she’s never seen two men together.”

“You know that wasn’t it, right?” Fuck him, his mouth was faster than his brain.

“What?” Stolas was looking at him in disbelief. “What else could it have been? You and I are—”

Blitz motioned to Stolas up and down. “Obviously gay as hell and so are those guys and that…that couple,” he said, pointing across the restaurant to two guys being gay and eating breakfast at a table, and a very queer couple of ambiguous genders sharing a coffee and muffin at a high counter.

Even as Stolas took them in, Blitzø could tell it was almost immediately useless. Confusion and a little bit of that spoiled brat etched into Stolas’s face. “Really then, what else could it be?”

Sighing, Blitz pulled his own hand back and rubbed his face. Did he even want to do this? Was it worth it?

He wanted to say no. But a small little part of him was dumb pendejo that wanted to hope that Stolas would be different.

“Look at me,” Blitz said quietly.

Stolas wrinkled his perfect nose. “I am.”

“No.” It was an exhale. Blitz motioned to the scar on his face, to the calluses on his hands, to the dirt on his jeans. He took Stolas’s hand and placed it on the table, palm down. Then, he placed his own hand there also. “Mira. Me and you are different.”

“You and I,” Stolas corrected.

Blitz winced and pulled his hand away, tucking it into his jacket pocket. “She wasn’t talking to you. She was talking to me. The way I look…She didn’t think I would eat here. I’m the one she didn’t think belonged.”

It took Stolas a moment of really looking at Blitz to get it. When his gaze turned back to his own hand still on the table, his eyes widened. “You’re saying it is a racial thing?”

Blitz shrugged. “Or class, but those two things go together a lot.”

Stolas shook his head. “That’s not—”

“She called me a ‘DoorDash driver.’”

“Maybe it was merely the way you are dressed?”

That caused a muscle in his jaw to jump and he clenched his fists in his jacket. “This isn’t my first rodeo, cabrón.”

“What does that—”

The buzzer vibrated loudly on the table causing them both to start. Blitz recovered first, swiping it up and starting for the pick up area while Stolas unfolded himself from the seat. Blitz was already at the counter, grabbing their bags after handing back that annoying buzzer, when he heard Stolas’s voice.

“Excuse me, Miss?”

Blitz pivoted sharply toward the cash register and saw Stolas standing at the front, having cut the line, to talk to the lady. It felt like watching a car crash and he was moving too slow to stop it, of course.

“Why did you not think we were together?” Stolas asked her in front of all those people. He had one hand on his hip, interrogating her like he didn’t even realize she was just some dumb college-aged kid. “Was it because we did not look like a proper heterosexual couple or is it because I am white and he is a Latino?” he asked, pointing to Blitz.

Finally, Blitz was there, shoving the drink tray in Stolas’s hands so he could grab his wrist and forcibly drag him away. He didn’t stop when Stolas protested or everyone looked at them. He didn’t stop when they got out of the doors and onto the street. He only stopped once they were waiting at the crosswalk for the light to change with the hotel in front of them.

Blitz rummaged through the bags in his hand, looking for Stolas’s croissant and fruit cup. “You couldn’t take my word for it?” he hissed, aware of the people at the intersection with them.

“I wanted to know—”

“It wasn’t about you,” he shot back and shoved Stolas’s food in his hands. “Not everything is about you.” He crumbled the top of the bag with his food in it, keeping the heat in.

“I’m not saying that?”

“Yeah?” Blitz glared at him and the incredulous expression Stolas dared to have. “Well, you fucking made it all about you, didn’t you? You couldn’t just listen to the guy that’s experienced racism for the last 30-odd years?”

The light changed and everyone started walking. He started walking, holding the bag of food with both hands.

Stolas’s long strides caught up easily. “It wasn’t fair to you!” Stolas reached out and grasped his forearm, pulling him to a halt. The drinks wobbled precariously in their holder in Stolas’s palm and Stolas’s croissant toppled off from the top of one of the cups, falling onto the asphalt. Someone laid on their horn and both of them flipped him off, but Blitz wrenched his arm away.

“If I made a fuss about every racist thing that happened to me,” he said, motioning to the world around them. “I would’ve offed myself years ago.”

“Surely,” Stolas complained and held out free hand like he was exasperated with Blitz’s shit. “Surely, it can’t be that bad.”

“You fucking…” Blitz was so angry he couldn’t think of anything creative. “You fucking privileged, white asshole.”

“Excuse me?” Stolas stepped back, managing to look pissed off and incredulous at the same time.

The driver laid on the horn again and, before Blitz could shout at him, Stolas was already screeching. “Fuck you! Can you not see we are in the middle of something?!”

The driver, who had rolled down his window, shouted back, “Yeah! The middle of the road!”

Blitz flipped him off again, but started walking with Stolas hot on his heels. Without looking over his shoulder, he said, “I am not here to open your eyes to all the racist bullshit that happens in my world or pander to whatever guilt you have about it. Handle it yourself.”

They made it to the sidewalk, where Stolas stepped in front of him, blocking his path. This time one of the drinks did spill, sloshing over the rim and into the cardboard holder that Stolas clutched with both hands. “I want to understand.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not my job.” He tried to side-step Stolas, only to get blocked again.

“But, how will I learn?”

And Blitz fucking lost it. “Stolas!” he shouted, becoming that couple, that trashy domestic disturbance in public. “I’m your fucking boyfriend! I’m not your…your racism librarian or a prop for your campaign or your secretary on your payroll, ready to clear my schedule because my boss wants to practice Spanish!” His voice faded. Tears gathered in his eyes like a bitch because, of course, this shit had to strike a nerve. He gritted his teeth and willed them away. “I just wanted to be your boyfriend.”

People were whispering. The doorman to the hotel was openly staring at them. Blitz turned away and headed for the closest parking garage.

“Where…Where are you going?!” Stolas called after him.

“Work!” Blitz shouted and stomped off, forgetting that he valeted the van and that Stolas had everyone’s coffee.

So he hid in the parking garage until Stolas went into the hotel. Then, he came back out and went to the valet so he could go get his much-needed caffeine.

Chapter Text

When Blitz picked up M&M without coffee or breakfast ready, Moxxie tried to get on his case. Joke was on him though, Moxxie got a case of a double middle finger in return. So they went first to the target’s house without caffeine, navigating rush hour traffic since all of everything had put them behind. While Moxxie set up surveillance and Millie checked on the overnight cams, Blitz went out to get cheap coffee and some gas station breakfast. The whole time Stolas was texting him stupid things; apologizing and asking to talk and asking to meet and platitudes that weren’t going to change anything.

And even though all his texts were worded nicely, it was almost like Stolas was doubling down on how he doesn’t look down on Blitz (even though he didn’t listen to him) and that maybe it really was a misunderstanding but that they’ll never know since he did not let Stolas get to the bottom of it in the coffee place.

“Turn your phone off, sir,” Moxxie said finally after he’d gotten back. “I am tired of hearing it ping every two minutes.”

Blitz switched it to vibrate with a heavy sigh, resisting the urge to text back the mean things that clawed at his throat. “What’ve we got, Mills?” Blitz said into the walkie-talkie before lifting his finger off the button.

“Heya, boss,” Millie responded right away, too chipper to be uncaffeinated. “Nada. Think he’s still asleep on the couch.”

“Alright,” Blitz responded. “Come back for coffee.”

“Si!”

Blitz turned the volume down on the walkie and set it up on the dash. His phone buzzed in his pocket again. Blitz frowned and rubbed his forehead, but picked up the binoculars and looked through them, staring into an empty house, instead of even seeing what Stolas had to say this time.

“So,” Moxxie said slowly. “How is Stolas?”

“Fine,” Blitz replied sharply.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Moxxie nod his head like a dick. “Good. Good. So nothing troubling happened?”

“Jesus Christ.” Blitz threw down the binoculars. “Okay. He pulled some dick move in the place—The barista was racist which is whatever but Stolas didn’t believe me when I said that and then he wanted me to explain racism to him. Like, bitch, I’m not explaining—”

The door to the van opened and Millie stuck her head in. “Coffee?” she asked with her hand out.

Moxxie passed it over to her and took the opportunity to tell Blitz: “This is why you said you were swearing off white men.”

“Qué pasa?” Millie asked, climbing into the van. She slid the door shut.

“Blitz and Stolas broke up.”

“We did not break up. We’re barely dating,” Blitz snapped. “He said some bullshit about racism not being that bad—”

“Carajo?!” “—and I walked my tight ass away so he’s been texting nonstop.”

“Uh huh,” Moxxie drawled as if he didn’t quite believe Blitz could not be at fault for something. Fuck him. Fine. Roughly pulling his phone from his pocket, Blitz put the password in with the screen opening automatically to the messages from Stolas.

