Chapter Text
There is absolutely no reason it should be this difficult to track down one raggedy ex-carnie, regardless of whether or not he had had an extra decade and a half to hone his skills. Oz has had millennia more than Blitzø ever will, after all, and near limitless resources.
But as soon as Blitzo Buckzo left the hospital, it’s as if his existence simply ceased. He didn’t have any credit cards to track, Fizzie had confirmed with Blitzo’s twin sister (whom Ozzie had never realized was even related to him, despite having met her once in the future-that-was) that his identification was never retrieved from their father.
Fizzie had been strange after that conversation, longer periods of thoughtfulness tinged with a bitterness and upset Oz knew too well, though he hadn’t tasted it often in the months since Fizzie and Blitzø had begun rebuilding their friendship. He hadn’t even let him in the room with him while he was on the phone with her, even though they had a long-standing tradition of Oz helping him through difficult phone calls. They haven’t been in contact since, either.
He has people tracking any hint of the name, of the appearance that Fizzie had given him, even in the rings that Fizz is certain Blitzø would never be willing to spend time in, like Gluttony. But there are no hits on his name at all.
He never turns up to get new identification. No one using his name ever rents an apartment or gets hired by anyone keeping any electronic records. His background is never run. And no one ever recognizes the description they provided.
Fizzie is always tense these days, the way he had been when he first moved into the palace with him. Some of it he’s shared with him, more mumbles under blankets than deliberate confession.
Oz’s staff don’t know Fizzie now, just like they hadn’t then, and it’s even worse on the rare occasions he recognizes someone and is not known in return. They’re hesitant and subservient in a way Fizzie had once deliberately trained out of them, just because he is a ‘guest’ of Oz’s. He hates it, is used to joking and laughing with the army of people who managed Oz’s estate and being treated with warm forbearance. He feels alien and unwelcome in a way he hasn’t in a long time.
But this, he had mumbled against the swell of Oz’s chest, would get better. They’d get to know him, and they’d develop their own rapport. He’s done it a million times before, shoving himself into areas he felt he didn’t really belong with a con’s smile and charming people so thoroughly that they can’t tell how terrified and out-of-place he feels. And eventually he does belong there, by his own efforts, and Oz can whisper reassurances he can actually acknowledge as truth when he’s not in the darkest depths of his mind.
But he’s nobody here. Few enough people have even heard the name Fizzarolli in this time, let alone remember it. And he’d hated the fame and infamy, but he’d also loved it. It meant he was somebody, in a completely undeniable way. There hadn’t been a soul alive who wouldn’t have had to admit that Fizz had completely changed the way the entertainment industry worked in the last decade, even if they disdained him.
He won’t be Mammon’s this time. Something in Oz’s chest that he hadn’t even realized was knotted up until that point loosens so suddenly he nearly gasps with it. There’s no hesitance in his Fizzie’s voice, no uncertainty, like he hadn’t even been fighting with the concept, that he assumed it was a given. He won’t be Mammon’s this time, and he’s not at all sure that he’s seeking the same level of fame he had once achieved.
So much of his life had been fueled by resentment and the desperate desire to prove himself. To prove himself to Cash- Cash Buckzo, Oz had only recently connected- to prove himself to Mammon, to prove himself to the world. To make it so there wasn’t a single person in all of Hell who didn’t know his name, who didn’t know his face, to prove he was worth it.
But, Fizzie doesn’t say, but Oz hears nonetheless, I think I kind of am worth it. That after all this time, after all this work, after all of Oz’s love and the near worshipful way Blitzø had been treating him with after they had reconnected, that somehow things would be okay.
So people would know his name on his own terms, with his own boundaries. He loved performing at Ozzie’s, loved acrobatics, loved having an audience and little kids who looked up to him. He’d feel a little less dirty signing autographs for them if there wasn’t a ubiquitous sex doll with his face staring at them from every window.
All of this would come later, anyway. Even with the assistance of a steady supply of Bel’s magical medicated cream, Fizz’s recovery is slower than he wants it to be. The magic is healing him faster, but also prevents so much of the pain that Fizzie is lucid much more often than he was the first time. It means time spent in bed is mostly spent awake, and Fizzie is nearly climbing the walls with frustration at his inactivity, even without limbs.
