Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The next thing Blake was aware of, he was stretched out completely naked on his bed, afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window and warming his back. Whatever party he'd been to must have been good. Everything about him felt sore and ached, and not just in the usual way. In the way that usually meant he'd gotten fucked so thoroughly he forgot who he was for a few hours. The mind-melting kind of sex. And the most unfair part of it was that he didn't even remember it, even though the afterglow was strong enough to make him grin up at the ceiling as he rolled onto his back. 

Fuck, he really hoped he'd gotten their phone number. 

The internet is for porn! The internet is for porn!

Blake could hear his phone going off from somewhere on the floor, which was probably why he'd woken up in the first place. He groaned and dragged a hand over his face. He realized there were bandages on his hands as the fabric dragged over his face, and something around his neck shifted. He frowned and fumbled to feel for it. Some kind of necklace...?

Why you think the net was born? Porn, porn, porn!

He'd missed his morning alarm, too, which meant he'd missed out on the entire morning rush. And he wasn't particularly feeling like immediately dragging himself out the door to sit around and have hardly any orders. Things were always dead at this time of day. And it especially didn't sound appealing when the alternative was laying in bed and grinning into his own afterglow like an idiot. 

His phone was quiet for a few seconds, and then immediately launched into another round of the song. Apparently, she wasn't giving up just because he wasn't answering today. Blake groaned and dragged himself across the bed, draping himself halfway over the edge to grab it. It had ended up nearly all the way over by his desk in the commotion of the night before. Still draped over the edge of the bed, he grinned into the phone. 

"Gooooood morning to you too, Trust Fund!" 

"Well, good morning," Charlie said with a laugh from the other end of the phone. "You sure are cheerful. Did you sleep well?" 

"Like a rock," Blake said, dragging himself out of bed and over to his desk chair, looking for the bathrobe he always kept draped there. "Rocks don't sleep. Like a... Bear? Wait, Sleeping Beauty. She definitely sleeps. It must have been a pretty wild fucking party, for you to be doing a wellness check first thing in the morning."

On the phone, Charlie laughed. "It's... two in the afternoon, Blake."

"That counts as morning after a party like that."

His bathrobe wasn't draped over the chair. He frowned and looked under the desk to see if it had fallen, but it wasn't there either. He usually tried to keep it nearby for exactly this sort of reason, so he would have something to throw on immediately whenever he needed. He instead settled for picking up a black pair of sweatpants and a tank top from off the floor instead. It wasn't even what he remembered wearing the day before, but it also wasn't the sort of clothes he would wear to a party, and it wasn't his normal pajamas. Mystery clothes. 

"There wasn't any party," Charlie said with a laugh. "You just had way too many edibles."

"What, were you here?" Blake said as he did his best to shrug on the sweatpants while trying to keep a grip his phone. 

"For a bit. You needed a sitter." 

"Well. I still could have gone to a party after you left, you don't know!" 

Even shrugging on the sweatpants with his spare hand was uncomfortable. Blake somehow felt like he'd been thrown down a flight of stairs, been attacked by a wild animal, and had sex with some sort of sex god. Plus it felt like he'd had so much sex that his dick had rug burn. Pussy burn. Or maybe ass burn. Fuck, he didn't even remember. 

"Uh-huh," Charlie said, and Blake could just hear how she was doing that little smile she always did when she didn't believe him. "Sooo... Morning after a hard night... Feelings check in?" 

Blake sighed and rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling. He did a mental scan over himself, then paused. 

"Good," he said slowly, his grin stretching. "Really good. I mean, it feels like I got kicked by a horse, but... Something feels. Better."

He didn't want to admit it to Charlie, but it was also the first night in ages that he didn't remember waking up from a nightmare. But telling someone like Charlie that he'd been having nightmares every single night for the past year was likely to just make her worry and fret. Even if nightmares weren't exactly something new for Blake. 

But god, having a night where he had actually slept through it felt like the first breath of air he'd had in a year of drowning. Even if he hardly ever remembered the nightmares, it was still always exhausting to wake up in the middle of the night wanting to cry and feeling like he'd lost... something. Maybe everything. 