“Here, you nosy bitches.” He turned the phone over to Millie in the backseat so they could get off his ass. Not for advice.

She leaned forward over the center console so her and Moxxie could put their heads together like the one-unit couple they were as they scrolled through, both somehow reading at the same pace. Frowning, she sipped her coffee.

Blitz’s chest felt tight and he figured that maybe there should be some context so he started to explain about the breakfast place and the argument in the street.

Moxxie raised a brow as he spoke, but didn’t pull his eyes away from the phone. When they had apparently finished, Millie handed the phone back and shot a look at Moxxie, who gave her a look back. Then, Millie shook her head ever so slightly ‘no’ and Moxxie rolled her eyes.

Leaning forward, Blitz waved his hands between them, breaking their line of sight. “If you’re gonna ‘eye’ me, it better be eye-fucking and not whatever this eye-talking about me is.”

Moxxie sucked his teeth, but said in his most annoying voice, “We should get back to work.”

“No. Tell me.”

“We didn’t say anything,” Moxxie responded (like a bitch) with a smug little grin. Millie was watching the back and forth, sucking down the rest of her coffee like all she needed was some popcorn.

“What were you eye-fucking each other about then?” Blitz insisted. His phone buzzed again. He ignored it.

“It doesn’t matter.” Moxxie started to get up, but Blitz caught him by the shoulder and shoved him back down into the passenger seat.

“Dime.”

While Moxxie moaned and groaned about how Blitz was supposed to treat employees, Millie said, “We just don’t wanna say anything and then y’all two get together again.”

Blitz sputtered, “I-It’s not…I said we didn’t break-up.”

Staring into his own frappuccino, Moxxie muttered, “Well maybe you should.”

“Fuck you!” Blitz yelled.

“See?!” Moxxie exclaimed like he was tired of Blitz’s shit when it was only 9 a.m. and Blitz had barely given him any shit at all.

“Stop gossiping about my personal shit then,” Blitz huffed. As Moxxie practically fumed, he continued, “Get to work. Moxx, you’re in the field ‘cause I don’t wanna see your face right now. Millie, I dunno. Get us some concrete evidence that this lazy asshole is just lazy and not injured.”

The two hopped out of the van without another word. Blitz waited a few minutes before he pulled out his phone and looked at the new messages Stolas sent. There were five more already.

Stolas: I would hate for this to come between us. I know I acted poorly though this misunderstanding is not so big in the grand scheme of things. Maybe one day we will look back and laugh. Still, I have reflected on my behavior and I would like the opportunity to make it up to you. You left your breakfast and coffee. Perhaps I could bring some to you?

Stolas: Or we could get dinner this evening?

Stolas: Also, I want to say I recognize that you do not want to educate me on this topic, but I was hoping you could give me a starting point so that I may better see the error of my ways.

Stolas: I do hope that you will still come to the suite even if you do not wish to talk about our argument.

Stolas: Please respond. I miss you.

Wow. Loco.

Blitz should totally ghost him.

Which is exactly what he did. While Millie disappeared to who knew where, Moxxie returned briefly to drop the camera in the van and went to knock on neighbors doors. He pretended to be part of a landscaping business, asking neighbors if they needed service and who might mow their target’s lawn when they inevitably turned him down.

Blitz kept an eye on the guy, who finally woke up around noon and went to the bathroom for an hour. Millie finally returned around then and hopped right up to the guy’s house, knocking on the door. She had swiped some outfit that he didn’t recognize with a bright blue t-shirt and had acquired a clipboard.

Knocking on the door, she chatted with their target. Blitzø lifted the walkie, but didn’t say anything. Usually, they were hands off with targets. This was risky. After a few moments, Millie wrote a few things on her clipboard and then handed the man a slip. She waved to him as she walked down the driveway and walked next door where she knocked on that door too and spoke to the woman there.

Lifting the binoculars, Blitz read the back of her shirt Fancy Fitness. Where the fuck had she gotten that shirt from? Mills never went there on purpose (Blitz had snuck in a few times). The place was for rich fucks. Every single one of the chains had saunas and hot tubs and…

Catching on, Blitz called Moxxie over the phone and told him to take a walk down the street so no one saw him getting back in the van. Then, he texted Millie the intersection to meet him after she’d picked them up some lunch.

Stolas continued to text and even left another voicemail. Blitz blocked him so he would get the hint.

Millie was halfway down the street when their target ambled out of his house and got into his beat up pickup. Blitz snapped a few photos. Then, the guy drove off. Five minutes passed before Blitz turned on the van’s engine and he drove the opposite way, first picking up Moxxie and then Millie.

It was sub sandwiches again.

As he chowed down on some meatballs, wiping his fingers on his jeans as he drove to the nearest Fancy Fitness, Blitz said, “You better have kept the receipt.” Millie turned over two receipts: one from the sub place and the other from Fancy Fitness.

Fuck a duck. She’d spent $300 on a massage and personal training session for today. They found the guy’s pickup outside and Millie hung back in the van as he and Moxxie bought their own day passes.

Sure that meant they were going into the gym with Blitz’s smelly workout clothes from the back of the van, but it was better than wearing jeans and being immediately out of place. They bought their day passes and then went into the men’s locker room.

Their target was not there. Then again, he had left the house in a beater and athletic shorts. Maybe he wasn’t going to change.

“This is so disgusting,” Moxxie murmured for the tenth time, holding the borrowed shirt away from his body.

Dramatic puta.

“Wait here,” Blitz said, leaving Moxxie by the lockers and heading over to the showers. By the sinks with the hair dryers, there were test soaps and sprays. Blitz grabbed a handful and brought it back around to where Moxxie still stood by the lockers.

Good boy.

Without warning, he doused Moxxie in a few of the perfumes despite how he protested and hissed at Blitz to ‘stop that’.

When he was done, Blitz set the rest of the bottles on the bench beside them. “Well, you smell better now.”

“I smell like a perfume factory,” Moxxie said flatly.

Blitz snapped his fingers in Moxxie’s face. “Better than my asshole. Now, you go upstairs and I’ll take down here.”

Moxxie hummed his agreement, but said, “You are breaking up with him, aren’t you?”

This wasn’t even Moxxie’s fucking business. Just because Moxxie had the perfect relationship didn’t mean everyone got one of those. Blitz was one of those weathered fuckers that wasn’t gonna get one of those.

But Moxxie’s perceptive ass must’ve read his face because he said, “Even you deserve someone who respects your opinion on something you clearly know more about.”

Which, fuck him, so Blitz said, “What’s that mean? ‘Even you?’”

Moxxie dragged a hand over his face. “You know what I am trying to say.”

“No, I don’t,” Blitz said petulantly. “And it doesn’t matter because I already blocked him.”

Instead of saying something about how blocking someone was immature, Moxxie said, “Good. It did not seem like he would listen to reason anyway.”

Meirda. Now Blitz was gonna have to go back and unblock Stolas’s ass and tell him exactly where to stick his white man attitude. “Let’s just go.”

They ended up getting their guy, which was the best part of the day. Moxxie snapped pictures of him working out with the personal trainer, lifting weights, and running on the treadmill. Blitz got pics of him swimming and his ass in the stretching in the sauna—which he kinda fucked up by leaving the flash on on his phone.

So they’d made a hasty retreat, dashing out of the doors to their van. Always ready, Millie spotted them and started it up, throwing the side door open as she put the thing in gear. They were leaping into the van as Millie got photos of the guy chasing them down.

While they drove back to the motel, Moxxie uploaded the photos and sent them to the insurance agency, who responded almost immediately that that was all they would be needing and to send in any outstanding receipts.

Which meant they didn’t have to stay one more night in the shitty hotel/back of the van. They headed back home and Blitz gave M&M the next two days off. After dropping them off, he only stopped by the office long enough to put up the ‘By Appointment Only’ sign for the next two days.

And it was a long next two days. They booked one more job (to stalk a stalker apparently) and two emails came in for bounties in the state so they’d be busy when they got back to it. But what exhausted him was the fact that he had to screen Stolas’s call, which was not blocked on office phone. So Blitz had to go back to the office and block his number there.

A few hours after he’d returned home and kicked his feet up on the couch, Stolas’s office phone number called. Blitz ended up blocking that on his cell and then going to the office again to block it there too.

Grumbling about how he should charge Stolas for the wasted gas, Blitz settled back on the couch. As he watched the fifteenth episode of House Hunters, he remembered he still had to talk to Stolas again out of spite so he drafted a text back, deciding that once Stolas finally stopped trying to contact him, then Blitz would unblock him, send his message, and then block him again.

It was a flawless plan with flawless logic.

Chapter Text

Except for Wednesday.

