Chapter Text
It wasn’t easy to argue with Stolas. For one, he wasn’t good arguing, and would much rather shut down than say what he had on his mind. And Blitzo (the o was silent) had found out that his own need to sit and think on stuff before making his mind was driving Stolas out of his mind. And something he had figured out on his own: he shouldn’t yell at Stolas.
Every disagreement that was oh-so-much-easier now to bring up than before, when there was the book, felt like a f*cking hair trigger.
At least Blitzo had slept late and slept well, even if he woke up groggy. Maybe it was that stupid sappy emoji at the end of the sh*tty week. And he’d gotten a pretty good workout the day before, going out in the morning to Earth for a murder, back in Hell in the afternoon for the billing, and cake.
Then it was Saturday afternoon, crazy how time went fast on a day when you slept late, and he was driving himself and Stolas to their next date in tense silence, which was that hair trigger thing Blitzo had thought about driving over to the palace. The prince was a little toned down from his usual official garb, and wore dark grey mostly.
“Did you sleep well? Did I text you too late?”
“I was just watching teevee,” Blitzo replied, keeping his eyes on the road. He had a big thermos mug of coffee in the cup holder.
“How was your week at work?”
He was always asking these questions.
“Killed some bitches, got paid. We had cake yesterday. Moxxie brought it in.”
“How are Moxxie and Millie?”
“Surprised you remember their names,” Blitzo said, as continuation to the Imp Conversation from earlier in the week.
“They did save me from an assassin and brought me to the hospital,” Stolas said, his voice quiet, and Blitzo wondered what kind of relationship-destroying mechanism of personal destruction was operating his own brain. Or maybe it was just him.
“Oh right. Well, they are suuuuper interested in knowing how you’re doing. Ask about you all the time.”
Stolas smiled briefly, a quickly vanishing expression. He didn’t pursue the topic with another comment.
“Want to pick up coffee or something on the way there?” Blitzo offered.
“I don’t even know where there is.”
“Oh right.” Blitzo didn’t tell him either. “It’s on this ring.”
They headed into what counted as sticks on Pride, the furthest out of the center of the ring.
“Is this quite safe?” Stolas asked.
“No worries, I have like five guns with me. And knives.”
“Hmm. Are you taking me with you on a hit?”
“No, we’re going shooting!” Blitzo responded with glee.
It was a shooting range built on top of old mowed-down parts of Pride that had collapsed in a massive and uncontrolled fire a while ago, here in the periphery. The place wasn’t a safety inspector’s dream, but who cared, it was cheap, and didn’t take foreverest ever to get to, unlike going to see the horses, which was an all-day thing.
There were lanes, and there were targets, and bad lighting, and the demon at the door just gave a cursory look at your pieces before taking the price of admission and letting you in. They didn’t look Stolas twice, just handed him and Blitzo over somewhat dodgy pairs of hearing protection that looked like about a hundred people had used them previously, and some of them had spikes growing near their ears.
There weren’t too many shooters at the range that afternoon, just four or so. Blitzo glanced around casually to make sure that none of the other shooters were for example Striker, or some mafia assholes from Greed. He had his guns in a black bag on his shoulder and laid it down carefully at their lane, which was picked to be as far away from the other shooters as possible.
There was background noise, but it wasn’t too bad yet, he didn’t bother with the hearing protection yet.
Stolas looked cautiously interested in everything: the dingy shooting range, the guns Blitzo was pulling out, the targets the other shooters were shooting to their left and right.
“Do you come here often, Blitz?” Stolas asked.
“Well, I do shoot for a living, and I gotta practice.” Blitzo offered one of his golden plated guns to Stolas, “want to try?”
The question seemed to have completely taken Stolas by surprise, if the widening of his four eyes was anything to go by.
“I don’t know, do you want to go first?”
“Ok, but just cover your ears before I go.”
And it felt pretty good to hit every target. He was very consciously showing off too, shooting with both guns at once like it was the movies.
After a while it turned out that Stolas did want to try. And was surprised by heavy the gun was.
“You make it seem so light,” his prince said, and Blitzo felt flattered by the compliment, his tail swished slightly from it.
“Just practice from holding heavy sh*t,” he downplayed it.
On his first try Stolas was so sh*t though. He hit: absolutely nothing. Blitzo cut the trial run short and tried to give a few pointers. Then it was ear muffs back on (Stolas looked so f*cking hilarious wearing his on his owl ears) and a second, equally abysmal attempt.
