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The first thing that Fizz noticed on their ride back to Lust was that Blitz wasn’t nearly as shaken up as he was. He knee that his friend worked as an assassin, traveling between the human world and Hell for money, but they had just been kidnapped and held hostage. On top of that, they had to relive something very close to the trauma that had separated them from each other in the first place.
Fizz could still see the green flames dancing around him and feel the way that his arm refused to react to what he was asking them to do. It reminded him so much of when he had been enjoying his birthday with his friends and family, only to realize that everything he loved and cared about was literally burning down around him. Just the memory of it and the fact that his left prosthetic was not functioning made him feel like he was trapped in that hospital bed again. At least when he needed a break from his limbs and hearing aides he knew that he had a way to put them back on thanks to Ozzie and Bel’s genius working together. Back then, he had to scream and wail for anyone to hear him in that giant Greed hospital for a nurse to come and do basically anything for him.
“Blitz?” Fizz asked. His voice was scratchier than normal thanks to the layer of smoke inhalation now hanging around it, but he was able to get the words out clearly enough that they didn’t sound garbled. “Do you want to come back to my place so that the two of us can talk? I get it if you don’t, we were both pretty horrible to each other over the years and went through something pretty serious tonight.”
“Was normal,” Blitz said. He was staring straight ahead, around the headrest and through the windshield. His hands were grasping the seatbelt that had stretched over his chest as hard as he could, enough that his knuckles had turned gray from the blood.
“Blitz? Are you okay?” Fizz asked as he reached his hand over to touch his friend. It was strange to think of them in that way when they had done nothing but hate each other for years and years. Still, Blitz had saved his life from that fire and the kidnapping that he had accidentally caused. If he hadn’t been such a cocky shit and just done what he promised Ozzie he was going to do, then he never would have drawn attention to the two of them by getting into a fight in the middle of the sidewalk. Fizz had caused the accident to happen by being arrogant and Blitz had been there to save him despite all the history that the two of them shared, a fair bit of it serving as a good example why Blitz would do exactly the opposite of what he had done.
The moment that Fizz’s hand dropped down onto Blitz’s shoulder, the other imp flinched and then curled in on himself. “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled. “Trying to get better, give a second.”
Fizz felt his heart beat pick up in his chest as something that he had buried in the back of his mind sprang back to life. He and Blitz had been seventeen when the fire happened, too young to leave the circus and make their own way in the world away from Cash but old enough to have taken the Imp Classification Test. They had both taken the first one required by Hell Law when they were fifteen, but Fizz had entirely put Blitz’s classification out of his mind because the other imp had also refused to acknowledge it in any way. Now it all came crashing back to him and he clearly remembered the large red ‘L’ marking the top of the page.
He unbuckled his seatbelt and then slid into the middle seat before he put that one on. He had already gotten in one accident that robbed him of some mobility and hearing, he didn’t need another one stealing his skin or giving him brain damage. He placed his working arm around Blitz and then asked, “Blitz, are you little?” he made sure that his voice was gentle and reassuring as he asked, he didn’t want to scare the other imp off.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “The last time I was little it was so bad. I should be a man, I shouldn’t have a fucking littlespace anyway.”
“That’s Cash talking and we both know that most of his words were just alcohol on the way back up,” Fizz said. “There’s nothing wrong with being little, middle, or big. You’re just doing what your brain needs to function. It’s like saying that you’re not man for sleeping every night or drinking water.”
“I had an ex tell me that once,” Blitz forced a smile onto his face.
“What? That you weren’t man because you slept every night and drank water?” Fizz asked. He was beginning to question the company that his ex-best friend had kept in the time that they were apart from each other. Blitz gave a morose little nod and then shuddered. His skin was beginning to look a bit tacky and pale, something that Fizz had seen in some of his fellow performers when they had put off their headspace for too long.
It was commonly believed that headspaces were forbidden in Lust, but they were simply just respected more. Most of the beings in Hell that were born there, unless they were part sinner or entirely sinner, had a headspace of some kind. Concubi could have a subspace or a domspace if the way that they fueled their magic had to do with sex, but most didn’t. Concubi were believed to be purely sexual beings by the humans because those were the agents that went up to earth, but they really just fed off attention and emotion from others. If there was a concubus who had a littlespace or a caregiver headspace, then they were treated just as reverently and respectfully as the ones who had something sexual going on. The ranks of the court had to deal with things other than the headspaces that people used to take care of their minds and process the stressors of life.