Blitz was in his office, planning how to divide up the assignments while Millie and Moxxie were in the reception area manning the desk together—because they were joined at the hip. It helped that the desk at reception had another computer for Moxxie to look up all the online info on their targets to give them a starting place. That way Millie could focus on the gear they’d need after pulling the dossiers from the local police stations.

Most of their bounties were small-time criminals, not even on FBI radar. Low risk, low reward. It used to be the tits mcgee but a bunch of internet sleuths and online reward tiplines were fucking up his business.

Blitz looked over the copy of the dossier Millie had given him. The first was a man in his white dude in his 40s, who was wanted for skipping on a $5,000 bail on a DUI—which should be too easy. The other was a skinhead who was somehow out on $10,000 bail on their second domestic violence offense.

Man, Blitz was hoping that they could do disguises for this one. He fucking loved dressing up.

From his door, which was cracked open to make sure M&M never got too handsy, he heard the chime of the door opening and then immediately Millie went, “No! No! Vete!”

She sounded pissed too. Her chair squeaked as she got up so Blitz slid off his own chair and stood, expecting it to be some disgruntled old target. Silently opening his desk drawer, he pulled out his Glock which was always loaded with a few 9mms.

Only to hear Stolas’s bitchass voice. “I come in peace. Truly.”

Hijo de puta.

Plastic crinkled and Millie said, “No. He doesn’t want to see you.”

Another chair rattled as Moxxie said, “She’s right, sir. Go home.”

“I-I do not understand. It was just a misunderstanding.”

“Ay!” Millie sounded exasperated. “Escúchame, pendejo. He don’t wanna talk to you.” Her voice was steadily rising. Plastic crinkled again and something thumped on the desk. “You didn’t listen. You dismissed him.”

Blitz made sure the safety was still on and slid his Glock back in his drawer, ready to interrupt if he had to. Fuck, he really didn’t want to though. Blitz had the resolve of a noodle. He was all firm until he met boiling water aka Stolas’s beautiful ass.

“I apologized,” Stolas insisted.

Surprisingly, it was Moxxie that replied, “You want to be forgiven without acknowledging you did anything wrong.”

Millie asked, “You really think being called a ‘DoorDash Driver’ isn’t racist?”

“I think—”

“Eeeerrrr,” Millie made a loud beeping noise like the wrong answer on a game show. “What you think doesn’t matter, cabron. Not unless you been called one. You ever been called one?”

“W-Well,” Stolas stuttered.

“Well, what? Huh? What about your friends?” Millie asked. “No? But you know better than him what racism is? Por qué? Everyone listens to you in meetings? You’re your daddy’s son?”

That was probably far enough. He walked toward his door when Millie shouted, “No salgas de esa oficina, B!”

“Por qué no?” he shouted back, already knowing her answer.

“Porque se hace lo que yo digo!” she shouted and she’d drag his ass back in that office and lock him in there if he tried to leave. So he stood close to the door and listened.

“Blitz?” Stolas asked.

Millie made a hissing noise at him.

Moxxie added—because he had to add shit: “It’s for your own good.”

“He blocked me,” Stolas explained, probably to Millie.

“Wow,” Moxxie said with his whole cunt. “It’s almost like he doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Y punto,” Blitz mumbled to himself.

“Why would he?” Millie asked. “First, you try to date him in secret while you’re still married and still in the closet. Then, you argue with him—in public—and somehow expect him to explain to you a topic that you didn’t even want to hear five minutes ago?”

“Not to mention,” Moxxie said, “The fact that you bombarded him with text messages while he was working and continued to call even after he had not answered, and now you’re showing up at his workplace?”

Stolas sighed heavily enough that Blitz could hear it. “Would you give this to him, please?”

Neither Moxxie nor Millie said anything.

“Thank you both,” Stolas said. “Your words have been very enlightening.”

After the front door clicked shut, Blitz pushed his office door open a little more. “Can I come out now?”

Millie grunted in the affirmative so Blitz stepped out. A gift basket wrapped in plastic sat on the desk. As he got closer, he could see it was a generic chocolate basket with fancy brands that he’d never heard of and never eaten. Well, at least it wasn’t something like a taco basket.

Although…

Tacos sounded good.

Millie sidled up close to him and Blitz unwrapped the silver twist tie at the top. The plastic was loud under his fingertips.

“Want me to cut his tires?” she asked.

“Nah.” Blitz pulled out a candy bar and offered it to her. “Would be more of a hassle than it’s worth.”

She unwrapped it and bit off a huge piece.

Moxxie peered at the basket suspiciously before plucking out something that said it was infused with espresso from Colombia in it. “You should get a restraining order.”

Blitz snorted and unwrapped his own piece, which looked kinda like a stamp. The chocolate was deep, dark. Almost black. “Oh yeah, the Mexicano that stole from one of the wealthiest men in the city wants a restraining order because Mr. Moneybags won’t stop following him around and giving him gift baskets.” He snapped off a piece with his canines and gagged almost immediately at the sharp, dry flavor. “Bleh. What kinda chocolate is this?”

“70% dark,” Moxxie replied, reading from his phone. “Letterpress sells—”

“Don’t care. And anyway, it’s done with Stolas.” Blitz chucked the open bar back in the basket. “What did you find about that fucker with DUI?”

It was a few days later when he flopped down on the couch of his shabby apartment and pulled out his phone that he realized Stolas had emailed him. The rest of that day had been spent tracking down easy money—DUI bitch was at his favorite bar down the street from his house. He didn’t even put up a fight when they brought him in.

The next day was used to tail the domestic violence bastard. They tried his home, his mom’s, his brother’s, his old job all for nothing. Pendejo was staying at the home of the same girl he’d assaulted, hiding in her fucking attic when they first knocked on her door. But the black eye was an immediate giveaway.

It took another day of staking out the house to find that the puta was up in the attic. So, yeah, they had to lure him out because Blitzø wasn’t getting arrested for breaking and entering again, and having to deal with the police chief.

Fuckin’ Asmodeus hated him.

So, after they caught and wrestled the motherfucker into the station, Blitzø was ready to take a month off. On the couch, he’d rolled over onto his back with his phone above his head and decided to do a swipe through of the emails he’d missed to make sure there wasn’t anything that needed immediate attention.

There, buried in his inbox from a few days back, was an email from Goetia Industries and Blitz thought that it was definitely a bill from them, trying to collect on the debt that Blitz racked up.

But, no.

Hello Blitz,

I am writing you one last time in an effort to let you know that you were right as were your employees. Their frank speech allowed me to better understand where I have been mistaken. I am sorry for not respecting your boundaries and continuing to message you, especially during working hours. Taking some more time to think on the matter, I have begun searching online. I have looked into this thing called White Privilege, which I am ashamed to say that I do have. I am sure there is so much more that I am missing. Unidos US has been a fantastic resource in the quantity of information. It makes me wonder how I had not noticed any of this before.

Did you know equity and equality are two separate things and we should not be striving for equality because that still does not take into account the oppressive and systemic racism in our society? The mandatory sensitivity training never covered these topics. I will be sure to speak with our HR team about reviewing the policies and training.

All of this to say, I have also reached out to a few experts on the matter and I have several meetings next week on the subject of race in the workplace as well as racism at large. I will also be attending an appointment with an expert on interracial relationships. I am certain they will be an invaluable resource. You could accompany me if you wish though I do not want to pressure you.

I am very sorry for how I treated you both before this weekend and afterward. It was never my intention.

Yours,

Stolas

Nope.

Blitz let his phone drop to the couch cushion and turned on the TV instead. He was not dealing with that shit right then. He had been (somewhat) successfully avoiding his feelings about Stolas, and had not even unblocked him.

Focus.

He picked a random app, eeny meeny miny moe’d it and found that someone had been watching a bunch of romantic comedies on his account. Probably Moxxie.

Fucking up all his recommendations so he had to sift through all pictures of idiots in love to try to find something worthwhile and, of course, Stolas wanted to talk to him again. Of course Stolas hadn’t left him alone.

Flipping through the channels idly, Blitz went to the least-sexy genre: horror. Spiritual horror was too close to ghosts and hauntings and shit that legit terrified him, but he could do murder and jumpscares.

Shit, he could probably take on half of those murders, unarmed, and win. So he turned on The Descent, an older movie that he never saw when it came out, about some scary shit in a cave. At least that was what it was supposed to be about. It started with some Final Destination shit where a rod flies off the back of a truck and kills this lady’s husband and daughter.

He immediately hit the Home button on the remote and stared at the main screen, heart thumping wildly.

Fuck car crashes. Fuck that bullshit. Fuck him for not being over it.