"That's really good to hear," Charlie said, her voice soft. "You sound... lighter. I'm... I'm glad. You've been carrying a lot for a really long time. You deserve-" 

"Gross," Blake said with a snort as he plodded to the kitchen. "You're going Disney princess on me again, Trust Fund. I'm gonna hang up if you start singing." 

"I'm not going to sing!" 

"You already had a chorus and two verses queued up in your head." 

Charlie spluttered excuses as Blake opened the fridge, trying to look for... Breakfast? Or would it technically be lunch? Maybe that made it brunch? Whatever. Something to stop his stomach from screaming at him. But his fridge might as well have been bare aside from the magic chocolate fudge bites. Not even an energy drink left, and he could have sworn he had four left before he'd gone out last night. 

"I forgot to go grocery shopping," he groaned. He remembered walking Charlie to the bus stop and feeling so tired that he'd thought maybe he would just leave grocery shopping to be a problem for Tomorrow Blake. Blake wrinkled his nose and slammed the fridge shut again. 

"Char, I think I've gotta go. I have to figure out something to eat."

"Oh! Okay!" Charlie said quickly. "No worries! I just wanted to make sure you were okay after last night." 

"I'm great," Blake said, turning from the fridge, noticing the empty taco truck containers spread out over his counter. Damn past him, that sounded delicious. "Hungry and sore as fuck, but good." 

"Okay, well... Text me later?" she said, still sounding a little reluctant to hang up. Like she was afraid that if she let him go, all the progress he’d made overnight might vanish like smoke.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, waving her off even though she couldn’t see it. "It's the weekend, don't you have all sorts of hotel stuff to do instead of mothering me?" 

She laughed. "Yeah... Okay. I'm just. Really glad you're okay." 

Something in her voice sounded so relieved that Blake couldn't help but feel a little guilty as he hung up. How out of it must he have been for her to be worrying about him like that? She usually didn't get that worried about him unless he had some sort of mental breakdown, and it made him wonder what all he'd said the night before. The memories from that night were a blur, just feelings of confusion and panic, the taste of tacos, something about taking a shower, and then he could vaguely remember feeling horny as fuck as he smelled the smoke of cigarettes. 

Okay. So the nameless, genderless sex god was a smoker. That was a start.

Thinking that reminded Blake that he had planned to check and see if he had gotten the sex god's number, and he flicked open his text messages. Usually he was too lazy to program in a new contact from scratch, instead preferring to just type his number in their phone and have them text him so he could do it later when he was sober. 

There were no new texts, so he decided to navigate to the calls. The calls from yesterday were all ones he had placed, one to Charlie and one to some 1-800 number he didn't recognize, but another one seemed promising, considering he had called it three times in a row. Blake had no idea 666 was a real, functioning area code, though. He would have thought people would throw a fit over something like that. Still. He shrugged and tried redialing it. 

The phone didn't even ring before it went to voicemail. 

"Well, hey, there, you angry fuck, you're reached the offices of I.M.P., that's the Immediate Murder Professionals!" 

"What the fuck?" Blake said with a nervous laugh. Was this one of those weird joke voicemails people sometimes did?

"I bet you probably want someone killed right now!" the voicemail continued in a chipper voice. "Unfortunately, we're probably out killing someone for somebody else right now. Yeeep, there's a lot of killing to be done. So you just leave your name, number, and whether you want them dead, double dead, or really double dead, and we'll get back to you when we're less covered in blood. And if this is Moxxie calling to see if he left one of his musical CDs at the office again... I swear to fucking Satan, Moxxie, if I saw your CD, I would have set it on fire, okay? Anyway. How long do I have to record before this-" 

Beep

"Oh, uh!" Blake blinked and fumbled for the phone, taken by surprise when he was suddenly on the line to leave a message. "Uh, sorry! I, uh... Wrong number!" 

It was instinctive to find an excuse to get off the phone as quickly as possible rather than trying to explain that he'd called because he was trying to figure out how he knew this person. Or... business? Had he really called some sort of... assassin? It had to be some sort of joke. Maybe he could try calling again later. 

He paused, his finger hovering over the strange 1-800 number. It would most likely connect him to some sort of machine before it would actually direct him to a person. Which would mean he could at least figure out what the number was for. 