Due to the headspaces being something that existed and were treated well in Hell, quite a few of the people that Fizz worked with and for had them and didn’t know what to do with them. Unfortunately, even though Lust respected headspaces education still rang along class lines and many of the people that ended up doing sex work didn’t know how to properly take care of themselves or didn’t have the money for a hyperclassification test that would give them the information that they needed to be at their healthiest. Fizz had gotten pretty good at identifying when they needed a bit of extra time down in their headspace or to skip out on the show that night.
Blitz was displaying all of them, which made anxiety sit low in his stomach. “Blitz, I want you to stop fighting it and just let it happen. Something really scary just happened to you and even though you deal with that every day in your job, it’s still going to require some headspace time to help you process it. We may not have gotten along due to some stupid miscommunication that Mammon and Cash played out, but I promise I’m a safe person for you to regress around,” Fizz said. He wasn’t sure that he truly believed what he was saying because he didn’t feel very able to help Blitz in that moment, but he wanted to do it more than anything.
He had been given a caregiver classification, which hadn’t helped with the divide that Cash had drawn between the two of them. When they had gotten their classifications, he had assumed that he would become Blitz’s caregiver and they would register themselves officially when they were adults. Instead, he had only ever seen Blitz down in his headspace when Tilla was feeling well enough to fight with Cash about it. She had taken care of him and refused to let anyone near he baby, which made sense given the kind of shit that Blitz had to put up with when she wasn’t around. He had forgotten about it when he was recovering from the fire, but now it was all coming flooding back to him.
“Safe?” Blitz asked. His voice sounded so small and scared, it made Fizz’s heart break in his chest. He’d had littles before, Ozzie had quite a few partners that he worked with a myriad of different ways, but none of them had ever felt quite the way that Blitz did. His heart was overflowing with love and care, which meant that it almost physically hurt him to know that someone had damaged Blitz badly enough that he felt like he had to fight his headspace instead of just giving into it.
“Safe,” Fizz nodded. He rubbed Blitz’s back with his working hand and then brought the other imp closer so that he was cleaning into Fizz. “You remember when we were little and I took care of you every single time you got hurt? I’m doing that now, but the hurt is in here instead of out there,” he explained. He tapped Blitz’s chest and then his knees. Blitz had been the kind of kid that was always running around and flinging himself off of things so he got injured pretty often.
“Yeah, safe with Fizz,” Blitz giggled as he kicked his leg. He had always done that, even though that wasn’t how reflexes worked.
Fizz smiled and kissed the top of his head, right where his horns met his skull. “Do you want to come back to my house or is there someone that usually takes care of you when you’re small like this?”
“I take care myself! In-de-pen-dant!” Blitz said as he jammed his finger into his chest.
“Do you want to be independent from Fizzy?” he asked, tickling at his sides. Blitz squealed and shook his head as he tried to defend himself from the offending fingers. When Fizz let up, he remained with his head leaned back against the door and a bright smile on his face. “You wanna go home and take care of yourself like you always do?”
“No! Wanna stay with Fizzy. Safe,” Blitz reiterated. He sat up in his chair and then leaned the other direction so that his head was once again on his friend’s shoulder. “Can stay with Fizzy?”
“Course you can,” Fizz replied. “You’re safe with me. We’re going to go back to my house and we’re going to have a really nice playdate together. Do you want me to call anyone and let them know where you’re going?”
It hurt to realize just how much of Blitz’s life he had missed when they were apart from each other. He knew why he had cut the other imp from his life so entirely, but that just made his anger for his boss and ex-mentor increase. He had been fed up with Mammon for a while now because he had been taking the business in another direction that Fizz didn’t really enjoy. He did a lot less shows and a lot more commercials and boring as fuck business meetings. He was glad that he had this to focus on now, though.
Blitz thought about it for a moment, knocking his horns into the back of the seat where he had hooked them over the headrest. “I don’t think so. Loonie doesn’t care,” he shrugged his shoulders.