Blitz rolled so he faced the scratchy back of the couch and dug one hand in the crack of the cushion until he found his phone. Unlocking it, he saw he was still in his emails section and Stolas’s name stared back at him.

Stolas…

Should he respond to the email? Words were just words at the end of the day. It meant nada, or if Stolas really did follow through on what he said it might’ve just been performative. Or out of guilt.

Christo, Blitz did a fuck ton of things out of guilt after—

No.

No. No. No.

Focus on something easier like Stolas. Blitz didn’t have to respond to the email, but what was the harm in unblocking him?

Maybe Mr. Moneybags would send another text with the details of that therapy—not that he was planning to go.

But, at least he would know he was wanted somewhere. Someone wanted him. He hadn’t ruined everything.

A week later, Moxxie sent him a link while they were in the office. Usually, the idiota did it to get Blitz to do something mind-numbing like a link to the IRS website to remind him to file the business taxes or Amazon links to spy gadgets that were way out of budget.

Millie was the one that sent better stuff like info on the latest keychain turned nightstick turned flashlight, or handcuffs that they could use on targets but were also comfortable enough to be taken home and used in the bedroom.

But, nope, Moxxie had actually come out on top this time. It was a link to an article with the headline: CEO’s Son Enacts Policy to Hire BIPOC Candidates. The photo that loaded with the link’s headline was of Stolas in his usual fancy suit standing at a podium. On his left lapel was a gay flag pin in all its green glory.

Lipservice, probably.

Maybe the company added some shit like they needed to interview a candidate of color for every position or something.

Another part of him stared at how good Stolas looked, the line of his jaw and the curl of hair that was a little too long by his ear.

Blitz clicked the link at the same time that Moxxie knocked on the doorframe of his office.

Without waiting for Blitz to answer, he leaned in and asked, “Have you seen it?”

“You just sent it. Give me a minute.”

He scanned the piece once and realized he must’ve read wrong so he went back and read it more carefully. But nope. Blitz was right the first time. “Is he fucking serious?”

“That’s what I said!” Millie exclaimed, popping into his office as well.

Moxxie held up his phone, pointing to some line that Blitz couldn’t make out. Not that it mattered. “Is this even legal?”

“It’s a private company,” Blitz answered, reading over the text on his own phone again. “And he’s not discriminating.”

Half. Half of the candidates to a position needed to be people of color before they would consider hiring anyone.

Moxxie was back on his phone. “There’s a lot of open positions too. Even some high-level ones…Wait.” He darted off back into the reception area and Blitz could hear him click-clacking rapidly on the keyboard. Millie came over to hover by his desk, leaning over his shoulder as Blitz googled for other articles on the topic.

There wasn’t much. The press release had just been issued that morning, but at least one newsroom had been able to get him for an interview. Apparently, Stolas had also opened an office within the HR sector of the company for DEI initiatives with their first task to restructure the training.

Millie pointed to another article. “Ese,” she said and tapped the link for him. They had just barely begun to read something about Stolas’s background with the company and where he went to college (Harvard, obviously) when Moxxie shouted from the other room.

“Are you kidding me?!”

Blitz slid off his chair and Millie was already headed for the door. Moxxie turned the screen in their direction so they could see it. It was just some old asshole’s LinkedIn page.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Blitz asked.

Moxxie pointed to the last bit of information. The guy had recently left Goetia Industries. Moxxie then clicked over to another tab with another guy that had ended his job there, and then another. And another.

Standing by the desk, Millie ruffled her boyfriend’s hair. “You think it's in protest?”

Moxxie inclined his head slightly. “Maybe some, but these guys aren’t giving interviews. Not only had they been with the company almost from the start, but the positions they are leaving are well-paid. I don’t have any evidence yet, but they could have been fired.”

“Por que?”

Moxxie half-turned in his chair toward them. “Usually executives of this caliber have a mountain of buried HR complaints.” Moxxie began to list on his fingers. “Harassment, sexism, racism, discrimination. All you need is one whistleblower. Look at what happened in the music industry.”

Blitz scoffed and folded his arms. “It’s the tech industry. You really think these guys were doing some sort of fucked up race-play freak off?”

“It’s business,” Moxxie insisted. “A multimillion dollar business and most of these men were hired before the 80s. Paimon founded Goetia Industries before the Civil Rights Act was passed.”

“It could be a coincidence,” Blitz said stubbornly.

Moxxie returned to facing his screen. “Maybe.”

This was too much. Blitz took one step back and then another, slipping back into his office unnoticed by the couple who were in some sort of conversation.

Back at his desk, his phone still glowed right there on top with the article about Stolas. The info was dry. Stolas married his high school sweetheart before he went to Harvard for undergrad. He graduated at the top of his class in business law and then went to USC at Berkeley to get his MBA. He joined his father’s firm directly after as some sort of analyst, rising through the ranks quickly to become Chief Analytics Officer. Right before he filed for divorce, he had taken the role of Chief Operating Officer in preparation to take over the company when his father retired.

He had done nothing particularly noteworthy for basically three decades and then all of a sudden he comes out as gay, divorces his wife, upends the company…

It had to be a mid-midlife crisis.

Yeah, that was what it was.

The next day, the news had gathered a bit of steam. A board member had resigned, one of the executives that quit gave an interview about how the policy change will never be able to be enacted, and an investor was no longer working with Goetia Industries though it wasn’t clear whether they pulled their investment or they were bought out.

Three days in, someone found pictures of Stolas clubbing in his 20s when he was at USC and sold a story to a tabloid that Stolas had regularly cheated on his wife with men all throughout their marriage. That, according to a leaked company email, he recently came out of the closet. The public dragged him, read him for filth in the comments and in other shorter stories.

Blitz was about two seconds away from going to the tabloid’s office and choking out whatever editor decided to do that. Stolas deserved to cheat on the bitch that hit him. He was literally on his way there when he got a call from Moxxie, who said he wasn’t coming in until late. Which left Blitz high and dry for the target they needed to photograph, who only went to cheat on her husband at noon on Wednesdays.

By the end of the business day, Stolas gave a press conference on the steps of the front of Goetia Industries and all of IMP watched it, crowding around the computer monitor. In an immaculate suit, Stolas addressed reporters and answered that yes, he was gay and yes, he did come out via email.

He said he took responsibility for cheating on Stella and made no mention of what that bitch did to him. Which was absolutely infuriating.

They continued to ask him questions about the backlash the company was getting in the press because of his scandal, because of losing investors and executives. Stolas just kept saying the company was moving forward with the rest of the world, that the changes were long overdue, that there needed to be equity and accountability.

Shit, the man looked tired. Hot stage lights washed out his face. His pale skin was dusted with make-up because the dark circles under his eyes were almost painfully obvious. He stood so straight that it looked like he was a marionette with a stick up his ass.

Then, he revealed that Goetia Industries would be partnering with Act 1 Group, some fancy Black-owned staffing firm in the tech field and that they were in talks with “certain Bay area businesses that share their progressive mindset.” That seemed to get the crowd buzzing.

As Stolas was answering questions about that, a reporter interrupted to ask if he had a comment on the leaked documents about the executives who recently resigned.

Stolas blinked, suddenly more aware and awake than he had been during the whole thing. His mouth dropped away from its thin line, opening in a small ‘o’ shape before he closed it again. Schooling his face, Stolas cleared his throat and asked, “Excuse me?”

The reporter off-screen said, “The documentation showing that Mr. Wolfram had been reprimanded for sexual harassment 62 different times in his 34-year career or the allegations of Anderson misusing company funds to solicit lesbian sex workers during office—”

Someone else called out. “Neilson and Smith’s four racial discrimination complaints that were settled out of court with signed NDAs.”

Stolas was leaning over the podium, squinting. “Where…Where are you finding this information?”

“The Times,” one person shouted at the same time someone else said, “Anonymous source.”

“Are you denying the allegations?”

“Do you have anything to say about Thomas Jackson and his ‘Tit List’?”

“Mierda.” Blitz couldn’t pull his eyes away from this train wreck on the screen. Moxxie was finally right.

Stolas stood stock still, frozen, staring at (presumably) a sea of reporter’s faces as if he were fixed on a single point. Voices kept asking questions and a few cameras flashed in his face.

“C’mon, bitch,” Blitz mumbled to himself.

“Is it safe to say you’re cleaning house?” someone asked.

Stolas jerked to life, turning to look in the direction of the voice. “You…”

The crowd fell silent.

Stolas’s eyes moved back and forth quickly, almost as if he were reading something. Slowly, he said, “Yes. You could say that, yes. As you know, I recently stepped into this position as COO and I became privy to more interpersonal information regarding employees and management.”

Slowly, the tiniest bit of a smile worked its way onto his face and he pulled himself even straighter. “I wish to do things differently than my father—very differently, and that sort of…behavior will not be tolerated within the company so I asked certain employees to resign effective immediately.”