“Could you come down here for a while, I’ll help you aim,” Blitzo asked, realizing this needed some hands-on assistance.
Then he absolutely froze, and felt Stolas freeze too, when he had his arms around the prince, trying to steady his arms and focus. He could feel Stolas’s shoulders shudder, and Blitzo then noticed he’d stopped giving pointers and, also, breathing. Stolas turned his head, and their faces were really f*cking close, and it would have taken an inch to cross that space between their lips-
“Oh hi!” A familiar voice piped out behind them, that Blitzo could just hear piercing his sh*tty ear protection, followed by, “oh crumbs, sorry!”
“The f*ck Moxxie!” Blitzo spat at Moxxie, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere to ruin the f*cking mood. Blitzo pulled off his ear protection. “You don’t shout at someone just about to shoot at the range.”
“Hello,” Stolas offered a greeting in between, and a very kind smile to Moxxie-the-suddenly-appeared. Blitzo noticed Stolas was blushing, and that was doing things to his insides. Again.
“The f*ck you doing here?” Blitzo asked.
“Practicing, same as you!”
“No, I meant stalking us.”
Moxxie rolled his eyes. “You stalk me and Millie all the time. And no I wasn’t stalking, I just happened to pass by, recognized your coat. Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt anything. Have a uhh… great whatever this is.”
Moxxie hurried along to mind his own f*cking business.
“Please send my regards to Millie!” Stolas called after him.
Blitzo’s spikes bristled, and his tail whipped in the air for a bit, annoyed, not knowing what Moxxie had seen. He wondered how stupid he’d just looked, staring at Stolas’s face like a lovesick teenager.
“Blitz. Are you alright?” Stolas asked.
“Mm. ‘sfine.” Blitzo focused on the business at hand.
The second, less sexy attempt at shooting had Stolas hit a part of the target. Not the center, but still.
Blitzo’s favorite part was yet to gone. Sharpshooting. It had its own range, for which they had to leave the first building and go to the second one. This wasn’t just a walk-in, but Blitzo had booked an hour specifically for the range, because it was just for one shooter only.
“Why the lying down?” Stolas asked. He sat next to Blitzo who’d just finished setting up his sniper rifle.
“It’s gotta lean against something solid, and the ground’s the most solid thing they got in this sh*t hole.”
Blitzo had even brought a blanket to lie on, which he always did, when he came to the range.
“I like your blanket,” Stolas noted. “Horseshoes.” He touched one of the horseshoe prints with his delicate fingers. Not if they’d just added a picnic basket, it would have been kind-of perfect.
“I can’t even see the targets,” Stolas noted.
“No sh*t, they’re so f*cking far away. I can see them through the scope just fine.”
“Do you mind if I take a look?”
“Nah, come on over.”
Stolas stretched himself on the blanket next to Blitzo, whose brain was taken away by thoughts of Stolas doing a similar movement, except with no clothes on, and in a very fancy canopied bed. Stolas’s long tail feathers cascading down past his hips and legs caught Blitzo’s eye.
“How large are they?”
Was there a big dick joke there somewhere? Blitzo blinked and looked back at Stolas.
“Hm.”
“The targets?”
“Oh right.” Blitzo showed with his fingers. “About so.”
“Do you always get them all?”
“No, one or two usually. That’s why I come here and practice.”
Stolas sat up, and withdrew himself slightly further away, to give Blitzo the space to shoot. He got so nervous he missed all but one of his shots in the next two rounds.
“Fuuuuck!” was Blitzo’s reaction to it.
Then it was Stolas’s turn to try, even though he tried to decline.
“It’s different from the pistols, it’s more about, you know, light touch, and you got that,” Blitzo encouraged him.
It took about two seconds for Blitzo’s hands-on assistance to start feeling kind of intimate though. There was a lot of hands on hands and other body parts, and about the moment when Blitzo’s hand smoothed its way over the the base of Stolas’s tail feathers the sniper rifle was entirely forgotten, with intense kissing happening instead of shooting. Blitzo wondered if there were security cameras on the range.
Then Stolas, the usually hornier of the two of them, pulled off slightly, with a smile, face flush with being kissed. “Sabotaging me? Are you worried I’ll hit more targets than you?”
Blitzo laughed. It wasn’t a sarcastic, bitter sound. Just a weird, happy laugh. “f*ck no. Go on then, take your shot.”
And Stolas got one target down. On his first try too. Beginner’s luck.