The phone rang enough times that Blake very nearly hung up and gave up on the whole idea. And then, to his surprise, rather than being directed to a machine voicemail, he got a distinctly non-robotic voice purring in his ear. 

"Hello there, you insatiable beast..." 

For a second, Blake's heart almost stopped. Something about the voice was familiar in a deep, aching kind of way. The sex god. This guy had to be the sex god from the night before. 

"Hi!" he said quickly, clutching at the phone. But before he could continue, the voice cut him off. 

"You've reached the exclusive pleasure line of your favorite prince of Hell. For dark rituals, press one. For filthy talk, press two. For me to scream your name while perched on the chandelier again... Well, you already know what to do."

Blake stared blankly at the wall. Oh. 

He felt himself sag in disappointment as he hung up the call. Just... some kind of sex worker line. Whatever weird dream he’d conjured last night—whatever connection he thought he’d felt—he was clearly just another horny idiot with too much imagination and not enough common sense.

But if that was the case, why did he feel like...

Blake sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Forget it. He needed food. He sighed, and on autopilot, went to the bathroom for his long overdue morning piss. 

He blinked at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands. His hair was a mess, his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked like absolute shit, even though he felt better than he had in months. There was a remnant of a scratch on one of his cheekbones, some kind of small wound on his bottom lip, and when he twisted, he could see the marks of bloody scratches on his back. Fuck, was all of that just from sex? It looked like he'd been attacked.  

And then there was also the necklace he'd felt around his neck, the silver chain glinting in the mirror. Who had given him that? The "demon prince of hell" sex worker guy? It was styled to look like some sort of round, red skull, so it at least seemed to fit the theme, but it didn't really explain why he had it. He debated taking it off for a minute. After all, he didn't know where it had come from; it could have a tracker in it, or just about a million other things wrong with it. But when he thought about taking it off, it felt like something cracked inside him. So even though it was against his better judgment, he decided to leave it on. At least, for now. 

As he thought about the necklace, he opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out his hydroxyzine. Somehow, even though he had the best sleep he'd had in years, he also felt like he was about to spontaneously combust from anxiety. 

There was an unopened energy drink sitting on the kitchen sink, which was at least a welcome surprise. At least he hadn't managed to drink all of them. He narrowed his eyes at it in consideration. It was probably stupid to wash down anxiety meds with caffeine. 

Blake cracked the can open. 

As he took a long sip, his eyes fell on a pile of rumpled clothes that looked like they'd nearly been kicked behind the toilet. Just from the color, he could tell it was his favorite shirt, a red graphic tee that had the words "punch today in the face" printed on it in blocky letters. The same shirt he had been wearing yesterday, only now it looked like it was stained with... ink? Blake frowned and reached down to grab it. 

When he got closer, a sulfuric smell hit his nostrils, and Blake was suddenly flooded with a flash of memory from the night before, getting attacked by that... No, not...

Blake hissed and dropped the shirt. He stared at it for a long minute with a frown. He remembered Tyler texting him for help with pests in his alleyway the night before, but... 

Nope. Not today, Satan. That was a Tomorrow Blake problem. 

"Okay, Di," he said as he strolled out of the bathroom. She looked up from her spot where she was curled up on her bed, and he couldn't help but flash a grin at how cute she was. "Daddy's gonna go down to 7-Eleven really quickly, but I'll be right back, okay?"

She settled her head back on her paws like she couldn't believe she had been woken up if she wasn't even going to get anything out of it. Blake grinned at her and went to grab his leather jacket from the closet, only to find it wasn't there. Everything was fucked up and different. Whatever. He grabbed a hoodie and zipped it up, trying to ignore the way his fingers shook as he shoved them in the pockets.

Music. Music would help. 

The last music he'd been playing on his phone had been his 'songs that shut up the 3am demons,' playlist. He had ended up listening to it all day yesterday, even though he usually only listened to it when he woke up in the middle of the night with the itch to paint. He thought about changing to a different playlist, but then his eyes caught sight of "HOT TO GO!" And, well. Who was he to say no to the great lady Chappell Roan?

I could be "the one", or your new addiction
It's all in my head but I want non-fiction

Outside felt like spring, and with music blasting in his headphones, Blake felt his mood slowly pick back up. Even if everything was a little weird. He felt himself walking in beat with the song, trying to breathe and focus on the stupid little human errand. 