“Do you know the source of the leak?”

“Why not go to the press with this information?”

“Is this an attempt by the company to withhold information from the consumer?”

Stolas responded, “No. No. I simply…Many of these complaints and allegations are very old and the complainants no longer work for us. Attempting to ascertain what truly happened may be impossible now and I did not want to make anyone relive these events. Myself and the parties involved decided it best to part ways instead of opening an investigation.”

“Is there anyone else who will be resigning?”

“Have you reached out to the complainants?”

“How do you plan to handle the legal ramifications of this?”

“I-I…” Stolas stuttered and took a step back. “I apologize, but that is all the time I have. Thank you.” He turned sharply on his heel and hurried back to the double doors which were already being pulled open by security.

“Que Carajo,” Millie mumbled.

The segment ended as did the live stream. Millie placed a hand on Blitz’s shoulder. “He did okay,” she said like she was comforting him. Like he needed comforting.

Moxxie tapped his pen on the desk idly, clicking through to The Times article Goetia Industries.

“Fucking wow,” Blitz said, stepping slightly away from Millie’s hand, ‘cause what else were you supposed to say for that. “Good for him, I guess.”

Millie nodded. “It does seem like he’s really trying.”

Yeah, but for what purpose? To suck up to Blitz? That couldn’t be it. Stolas hadn’t contacted him again. (And he’d been checking his texts almost religiously.) What if it wasn’t all for show? Like…the shit he was doing didn’t have jack to do with Blitz. For all Stolas knew, Blitz wasn’t even paying attention to any of it.

Moxxie clicked off The Times article and then went to search for similar articles. Blitz raised a brow. For someone who liked to be right, Moxxie sure was being quiet.

Not even an ‘I told you’ out of that mouth of his.

So he kicked the side of Moxxie’s chair, spinning it around and slammed his boot between Moxxie’s legs. The shorter man jolted, widening his thighs and scooting back in the seat even though Blitz hadn’t even so much as grazed him.

Blitz leaned forward, narrowing his eyes, and Moxxie avoided his gaze, leaning away as far as he could. He watched the other man’s chest rise and fall in even practiced breaths.

Millie started to step forward and Blitz threw out a hand to stop her. It took another minute of full silence before Moxxie broke.

“They deserved it,” he said, pointing to the screen fiercely. “Those assholes are trying to be mad that he wants to do something good for the company. They outed him. They brought up his personal business.

“Oh, you absolute nosy puta,” Blitz crooned with a smile. “Look at the cojones on you.”

Millie bounced on her toes, sweeping in to wrap her arms around Moxxie’s neck. “My hero. Mi Señor Sotomayor.”

Blitz clapped him on the back. “Bueno, bitch.”

Chapter Text

Stolas still hadn’t texted Blitz—even after he unblocked him. It had been a week since that press conference and, while the articles kept coming, Stolas did not appear on television again. Paimon did, but Blitz didn’t give a shit about that old piece of ass.

With the dam burst, all kinds of stuff came out of the woodwork. Women and people of color whose NDAs had expired—or who didn’t give a fuck—started to give interviews about the management and discrimination at Goetia Industries. Very few pieces seemed to even mention that this was part of a larger issue in the industry and that Stolas’s company wasn’t the unusual one.

So Blitz found himself taking a few long lunch breaks, casually walking down to the parking lot and getting in the van. An hour or so later, he would come back with coffees and ignore when Moxxie pointed out that those came from the gas station on the corner.

‘Cause it wasn’t like he was doing anything illegal on his lunch break and it was his lunch break so he could do whatever he wanted.

Back in the office, Blitz could hear Millie and Moxxie talking quietly to each other so he stuck his head out his office door, spotting them by the copier. If they were quiet, it was either the prelude to making out or some gossip. Millie had her hand on Moxxie’s arm, running her palm up and down it soothingly.

“…being an asshole,” Moxxie said a little loud.

“Mmhmm,” Millie hummed.

Uh. Excuse him?

“He won’t even—” Moxxie turned slightly, catching Blitz’s eyes in the doorway. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

Blitz threw the door the rest of the way open, strolling out with his hands in his pockets. “Something to say?”

Moxxie cocked his hip and sucked in a deep breath. “Yes, actually,” he said, lifting his chin, “You cannot continue to spy on him.”

“Wha—” Blitz floundered, raising his hands reflexively. What was this sudden personal attack? “What are you…Have you been tailing me?!”

“Surveillance is literally our job!” Moxxie’s eye twitched. “How can you be so bad at it?!”

“Boys.” Millie outstretched her hands, making a calm down motion.

“You’re not supposed to be spying on me!”

“You’re not supposed to be spying on your ex and eating pints of ice cream in the front seat of the van, blasting Casual by Chapelle Roan during lunch!” Moxxie shot back.

“Boys,” Millie said louder and physically stepped between them, making Blitz have to lean sideways to continue shouting at Moxx.

“He’s not my ex! We were barely dating!”

“Then why are you parked outside his office with binoculars?” Moxxie looked like he was about to burst, all red in the fucking face. “Why can’t you quit while you’re ahead?! Are you trying to make him remember that we owe him thousands of dollars?”

Blitz dragged both hands down his face, groaning obnoxiously. “Oh, is that what this is about? Money? Well don't worry. I’ll continue to whore myself out if that’s the case.”

Millie attempted to drag Moxxie away toward the kitchenette.

“You’re impossible!” Moxxie shouted as he was shoved in there.

Blitz stalked back to his office and slammed the door. A moment later, it opened again. Blitz already had his stapler hefted in his hand, ready to throw it at the door when he realized it was Millie.

“No,” he said to her from his place behind his desk.

She entered and shut the door behind her.

Pushing back in his chair, he sat straighter. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Her mouth quirked up. “It’s okay if you still have feelings for him.”

Blitz had half a mind to fight her. “No one said shit about feelings.” He spat the last word. He felt as if every hair was standing on end, irritated with how she could just come in here and say things to him and…

Still by the door, Millie watched him, tracking each of his movements with a smile on her face like she knew something.

So he held up both middle fingers, staring back at her. “I’m just checking on him.”

She nodded slightly, but kept silent. It was always a battle of wills with her. The longer she was quiet, the more Blitz felt the words crawl up his throat. His worry had clawed at his breath for days and everything in his stomach had knotted together tighter in his stomach as the week had dragged along.

“His office light hasn’t been on,” Blitz broke finally.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Blitz deflated, turning to look out the narrow window in his office. The blinds were stuck halfway up so he had a great view of the alley and the brick building next door. Rubbing his knuckles into the bridge of his nose, he said, “I dunno what to do.”

He heard Millie’s boots make a move, rounding the desk.

“Y?” she asked.

Blitz shrugged even though he knew. He liked Stolas. A lot. “Y nothing.”

What if his dad had fired him? What if Stolas was taken by a hitman paid off by angry ex-executives? What if his wife had done something to him that—

“Then let’s go say hi.”

Blitz groaned. “Mills.”

There was no way it was that simple, no way he could just walk into the Goetia Industries office and—

Oh, fuck.

Millie had slung him over her shoulder and began to manhandle him out of his office. He clawed at the door frame, trying to keep himself in the room, but Millie was strong as shit and he didn’t want to rip his fingernails off.

“Fuck you!” Blitz shouted, flailing so maybe she would drop his ass.

Which, of course, had Moxxie bounding right into reception to see what was up. “What’s going on here?” he asked, sounding smug.

“Car keys, baby,” Millie said, simply hooking her other arm around his legs to pin him down.

And then Blitz was hustled into the backseat of his own van like a rolled up rug. Millie hit the road before he was able to get free from Moxxie, but it was still residential streets so he could tuck and roll. Road rash would be a bitch to handle but…He yanked on the door handle. It didn’t budge.

“You puta perrita!” He whirled on Moxxie. “The child locks?! Really?”

Moxxie shrugged like he wasn’t sentencing Blitz to his worst nightmare of honest communication. “We’re both really tired of making sure you don’t do something stupid.”

“I’m not gonna—Fine, go to his office.”

From the front seat, Millie hummed. “You said he wasn’t at his office.”

Mierda. No. Not his home.

And all Millie had to do was punch Stolas’s name into the GPS because Blitz was so down bad for that beautiful asshole that he’d programmed Stolas’s work and home addresses in. He half-stood in his van and leaned into the front seat.

“You don’t even like him!” Blitz shouted at her as she opened the GPS, embarrassed that his voice had pitched up to a crazy octave like a very gay teenager. The van began to drive over the caution lines.

Moxxie tugged the back of his black jacket, pulling Blitz back into the seat. “Let her focus on driving,” he said calmly.