But eventually, the flesh of his limbs heals as much as it’s going to and he’s being eased off the cream. Physical therapy is easy compared to the first time. He’s better healed faster, and Fizzie tells him silkily that he has more mobility than he has had since the first fire. His scars are shaped differently, the jaggedness of his horns has shifted topography and he has concluded that he has retained nearly an inch more on all of his limbs. It’s actually really going to fuck up his reacclimation to his prosthetics.
At that point, his train of thought had wandered off to planning said acclimation, and Oz had let him distract himself. He knows how terrified Fizzie is of losing Blitzø again. He knows he wakes up crying for him more often than he has in the last ten years put together. He knows how he haunts the palace, even though he had never spent that much time here. He also knows that all of the anxiety he can’t express regarding everything else is being shoved into their search for him.
Fizz is clinging to Blitzø, or perhaps the concept of Blitzø, like flotsam in a wine-dark sea. He had always been his constant- whether that constant was love or hate or some fucked-up combination of the two, it was constant nonetheless. He had never felt an iota less for Blitzø once in his whole life, he had told Oz like it was a joke, regardless of what that feeling was.
So their hunt continues, and continues to turn up nothing.
He’s acting odd enough that eventually it starts to get back to the other sins. Mammon has called him fourteen times in the last two days, leaving increasingly incoherent obscenity-filled voicemails.
But he can’t ignore Bee, so he swallows a groan and swipes to accept her call.
“You’re coming to my party tonight, Ozzie,” she informs him before he even has a chance to greet her. “If that doesn’t knock you out of whatever funk you’re in, we’ll talk after. But you’re going out tonight!”
Her call ends on a shriek only slightly played up for his amusement, and she hangs up before he can argue.
He huffs, tamping down reluctant laughter, and moves to slide his phone in his pocket as he stands. It vibrates again before he can, once again displaying the latest selfie she had installed as her contact photo. He answers, not even bothering to open his mouth beyond the affectionate grin he can’t suppress.
“Don’t wear anything boring!” She demands, inexplicably more winded than she had been fifteen seconds before. “Something hot! Something leather! Something with heels!”
She hangs up again, and he can’t help a huff of laughter. He goes to let Fizzie know, and maybe get his input on a Bee-approved outfit.
-
“I wish you could come with me Fizzieeeee,” he whines, pouting at his partner theatrically. Fizzie cackles to himself as he carefully adjusts Oz’s lapels, shiny new metal fingers hesitant in a way that will only ease with time and familiarity.
“I’ll re-meet Bee later, Big Daddy, but her parties are no fun when you’re the only one there who’s sober. Once I can drink again, I’ll party with Bee all she wants.” He waggles his shoulders at him suggestively, and Oz snorts a laugh.
“She’ll be thrilled to have a partner to come up with bad ideas with again. Been awhile since I’ve been wild enough.”
“And I’m young enough now that hangovers don’t touch me,” Fizzie brags, dropping back down to sit on Oz’s vanity and swinging his legs a little too wildly to suggest control. “I am going to drink so much.”
“Determined to prove yourself wrong, huh baby?” Oz teases, pausing his makeup application to shoot his Fizzy-frog a wink.
Fizzie cackles again and sticks his tongue out at him. The bull dangling from one earlobe throws Fizzie a kiss, the little heart that results drifting to pop right between Fizzie’s eyes. He smiles so wide Oz worries for a moment that he’s going to tip off the vanity.
“You have to tell me allllll the fun things that happen. No ‘Oh, I was discussing business with Beelzebub because somehow when two of the most fun party people in the universe attend a party together they become the most boring businesspeople who have ever lived.’”
His heart swells with affection even as he shrinks himself to a more average height for hellborn. The face he has on now is his just as much as the one he wears most, and people know who he is in this form as well. This is the form his incubi are based on, with a little room for deviation over the years. Nearly human.