Maybe when he had a chance again, he could call that weird 1-800 number and leave a message asking about the necklace or something. 

The 7-Eleven was empty aside from the cashier, and Blake made a beeline for the freezers at the back, slipping his headphones around his neck as he did. A few pizzas, some soda, and he'd at least be able to hold himself over until he felt like actually going grocery shopping. Maybe some chips and dip while he was at it. 

A minute after he walked in, there was a ding from behind him, and he turned to see a woman enter behind him, probably about ten or fifteen years younger than him. She had silver hair that was shaved on one side along with a crop top that had an inverted pentagram design perfectly centered over her cleavage. 

Holy Killer Goth Girl, Batman!

She was hot. And usually exactly the type of girl he would go for. But it felt like something in his brain had suddenly slammed on the brakes. It was like his thoughts slammed into a wall, bounced back, tried again, and shorted out with an error message that just read: DO NOT ENGAGE.

Maybe his brain was still just hung up on the guy from last night. Whatever. He was too tired for this shit.

He didn't think much else of her until he was heading out of the 7-Eleven with his one bag of ridiculously overpriced food. And then, before he fully knew what was going on, he was suddenly pinned against the wall, the breath knocked out of him with a wheeze. It was the same killer goth girl from inside, but her eyes were suddenly rage-filled, and he could have sworn she was growling at him. There was a tug at his neck, and he realized, belatedly, that she had ripped the necklace off him. 

"Where the fuck did you get this?!" she snarled. 

"Christ on a stick!" Blake yelped, his arms flying up over his face, the bag of food flying out with the motion. He could feel the smack of an energy drink in the bottom of the bag connecting with her cheekbone. She staggered back with a curse. 

For a second, Blake felt bad for her and wanted to ask if she was okay. But then logic kicked in. None of this was worth it for a necklace he'd never even seen before that morning. Probably some sort of cheap piece of costume jewelry. If this crazy homeless lady was on something that made her want it bad enough to be violent, then she could have it. 

So after a couple seconds of hesitation, Blake turned and bolted. 

No plan, no direction—just pure adrenaline and the overwhelming sense that he had to run. He didn’t look back to see if she was following. He knew she was. He could hear her screaming something at him as he ran, though he didn't really care enough to figure out what exactly she was saying. 

His apartment was only a block away, but he knew better than to lead her straight there, so he went in the opposite direction. He ducked into a side street, then another, then darted into a narrow alley crammed with trash bins and chain-link fences. He squeezed through a gap in the fencing, the hem of his hoodie catching and tearing as he stumbled out the other side and back into open air, just in time to crash headfirst into a low-hanging tree branch.

"FUCK-"

He fell to the ground in an explosion of pink cherry blossoms. 

Some sort of buried instinct took over as he fell, and he found himself tucking his chin and rolling with the impact, using an arm for leverage to push him into some sort of somersault, rolling him over his shoulder and landing him on his back. Like he knew exactly how to fall like a guy in an action movie. Like he'd done it a million times before. 

It was so unfair that no one had been filming that, because it was probably the coolest he'd ever looked in his life.

Blake scrambled to his feet, flailing and coughing as blossoms clung to his hair, his hoodie, everything. Coolness gone immediately. He expected to see Killer Goth Girl show up any second, as he struggled to pull himself back together, but she didn't show. Somehow, he seemed to have managed to lose her.

Still, he was tense all the way back to his apartment, looking over his shoulder and expecting her to jump out at any minute. He sure hoped she wasn't going to be hanging out in the neighborhood for the foreseeable future. It would be a bitch to constantly have to worry about her wanting to stab him from behind any time he went out. 

He hurried back to his apartment, hands shoved in his hoodie pockets and head down. Cherry blossoms were still all over him, in his hair, on the shoulders of his hoodie, but he didn't have it in him to care. A wave of relief hit him as soon as he walked through the front door of his apartment building. He still took the stairs two at a time, and his key shook when he jammed it in the lock. 