“But you don’t like him!” Blitz repeated. “Why do you care?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Moxxie groaned and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We don’t care about him.”

“Nada,” Millie added.

Moxxie continued, “We care about you, idiot.”

“But…” No one should care about him, especially not them, not this much. He was an asshole. Half the time, he couldn’t pay them on time. He bitched and moaned about Moxxie all the time. He would eventually drag them down. Clenching his fists, he tried to make the words come out, tried not to look on the outside the panicked way that he felt inside.

“He’s trying to make amends,” Moxxie said, oblivious to it. “Genuinely trying.”

From up front, Millie snorted and mumbled something like she disagreed but she didn’t say more and Millie wasn’t shy about her opinions. She’d come out with it sooner or later.

“I don’t wanna talk to him,” Blitz said, changing tactics. “And he doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Okay,” Moxxie said and Blitz could literally hear the eye roll.

“Check my messages.” Blitz held out his phone, shaking it in Moxxie’s face. “He hasn’t texted me since—”

“We literally told him not to,” Moxxie said.

Millie cut in. “We don’t have to talk to him, B. We can stake the place out, see if he’s there. Moxxie can connect to his wifi and check his emails—”

Blitz folded his arms and shoved his boot in the back of the driver’s seat. “We’re not invading his privacy,” Blitz said stubbornly.

Moxxie yanked his boot down. “Oh, like you were doing?” he asked.

The road Millie was on narrowed, going from a highway to two-lane. Blitz felt like throwing a tantrum, spouting out anything that even made the slightest amount of sense, only to fall silent as they turned into an upscale neighborhood—the professional in him flickering on, checking the curb for garbage cans that may hold evidence, any cameras that may capture their coming and going, and the people out walking their dog.

As they got closer, Blitz said, “Park here…Here, Mills.”

But she kept driving.

Getting to his feet again, he leaned over and pointed to the curb, insisting, “We can’t risk him seeing the van. We’ll get closer on foot. So swing around.”

And she did. She swung around right in Stolas’s driveway.

“Fuck are you doing!” Blitz hissed at her as if Stolas could already hear him. His heart hammered in his throat. He felt like there was stuffing in his ears.

“You’re such a messy gay. Es adorable,” Millie said with a wink and then she leaned on the horn.

Blitz dropped to the floor of the van, plastering himself there. Moxxie just stared at him incredulously, ignoring Blitz telling him to get down. “You don’t have to get back together with him, you know. Just talk.”

The van jerked as it was shifted into park and then there was the grinding of metal on metal as the driver’s side door opened. Blitz had half a mind to jump into the front seat and just fucking leave Millie there, but then Stolas would know he was there and know he ran away.

Like a maldito idiota.

Best thing he could do was wrangle Millie back in the van and drive off before Stolas answered the door. He moved up to a kneel and yanked on the passenger door again before remembering that Moxxie’s bitch ass had fucked it up.

As he was about to let Moxxie know every way Blitz was going to make him pay, the door opened and Millie stood there in a gravel driveway, grinning at him like they were going to a theme park.

“Vamos.” She reached into the van for him and he reeled back, only to see one of those fancy wooden doors open and Stolas step out into the sun with a hand shadowing his eyes from the late afternoon sun. In a robe and slippers, Stolas took one step down the front steps and paused, locking eyes with Blitz who still sat on his culo on the floor of the van.

Shit, Stolas looked good even with the dark circles under his eyes and his hair sticking out at odd angles. The tall twink clutched at his robe, holding it closed tighter. He watched as Stolas’s lips formed his name.

Dios, Blitz wanted to kiss him.

Chapter Text

After Blitz had been abandoned by his crew and left to fend for himself in the driveway of Stolas’s house, he just sort of kicked around gravel with the toe of his boot. He stared at the flecks of gray rock that bounded away and shoved in his pockets.

“Would you like to come inside?” Stolas asked, hovering by the door.

Blitz grunted, “Sure.”

As soon as Blitz stepped inside, he was slapped in the face with how different he and Stolas were. Stolas led him through the foyer and down a mas grande hallway with pristine walls and priceless artwork. Fuck, there was even a vase on a table with fresh flowers in it. Like, Blitz had seen the floorplans when he was doing recon on Stolas—what kind of private investigator would he be if he hadn’t. He knew there was a library on the first floor and a study on the second, which was different than the office on the third. There was a greenhouse in the back and a sunroom in the front, a formal dining room and a separate breakfast nook, five bedrooms, and an entertainment room.

The 2.5 million dollar home had a state-of-the-art kitchen and the latest smart home technology. Blitz knew the exact entrance and exit of every door and window. He knew the square-footage of the fucking fancy mother-in-law suite in the back.

But, for all that he knew, he’d never actually looked inside. He’d never seen how perfecto it was.

Mierda, Blitz didn’t belong here, following this god of a man.

Stolas wandered into a room—the breakfast room that faced the east to catch the rising sunlight—and motioned for Blitz to sit on a bench. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Water?”

“Uh…” Blitz wandered toward the table and collapsed into a fluffy bench seat, keeping his back to the wall. Honestly, he was surprised Stolas knew how to cook anything and hadn’t rung a bell to have some maid come running. In the corner, there was a sleek gray espresso machine. “Coffee?”

For a moment, Stolas fumbled the tea kettle which he’d been filling in the sink. “Y-Yes! Of course.”

Kettle set to the side, Stolas moved to the espresso machine and stood in front of it, blocking Blitz’s view of it. So he glanced out the window to his right and spotted the edge of the greenhouse, partially obscured by the rest of his massive house, surrounded by simple flowers that Blitz recognized from the vase. The afternoon cast shadows over the perfect manicured lawn.

Metal clinked on metal as Stolas tinkered. The comfortable quiet was broken when Stolas said, “I’m afraid I do not have many choices of beans nor am I entirely sure how to make the iced coffee you prefer.”

Yeah, from the clinking, Blitz was pretty sure Stolas didn’t know how to make any coffee. After two years as a barista, he was intimately familiar with the sound of an espresso machine. It had haunted some of his dreams. Groaning like the old man he was becoming, Blitz scooted out from behind the nook’s table and went over to see what Stolas was doing.

Which turned out to be filling the frothing cup with whole beans.

Blitz lifted his head to look inquisitively at Stolas, who gave him a tentative smile. They both looked back down at the cup of beans that Stolas held in both hands.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Blitz said as a matter of fact.

“I do not,” Stolas agreed.

Blitz almost laughed. Gently, he reached over and took the silver frothing cup away. He poured the beans out and into the grinder, setting it to run while he went to rinse out the cup. “Get me some milk?”

“Is oat okay?”

It would have to be.

Without needing to measure, Blitz poured a practiced amount of milk and turned on the espresso machine so the frothing wand would heat. As Blitz leveled and tamped and pressed, Stolas stood just a shade closer than was friendly, watching his hands move.

“You’ve done this before,” he said, raising his voice over the sound of Blitz frothing the milk.

As the steam hissed to an end, Blitz pulled the shot out and poured it into the mug Stolas had provided him. “Did it for two years,” he remarked.

Stolas blinked. “Why did you stop? Did your machine break?”

Yeah. That was right on target for someone who owned a thousand dollar espresso machine and didn’t even know how to use it. Blitz deflated, not wanting to explain that he worked a minimum wage job well into his 20s, opting instead to focus on pouring the steamed milk. He’d long learned how to make foam art and preferred to foam little kittens. He was tracing the ears when he felt the silence shift as if the air around them had changed. Comfort gave way to something gloomy and tense. Clouds covered the sun and the light dimmed.

Joder.

He wanted to curl into himself. He wanted to pull out his phone and pretend as if he didn’t feel anything. He wanted to ignore the way he could feel Stolas’s eyes on him. Whatever judgemental shit was being thought, he wanted no part.

Or, worse, if not judgement, then pity.

As he finished pouring with a flourish, Blitz moved to put the milk cup in the sink, flicking on the water so that it could soak.

There was a shuffle behind him and the overhead light flickered on, overly bright. Shutting off the sink, Blitz took his coffee back to the nook. Stolas picked up the kettle. From over the top of his phone, Blitz watched furtively as Stolas made his tea, studied the hunch in his shoulders, the drag of his feet in his white slippers. Anxiously, the belt around his robe was untied and re-tied tighter, all the while he kept his back to Blitz.

Finally, when they both had their drinks, Stolas sat down across from him at the nook’s table, studying the grain of the wood. He cupped his mug in both hands and lifted it to his lips, which were chapped and cracked.

He hadn’t been taking care of himself.

