The Morvane apartment in Hell had seen a lot: half-rebuilt animatronics, soul-bound spirits, a hellhound in heat, a glutton queen’s drunken karaoke, and even a child’s magical outburst or two. But nothing… nothing had prepared Blaze for this.
Loona — his beautifully bitter, sarcastic, claw-your-eyes-out partner — was on a step ladder with a string of enchanted orange lights wrapped around her shoulders like a boa, fangs bared in concentration as she tried to hang a floating bat lantern from the ceiling.
“Hold it steady!” she snapped.
“I am holding it steady!” Blaze called back from below, gripping the base of the ladder. “You’re the one doing aerial acrobatics with demonic tinsel up there!”
“It’s not tinsel, it’s binding wire. Says it channels spectral movement. The bats flap more realistically!”
Blaze blinked. “…Why do you know that?”
“Because I read the tag, dumbass.”
He looked around. The apartment was slowly being transformed into the gory fever dream of a candy-addicted necromancer. Cobwebs that twitched on their own were strung across the corners. A cheap animatronic reaper stood in the hallway… but screamed in Loona’s voice whenever activated. She insisted on recording her own “boo, bitch.”
On the far wall, a projector looped old-school horror movies, warped and red-filtered through the Hellnet. The couch had fake bones scattered across it like morbid throw pillows, and Blaze was pretty sure that the eyeball wreath on the door winked at him.
In the middle of it all, waddling around with a pumpkin bucket already clutched in both tiny arms, was Laziel — still in his candy corn costume.
He had refused to take it off since the store.
“Caaaandyyyyy!” he squealed, swinging the empty bucket like a club.
“Not yet, kiddo!” Blaze called. “That’s in three days. We gotta earn the good stuff.”
“NOOOO! NOW!”
Loona snickered from above. “He gets that from you.”
Blaze smirked. “Please. If he got it from me, he’d already be sneaking into the stash with a fake ID and a smoke bomb.”
“Don’t give him ideas,” Loona muttered, finally finishing the bat lantern and hopping down with a satisfied grunt. She stepped back, flicked a switch on the wall… and the whole ceiling suddenly glowed orange and black, casting eerie shadows across the walls.
Blaze blinked. “…You did that? Since when do you like Halloween this much?”
Loona folded her arms, leaning against the wall beside him. “What, I can’t be into something?”
“No, no, it’s just… this is like, excited Loona. Festive. Crafty. You yelled at a decorative skeleton earlier because it wasn’t symmetrical.”
“I told you, his femurs were off,” she muttered, then caught herself. “Okay, yeah, maybe I’m a little into it.”
Blaze raised a brow, waiting.
Loona rolled her eyes but finally sighed. “…When I was a kid, Halloween was the one night in the orphanage they didn’t treat us like trash. We all got to dress up. Even the dumbass little devils who bit each other over gum.”
Her voice softened just slightly. “It felt like, I dunno… for one night, I could pretend I was someone else. Someone stronger. Scarier. Cooler. Not some mutt waiting for a family that never came.”
Blaze blinked, heart quietly aching. Then smiled. “Well, this mutt’s got a family now.”
Loona looked at him. Then down at Laziel, who had found a plastic skull and was trying to feed it fake candy.
“…Yeah,” she said softly. “Guess I do.”
She nudged Blaze with her elbow. “So what about you, huh? You weren’t exactly the holiday type before.”
He laughed. “Yeah, well, turns out when your kid dresses like a walking sugar triangle and your hellhound girlfriend goes full Martha Stewart meets Addams Family, it kind of rubs off on you.”
Loona rolled her eyes but didn’t hide her grin. “Dumbass.”
“Love you too, Loon.”
*~*~*~*~*~*