“Is she your daughter?” Fizz asked carefully. He knew that sometimes when children were brought up around littles, especially their own children, it forced them out of their headspaces entirely.
“Uh huh. Adopted her from the pound, but she just yells at me,” Blitz frowned.
“Why does she yell at you?” Fizz pouted along with him. It was easier to get him to open up and talk about the way that he was feeling when the emotions he was feeling were mirrored on someone else.
“I touch her too much and tell her I love her too much,” Blitz shrugged. Fizz was able to tell that he was pulling out of his headspace and that was absolutely not what he had wanted.
“You can hug me and tell me that you love me as much as you want, little one,” he cooed. “Do you want to play when we get home or do you want to watch a show?”
It was easy to see the way that Blitz was dropping back down into his headspace, which filled Fizz with relief. He hadn’t taken care of a little entirely on his own in a long time, so he had been kind of worried that he was going to ruin everything with his inexperience. “I think I wanna play! Do you have horsie toys?” Blitz then gasped and his eyes shone with excitement, though Fizz noticed that one of them didn’t dilate or move as quickly as the other one did. He wondered how much his friend had been damaged from the fire and if he had been alone, in his headspace to deal with the trauma of that event. The only thing that he could do now was help him heal from this point onward, like it was a spit in the face to Cash for trying to keep them apart.
“Can you make Banana Pudding again! Or Worm Horse?” Blitz asked as he bounced up and down in his seat.
“You always made Worm Horse better than I did. Do you want to try and make balloon animals when we get back?” Fizz asked. He knew that he had some in his pocket, but he wasn’t sure that they were going to be usable after the heat of the fire that had almost consumed him.
“I think so,” Blitz nodded. He sat back in his seat and hummed to himself for the rest of the drive. He kicked his feet against the seat that he was in and the one in front of him while his fingers drew little designs on the window.
Using the distraction, Fizz snagged the burner phone from under the car that was driving them back to Lust. It was something that Ozzie had in all of their cars, just in case something like this was to happen to either one of them. He was able to text his partner to let him know that he had been kidnapped, but Blitz had saved him. Ozzie was very happy that he was okay and explained that Stolas had been arguing with the lawyer that the kidnappers had sent the entire time, though he had just wanted to burn the entire place down to the ground. Fizz said that he should have with a dozen hearts at the end of the message. He then had to tell the Sin that while they were in the car, Blitz had regressed and now Fizz was bringing him back to the palace so that he could care for him. Ozzie seemed to understand, but Fizz was still worried that the Sin was actually upset with him.
His worries were destroyed as soon as they arrived at the palace. He had taken Blitz’s hand and helped him out of the car so that they would walk up the high steps and into the foyer, away from the elements of the ring outside. Ozzie was waiting there with a massive smile on his face, “Welcome to my home, little one.”
“Why do you guys keep calling me that?” Blitz asked. It seemed like his age had finally settled out when they were in the car and he was now stuck around five or six. It meant that his words were a bit clearer and his sentences were structured far better, but he still had the cute little lisp that he had when they were actually aroaund that age.
“Little one? Because you’re small and cute. It’s what regressed people get called,” Fizz answered gently. “Do you not like it?”
“No, the mean bird man calls me that when he forces me out of my headspace. Don’t like being forced out of my headspace, it’s comfy in there,” Blitz pouted. He reached out and took Fizz’s hand, the one that wasn’t non-functional, and then leaned into his caregiver’s side.
“We need t ohave a conversation about Stolas and Blitz’s relationship after he’s down for a nap or playing by himself, Froggy,” Ozzie said, his voice still chipper and light. Fizz knew that there was something deeper going on behind that statement, though.
“Come on, Blitz. Let’s go get my arm fixed and then we can start playing!” he chirped.
The trio made their way into the exclusive elevator that went up to the penthouse apartment where Ozzie lived. Unlike the Morningstar Palace in Pride, the Lust castle was styled as a giant skyscraper with business and servant quarters down below the place where Ozzie lived on his own. It allowed him to have more privacy while still maintaing the staff and court presence that he was supposed to have as the ruler of a ring. They rode the elevator up to the penthouse and then stepped inside before the doors had a chance to close again.
Blitz tilted his head up and gasped as he looked at everything. “Woah!” he shouted as he rushed over to the window so that he could look at all the shimmering lights of the city below.