Blitz set his own phone face down, his stomach turning over in knots. He tried to take a sip of his drink only to immediately burn himself and he jerked away. Era el tonto o… A few drops spilled over the rim of the mug, splattering on the table and down Blitz’s shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Stolas said, rising from his seat. “I should’ve warned you.” As if he’d even made the coffee. “I’ll get you a napkin.”

“It’s fine,” Blitz said, wiping his chin with the sleeve of his shirt. It was dark anyway, probably not even clean in the first place. Yup, that was a pizza stain on the hemline.

Mierda, when was the last time he had showered? Here he was judging the shit out of Stolas and Blitz probably hadn’t changed his underwear in a week.

Dios mio, he was groddy.

Stolas came back with a stack of napkins, but did not sit. “I should have offered you something. Can I…Would you like a snack? I’m afraid I don’t have much, but I could—”

“No,” Blitz cut him off, harsher than he meant. Bringing a hand to his face, he massaged his forehead, trying to smooth out the frown lines.

There was that silence again. Stolas fidgeted with his tea, stirring the small spoon, clinking it against the side of the tea cup and saucer.

Finally, when it all became unbearable, Blitz dropped his hand back to the table.

“Sorry,” he said at the same time Stolas did.

They both snapped their jaws closed, but Blitz recovered first. “What for?”

“I…So many things.” Stolas started to reach out, but then pulled back to trace the rim of his cup with his forefinger. “I can’t seem to stop saying the wrong thing to you. Everything I do inconveniences you.”

“It doesn’t.”

Stolas went on as if Blitz hadn’t spoken. “No matter how hard I try I cannot see the glaringly obvious privileges I have even when they are placed right in front of me.” He gestured to the espresso machine. “And the way I attempted to handle the beginning of our relationship, convincing myself that your use of my card was some sort of cat and mouse game when you legitimately needed the money—”

“Hey,” Blitz started, offended. “We didn’t need it.” Fuck, was Stolas wanting him to repay it now that they weren’t together?

The man was becoming more animated, gesturing across the table. “And then to try to persuade you to continue to be with me despite my own entanglement with my wife?”

“Stolas.”

Somehow, Stolas continued to talk despite chewing the shit out of his bottom lip. “Not to mention that disastrous morning date and the self-centered, single-minded focus during the resulting argument.”

Blitz groaned loud enough that Stolas shut up. “A dios, you’re doing it right now.”

“Excuse me?”

“Escuchame. I’m telling you something. I don’t know if you’re ignoring me or not trusting me to tell you the truth but I’m telling you that it’s okay now.” He paused and considered his words. “Well, maybe not okay, but I know you’re trying.”

“You do?” Stolas’s eyes widened, becoming a little glassy.

Now that that had been diffused, Blitz sighed and leaned forward a bit on the table. “Yeah. And if you don’t stop biting the shit out of your lip, I’m gonna have to do something about it,” he said, trying for flirty. Maybe it didn’t land, but Stolas did stop biting on his bottom lip.

With his heart hammering in his chest—shoving out all the air in his lungs, Blitz reached out his hand, laying it palm up on the table.

Despite the blush on that pretty white face, Stolas hesitated, seeming to consider the hand in front of him. “W-Why did you come here?”

Awesome. What was he supposed to say? My employees kidnapped me and brought me here against my will because I’ve been a mess since our break up?

Yeah, no.

Blitz started to pull his hand back, but whipfast Stolas smacked his own hand down on top of Blitz’s and pinned it to the table. The blush on his face grew hotter and it must’ve had secondhand effects because Blitz felt the back of his own neck warm up to the tips of his ears.

When Blitz shifted his hand, attempting to turn it over to hold Stolas’s properly, the taller man made a small strangled noise that he immediately choked back, squeezing Blitz’s hand tight. And it was so fucking hard not to laugh that Blitz had to bite his cheeks.

The tension in the air was still there, having melted into something closer to anticipation—or immensely gay like hope.

So Blitz settled on: “We saw your press conference.”

Stolas merely nodded, not taking the hint to ask what Blitz thought of it so he was gonna have to go ahead and say this shit himself.

“Pretty cool what you’re doing.”

“It’s the least I could do,” Stolas said even though his voice trembled. He loosened his grip on Blitz’s hand, letting up on the death grip. “Not that I did it for you—to win your affection—I meant that it was the least I could do for the company. After all of the injustice, all of the times management looked away, that I looked away…I want the people that work for us to know they deserve better, to expect it and feel that they can come forward and someone will listen. No matter the cost.”

The slight shadow that fell across his face, the way his eyes turned down, Blitz knew that Stolas was talking about being outed.

“That was fucked up what they did.”

Stolas huffed a cold laugh. “Perhaps, but all of it was true. And that’s the price of being a public figure. Nothing is truly ever private.”

Clicking his tongue, Blitz turned to the window, gazing at the clouds that had begun to part and the splotchy shafts of light on the grass. He brushed his thumb over the top of Stolas’s hand as he thought. “You know, si quieres, we can find who did—”

“No,” Stolas said, bitterness in the threads of his voice. “I believe I know the culprit and there is nothing to be done.”

Blitz scrunched his nose, wrinkling his brow. “Who? Because that fucker should get what’s coming to him.”

Stolas still looked unsure. His free hand grasped at the tea cup in front of him as if he were going to finally drink some.

“Listen,” Blitz said. “I’m not saying we kick in some kneecaps, but they outed you. Turnabout is fair play.” That was a phrase he’d learned from Moxxie.

At that, Stolas rolled his eyes in the prissy little way he did and leaned back as far as he could. For a moment, it looked as if he wanted to cross his arms, but that would’ve meant he let go of Blitz’s hand. Stolas said, “My wife—ex-wife—may be a bitch but—”

“Your wife?!”

Stolas looked off the side, almost over his shoulder as if he expected her to appear, bitter irritation plain on his face. “I wouldn’t put it past her to gather years worth of blackmail and hold it until she deemed necessary. And, if not her—because I have yet to see that empty-headed Jezebel read so much as a street sign, then surely it was that frosty bitch of a brother she has, the scheming bastard,” he muttered.

It was the first time Blitz had heard Stolas say something so…common. He burst into laughter, drawing his hand away to clutch at his sides.

“Glad you find all of this so funny,” Stolas pouted.

He couldn’t stop though. All this time, Stolas had seemed so unattainable, so out-of-reach, but there were moments—flashes of seconds—when he was so surprisingly human. Sitting here in his kitchen, both of them unwashed and exhausted, it was so obvious. And wasn’t that a relief?

And kinda hot.

But mostly it was a relief. For a full 30 seconds, he laughed his culo off. Stolas huffed, of course, and Blitz hurried to pull himself together before the man got all in his feelings about it.

“Precioso, I’m not laughing at you.” Blitz wiped the moisture from his eyes. “I’m laughing at me.”

Stolas tilted his head, concerned. “Why?”

Blitz motioned to the whole of Stolas. “You—Not, wait. Stop that face. I mean I just realized that you’re, like, a person and shit.”

If anything Stolas looked more confused.

“You and me. We’re both…” Blitz reigned himself in, trying to stop the smile that was way too big. “For the longest time, you were this god that I couldn’t—”

“God?”

He shrugged, a bit self-conscious, grin dimming only slightly. “Yeah. You’re fucking beautiful and rich and tall and nice to me. You’re everything I’m…not. Where are you going?”

Stolas hummed, already on his feet. He moved around the table and went to sit beside Blitz. In a rush, Blitz made space so Stolas could sit his pretty culo down, but Stolas still crowded close to him and cupped his face.

Ah, fucker, Stolas could probably feel how warm his cheeks were getting. Blitz tried to will the blush away and also not stare at Stolas’s mouth. So he looked into his eyes instead, those soft dark eyes as if they had some sort of magnetic pull.

Something bubbled in his throat and his chest felt tight.

“Oh, mi luz,” Stolas cooed at him. Gentle thumbs brushed over Blitz’s cheeks. “If there is a god, you are mine. You have brought such warmth and motivation to my life.”

No, that couldn’t be right. Blitz was breathing hard and yet he couldn’t pull himself away.

“You have inspired me and given me the courage to reach for things I never believed I could have.”

Shit, Blitz was gonna throw up. He could feel the pressure on his tongue. Taking a deep breath, he opened his mouth, and— “I love you,” he blurted.

Puta madre! He would’ve preferred real vomit to word vomit.

Chapter Text

“You love me?” Stolas asked.

Yeah, this was his fucking nightmare. Blitz sprang away from Stolas, further back onto the bench seat of the breakfast nook until his back hit the wall, effectively cornering himself. He was breathing too hard and his heart was going to crack his ribs. Dios, he swore he could feel his sternum cracking.

“Whaaaaa?” he asked, drawing the word out. “Que paso? Who said—” His eyes darted to the window beside him. Locked. “That was…” He could launch himself over the table.