He keeps himself just a little too tall to be an incubus, just a little out of the realm of possibility, his eyes just a little too bright, a little too magical to be anyone but Lord Asmodeus, Sin of Lust.
He pairs it with a sexy little leather miniskirt and heels.
Fizzie puckers his lips expectantly, and Oz drops a sweet kiss on them.
“I love you, Ozzie. Have fun playing with Bee.” Fizzie pets his cheek a couple of times before swinging to haul himself to the bed. Oz politely does not watch as he overshoots slightly and squawks as he has to catch himself.
-
He’s fashionably late, as Bee always insists for him to be. Apparently it sweetens the excitement of her guests when he makes a grand entrance. So he takes a limo and sways his hips like he still has tail feathers to shake, and does not laugh as Bee hurdles toward him at top speed as soon as she deems the thrill to have reached its peak.
“Ozzie!” She screams loud enough for half the party to hear, drawing even more eyes. “You missed my performance!”
She flits around him theatrically, tugging at his jacket and inspecting his makeup. She’s showing him off to the crowd, highlighting the effort he put in and how lucky they are to see him. Her current boyfriend is trailing after her looking longsuffering, and Ozzie suspects that he won’t last much longer with her.
“Has it changed since the last time?” He asks, shifting his suit jacket so it better shows off his bare chest underneath. The surge of lust from around them tells him he’s doing his job correctly, as does the flash of satisfaction in Bee’s eyes.
“Yes! A lot!” Bee insists, already moving to tow him toward the balcony her crew is set up on. Polite of her, considering she prefers to be at the center of her parties, but Oz has preferred to be a little separated for a couple of hundred years at this point. It dulls the secondhand emotions a touch, allows him to maintain some aloofness that has become especially important since Fizzie and he had become mostly exclusive.
She doesn’t know that part yet, of course, but she knows him better than anyone but his froggie and the people he employs. So she brings him to the balcony, and he lounges on a chaise and sips a merlot the same shade as his lipstick and lets the excitement and lust of the celebrants below wash over him.
She doesn’t linger with him for the first hour, though he spots her regularly among her guests, often nodding subtly to him to show him off. He acts as untouchable as she needs him to, and only smiles at her when she returns at last. The boyfriend has disappeared at some point.
She collapses to the identical chaise set beside his and stretches forward like a puppy before flicking her wings like she’s shaking them out and grinning at him.
“Okay! I’m free for a bit. Now we can party!”
The elegant glass of merlot shifts with a burst of scarlet stars into a much larger, much more elaborate glass of something composed of the violet and fuchsia theme colors of the event and faintly luminous. It matches his outfit disconcertingly well for something that was decided upon independently. He’s a little worried that she somehow knows him so well she was able to predict exactly the outfit he was planning to wear. Not even Fizzie can do that.
He takes a careful sip. It tastes mostly like sparkly sweet, exactly as he likes his cocktails, and doesn’t at all taste of alcohol. It’s probably loaded with enough ABV to take down a small army of Hellborn, so it will let him let loose a bit even with the search for Blitzø hanging over his head.
She introduces him to several select people, and for Fizzie’s sake he mostly manages to keep from talking business with them for more than a few minutes each. Every few minutes a different one of Bee’s assistants slinks out of the crowd and reports to her, too quiet to hear easily. She usually dismisses them with a smile and moves on, but an hour in- just as being on the floor is starting to become grating- one of them gets stopped fully by the arm and Bee stands on her own two feet for the first time that night.
She holds onto her still as she gestures Oz over hurriedly. He wades his way over to her and she switches to holding onto his sleeve, wings lifting her to grip close to his shoulder.
“I have to catch someone but I don’t want to abandon you, just humor me for a second!” She begins dragging him off, not really paying attention to his bemused, “It’s not a bother, Bee.”
The assistant is leading, he realizes, and is moving swiftly. She doesn’t have to take them far, especially because with Bee flying slightly above the crowd she sees her aim faster than anyone else could.
“B! Don’t run! I know you’re avoiding me!” She shrieks, using the hand she’s not pulling Oz with to point at her target.