“You like what you see?” Fizz asked. He sat down on the couch and kept his eyes on the little as Ozzie undid the latches on the prosthetic and removed it. He left with the item and came back with a new one a couple of minutes later.
“Yeah! This is so cool,” Blitz said. “You can see everything from here! Woah, look at that,” he pointed his fingers towards one of the taller skyscrapers.
“I know, isn’t that one so pretty? Sometimes the colors change and you can actually watch it go from the bottom up to the top,” Fizz said. It was nice to have a bigger distraction than a single conversation with Ozzie while work was being done on his prosthetics. He knew that his partner did as much as he could to help him with the process, but there was only so much that he could do while he was also attaching the limb that Fizz needed to work and live.
“Do you think that we’re going to see that tonight?” Blitz asked.
“I think we might,” Fizz nodded. The limb snapped into place and he rose from the couch. “Do you think that you could sit with Ozzie for a while so I can go change and find you some little clothes to play in?”
“I don’t need little clothes,” Blitz said. His hands were squeezing the edges of his shirt with both of his hansd while he continued to stare out at the city out of the window. It was something that he had done while they were growing up whenever he refused something he wanted because he knew it was for the best. Fizz hated that they had grown up in the type of situation that had required that out of him, but he was happy that he was finally in the place where he could undo some of those issues.
“But do you want them? I already have them here so I can just bring them out and you can wear them while we play. It’s not like I’m buying anything for you so you don’t have to feel guilty,” Fizz explained.
Blitz thought about it for a moment before he gave his head a firm nod. “Yes, please, Rolly-Polly,” he said.
The nickname made Fizz smile so wide that the burn scars around his hairline ached. It was nice to know that they were already returning back to where they had been before Cash had decided that he was going to break them apart. Fizz was sure that the bastard had been getting a cut of the money he made Mammon, otherwise he would have continued to drive his son away simply by guilting him so that he could extort Blitz further. Blitz didn’t like Mammon so if the two of them would have been permitted to be together then Fizz never would have agreed to work for him in the first place.
He walked off while listening to Ozzie ask the little questions about the way that he liked to play and the kinds of things that he liked. Fizz changed out of the outfit that smelled of smoke and the dingy room that they had been held in. He washed his body off with a damp cloth as quickly as he could before he dressed in something comfortable to hang out in. He set out a couple of outfits on the guest room sofa and then called Blitz and Ozzie to come for him.
When the little arrived in the door, his eyes widened with excitement. He walked over to the outfits and examined them closely before he picked the one in the middle that Fizz had expected him to go for. It was a blue dungaree set with a white and orange stripped shirt underenath, something very reminiscent of what the cowboys on earth would wear but for a little. “Do you need help putting it on or do you think that you can do it yourself?” he asked carefully.
Blitz thought about it before he said, “I’m a big boy! I can do it on my own!”
“Okay, you can call me if you need any help and we’ll come right back for you,” Fizz promised. He and Ozzie stepped out into the hallway so that Blitz had the privacy that he needed to change. The two of them had a quiet conversation about what Stolas had come to ask Ozzie about and the fact that he shouldn’t be trusted around the little until they got confirmation that he wasn’t being sexual with someone down in their headspace. The Goetia had been known to reject those headspaces and pretend as though they didn’t exist as a way to keep their women specifically in place, so it was possible he had been doing horrific things to their little. Fizz knew that had contributed to why Blitz had absolutely refused to go down into his headspace when they were in the car until Blitz had reassured him over and over again that he would be safe.
The door opened five minutes later with the little revealing himself. His old clothes were laying in a pile on the floor of the guest room and the straps for the overalls were crossed the wrong direction.
“You look just like a real cowboy in training!” Fizz informed him as he naturally undid the clips and then swapped them to where they belonged. “Do you want to come play with me in the living room?”
“Yeah! Worm Horse!” Blitz said as he ran down the hallway back to the living room. Fizz smiled after them and felt his heart swell adoringly in his chest. He hadn’t had a little of his own in his entire life, but he was beginning to think that was because the Saints of Hell had been waiting to bring him and Blitz back together. He had expected to be Blitz’s caregiver when they were classified but hadn’t been, not until that moment.