So he did.

With absolutely no grace, Blitzø vaulted over the table, knocking down a chair on the other side in the process.

“Oh my!”

His shirt snagged on some ornate part of the frame and Blitz yanked it in a bid to free himself. It came loose with a loud rip and Blitz stumbled but didn’t land on his ass. “Yeah, so, I…I’m just gonna…” He trailed off, jerking his thumb in the vague direction of the front door.

Stolas rushed to his feet. “You don’t have to,” he said in a hurry. “Please stay. Not that I am forcing you—Not that I would force you but…” One hand clutched his robe. “I would like to spend…time…with you.”

They stared at each other silently and it would’ve been horrible if Blitz wasn’t watching the funniest shit slowly unfold. The tear in his shirt had ripped a little window for one of his pecs and Stolas had not looked away since he’d seen it. Nah, he was turning pink, a flush from his forehead all the way to the exposed part of his chest. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and underneath the robe, under the thin sleep clothing Stolas was wearing, his perfect cock was perking up.

With a smirk and a nod toward it, Blitz asked, “What’s, uh, going on there?”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Stolas wrapped his robe around himself tighter. “N-Nothing. Ignore it!”

His voice was squeaky.

“Mucho grande nothing.” Blitz slid his arms out of his jacket, dropping it to the floor, and then began to pull off his torn shirt. He could totally use this. Make Stolas forget all about his accidental love confession with a distraction.

“I’m nervous,” Stolas protested. Despite that, he opened an eye. “W-What are you doing?”

Blitz tossed shirt down on the floor with his jacket, flexing slightly. He shrugged and hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans, making them pull a little lower. “Can’t really wear it out now.”

It sounded like Stolas tried to make a noise of confirmation, but it ended up sounding like a strangled goose. He cleared his throat. “My apologies.”

“Yeah.” Blitz rolled his head toward the foyer where there had been some grand staircase. If he was lucky, he could also get a ‘adios’ fuck in before Stolas kicked him to the curb for saying that lovey shit way too early in their not-relationship. “So you got something I can wear or…”

“Yes!” Stolas rushed around the breakfast table right past him. “Yes, of course. I’ll be right—oh, you’re coming. Alright, then.”

Yup. Blitz followed directly behind him as Stolas walked up the steps and he got to watch that culo give a little bounce each step. His right hand itched with the urge to smack the shit out of it. He flexed his palm, looking away to focus on something else. They passed a gaudy chandelier and it didn’t have a single spec of dust on it.

Once at the top of the landing, they took a hall to the right. The walls were lined with large pieces of artwork in expensive gilded frames. The paintings were—or digital art, maybe—were all beaches at sunset and the longer Blitz looked, the more he noticed that the same figure was in each of it.

Some white lady in a linen white dress wore stiletto heels on a pier. She had one of those floppy beach hats. Long blonde hair curled down around her ass. Mostly, she was facing the ocean. But there was one where she was facing forward so viewers could see her face—And, oh mierda—it was Stolas’s blanca chingada esposa.

She literally had at least 15 paintings of herself on the same beach all down this wall. Below each frame, there was a number with a gold plate.

“Oh, Gerold,” Stolas said with a hint of surprise. “I did not know you’d be here today.”

Blitz had stopped to stare at the wife and only now realized Stolas had kept walking. A little further up the hall, Stolas was speaking to a short brown man who had one of the paintings on the floor, packaging it up. He wasn’t dressed in a stuffy suit like an old butler. Nah he was a young guy, maybe younger than Blitz.

“Yes,” the guy said in a thick Spanish accent. “The misses wanted her things.”

Stolas heaved the biggest, heaviest sigh and it looked like some of his height even deflated. Rubbing his frown lines, he asked, “What now?”

Damn, Blitz was intruding big time. Shirtless, he lingered in the hall a few steps back.

“Her yearly paintings in Nantucket,” the dude said, motioning to the one he had covered with large cardboard. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow but his clothes weren’t for yard work or heavy lifting. He wore a crisp white shirt with white buttons and khaki pants. “Her handbags and shoes.”

“Of course.”

“Her skis and keys to the home in Aspen. Her cashmere scarf collection. The vases in the entry.”

Stolas sighed at the last one. “I suppose they were heirlooms or wedding gifts or something of that nature. Go on.”

“All of the red wine in the cellar.”

“All of it?”

“Yes. The Range Rover—”

“The one she does not drive? That I specifically bought for—” Stolas paused to take a deep breath. “Nevermind,” he said with an amazing level of gave-no-fucks. “Let her have it.”

“Her wedding dress.”

“For what purpose—”

Getting a little chilly standing still, Blitz shifted on his feet, approaching again, and the movement must’ve caught the other guy’s eye because he turned quickly, straightening up. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t realize you weren’t alone.”

Stolas laid a hand on the guy’s shoulder—Blitz had already forgotten his name. “It’s quite alright. No need for that. Gerold, this is Blitz. Blitz, Gerold.”

And Blitz noticed how Stolas gave neither of them any kind of explanation like ‘Hey, Jerry. This is my boyfriend Blitz’ or ‘Meet Blitz, whose dick you’ll hopefully hear me riding later.’

Gerold was already holding out his hand. “Good to meet you,” he said formally.

Blitz flexed, making sure every one of the muscles in his abs were flexed, before he took it and shook with much less enthusiasm. “Yeah, what’s up, Jorge.”

The smile on Gerold’s face slipped just the slightest. “Gerold.”

“Uh huh.” Blitz released his hand and started to walk past him—even though he had no fucking idea where he was headed. He called back down the hall. “Nice to meet you too, Gerard.”

“It’s Gerold!” the man called out in a cheery tone that was obviously false. “It was nice to meet you.”

Wow. The undercurrent of sarcasm in Gerold’s tone there was unrivaled.

Stolas said a few more parting words and then Blitz heard the slap of his slippers hurrying to catch up. He said nothing until they reached the end of the hall and a single sturdy oak door, which he opened for Blitz and allowed him in first. Of course Stolas’s room was at the end of the hall. It was massive like the penthouse room they stayed in the night they met. Like, the bed of this bedroom wasn’t even in sight as he stepped inside.

Blitz meandered toward the small couches and overly large TV. Behind him, the door closed and Stolas went into another doorway.

Joder, Stolas must’ve knocked down a wall from the original plans or something. An alcove on the right had another sitting area nearly blocked from view by several bookcases. Blitz peered around the side and found large bay windows, looking out at the gardens below like Stolas was some kind of Victorian miss.

Opposite of the booknook, a door stood ajar and he could Stolas rummaging around in whatever that was. Probably a luxury walk-in closet. Another door lined the wall after that one but it was closed.

Welp.

Blitz mosied his nosy ass over to peek inside. As soon as he opened the door, the low lighting flickered to life, shining off spotless tiles of the bathroom. Above a granite double sink, a large mirror lit up around the frame and text glowed on it. It took a moment for Blitz to realize what it was—because he’d never seen one before—but it was a SmartMirror greeting Stolas by name and displaying the time, temperature, weather forecast, and a little calendar.

Turning 360 degrees, he took in the whole of the bathroom from a fancy armoire stocked with soft white towels to the honest-to-God clawfoot tub overlooking a private pool like it was straight out of an ad for Viagra.

“Here you are!”

“Jesus!” Blitzø jumped two feet into the air, feeling his heart try to flip itself out of his throat. He pivoted on his heel, feeling himself flush under Stolas’s satisfied smirk. “Que chingado! A little warning.”

“You know…” Stolas tapped his chin. “This is my room and I don’t remember inviting you in here.” He held a maroon shirt in his left hand that looked a size too small for Blitz and somehow still too long.

“Bitch, you held the door open. We both know you want me up here.” He reached for the shirt.

Stolas pulled it out of his reach. “Do I?”

Uh huh. Okay. Feigning indifference, Blitz cupped his hands behind his head and strolled toward Stolas, who backed out of the bathroom with a sharp inhale. Blitz kept walking, not saying a word, and went straight for the last unexplored door on the opposite side of the room.

Bingo.

A King-sized canopy bed decked out in royal reds featured prominently in the center of the room. Blitz threw himself onto the center of it—boots and all—and rolled onto his back, legs spread so Stolas could get an eyeful of the bulge in his pants and the flex of his biceps. He lifted himself up onto his elbows and lifted a brow at Stolas who stood in the doorway staring at him slack-jawed. The shirt slipped out of his hand, falling on the floor.

Got him. “So,” Blitz said cooly. “Just so we’re clear. This isn’t exactly where you want me?”

Two hours later, Blitz received a text from Millie.

Millie: Muerto?

Blitz: Yup

Millie:👍🏾