And somehow-
It’s Blitzø. But he’s different even at first glance. His scars are worse than Oz remembers, noticeably so even to him. He’s wearing a cushioned patch over his right eye and looks at Bee like he’s being hunted.
He hasn’t seen Oz yet, preoccupied with skittering away as Bee zooms over to him still shouting. But the question of whether he had joined their little time expedition has already been answered for him.
Bee manages to seize Blitzø before he can run. His uncovered eye is wide and darting around, looking for an escape he will not find. The assistant has already disappeared.
“B, you’ve been gone for months, we thought you were dead!”
His arm, partially lifted by Bee’s grasp, ends just below the elbow.
“Blitzø.”
He doesn’t shout it. He doesn’t know how Blitzø even hears it over the noise of the party and Bee’s continued chattering. But he turns unerringly to face him like it’s the only thing he hears.
His attempts to get away cease. He goes deathly still. Bee clocks the difference immediately and follows his gaze to Oz.
“Ozzie?”
It’s not often she sounds hesitant, but Blitzø’s reaction to him throws up red flags immediately.
“You look a little different, Big Guy,” Blitzø rasps before Oz can come up with anything to say.
“You look a lot different.” He means to continue the verbal sparring, knowing just how much Blitzø likes it even from the few times they’ve properly talked, but he’s so overcome with relief that he scoops Blitzø like he would his Fizzie and tugs him firmly against his chest. Bee lets him slip through her fingers and blinks up at them, disconcerted.
“You know B, Ozzie? Wait, Blitz?”
“The ‘o’ is silent,” Blitzø offers automatically.
“…What ‘o’?”
“Fizzie’s been looking everywhere for you.” His voice is soft, just for Blitzø. Bee looks even more confused, even though she couldn’t have heard him over the noise of the party. Blitzø stares at him, uncovered eye wide, not struggling to remove himself from Oz’s cradling arms at all. He actually shifts a little to sit on his forearm more comfortably and tuck his damaged arm securely between them.
“Come home with me, please. To see Fizzie.” The request comes out at nearly a whisper. There’s so much more he could say, but he doesn’t. He just waits for Blitzø to come to a conclusion.
Bee runs out of patience and flies up to Oz’s head level just as Blitzø mumbles his assent, finally tearing his gaze from his face.
“Asmodeus! What is going on? Tell me!”
“Sorry, Bee,” he says, genuinely remorseful. “I’m going to have to duck out a little early.”
He turns to begin wading to the front door. She follows him closely, above the heads of the partygoers, peppering him with questions the whole way. People are staring, and Blitzø turns his head subtly so that his face is less conspicuous. It mostly just tucks his face into his shoulder, which Oz isn’t complaining about.
He’s also not answering Bee, which is irritating her a great deal. She’s also having fun with it, though. She loves a good mystery. He’s banking on that love preventing her from getting angry about it.
They tumble from the front door en masse, and Bee zips around to hover in front of his face.
“Oz?” She sounds a little vulnerable. He melts a bit.
“I’ll call you in a couple of days, Bee, I promise. I’ll explain.”
She scowls at him, but there’s no true anger in her face.
“You’d better. Whatever you want B for, I want him back in one piece, you hear me? I’ve gotten attached to the little fucker.”
Oz chuckles, and can feel Blitzø’s little huff of laughter against his neck.
“You’ll get him back just as he came. Thank you for the fun night, Bee.”
“Don’t be good, B,” she orders Blitzø. “Ozzie needs people to shake up his routine a bit now and then.”
He peeks out at her, strangely demure. She seems to think this is a little odd as well, but hides the worried furrow of her brow when he nods with a little smile. Oz suspects that only Blitzø’s body language is keeping her from coming to some pretty damning conclusions. He’s still comfortable in his arms as they approach where Oz’s limo is already idling.
He deposits Blitzø carefully into the bench seat in the far back. It’s only as he’s pulling away that he registers Blitzø’s tail slipping from where it was curled around his bicep.
Bee’s gone by the time he turns around. It’s a gesture of faith.
It’s a long drive back to the elevator, but he suspects that using a crystal right now isn’t something that would soothe Blitzø.