As soon as he was through the front door, he slammed it shut behind him. Locked. Chained. He debated shoving the sofa bed in front of it for a minute. His heart was still pounding in his ribcage, and he rested his back against the door, slowly sliding down until he was sitting on the floor, dropping his bag of food on the floor beside him. He sure hoped he hadn't lost any of it in the chaos. 

And then, the soft, pitiful whine. 

Blake snapped his head up to see Diana sitting in front of him, her leash in her mouth as she looked at him, then the front door, then him again. 

"Right," Blake said with a grimace. "Okay. But we're just going down to the tree out front and then straight back in, got it, sweetie?" 

Thankfully, Diana seemed to understand the assignment perfectly, maybe from the fact that Blake kept looking around like they were going to get attacked any second. So it was only five minutes before they were back in the apartment. Blake draped his hoodie over the back of his desk chair and busied himself with putting a pizza in the microwave and putting the rest of his food away as it cooked. And then, for good measure, took a couple cookies from the fridge and popped them in his mouth. He needed to calm the fuck down after Killer Goth Girl. 

As he gnawed on the pizza, he wandered over to his desk. The painting he had been working on the night before was sitting where he'd left it to dry, though some cherry petals had spilled out of the hood of his sweatshirt. Something about the pink petals on the moon stirred some fragment of a memory in him, and he frowned at the painting. 

Pink moon. 

Something about it seemed more appealing to him than the same red moon he had painted a thousand times before. He could almost see it as he looked at the painting. He could tweak the red to be more of a pink, bring out more of the blue on the owl... And for some reason, he had the urge to paint some stars into the owl's feathers. Maybe he'd even be tacky enough to crack out the glitter. Before he knew it, he was filling some jars with water and pulling out his paints.

Time slipped sideways.

He didn’t think, didn’t plan, just moved. Brushstrokes softened the red into dusky pinks, like cotton candy stained with longing. He darkened the blues in the owl’s feathers, let the colors bleed into violet shadows, and then, on a whim that felt more like instinct, he dabbed tiny white stars into the wings. A whole little galaxy tucked into feathers, like a secret he didn’t remember learning. 

At some point he tried to slip his headphones back on, only to realize they had been damaged when he fell, and now sound only came out of one side. Awesome. Fantastic. Because he definitely needed to go buy a new pair of headphones on top of everything else. He ended up settling for playing music from his phone's speaker and let himself get lost in the process of painting. 

It was hours later when he was jolted out of his reverie from the sound of a text message notification interrupting his music. Blake blinked and looked at the screen, expecting Charlie checking in with him, but instead, it was a couple texts from Tyler.

Tyler: yo man i found some new stuff 🍄

Tyler: come hang

Blake sighed and took in a long breath. Actually, yeah. He could use a fucking night off. And taking some questionable substances and watching shitty old cartoons with Tyler sounded like a decent way to go about it.

A quick walk for Diana later, and then he was slipping on some shoes and grabbing his hoodie before heading out to the van. He found himself still looking over his shoulder for Killer Goth Girl, but didn't see her lurking anywhere nearby. Maybe that one meeting had been the only time he'd ever see her. 

It was golden hour outside, the sun suspended low in the sky and casting everything in a surreal amber glow. Thankfully, there wasn't much traffic, and once he was on the highway, Blake found himself relaxing, berating himself for getting so scared by Killer Goth Girl. She'd probably just been on some sort of really bad trip. He doubted he would ever even see her again. 

Tyler’s apartment was a third-floor walk-up in a building that always smelled like weed, cheap incense, and old paint. Blake buzzed in and made his way up, the dim hallway lights flickering ominously as always. Classic. He knocked on the door to Tyler's place, but the door swung open at his touch. Blake frowned. Weird. 

"Yo, Tyler, you left your door open," he said as he shut it behind him. He turned around, only to freeze in his tracks. 

Tyler was sitting on a chair in the middle of the living room, his arms and legs tied so he was immobile. And standing on either side of him were two... women?

The tall one who loomed over Tyler was some sort of... furry? She was covered from head to toe in white fur with gray patches and a dark tail. He would have absolutely expected it to be some sort of fur suit, but something about the way she moved didn't seem like someone who was packed into an elaborate costume. When she growled at him, her lips curled and showed pink gums and sharp teeth just like any other dog. Only she was standing upright and had boobs. But her face wasn't quite that of a dog. But it also wasn't quite a human face, either. 

