Archive of Our Own ^beta

Part One: The Meeting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part 2: The Pregnancy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you talking about?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was how they had ended up where they were.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So should we get started?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part Three: The Birth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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