The other... woman? creature? on Tyler's other side was almost even more terrifying, despite being a good couple feet smaller than Blake. She was... Well, Blake honestly didn't have any clue what she was. Some parts of her seemed human, like her dark hair hanging around her face, but other parts of her seemed almost... lizard-like. 

Oh, yeah, and she had fucking red skin and dark black horns sprouting from her head. 

And she was holding a gun up to Tyler's head. 

"Glad to see ya could make it!" she said in a deep Southern accent, smiling at him as if she were just inviting him in for a glass of sweet tea. Her smile then dropped, and she used her gun to point at the couch, glaring at him in a way that sent shivers down his spine. "Now sit, mister. Talk." 

Blake hissed, his breath coming faster as his mind flicked back to the night before. He hadn't wanted to think about it, wanted to believe it when Tyler had said it had just been a strange creature and nothing more. He'd tried to yell at Tyler that animals didn't talk and wear clothes, but he'd still wanted to believe it. He hadn't been able to get as solid of a look at them the other night, and it had been dark in the alleyway, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was the same... People? Creatures?

But his legs didn’t want to move. His brain couldn’t decide whether to scream, bolt, or just blue screen entirely. He stared at the red-skinned woman, the gun, the tied-up Tyler, then back at the furry nightmare with glowing red eyes and claws the size of steak knives. 

Every part of him, every instinct, screamed at him to run again. But he couldn’t just leave Tyler tied up as bait, and the looks the two women were giving him made him pretty sure they'd catch him before he even made it out the door. He swallowed and held his hands up in surrender. 

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" he said slowly. "For beating you guys up the other day. And for the other... I just didn't want to see Tyler die."

"We're not here about this asshole today," the wolf girl said with a snarl. "You're gonna tell us what you know about Blitzø or we're going to rip you apart and hang you with your own intestines!" 

"Kinky," Blake said with an instinctive grin before his brain could catch up with his mouth. Maybe it was just the stress of the situation. Maybe it was because he had no bandwidth left in his brain to spare on having a filter. "Though I'd prefer if you at least took me to dinner first. Maybe whisper some sweet nothings in my ear before you disembowel me. I mean, take some fucking pride in your work, right?" 

The wolf girl gave the red woman a sharp look. "Do you see what I'm fucking talking about? That's exactly what he would have said! It's weird!!"

"Like what who would have said?!" 

"How did you get the number for the office?" the red-skinned woman demanded, ignoring Blake's question. "And how did you know our names?" 

"What the fuck are you talking about?!" Blake’s breathing was ragged now, chest rising and falling like he’d just sprinted a mile. It felt like he was slowly drowning in the memories from the other night that he would have preferred to forget. Being terrified that he was going to die. A raging, burning white anger. The feeling of swinging a baseball bat and feeling a skull crack underneath it.

He could feel his hands trembling. 

Then the wolf girl pulled something out of her pocket, and he recognized it instantly. The necklace. And suddenly, he realized that even if her face was different now, he recognized her outfit. 

"Where did you get this?" she said, holding it in the air for emphasis. 

"Killer Goth Girl?" Blake said in disbelief as he looked her over again. "How the fuck did you-"

"Where did you get this?!" she snapped, shaking the necklace. 

"Fuck, I don't know! I just woke up with it!" 

His head was spinning, and his mouth was dry. The room felt lopsided, like the walls were breathing. It felt like his brain had gotten shipped through USPS under a fragile label, dropkicked straight across the country. The trembling spread from his hands to his shoulders, and before he fully processed what was happening, his legs dropped out from underneath him. He caught himself on the couch just before he hit the ground, barely able to stay upright with a rug that seemed to be alive and swirling under him. 

He remembered hitting one of them with the bat. He remembered watching it stagger back. He remembered the feeling of blood splattering across his face. He remembered what brains looked like. Or at least, pieces of brains. 

Blake dry heaved. The edges of his vision were black. He could vaguely hear the red woman and wolf girl arguing in the background, but he had no idea what they were saying. Words didn't make sense anymore.  

He didn't remember how he'd gotten home.

The next thing Blitzø was aware of, he was kneeling on the floor, draped over the edge of a couch.